Dance Macabre

If you stood all of Hugh Hefner's exes in a line, one after the other, they would form a queue that would probably wrap around the earth's equator three or four times.  Having previously discarded two wives and a legion of concubines -- Hef has often economized by carrying on with multiple women at once -- the 84-year-old playgeezer has offered his soiled hand to Crystal Harris, a girl 60 years his junior.  And she, already foolish enough to have bared herself in Hefner's mag, is apparently compounding her foolishness by agreeing to marry this hound, who is old enough to be her great-grandfather.


Hey Hef: you can rob every cradle within a 100-mile radius of the Playboy Mansion, but: you're still going to die. 

Atheist BULLboard: Free Speech?

In a sophomoric attempt to be provocative, and proving once again that a fool and his money are soon parted, something called American Atheists spent 20 large to put up the following billboard near the Lincoln Tunnel in New Jersey:

One of the questions before the house is: are these people champions of free speech?  Indeed, is this a legitimate use of the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment?  Some brief observations:

-- Error does not have a right to be heard. Persons who promulgate errors do not have a right for their errors to be heard. A right of one person to be heard necessarily entails an obligation on the part of the rest of us to listen. Who wants to be forced to listen?

-- If you take the position that the public airing of errors ought to be tolerated because "who is to decide what is true and what is false?", then aren't you really saying that truth is unknowable? If you are Catholic and hold this view, how do you square it with your faith?

-- The idea that there is some benefit to the publication of error deserves more careful scrutiny than it is given. There is no basis to assume that an error will always be recognized as such once it sees the light of day, or that its folly will be obvious to everyone: its folly is clearly not seen by some, or else there would be no one who would want to preach it. True, an error publicly displayed and publicly contradicted is better than a public error that goes unchallenged; but better than either is an error that is not made public in the first place. St. John Chrysostom certainly thought so: he went so far as to say that heretics ought to be smitten across the face, and made to fear the consequences of declaring their false doctrines in public.

-- There is such a thing as hell.  How many people's journey there began because, in the name of tolerance, they were exposed to pernicious ideas?  Could we tolerate the preaching of errors -- and blasphemous ones at that -- if we took seriously the existence of hell, and the irremediable evil of damnation?  If we stopped to imagine the horror of a soul's first seconds in hell, and its realization that there is no escape, and no reprieve for all eternity -- could we bear the thought of even one person's eternal ruin?

Forty years ago, William F. Buckley, Jr. gave an interview to Playboy magazine which was later published in his excellent anthology Inveighing We Will Go.  Some of his thoughts from this interview are pertinent:

Society has three sanctions available for dealing with dissenters of this kind [Black Panthers, the KKK].  There is the whole family of social sanctions; if they don't work, we then have legal sanctions; if the legal sanctions don't work, we are forced to use military sanctions.  As an example of the social sanctions, I give you what has happened to Gerald L. K. Smith, the fierce anti-Semite.  Would Smith be invited to join the sponsoring group of the Lincoln Center?  If he gave a $1,000 contribution to the President's Club, would he be admitted as a member?  No.  Gerald L. K. Smith has been effectively isolated in America, and I'm glad that he has been.  After such an experience as we have seen in the twentieth century of what happens -- or what can happen -- when people call for genocidal persecutions of other people, we have got to use whatever is the minimal resource available to society to keep that sort of thing from growing....I would like to see people like Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver [Black Panthers and convicted felons] treated at least as badly as Gerald L. K. Smith has been.  But no: they get applauded, they get invited to college campuses, they get listened to attentively on radio and on television -- they are invited to Leonard Bernstein's salons -- all of which makes rather glamorous a position that, in my judgment, ought to be execrated.

...For as long as that kind of thing happens, you encourage people to consider as tenable a position that in my judgment ought to be universally rejected as untenable.  The whole idea of civilization is little by little to discard certain points of view as uncivilized; it is impossible to discover truths without discovering their opposites are error.  In a John Stuart Mill-type society -- in which any view, for so long as it is held by so much as a single person, is considered as not yet confuted -- you have total intellectual and social anarchy. 

