It's a joke, right?

With the United Nations it's always hard to tell - 'Aids risk' for UN peacekeepers:

The United Nations Aids agency has warned that UN peacekeepers still do not have the knowledge and means to protect themselves from HIV/Aids.

Sheesh, this one should be a beaut.

Leaders from numerous countries have now acknowledged HIV/Aids is a serious problem in their armed services, according to a new UN report.

More than 100 countries contribute personnel to UN peacekeeping missions.

The armed forces at the bottom of the list mostly consist of glorified street gangs. Nice to know that Uncle Sugar foots the bill for their foreign vacations. But there's bound to be problems, right?

A new UN report says uniformed service personnel are considered one of the high-risk groups for contracting HIV/ Aids and this could jeopardise the world's ability to generate future UN peacekeeping missions.

Gosh, that's my big worry too!

The head of UN peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehnno, said they had reduced the risk of peacekeepers contracting or transmitting the virus while on mission.

Told them to forego the usual UN practice of raping the natives?

UNAids chief Peter Piot said there had been some progress over the past five years, but more needed to be done.

He said peacekeeping operations now had Aids advisers, trainers and counsellors, while troops were given awareness training.

The peacekeeeping tab just went up. No word on when we have to foot the peacekeepers' tab for toilet training and literacy.

Tis a puzzle

Mark Steyn in the Telegraph:

One of the striking features of the post-9/11 world is the minimal degree of separation between the so-called "extremists" and the establishment: Princess Haifa, wife of the Saudi ambassador to Washington, gives $130,000 to accomplices of the 9/11 terrorists; the head of the group that certifies Muslim chaplains for the US military turns out to be a bagman for terrorists; one of the London bombers gets given a tour of the House of Commons by a Labour MP. The Guardian hires as a "trainee journalist" a member of Hizb ut Tahir, "Britain's most radical Islamic group" (as his own newspaper described them) and in his first column post-7/7 he mocks the idea that anyone could be "shocked" at a group of Yorkshiremen blowing up London: "Second- and third-generation Muslims are without the don't-rock-the-boat attitude that restricted our forefathers. We're much sassier with our opinions, not caring if the boat rocks" - or the bus blows, or the Tube vaporises. Fellow Guardian employee David Foulkes, who was killed in the Edgware Road blast, would no doubt be heartened to know he'd died for the cause of Muslim "sassiness".

I'm sure it's a comfort to his family too.

But among all these many examples of the multiculti mainstream ushering the extremists from the dark fringe to the centre of western life, there is surely no more emblematic example than that of Shabina Begum, whose victory over the school dress code was achieved with the professional support of both the wife of the Prime Minister who pledges to defend "our way of life" and of Hizb ut Tahir, a group which (according to the German Interior Minister) "supports violence as a means to realise political goals" such as a worldwide caliphate and (according to the BBC) "urges Muslims to kill Jewish people". What does an "extremist" have to do to be too extreme for Cherie Booth or the Guardian?

Good question. And here in the USA, the Democrat establishment like Senators Barbara Boxer and Dickie Durbin have adopted "Screw 'em" Kos and his Kosmonauts as their pets.

Today's Hoot!

Polipundit:

It is 36 years today since Ted Kennedy thought his car was a submarine.

And he decided to take Mary Jo to the submarine races.

Is that cool or what?

Andrew McCarthy has been spending some quality time with the court filings of the paladins of our glorious mainstream media in the Plame case and discovers they are two faced crapsacks:

Have you heard that the CIA is actually the source responsible for exposing Plame's covert status? Not Karl Rove, not Bob Novak, not the sinister administration cabal du jour of Fourth Estate fantasy, but the CIA itself? Had you heard that Plame's cover has actually been blown for a decade — i.e., since about seven years before Novak ever wrote a syllable about her? Had you heard not only that no crime was committed in the communication of information between Bush administration officials and Novak, but that no crime could have been committed because the governing law gives a person a complete defense if an agent's status has already been compromised by the government?

No, you say, you hadn't heard any of that. You heard that this was the crime of the century. A sort of Robert-Hanssen-meets-Watergate in which Rove is already cooked and we're all just waiting for the other shoe — or shoes — to drop on the den of corruption we know as the Bush administration. That, after all, is the inescapable impression from all the media coverage. So who is saying different?

The organized media, that's who. How come you haven't heard? Because they've decided not to tell you. Because they say one thing — one dark, transparently partisan thing — when they're talking to you in their news coverage, but they say something completely different when they think you're not listening.

You see, if you really want to know what the media think of the Plame case — if you want to discover what a comparative trifle they actually believe it to be — you need to close the paper and turn off the TV. You need, instead, to have a peek at what they write when they're talking to a court. It's a mind-bendingly different tale.

I'm sure surprised, aren't you?

Today's Hoot!

Mark Steyn, of course:

Back when Woodrow Wilson was running for president, he had a campaign song called ''Wilson, That's All.'' If only. With Joe Wilson, it's never all. He keeps coming back like a song. But in the real world there's only one scandal in this whole wretched business -- that the CIA, as part of its institutional obstruction of the administration, set up a pathetic ''fact-finding mission'' that would be considered a joke by any serious intelligence agency and compounded it by sending, at the behest of his wife, a shrill politically motivated poseur who, for the sake of 15 minutes' celebrity on the cable gabfest circuit, misled the nation about what he found.

Joe, your 15 minutes are long gone. Time to hit the bricks.

Morning jollies

Via Dave Barry, I'm entranced to discover the next two items:

Eating Disorder Expert Collapses at Market:

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - An expert in eating disorders collapsed in a supermarket after inhaling propellant from whipped cream cans, according to police.

