Someone 'splain it to me!

Table Candy:

JANE Fonda and Sally Field will lead the Hollywood contingent at this year's White House Correspondents dinner at the end of the month as guests of Knight Ridder. Donald Trump, Jack Welch, Robert Duvall, Georgette Mosbacher and Patricia Duff are guests of John McLaughlin. Newsweek has secured the company of Richard Gere. "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone will be guests of the Denver Post. The dullest table could be ABC News, featuring liberal windbag Al Franken.

Why are these room temperature IQ preeners attending the "White House Correspondents dinner"? Well, it is getting harder to separate the reporters from the thespians. Of course, it'll be all right if ole Sally reprises her "You like me! You really like me!" speech.

Revised career path alert!

An odd twist for an ex-dominatrix:

When Susan Peacher hung up her latex evening gown and wooden paddle for a job with the federal government, the former dominatrix thought she was done with abuse.

She went to work for the Treasury Department in San Francisco, but when she arrived at her new job, she found that one of the office managers was a former client.

And to make a long story short, he was no better than he should be. Only in San Francisco.

But speaking of fancy dress, Roger Simon points to an article by Mike Adams which discusses one of the nation's "educators" who has a web site with a fetching snap of herself and some chums fitted out as terrorists. The picture is small and rather grainy, but there are some obvious oddities in the poseurs' outfits, most particularly that Jihad Jane's head mask doesn't seem to be an ordinary balaclava. Instead, it appears to have a zipper up the center. It's nice to make a career change where you can recycle your old gear.

Same old, same old

Michael Wines in the NY Times - Tough on Togo, Letting Zimbabwe Slide:

Even the heads of state who were its members called the old Organization for African Unity a dictators' club, one reason why it was replaced three years ago by a new African Union that was modeled, in name and purpose, on Europe's own union.

Funny though, it has the same old members.

The old O.A.U. fulminated about colonialism and liberation, but was often silent on human rights and the consent of the governed. The new group, bowing to a democratic breeze blowing from Mali to Mauritius, stood for the premise that the rule of law is in, and despotism out.

More like "stood for putting lipstick on the pig."

So when Robert G. Mugabe attends the next meeting of the African Union, will he have to stand?

No peeking to see the answer!

Why do African leaders who no longer tolerate a Togo coup blanch at denouncing Mr. Mugabe's strongman tactics? The question seems almost nonsensical, given that Zimbabwe's political and social implosion has flooded its neighbors with unwanted refugees and made the nation a potential vector for regional instability.

It's a trick question, right?

Foremost, perhaps, African leaders fear that the defeat of a serious ruler like Mr. Mugabe may help spread the notion that any entrenched leadership can be unseated by a committed opposition. In Africa, where most democracies are effectively one-party affairs, such a notion can be dangerous.

Ruh Oh! Of course, what he really meant was: "In Africa where dictatorships pretend to be one-party democracies."

Maybe that helps explain why South Africa endorsed the Zimbabwe vote even more warmly than did the African Union, and why its president, Thabo Mbeki, has emerged as Mr. Mugabe's most powerful ally.

Coincidentally, perhaps, Mr. Mugabe's opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change, enjoys strong support from South Africa's labor movement and from its Communist Party. Both groups are part of Mr. Mbeki's ruling African National Congress, but are widely expected to split from it before the 2009 national election.

Quite a choice - Thug A or Thug B. But not to worry, the Times has a multilateral solution from an anonymous AU staffer:

The African Union can put down a coup in Togo, he said, because its charter explicitly permits intervention in a member nation's affairs in the case of a coup. But the charter is silent on whether the bloodless theft of political power by, say, stealing an election, is a coup in all but name.

"What could change that is if Zimbabwean groups themselves make the call to the A.U.," he said. "You could make quite a strong argument that rigging and manipulating elections is a kind of constitutional coup."

It's a joke, right?

Today's Hoot!

Note to the New York Times: Don’t use Wikipedia as an authoritative source. Lifting text verbatim from Wikipedia would seem to be a poor practice as well.