At this point, Playboy asks Buckley if the ventilation of these uncivilized points of view might not serve the cause of exposing their untenability and discrediting their adherents.  Buckley is quick to point out the disparity between the abstract appeal of an argument and its real-life application: 

I acknowledge the abstract appeal of the argument, but I remind you that it can be used as an argument for evangelizing people in Nazism, racism or cannibalism, in order to fortify one's opposition to such doctrines.  The trouble is that false doctrines do appeal to people.  In my judgment, it would be a better world where nobody advocated tyranny; better than a world in which tyranny is advocated as an academic exercise intended to fortify the heroic little antibodies to tyranny.

Playboy asks: what is the harm in allowing a doctrine to be preached whose evils are apparent?  Buckley points out the road that we set ourselves on once we start tolerating the promulgation of error:

What is apparent to one man is not necessarily apparent to the majority.  Hitler came to power democratically.  It's a nineteenth-century myth to confide totally in the notion that the people won't be attracted to the wrong guy.  George Wallace [the segregationist 45th governor of Alabama] not Nixon or Humphrey, got the highest TV ratings.  Take, once more, the Panthers.  There are, I am sure, hundreds of thousands of Americans who would like to hear a speech by Eldridge Cleaver.  One reason they would like to do so is the excitement.  Another is that they like to show off.  People like to show their audacity, their cavalier toleration of iconoclasm....I contend that it is a responsibility of the intellectual community to anticipate Dachau rather than to deplore it.  The primary responsibility of people who fancy themselves morally sophisticated is to do what they can to exhibit their impatience with those who are prepared to welcome the assassination of Bobby Kennedy because that meant one less pig.  Their failure to do that is, in my judgment, a sign of moral disintegration.  If you have moral disintegration, you don't have left a case against Dachau.  If you don't have that, what do you have?  Make love not war?  Why?

Why indeed?  The question whether, in the name of free speech, we really owe dissenters like American Atheists a public forum is one that deserves, not a knee-jerk reaction, but serious consideration. 

A Rich White Liberal and His Money Are Soon Parted

Exhibit A: "Hopi" ear candling.  Too stupid for comment.

Except that I'd like to help the Hopi tribe spread the word that this inanity, which has been pinned on them, has nothing whatsoever to do with Hopi medicinal lore.  The Hopis are not, and never have been, dumb enough to stick lit candles in their ears, let alone pay somebody for the privilege.

H/T TH2.

Of Giant Sloths, Disneyland Druidism and Presbyterians

Christopher Johnson of Bad Vestments alerts Catholic liturgical abusers that the Presbyterians are giving them a run for their money:

 

If you could stick these poseurs in a time machine and transport them to an authentic ancient pagan festival -- say, in Britain, around the time Stonehenge was built -- would they last more than five minutes?  

Never, Never, Never, Never Give Up

...however tempted one may be.

We have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat...We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude...we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road...we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when...the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced...: "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting." And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, denouncing the Munich Agreement, 1938

Time to take the last half of the last line to heart.

America

Well, it was a nice country while it lasted.

For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah stay and staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water; the mighty man and the soldier, the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder, the captain of fifty and the man of rank, the counselor and the skilful magician and the expert in charms.  And I will make boys their princes, and babes shall rule over them.  And the people will oppress one another, every man his fellow and every man his neighbor; the youth will be insolent to the elder, and the base fellow to the honorable.

Isaiah 3:1-5

Reason No. 3,438,872 for Abolishing Communion in the Hand

Is it possible to desecrate a Host after having received It on the tongue? Of course. Has it happened in history? Of course.

But who is seriously prepared to argue that Communion in the hand does not provide greater opportunity for desecration and make it a lot easier?

Those '70s Stations

Every Lent, for the last several years, I am reminded why I don't like to go to the Stations of the Cross anymore at my local neighborhood churches.  When I was a kid, the Stations of the Cross  booklet that we always prayed out of at my parochial school was distinctly lacking in power and majesty; yet Stations was still an oasis of Catholic sanity in the howling desert of the Spirit of Vatican II.

