Dog Bites Man!
The AP astounds with Saddam Wins Presidential Referendum:

Saddam Hussein won another seven-year term as Iraq's president in a referendum in which he was the sole candidate, taking 100 percent of the vote, the Iraqi leader's right-hand man announced Wednesday.

All 11,445,638 of the eligible voters cast ballots, said Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council that is Iraq's key decision-making body.

"This is a unique manifestation of democracy which is superior to all other forms of democracies even in these countries which are besieging Iraq and trying to suffocate it," Ibrahim said at a news conference in Baghdad, apparently referring to the United States.

The amazing thing is that anyone takes anything these thugs say seriously.

Mr. Peanut
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. has his way with the Canoist Without a Paddle:

If anyone has doubted the growth of Anti-Americanism in Europe, their doubts surely were silenced when the Nobel Prize Committee gave its "Peace Prize" to Jimmy Carter. For over twenty years every American who loves this country and takes pride in its achievements has avoided mentioning Jimmy as president, perhaps as carpenter, perhaps as peanut farmer, but not as president, and surely not as diplomat or peacemaker. Practically every country he leaves after his peace posturing he leaves a corrupt despotism or perhaps at best a corrupt oligarchy.

He was the worst president of the Twentieth Century.

... he has always been a fraud and an opportunist. His prey has always been the liberal sap. In running for the presidency in 1976 he gave these as his credentials: "I am a Southerner and an American. I am a farmer, an engineer, a father and a husband, a Christian, a politician and a former governor, a planner, a businessman, a nuclear physicist, a naval officer, a canoist, and among other things, a lover of Bob Dylan's songs and Dylan Thomas' poetry. "

He forgot butthead.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch
Ben Shapiro analyzes why the leftists have their panties in a knot over talk radio and the Internet in Left behind: the democratization of the media:

On the 'Net, liberal failure has been just as complete. While Matt Drudge's Web site receives nearly 5 million hits per day, liberal news sites are virtually non-existent. Salon.com is going the way of the dinosaurs, and Slate.com is a mere facade. The only liberal Web sites that get any hits are established television channels like BBC, CNN and ABC News. There are no major leftist commentary sites to compete with conservative monsters like Freerepublic.com and lucianne.com, where normal news followers can post their opinions on the story du jour. The left has been left behind on the Web.

It's the inability to compete that has the liberals so angry. They don't understand why people won't listen to elite intelligentsia dither about politics but gladly tune in to hosts like Sean Hannity, a former construction worker with no college degree. They rant and rave over the newest phenomenon -- weblogs, or bloggers, where ordinary folks comment on the news in real time, allowing true Rousseau-ian democracy to flourish. Why, they ask, do more people visit libertarian/conservative bloggers Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds than the soon-to-be-extinct American Prospect blogger, TAPPED?

Here's the answer: The left cannot survive criticism. It is easy for liberals to air their views when the audience cannot challenge them. Network news is a perfect example -- when Peter Jennings sympathizes with Palestinian suicide bombers, viewers can kick their televisions and scream at Jennings, but Jennings cannot hear them. If Jennings had a talk show, though, he'd have to deal with the views of his audience. Print media is similar. Maureen Dowd can write nasty things about President Bush but would be hard pressed to respond to a reader's challenge.

Ah, Peter Jennings! The quintessential empty suit.

What do you get when you cross an Ecoweenie and a Euroweenie?
The BBC provides us with a vision in The high price of low-cost airlines:

Booking a low-cost flight is seldom as cheap as the headline figure, with taxes, handling fees and surcharges. But there's one fee you won't find on your ticket - the cost to the planet.

Cheap air fares have broadened our travel horizons and spawned a trend for weekend breaks in exotic locations, but for the environment it is proving a nightmare.

Zzzzzzzzz......

Pond Scum
(Via Gareth Parker). Guy Rundle deposits a steaming load of "it's all our fault" in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Militant Islamic fundamentalism is a potent ideology for people battered and humiliated by the extension of Western power and money into every area of global social life. Because it gives meaning to lives thrown into disarray by these forces, people are willing to die for it.

The further extension of unjust and unilateral power will simply increase the numbers of willing martyrs exponentially. We have never had a greater need for cool and calm reflection on our place in the world. Instead we are being asked to subscribe to patriotic dumbness. Only in Australia?

Guy, as is customary with the apologists, provides no factual basis for his whine which basically amounts to "West bad, killers good". He's as compulsively illogical as the Islamofascists and has only a slightly different religion.

Guy, we're fresh out of sackcloth and the only ashes are of our friends. Take your sorry ass back to whatever hole you crawled out of.

A Fisk, a barrel, and a smoking gun
Glenn Reynolds coins a new term, barrelfisking, for Eugene Volokh's analysis of the latest McGrory swill.

Yep
From Peter Kerr at Mebourne Truth/Monaro:

It's time to stop fucking around. Time to untie the hands of our authorities. Time to stop pretending there are no terrorist cells in this country.

It's time to stop turning a blind eye to those in our community who condone these acts of terror. Time to 'out' the fanatics. Time we stopped allowing them to hide behind their ethnicity.

It's time for our media and politicians to stop presenting dangerous cranks as 'community leaders' and 'voices of moderate Islam'. Time to put the 'Sheik' on a plane back to Egypt.

It's time the Australian Labor Party decided whether a supposed 'Muslim vote' is more important than the security and will of 19 million odd other Australians. Time the Liberal Party of Australia made the same decision regarding the sensibilities of a few 'small l' liberals in the leafier suburbs.

No more double standards. No more pandering to the most backward voices in our society. It's time it was made very clear to every one what is and isn't acceptable in this country.

Our Pal Hugo
The President of Venezuela yesterday appeared in public in his trademark red beret with a parrot also wearing a red beret. Must be another use for superglue.

Don't worry Hugo. He's not dead. He's just pining for the fjords!

And why does Hugo appear to be wearing the national flag as a cape?

We've Got a Winner!
Tim Blair has already got the answer to the question posed in the post immediately below. And the winner is Robert Fisk!

I'm so surprised! I bet Bobby creamed his jeans at the first report of the bombing.

Terrorist Murderers Alert
Tim Blair is covering the Islamofascist murders in normally peaceful, Hindu Bali. He asks the dreaded question:

We're probably less than 12 hours away from the first opinion piece arguing that the attacks were the logical consequence of supporting the US in the war against terror, and that we'd be better off staying quiet and not upsetting anybody, especially Islamic murderers. I wonder which dumb fuck will write it?

And I wonder which US surrender monkey will be the first to pick up the refrain?

Prof. Bunyip observes:

At least 160 people dead, the majority Australians, most of them young, all of them innocent. When the Mannes and the Kingstons start asking why they hate us (the first of those columns is probably being written this very minute), here's the one and only answer:

The hate stops with the heartbeat. It's past time these animals were put down.

They've been using this routine on the civilized world for over 30 years and no one has had the cojones to object until now.

There's nothing more peaceful than a dead terrorist.