Without taking a huge digression, the advantage of a Wiki is supposedly that a "community" of folks shares their knowledge to build an informative web site with an easy to use authoring tool. There's a problem though, if some of the community have more enthusiasm than knowledge. Or more bias.

UPDATE: Apparently the copying was in the other direction.

I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell ya!

Nicholas Kristof in the NY Times - Nukes are Green:

If there was one thing that used to be crystal clear to any environmentalist, it was that nuclear energy was the deadliest threat this planet faced. That's why Dick Gregory pledged at a huge anti-nuke demonstration in 1979 that he would eat no solid food until all nuclear plants in the U.S. were shut down.

Mr. Gregory may be getting hungry.

Actually, "In 1987 Gregory introduced the Slim-Safe Bahamian Diet, a powdered diet mix, which was immensely profitable," so maybe it was just a PR stunt, but it's still a good line.

But it's time for the rest of us to drop that hostility to nuclear power. It's increasingly clear that the biggest environmental threat we face is actually global warming, and that leads to a corollary: nuclear energy is green.
...
So it's time to welcome nuclear energy as green (though not to subsidize it with direct handouts, as the nuclear industry would like). Indeed, some environmentalists are already climbing onboard. For example, the National Commission on Energy Policy, a privately financed effort involving environmentalists, academics and industry representatives, issued a report in December that favors new nuclear plants.

One of the most eloquent advocates of nuclear energy is James Lovelock, the British scientist who created the Gaia hypothesis, which holds that Earth is, in effect, a self-regulating organism.

"I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy," Mr. Lovelock wrote last year, adding: "Every year that we continue burning carbon makes it worse for our descendents. ... Only one immediately available source does not cause global warming, and that is nuclear energy."

Who would have thunk it? I thought the Ecoweenies were bound and determined that the citizens of the "developed world" all live in mud huts - as long as they didn't get the mud from a wetland. Of course not everyone was as "sensitive" - Official: China Plans 40 Nuke Power Plants:

China plans to build 40 nuclear power plants over the next 15 years, making them the main power source for its booming east coast, a government official said in remarks reported Thursday.

China is expected to be the world's biggest developer of nuclear power stations in coming decades as the government tries to meet soaring demands for electricity while reducing pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Gosh, they're on the Kristof train too! And, of course, those sneaky Frenchies have always been on it.

Fasten your seat belts though - I'm sure the back-to-nature crowd will be out shortly with torches and pitchforks to chastise ole Nick.

Woohoo!

Lookin' for a cheap date? Try Wal-Mart

Just when you thought you'd heard it all from the king of discount shopping, Wal-Mart is now pitching itself as the new dating hot spot -- with everyday low prices to boot.

In fact, the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer's been playing Cupid to hundreds of lonely single German shoppers for well over a year now.
...
Here's how its works.

On Friday nights, singles looking for romance, mindless flirting or just a new friend head over to their neighborhood Wal-Mart where they're given a big bright red bow to attach to their shopping cart or shopping basket.

Then it's up to the willing participants to approach one another and take it from there.

But if that's too intimidating, Wal-Mart has set up "flirting points" around the stores stacked with "romantic" merchandise, such as chocolates, wine and cheese, to help with that first awkward step.

Said Wyatt, "The singles night runs for two hours in the evening, from 6 to 8 p.m. every week. Our managers there told us that its been hugely successful and has actually boosted store traffic and sales in a lot of markets in Germany. In some stores we're getting 300 to 400 people taking part every week."

Wal-Mart feels so good about the idea that the retailer trademarked the "Singles Shopping" slogan in Germany and is also testing it in its stores in Puerto Rico, South Korea and Britain.

The skeptics on FreeRepublic, where I found this, have some suggestions of their own including this guy as official Wal-Mart Singles Shopping host.

It must be Friday

Restaurant Explodes After Cockroach Control Snafu:

PERTH, Australia -- An Australian restaurant owner's attempt to get rid of cockroaches in his kitchen has left his eatery in ruins.

The owner set off 36 fumigation devices.

36! How many cockroaches did he have?

However, he apparently forgot to extinguish an oven pilot flame.