Not anymore.  Now, instead of following Jesus on the Way of the Cross, we are to swing into lockstep with the revolution on the march.  An outfit called Center of Concern runs a website called Education for Justice, allegedly dedicated to advancing Catholic social teaching.  You have to be a paid subscriber to access most of the site's content (which seems to be almost devoid of anything having to do with a real and pressing matter of social justice, namely, abortion).  But if the "Peace Stations of the Cross" held at one of the local parishes last Friday is any indication, that money would be better spent on something more worthwhile, like say a five-day drug run.

Some samples of the Center for Concern's commie crappola and downright heresy masquerading as a legitimate Catholic devotion, ranging from the nonsensical to the overtly pagan:

Third Station: Jesus Falls the First Time

Jesus knew in his own body the force of violence, the power of fear and the domination of those intent on destroying him.  All might, all evil, all hostility struck against him and he fell.  But he stood again, faced the power of violence, and absorbed it within himself.  Jesus' lifestyle of personal nonviolence was chosen long before he faced the cross and execution.  His first word, "repent," was the call to be nonviolent and obedient.

Every time we fall, giving in to hatred and revenge, we promise to rise again and recommit ourselves to the nonviolent Jesus.  We will strive to be peacemakers in our daily lives, offering an alternative to the violence that is so pervasive in our culture and world.

[Note the twisting and subversion of the well-known prayer:] We adore you, Christ, and we bless you.  By the power of your holy cross help us to change the world.

From the Fourth Station: Jesus Meets His Mother.  Mary, who never sinned, stands in solidarity with unrepentant and public sinners:

From the beginning Mary shared the fate of her child, including his call to prophecy, his rejection and sufferings.  She prayed his call to prophecy, his rejection and sufferings.  She prayed what he prayed -- that the proud be overthrown in the conceit of their hearts, that the hungry be fed and the rich sent empty away, that the meek and lowly live with dignity and the powerful dethroned.  On the road to Calvary, Mary stood with her son and endured humiliation, mocking and ridicule.  She symbolizes all who stand in solidarity with those whose pain is public.  She stands with women who have illegitimate children, with those who contract AIDS, with men and women marginalized because of their sexuality.  And she stands with all who befriend them.

From the Seventh Station: Jesus Stumbles a Second Time.  Jesus wasn't just accomplishing our salvation: more importantly, He was stickin' it to The Man:

The violence of the system degrades, keeps down, rejects and never forgets failure and weakness.  So many in our society fall again and again under the burden.  We have names and categories for them: alcoholics, addicts, abusers.  It's so easy to see them as problems rather than persons with individual stories.  It's so easy to forget how many are victims of our failed educational, economic and legal systems, scapegoats of racism, sexism and intolerance.  Actually, it's a miracle that the journey continues at all and that anyone marginalized by the system gets up again.

From the Eighth Station: The Women of Jerusalem Weep for Jesus.  Another blow against American imperialism:

Let us be still and weep in our own hearts.  Let us weep for all those lost in our wars, in our armed conflicts, in our military maneuvers.  Let us weep for all who suffer because our country initiates and aids racial and national conflicts with arms, money and supplies.

From the Eleventh Station: Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross.  The Good Thief erred when he told the other thief that they were getting what they deserved:

Jesus is executed by being nailed to a piece of wood, hung naked, exposed to taunts, reduced to an object of ridicule.  Public crucifixions continue today, only in place of wooden beams there is a gas chamber, electric chair, injection, firing squad.  The death penalty is not our right.

O God, forgive us for we know not what we do.  Help us to work against the death penalty, to stand against legally sanctioned death.

From the Thirteenth Station: Jesus Is Taken Down from the Cross.  Our lives are only worthwhile if the world smiles on us:

We all have the same reason for living.  How will we know if our lives have been worthwhile?  The criteria is [sic] clear.  Will others remember us for our mercy, our kindness, our truth-telling, our compassion, our faithfulness.  [Sic.]  Have we, in other words, done the will of God?

