Said historian Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, "Certainly at this point, you have to say that the Bush administration's critics have made as many mistakes as the Bush administration in assessing Iraq."

It's fairly obvious what the mistakes of the Iraq War have been, and I've accepted them all, and criticized Bush a number of times for the administration's incompetence and lack of foresight.

I'm talking about the war being sold largely under false pretenses, the catastrophic intelligence failures that led to the war, the poor post-war planning, the failure to take Fallujah in April 2004. The failure to stop Zarqawi in 2003. The failure to train Iraq soldiers. The failure to embrace the other great tenet of neo-conservatism: nation-building. The petty fighting between the State Department and the Pentagon. The policy rifts that led to Rumsfeld's lean, mean, stripped down high-tech military, never actually becoming reconciled to the large standing armies need to play post-modern Empire. And most frustratingly, the Admin.'s love of doing EVERYTHING on the cheap. Especially when lives are at stake.

Anyway, I've made my list of Bush mistakes. I now challenge Asa to come up with a list of mistakes made by the Bush administration critics. And I'm not simply talking about, "Well they should of fought harder to make sure we never went into Iraq in the first place." Let's pretend Iraq was inevitable. What mistakes have the anti-war folks made in understanding, observing, debating, and helping/hindering the quest for a democratic Iraq?

So, I went over to the "democratic" underground today to see what they thought of, you know, 8 million odd Iraqis voting. It's not pretty.

Where are the freedom fighters today? Are their voices silenced because some American puppets cast a few ballots? I can't believe the Iraqis are buying into this "democracy" bullshit.

It's probably some of the most frightening, anti-democratic stuff I've read since I happened upon a thread on the (arch-conservative) FreeRepublic.com that said freeing the slaves was stupid policy, Abraham Lincoln was guilty of genocide, and he was a Nazi and America's worst President. What would the Pennywhistle Brothers say to such nonsense? I beg of all you anti-democrats out there, please, please think of the Pennywhistle Brothers.

Well, it's already underway, but here's how I think this will playout.

115 dead, that's including civilians, terrorists, and army/police.

53% turnout.

17% turnout among Sunni.

I don't think it's going to be some rousing, super-success, but I don't think it's going to be the apocalyptic bloodbath some would like.

Two thoughts from Andrew Sullivan's blog, both of which I agree with.

Here's the first, from a fan's letter.

There will be NO measure of voter turn out that will satisfy those who wish to oppose the Administration. Look at Afghanistan

I couldn't agree more. There will also be those whose hatred of Bush and his policies precludes them from recognizing or even supporting any sort of success in Iraq or the Middle East.

Now, here's Sullivan's response:

But is there a measure of failure that supporters of the administration would take seriously?

Ah, that's an even better question. What will it take for Bush's die-hards and yes-men to "see the truth" with regard to Iraq? 30% turnout? 500 dead civilians? 1000?

I just found out that CAG stands for "Commander Air Group."

Ex.: Capt. Lee Adama, Commander Air Group -- Battlestar Galactica

There's some new art in the Gallery. Not as much as I intended, but getting my larger things into the computer isn't cheap, or at least not cheap enough.

"Race to the Sun" is the rough draft of the cover to Hand #6. How's that for a teaser?

A couple years ago, I saw the ballsiest Halloween costume(s) I've ever seen. I was in the Ralph's at La Brea and Fountain and two guys walked in, joking and laughing.

One had on a full, exceedingly well-made SS uniform. The other was decked out like an Orthodox Jew, with the long beard, robe, and even one of those pointy, money-lender hats that Catholics forced Jews to wear in the Middle Ages.

I thought it was hysterically nutso, and even funny. It's not something I would ever wear in a million Halloweens, but hey, this is West Hollywood, it's all about being yourself, dressing however you feel, and blablabla.

Anyway, VMI students are now following the lead of Prince Harry. I guess a few of them dressed as Nazis for Halloween last year. Not only that, but some other guy went as a starving African, and a couple guys went as drag queens. Needless to say, the school found all of them OFFENSIVE. *cue omnious music*. I suppose we should have seen this coming. Every year Halloween gets bigger and bigger and costume parties seemingly more popular. And anytime something goes -- not just mainstream -- but HYPER mainstream, the backlash begins. I mean, Nazi costumes? Drag queens? Based on the reactions coming from the media and various groups, you would think people suddenly started dressing like this just this past year. There's nothing new here, folks.

Paul Greengrass set to helm The Watchmen.

I still sort of think that making The Watchmen into a movie is a bad idea. Without some sort of LA Confidential-esque masterstroke of adaptation it is destined to failure. But if it has to be made then there are few people I'd rather see heading it up than Paul Greengrass. The Bourne Supremacy is so good. Combine that with superhero sci-fi and, sweet jumpin' moses, it might just be brilliant. I wonder if this means that they will downplay Dr. Manhattan and play up Rorshach, who seems to be more up Greengrass' alley. I hope not, because I'd love to see what he does with the wild sci-fi stuff, and I certainly want to see the glass palace of Mars on the big screen.