Fire officials said the ensuing explosion lifted the roof off of the Thai restaurant, blew out the back wall as well as the front window and caused the ceilings to cave in.

Maybe it's an insurance scam?

Handler punished for donning camel costume:

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Qantas Airways Ltd. on Friday suspended a baggage handler who was caught on video opening a passenger's bag which contained a camel costume, donning the head and wandering around the airport tarmac.

That's probably not in the job description.

Don't think small:

A Boston-area man was arrested this past Tuesday after several humongous deposits he made to a new bank account didn't clear.

Thanh Nhat Le, 51, of suburban Dorchester, was arrested at a local Sovereign Bank after arguing with a teller who wouldn't cash his check for $7,550.

Le had opened an account at Sovereign the previous week with $171 in cash, the Boston Herald reported.

But three checks had been deposited to his account since. One was for $250,000. Another was for $2 million. The third was for the paltry sum of $4 billion.

No, he wasn't a secret billionaire.

Cookie Monster leads way as Sesame Street goes on a diet:

My beloved blue, furry monster - who sang "C is for cookie, that's good enough for me" - is now advocating eating healthy. There's even a new song - "A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food," where Cookie Monster learns there are "anytime" foods and "sometimes" foods.

Tofu and birkenstocks are next.

Outlaw blows himself up:

Albania's most wanted man fought off special police and eluded capture for years only to blow himself up while fishing with dynamite, police and newspapers say.

That used to be Mullah Omar and Osama's hobby too. Maybe that's why we haven't seen them lately.

Speaking of which - according to the AFP, Osama is a "Saudi dissident". And all along I thought he was merely a murderous wingnut with goat bothering tendencies. Who knew?

And speaking of folks who are feeling blue

Poor Saddam!

Poor baby!

Polipundit points us to a really sad story - Annan Tells Staff of His 'Pain' from UN Inquiries. (Too bad Bubba Clinton wasn't around to feel it for him.)

"To see the institution you have devoted your life to being hammered and attacked, in most cases unfairly, was very difficult to digest, and I can imagine what impact it had on you and on staff morale," he said.

Tell it to the kids in Rwanda, Kofi. And the kids in Timor, the Congo, Kosovo and just about everywhere else the UN has been.

"It is also unfortunate that my own son seems to have been associated somehow with this program, and of course that investigation is going on," Annan added.

Somehow? I guess he was just ambling down the street and all of sudden, folks started stuffing money in his pockets. That happens a lot at the UN.

Speaking of money and the UN, check out Indonesia denies tsunami aid paid for posh ambassador villa in Geneva:

Indonesia on Monday denied allegations in a Swiss newspaper that tsunami relief funds were diverted to purchase a swanky resident for its ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.

I wonder where their ambassador to the UN in New York lives?

"The report insinuates that we are using disaster aid funding for the purchase of the residence and this is not at all the case," Thamrin told AFP.

Le Matin said that the purchase of the 9.6-million-franc (US$8.1 million) villa in the swish Collonge-Bellerive district overlooking Lake Geneva was inappropriate while many in Indonesia, where 220,000 are dead and missing after the tsunami, still needed help.

But Thamrin said the purchase of the villa had already been agreed by the finance minister on October 12 and the contract was signed shortly after - more than two months before the December 25 tsunami.

The government had provided the funds in its 2005 state budget, he said, adding that the purchase of the villa would be a long-run saving against costly rents, and would also be an investment for Indonesia.

Dang those pesky rents! They also seem to be a tad unclear on the concept of fungibility.

Ambassador Makarim Wibisono, 58, who is also current president of the UN Human Rights Commission, was scheduled to move into the Provence-style villa with his wife and three children in the coming weeks.

They will enjoy a large verandah overlooking a swimming pool, an immense park including a house for the domestic servants, hot-houses, and a volley-ball court, Le Matin said.

Sometimes when you're at the UN working for human rights, you just have to make sacrifices.

Today's Hoot!

“The Big Dig is perfectly safe….yeaghhhhh!!!!” No, it isn't Howard Dean.