From the Fourteenth Station: Jesus Is Laid in the Womb of Mother Earth:

The body of Jesus was returned to the earth.  It was interred with the waste, the refuse of society.  The earth took back its creator and maker.  The womb of Mother the Earth received the flesh of the Sun of Justice, just as Father the Sky embraced his last cry and prayer.

Time to throw out the left-wing pabulum and go back to the authentic devotion of the Stations of the Cross.  Time to live again by the wisdom the Che-wannabes have thrown out:

I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 

1 Corinthians 2:2

It's Been One of Those Months

LEX NON ORITUR EX INJURIA
The law does not arise from a mere injury. 
...except in Idaho.

LEX NON FAVET DELICATORUM VOTIS
The law does not favor the wishes of the dainty.
...except in Idaho.

LEX NON PATITUR ABSURDUM
The law does not suffer an absurdity.
...except in Idaho.

LEX NEMINEM COGIT AD VANA SEU INUTILIA PERAGENDA
The law compels no one to do vain or useless things.
...except in Idaho.

LEX NON CURAT DE MINIMIS
The law does not care about trifles.
...except in Idaho.

That They Too May Vandalize

When The Redoubtable Marcus Magnus told me about this ad from Quest magazine, the organ of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  Then when I saw it for myself, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  I still don't believe I'm looking at what I'm looking at.  I bet you can't, either.

TO:            The editor, Quest Magazine
FROM:     Anita Moore, Attorney at Law
RE:            Your Permobile scooter ad

As an attorney practicing full-time in the criminal courts of my great state, I want to thank you for the ad you ran in your latest issue for the Permobile scooter, showing how the scooter opens doors for disabled kids onto the fascinating world of malicious injury to property.  I would have thought that the idea of a scooter company encouraging felonious behavior would have raised an eyebrow or two in the editor’s office, but it is apparent that your publication has evolved beyond such outmoded, puritanical thinking.  Clearly, Quest Magazine is in the business of affirming and fulfilling every MDA sufferer’s dreams, however squalid and unlawful.  I congratulate you on your broad-mindedness.

I am not presently practicing in the juvenile court, so it will be a few years yet before I have the privilege of representing the young gentleman pictured in the ad in question; but it is always helpful to have a sneak preview of my future clientele.  My thanks to Quest Magazine for doing its bit to keep my filing cabinet in a constant state of overflow.

Very truly yours, &c.

More on Archie Bunker, Prophet

Digital Hairshirt reports on airline "security" measures ranging from the nonsensical to the downright insane in the wake of the Crotch Bomber incident over Detroit on Christmas Day.  While passengers on some flights are not noticing any changes, on other flights, passengers are being subjected to the following indignities:

-- The removal of blankets

-- Being ordered to keep their hands visible at all times

-- Being locked out of lavatories

-- Being deprived of food and drink

-- Being prohibited from using any electronic devices whatsoever

-- Being deprived of access to their belongings throughout the flight

-- Being prevented from keeping things on their laps 

-- Redundant searches of their belongings

-- Not being allowed to read

-- Frisking at the gates, even of babies 

The inconsistency of application of these over-the-top procedures is being labeled a "tactic."  "'It keeps them [potential terrorists] guessing,' transportation expert Joseph Schwieterman said."  More likely, however -- if a non-expert like me can venture an opinion -- the stupidity of these rules both in their content and their application is predictable as coming from an entity that cannot even reliably secure our borders or deliver our mail, and whose incompetence is surpassed only by its arrogance.

Why do we put up with this crap? After 9/11, the airlines ought to be kissing our asses, not searching them or harassing them.  I mean, the airlines ought to be glad that we still condescend to put up with all the unnecessary discomfort and stupidity in order to do business with them.

But even more than that, there is this: wasn't it passengers who thwarted the terrorists on United Airlines Flight 93 from destroying their objective on 9/11?  Wasn't it passengers who  thwarted the Shoe Bomber on December 22, 2001?  Wasn't it passengers who apprehended the Crotch Bomber over Detroit just a few days ago?  Have not passengers played a key role in quashing terrorist attacks on airliners since 9/11?  When are the airlines going to start rolling out the red carpet for passengers and stop treating them as liabilities?

