What I want for Christmas you ask?
The same thing that every other gay neo-conservative young hipster wants.



A Lady Ann Action Figure.

Gosh, this woman really makes me laugh.

Her latest piece earns her some new funny points at the expense of the Democrats. As you may know the Democrats have stopped talking about real issues. Instead they are trying to gain points, not the funny kind, by describing personal sob stories.

Here is a taste from Lady Ann.
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In the current campaign, Gephardt has taken to spinning out a long, pitiful tale of his son's near-death three decades ago. If a lingering family medical tragedy is the main qualification for becoming a Democratic presidential candidate, what's Michael Schiavo waiting for?

In addition to having a number of family deaths among them, the Democrats' other big idea – too nuanced for a bumper sticker – is that many of them have Jewish ancestry. There's Joe Lieberman: Always Jewish. Wesley Clark: Found Out His Father Was Jewish in College. John Kerry: Jewish Since He Began Presidential Fund-Raising. Howard Dean: Married to a Jew. Al Sharpton: Circumcised. Even Hillary Clinton claimed to have unearthed some evidence that she was a Jew – along with the long lost evidence that she was a Yankees fan. And that, boys and girls, is how the Jews survived thousands of years of persecution: by being susceptible to pandering.
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I am so proud of Bush and his level of tolerance.

The Washington Post Reports:

The president was having trouble with the toasts.
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Queen Elizabeth did indeed provide the president and his entourage with superior accommodations at Buckingham Palace. But although the royal hospitality gave Bush a comfortable distance from the madding crowd, it introduced a new problem: Bush, a man with little patience for ceremony, had to endure the very pinnacle of pomp and pageantry -- a state visit to the United Kingdom.

The queen gave her toast, noting that, unlike presidents, she was not term-limited. The president smiled, Prince Charles did not. When the queen finished, the president raised his glass, but Her Majesty did not return the gesture, instead waiting for the American national anthem to begin. Hearing the music, Bush put down his glass and placed his hand on his heart, then took it off, then put it on again. "The Star-Spangled Banner" over, he clinked glasses with the queen, then turned to clink glasses with Princess Anne, who was already sipping from hers.

The awkwardness continued after Bush's toast, when he again picked up his glass to clink with the queen, who stood motionless, waiting for her own national anthem. Bush put his glass back down and, as the orchestra played "God Save the Queen," winked at somebody in the audience. Finally, the anthem finished, president and queen consummated their clinks.
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I love the UK.

Not only because I shall feel safer during my December stay in London, but also because I admire their willingness to limit certain categories of hate speech. Advocating killing is simply a bad-bad thing. Unless you are a “jihadist” of course. Then guys like Chomsky and Said will look-up to you and call you a hero.

EXCERPT

UK Police Prepare Charges In Anti-Gay Music Campaign
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff

(London) Scotland Yard is preparing to lay charges against three leading Jamaican reggae artists and the stores and radio stations that distribute the music that advocates the murder of gay people.

Among the singers being investigated are Beenie Man, Elephant Man and Bounty Killer.
Investigators bought copies of the CDs at HMV and Virgin stores in London and then had the lyrics translated from patois to standard English by an independent linguistic expert.

The songs advocated extreme homophobic violence and murder, including the shooting, burning and drowning of gay people.

Outrage spokesperson Peter Tatchell cited Beenie Man's Damn as one example: "I'm dreamin' of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the gays." The three artists involved were all nominated for best reggae act at the Mobo awards in London in September.

Detective Chief Inspector Clive Driscoll of Scotland Yard's diversity directorate is understood to believe that record stores, websites and radio stations who promote and distribute the songs could also be criminally liable.

A Great Epic Ruined

Saw the final Matrix in IMAX.

The Wachowski brothers have finally been revealed as half witted intellectual wannabees. Even the presence of Cornell West cannot enlighten these two. The story is numb; lacking the intellectual stimuli that the audience both expected and deserved. The visuals suck too.

I recall leaving the theatre after having seen the first Matrix. I was amazed and the possibilities seemed endless. I could not even conceive of what might happen next. It was beyond me. It was perfect on every level.

The second installment offered more insight into the possibilities. I had a few theories about the conflict between the architect and the oracle as well as hoped to see further exploration of the "love" theme. However, I was somewhat disappointed with some of the casting choices and the idiotic dialogue. But, the effects alone were reason to forgive these shortcomings.

The third installment is an absolute garbage of a film. It lacks the great visual style of the first two. The fight scenes are sloppy and the camera movement is boring. Bullet- time has been replaced with rain-time and the many philosophical questions raised previously are unanswered. I guess the brothers gave up the exploration of the concept of choice and instead decided to kill Neo and Trinity.

Having said all this I must give due credit where it is due.
The cast is one of a kind. They have worked too hard and for too long. It is not their fault the third film sucks.
Also, the score for all three is an amazing compellation of some of the best industrial/orchestra mixes I have ever heard.

In a new op-ed for the New York Times THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN offers a critique of the European approach to the entire Iraqi issue. In the midst of this critique he raises a new question. I have no response to his assessment since I have not been exposed to this question before. In fact, the possibility had not occurred to me.

Is the notion of “the West” on the verge of collapse? If so, then Juergensmeyer, author of the The New Cold War, may have already pinpointed the cause. The perpetrators of this collapse may very well be religious nationalists.


Op-Ed Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/02/opinion/02FRIE.html


EXCERPT

What I'm getting at here is that when you find yourself in an argument with Europeans over Iraq, they try to present it as if we both want the same thing, but we just have different approaches. And had the Bush team not been so dishonest and unilateral, we could have worked together. I wish the Bush team had behaved differently, but that would not have been a cure-all — because if you look under the European position you see we have two different visions, not just tactical differences. Many Europeans really do believe that a dominant America is more threatening to global stability than Saddam's tyranny.

The more I hear this, the more I wonder whether we are witnessing something much larger than a passing storm over Iraq. Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of "the West" as we have known it — a coalition of U.S.-led, like-minded allies, bound by core shared values and strategic threats?
I am not alone in thinking this. Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, noted to me in Brussels the other day that for a generation Americans and Europeans shared the same date: 1945. A whole trans-Atlantic alliance flowed from that postwar shared commitment to democratic government, free markets and the necessity of deterring the Soviet Union. America saw the strength of Europe as part of its own front line and vice versa — and this bond "made the resolution of all other issues both necessary and possible," said Mr. Bildt.

Today, however, we are motivated by different dates. "Our defining date is now 1989 and yours is 2001," said Mr. Bildt. Every European prime minister wakes up in the morning thinking about how to share sovereignty, as Europe takes advantage of the collapse of communism to consolidate economically, politically and militarily into one big family. And the U.S. president wakes up thinking about where the next terror attack might come from and how to respond — most likely alone. "While we talk of peace, they talk of security," says Mr. Bildt. "While we talk of sharing sovereignty, they talk about exercising sovereign power. When we talk about a region, they talk about the world. No longer united primarily by a common threat, we have also failed to develop a common vision for where we want to go on many of the global issues confronting us."

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

From now on i shall do a QUOTE OF THE WEEK.

The first QUOTE OF THE WEEK is from Lady Ann herself. Duh

"Liberals are always complaining that they haven't figured out how to distill their message to slogans and bumper stickers – as they allege Republicans have. Though it can't be easy to fit the entire Communist Manifesto on a bumper sticker, I beg to differ.
(Bumper sticker version of the current Democratic platform: "Ask me about how I'm going to raise your taxes.")