Lisa G. Berzins, a prominent psychologist who has been on national television and radio shows and in newspaper articles, was arrested on a warrant Friday charging her in the May 29 incident, The Hartford Courant reported.

Berzins, 49, has a practice in West Hartford. She has written and lectured on eating disorders, female development, sex roles and self-esteem, according a speaker's biography from the American Psychological Association.

According to the arrest warrant affidavit, West Hartford police responded to the Farmington Avenue Stop & Shop and found Berzins lying on the floor and bleeding from her head. Berzins, the affidavit says, told police she did not know what happened.

Police interviewed witnesses and collected evidence, then determined that Berzins apparently inhaled from three cans of whipped cream containing nitrous oxide, known as laughing gas, the affidavit says.

Perhaps she was doing field research? But I mostly want to know if she was putting the "used" cans back on the shelf.

It's 'Homo Light' - the gay softdrink:

NORWEGIAN homosexuals are set to launch their own soda brand, "Homo light", at an upcoming gastronomic festival, in the hope that it will help promote tolerance, one of the authors of the project said.

"The goal is not for us to make money but to make us more visible and accepted," Oeystein Mauritzen told AFP.

Pear-flavored and pink, "Homo Light" will go on sale as a one-time offer at a stand at a gastronomic festival in the southwestern town of Stavanger between July 27 and 30.

Along with the soda, which will be sold in half-litre (about a pint) bottles for 20 kroner ($4.70), the group will sell rainbow-colored pasta salads.

Yep, that'll do it.

Ace clears it up for me, at least:

* You're a mouth-breathing troglodyte if you suggest that Ward Churchill should be removed from his unearned tenured position, inter alia, advocating the fragging of American military officers, plagiarism, falsification of sources, falsification of qualifications, and for comparing the victims of 9-11 to Nazis such as Adolf Eichmann.

* But you're a rising star in the Democratic Party for suggesting that a legislator be "removed from office" for (correctly) pointing out that you are advocating an economically disastrous tax-and-spend policy.
...
Everyone clear on the rules?

Who knew he did stand-up?

"PRESIDENT CHIRAC sought to regain favour with his worried nation yesterday by telling the French that they are far better off than the British and have no reason to take lessons from across the Channel."

Here's a good idea:

For some years now, I've been pondering a little amendment to the Constitution. Nothing too grand, mind you. Just a little something that could fit on a cocktail napkin, yet at the same time provide more legal clarity than 100 Sandra Day O'Connor opinions.
And, so, without further ado, here it is, my 28th Amendment:

Amendment XXVIII.

AND WE MEAN IT!!!

The crapwaesels would still try to nuance it.

VALERIE PLAME: "PLEASE STOP LEAVING ME ALONE!":

Plame: I don't want to hurt your feelings, honey, but you're a loser. You were ambassador to Gabon. Hell, Shirley Temple was ambassador to Ghana. You were such a zero, you were drummed out of the Foreign Service. That's like being too crazy for the Scientologists. The only way a cipher like you could get a book deal is with the right packaging.

Ole Joe Wilson still has a big career ahead endorsing bagged manure.

What if you gave a party and nobody came?

Check out zombie's report on the "big" United Nations 60'th Anniversary hoedown in San Francisco. Gosh, they had everything - good eats, actors in period costume, and a stunning array of UN bigs!


(Hat tip: LGF)

It won't end until the roaches are exterminated

Instapundit is rounding up news and Instapunk is rounding up pictures. And John Hawkins is noting the insane and disgusting. Of course, for real pond scum, there's George Galloway.

Update (11:50AM): Abu Hamza: Kill Him In Prison. Hell, shoot him in the gutter on the street in front of the United Nations.

Beats the heck out of sparklers!

Fireworks Likely When NASA Blows Up Comet:

Not all dazzling fireworks displays will be on Earth this Independence Day. NASA hopes to shoot off its own celestial sparks in an audacious mission that will blast a stadium-sized hole in a comet half the size of Manhattan.

Yeehaw! Hold my beer and watch this!

Actually, it may not be all that spectacular to a naked eye observer:

The big question is: What kind of fireworks can sky-gazers expect to see from Earth?

Scientists do not know yet. But if the probe hits the bull's-eye, the impact could temporarily light up the comet as much as 40 times brighter than normal, possibly making it visible to the naked eye in parts of the Western Hemisphere.

But the probes are taking pictures of the action.

The real action starts in the early morning of July 3 (Eastern time) when the spacecraft separates, releasing an 820-pound copper probe called the "impactor" on a one-way trip straight into the path of the comet. During the next 22 hours, mission control at Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena will steer both craft toward Tempel 1.

Two hours before the July 4 encounter, the impactor kicks into autopilot, relying on its self-navigating software and thrusters for the rest of the journey to steer toward the sunlit part of the comet's nucleus so that space and Earth-based telescopes can get the best view.

Meanwhile, the spacecraft - with its high-resolution camera ready - will veer out of harm's way some 5,000 miles away, as it stakes out a ringside seat for recording the collision. The spacecraft will make its closest flyby minutes after impact, approaching within 310 miles.

The collision is expected to occur around 1:52 a.m. EDT when the comet, traveling through space at 6 miles per second, runs over the impactor, which will be shooting some of the most close-up pictures of Tempel 1 up until its death.

Grammier has likened it to standing in the middle of the road and being hit by a semi-truck going 23,000 mph - "you know, just bam!" The energy produced by the crash will be like detonating nearly 5 tons of TNT.

Now we're talking! Hmmm, I'm surprised no ecoweenies have jumped on this.

Don't try this if you are troubled by vertigo

http://www.izpitera.ru/lj/tetka.swf