Let passengers eat, drink, get into the bathroom, and use blankets.  Let them have access to their purses.  Let them read -- maybe that issue of Soldier of Fortune will come in handy.  Let them use electronic devices to their hearts' content, to the extent they don't interfere with the crew's radio communications.  (Wasn't it cell phones in the hands of passengers of Flight 93 that made them realize they weren't just going to land in Cuba, and that they needed to retake the plane?)   Let the blue-haired little old ladies take as many knitting needles and crochet hooks on board as they want -- what chance would a guy who wants to explode his crotch have against a knitting-needle-wielding Italian grandmother?    

Finally, I'll say it again: Archie Bunker had it right. Instead of  subjecting airline passengers and their infants to indignities that not even common criminals have to face, arm them. Pass out the pistols at the beginning of the trip; and then pick 'em up again at the end.  Case closed.

They'll Have Nun of It

We all know the apostolic visitation of institutes of women religious in the United States has not sat well with certain congregations and prominent religious.  We hear complaints about how "demeaning" and "intrusive" is the visitation; we  hear the lamentations of liberal religious comparing themselves to victims of battered wife syndrome; we even hear about the "lack of transparency" of a process that has its own website.  

Now, it appears the temper tantrum is working itself into a rolling boil.  Crows the Non-Catholic Reporter: "The vast majority of U.S. women religious are not complying with a Vatican request to answer questions in a document of inquiry that is part of a three-year study of the congregations. Leaders of congregations, instead, are leaving questions unanswered or sending in letters or copies of their communities' constitutions."  In particular, the "vast majority" is annoyed by a three-part questionnaire that seeks information about individual institutes, including vital statistics and -- most offensive of all -- how Catholic the institutes really are.    The deadline for responding to the Visitator's questionnaire was November 20th.  According to NCR's source, only about half of the responses to the questionnaires have been accounted for, and only 1% of these have been answered as asked. 

If it is true that most women religious are refusing to answer this questionnaire, then that  right there should tell Rome everything she needs to know about the state of women religious in this country.  That some congregations have responded to the visitation by consulting civil lawyers is also very revealing, as well as counter-Scriptural.  But just in case Rome doesn't get the point, some of her daughters are driving it home with what apparently passes for "thought" in liberal congregations.  Some choice samples from the NCR piece:

-- "What I can say quite clearly is that every leader that I know is trying to answer the survey with integrity. How that integrity works out in each case is up to the wisdom of each leader and her council."  Whatever that means.

-- "I feel the response was a thoughtful, respectful response to a very puzzling situation. The purpose of this investigation is unclear to me, given the level of the questions. I have always been proud of our community and the many women who serve God's people. The first sentence of our letter [to Apostolic Visitator Mother Clare Millea, Superior General of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus] says it all, 'As apostolic women religious, we are faithful to the call of the Gospel and to our respective charisms.' "  Since Vatican II, as demonstrated by additional quotes below, so many women religous have felt free to redefine "faithful" that this sentence says exactly nothing.

-- "Vatican II took us out of the ghettos and into ecology, feminism and justice in the world. The Vatican still has a difficult time accepting that."  This sentence does say it all.

-- "[It is] unlikely the Vatican wanted us to come out of this being more confident of our identity as self-defining religious agents, but that is exactly what has happened."  A stunning admission, evidence of the need for the visitation.

And then, from the Too Stupid for Comment Files, there is the hyperventilating stuff that both illustrates the secularization of religious institutes since Vatican II and contributes to the stereotype of women as hysterical, coming from the type of women who profess to be out to destroy stereotypes:

All along, said one woman religious, the challenge has been to respond to the Vatican in a way that breaks a cycle of violence. She said that the women religious communities have attempted to respond by using a language "devoid of the violence" they found in the Vatican questionnaire and within the wider study. She characterized the congregation responses as "creative and affirming," and part of an effort to set a positive example in "nonviolent resistance."

"On the one hand we didn't want to roll over and play dead," she said. "So the question was, "How do you step outside a violent framework and do something new?' That was the challenge that emerged." One congregation, she said, cited a U.S. bishops' statement concerning domestic abuse in its response letter to Millea. "The point is, there have to be more than two choices: Take the abuse and offer it up, or kill the abuser."

Women religious, she said, are asking if there is a "Ghandian or Martin Luther King way" to deal with violence they felt is being done to them.

The dissenters who responded to the questionnaire with non-responses or with just their constitutions claim that the constitutions tell the whole story about their institutes, and that beyond these, they do not need to elaborate.  

Obviously, the constitution only tells half the story.  The other half of the story is how faithful these women are to their constitutions, and to what extent their constitutions are a dead letter.  This is the half were we find out the hypocrisy of the liberal religious, who demand transparency from Rome and opacity for themselves.  

We've Come a Long Way, Baby

Yesterday on CNN, Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. and Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J. debated whether pro-abortion politicians should receive Holy Communion.  Fr. Pacwa is against Communion for pro-aborts; Fr. Reese thinks otherwise.

How did we ever get to the point where two Jesuits could lock horns on this painfully obvious issue?

Use a Banana, Go to Jail

So now this scene, played out in a school cafeteria:

...is a misdemeanor.  At least it is in Chicago, where good-old-fashioned Chicago political thuggery has evolved into the criminalizing of school disciplinary problems.

On November 5th -- the same day as the terrorist massacre at Fort Hood -- 25 kids at Perspectives Charter School south of Chicago were arrested -- cuffed, transported, booked into detention, charged -- for having a food fight.

I am not a fan of crime and disorder.  But as someone who works full-time in the criminal justice system, I'd like to address some points to the "zero-tolerance" crowd, which is merely a finger on the claw of liberalism, and is not an affliction only in Chicago:

-- The root cause of disorder in society is Godlessness.  The undermining of Church and family, the creeping secularization, political correctness, and tolerance and even encouragement of deviancy in our civil institutions -- which, as liberals, you put there -- has led to our failure to govern our passions.  In fact, political correctness and the mindless drive for "diversity" have led many to believe that they have a positive right to refuse to govern their passions.  We should not wonder at the results.

-- You ignore the costs, usually paid by others, of abandoning the principle of subsidiarity.  Student disciplinary problems are best handled by the schools -- or even better still, in families, which you have worked hard to destroy.  But by involving the police powers of the state, you set all kinds of costly mechanisms in motion: the police; the prosecutors; the public defenders (jailable offenses, however minor, trigger a right to court-appointed counsel); the courts; and the courts' whole constellation of "rehabilitative" machinery, including probation officers and counselors and proprietors of drug and alcohol schools.  In short, you use a Howitzer to kill a flea.

-- But the cost of all this heavy equipment lies not only in the amount of money it takes to run it, but -- what is more important -- in the amount of resources that cannot now be devoted to things that really matter.  The police and prosecutor manpower and time devoted to junior high food fights now cannot be devoted to the pursuit of real criminals.  The courts are jammed with petty affairs that squeeze out the adjudication of major matters.  And -- my personal gripe -- public defenders are forced to waste inordinate amounts of time on relative trifles, to the detriment of clients with really serious and complicated problems.    

As bad as federal government corruption is, we cannot afford to go on ignoring the same corruption at the county, city and state levels.  The criminalizing of life's every nitpick is a local-level power grab every bit as cynical and tyrannical as any perpetrated by the feds.  And our failure to govern ourselves gives the power-grabbers their excuse for wiping out our freedom.   

Nun the Worse

Let's see now...

ITEM: With the support of her prioress, a Dominican sister has aided and abetted abortion by escorting women past demonstrators into abortion mill

ITEM: Three elderly nuns, along with two priests, burglarize a naval base near Seattle in order to brandish kindergarten scribblegrams and scatter sunflower seeds in protest of nukes

ITEM: A nationally known Benedictine nun writes inane columns for an infamous liberal rag

ITEM: A significant number of women religious regularly assemble, in various groups, for the purpose of promoting dissent from the Magisterium

ITEM: The number of women religious declined 54% between 1965 and 2000

So what is the point of the apostolic visitation?

Pop Quiz!!!!!!!

What do the following have in common:

Linus Pauling
Mikhail GorbachevYassir Arafat
The United NationsJimmy Carter
Al Gore
Barack Hussein Obama
A. They are left-wing fanatics and/or are (or were) regularly feted by left-wing fanatics.

B. They are (or were) all outspoken critics of the United States.

C. They are (or were) all in cahoots with the enemies of the United States and/or actually are (or were) enemies of the United States.

D. They have all been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

E. All of the above.

Tick tick tick tick tick tick...DING! Time's up! If you're not surprised the correct answer is "E"...

...join the club.

!!!!!BONUS QUESTION!!!!!

President Obama says he will donate the Peace Prize money to charity. True or false: the charity he donates the money to will be his half-brother George, who still lives on twelve bucks a year in a hut in Kenya.

Neener, Neener!

It's pretty bad when I root for an American city to lose out on an honor like hosting the 2016 Olympics. But I couldn't help it: anything the Obamas want so much has to be bad.

On the other hand, Chicago should look at it as a blessing in disguise. If the Special Olympics in Boise earlier this year were such a pain in the ass (like the day they shut down the main drag out of downtown right when everybody was getting off work), how much more of a pain in the ass will the big Olympics be?

And how many more pains in the ass do Chicagoans really need?

This Is Why: Update

"Film industry luminaries," including Woody Allen (no surprise there), Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and Terry Gilliam are petitioning for the release of Roman Polanski, who is finally about to face the music for plying a 13-year-old girl with champagne and quaaludes, then raping and sodomizing her in 1977.

The "luminaries" are in especially high dudgeon over the fact that the authorities nabbed Polanski while he was on his way to be honored at the Zurich Film Festival. The Guardian quotes this huffy line from the petition (which I haven't been able to access): "It seems inadmissible to them [the "film industry luminaries"] that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary film-makers, is used by police to apprehend him." Producer Harvey Weinstein, fantasizing about the omnipotence of the film industry, said he was "calling on every film-maker we can to help fix this terrible situation." Meanwhile, "luminaries" from other countries are attacking the arrest of the 76-year-old fugitive child rapist as an "assault on freedom of expression" worldwide. Too stupid for comment.

I think my favorite line comes from German producer Henning Molfenter, a member of the Zurich film festival jury who now plans to boycott the festival:

There is no way I'd go to Switzerland now. You can't watch films knowing Roman Polanski is sitting in a cell 5 km away.

With Roman Polanski sitting in the hoosegow, I can watch films AND eat a jumbo tub of popcorn (extra butter), washed down with a 44-ounce diet Coke, and then top the whole thing off with a brownie batter Blizzard from Dairy Queen.

(And with the quality of filmmakers these days, the junk food would be the only worthwhile part of the whole venture.)

Red State, Blue Capital

Right after over a thousand people march in protest of government spending and Obamacare, the Boise City Council -- with Mayor Dave Bieter providing the tie-breaking vote -- passes a resolution in favor of "health care reform." For the resolution: David Eberle, Maryanne Jordan, and Elaine Clegg. Against: Jim Tibbs, Alan Shealy, Vern Bisterfeldt.

About 30 Boiseans voiced their disapproval of the resolution, and even the idea of the city government wasting their time on such a thing. The local media hastens to explain that the resolution is non-binding and is purely a symbolic gesture.

One guy at the Tea Party on Saturday carried a sign with the word NO all over it, and a big, bold legend in the middle: CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? I guess at Boise City Hall, the answer is -- NO.

Maybe He Has a Point

Capitalism is evil. This is the Deep Thought from Capitalism: A Love Story, the latest film by Michael Moore, who doesn't appear to have missed many meals due to capitalistic oppression.

Then again...maybe capitalism is evil, to the extent it brings prosperity and influence to fat, moonbat slobs like Michael Moore.