On the way home tonight I was behind an X-Terra with a bumper sticker that read "Honk if you *heart* Clay Aiken." I can only assume that had to be Clay Aiken's car.

A new book details what's already been detailed many times before: the horrible humilations and outright tortures (the ol' fluroscent light up the ass trick) our military has inflicted on prisoners and suspected terrorists.

But...

This book also talks of how we have women use their, shall we say, feminine wiles to break the will of prisoners.

One female civilian contractor used a special outfit that included a miniskirt, thong underwear and a bra during late-night interrogations with prisoners, mostly Muslim men who consider it taboo to have close contact with women who aren't their wives ... In one incident, described in the document dated June 19, 2004, "The detainee appears to be genuinely traumatized by a female escort securing the detainee's leg irons," according to the U.S. Southern Command summary of videotapes shot when the teams were used.

Is this awful? Isn't it the man who has the problem? The man who grew up in a society that effectively hates women? That's the sentiment I sometimes see when people accuse others of being homophobic. "It's not gay people who are weird, it's you who's weird for not tolerating them."

Maybe I'm verging on "he's was asking for it" territory here, but I do believe it's an interesting question: How tolerant should we be of these prisoners' intolerance? Shouldn't we use their faults and hatreds against them?

Remember that scene in Saving Private Ryan where the Jewish guy proudly displays his Star of David to all those captured Nazis? Would a Jewish interrogater doing that today be accused of torture?

Sodomizing, beating, etc. prisoners is always absolutely unjustified (what are we, Turks?!), but having women rub their breasts in their face to make them feel uncomfortable? I don't know. I hate finding gray areas in the subject of something as heinous as torture...

The article I linked to also tells of a woman wiping a Muslim man's face with fake menstural blood. (Even a Jewish interrogator would probably hate this one.) While this seems like a pretty good instance of "non-lethal" force, I'm going to come down against it on the grounds that it's ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING.)

Tom Spurgeon, the Comics Reporter, brings us a short article about 2 kids being arrested for drawing violent stick figures. This is one of those things that, post-Columbine, is "understandable but not reasonable," as the CBLDF guy says. I mean, violent stick figures? I could have been kicked out of college for that too.

I also feel sorry for the nerd girl who got in trouble for bringing a Penny Arcade parodying Rob Leifeld to school.

Just in case you don't read through the comments (whoever you might be) this is to let you know that there is a Brand New Junk Science up. It's good. You'll like it.

Hopefully there will be more in the gallery soon, and more Junk Science and Hand is on the way (not soon). We are full of content. All hail Number Ten, the secret tenth member of the Council Of Nine that runs Mastodon City.

Emily has to discovered, much to the distress of all who know her, new Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper. We got a bottle and tried it last night. It's at least as bad as you think, though not in the way you might expect. Basically you get carbonated nutra-sweet, with maybe a hint of cherry and/or vanilla, and then a slight aftertaste of Dr. Pepper.

I'm not sure how this qualifies as a "Soda Fountain Classic", but if it does then I find renewed accuracy in the name "soda jerk."

Hey, Jesse writes for Broken Frontier now. Congrats, my friend.

Where's that review of The Hand we've been waiting for?

And by "burrito" I mean Junk Science #2. I'm dying, Asa. I'm dying.

Tomorrow this? *shiver*

The poster for "Ice Princess" starring Michelle Trachtenberg and the poster for "Angel" (Honor student by day, Hollywood hooker by night)

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer "B" and the Houston Rockets logo:

Reply to my emails. The Junk Science art is done. Come collect it.

Paris freaks out about sex tape.

I mean, I see how she's pissed and all, but does she realize that it's the main reason she's famous? Other than being idly rich, of course. I want to visit an alternate reality where the sex tape was never released and see what kind of ratings The Simple Life gets there.

Battlestar Galactica Blog: "The religious angle was something that evolved after the first draft of the miniseries. In that draft, I had mentioned, almost in passing, that Number Six believed in God and that really intrigued Michael Jackson (the executive, not the singer) who was working at the studio at the time. He suggested making it a bigger part of the show and also to more strongly play the Al-Queada/Cylon parallels. Both comments surprised and delighted me and I was more than happy to go in both those directions. The Colonials in the original were always mentioning the 'Lords of Kobol' and I decided to make that literal rather than figurative and give them a polytheistic religion and the Cylons a monotheistic belief system. I found the clash of those two belief systems to be fascinating in our own history and thought it would be an interesting conflict in the show."


It's real science fiction. That makes me so happy. And yes, the religious stuff, and the fact that the Cylons seem to believe in God, is one of the most intriguing parts of the show to me.

I can't preach it enough, so let me just say that the new Battlestar Galactica is just wonderful. Imperfect characters abound and even the robots are morally complex! The spaceships move like spaceships rather than airplanes in outerspace. And #6 is just about the hottest slightly evil brain chip manifestation that you've ever seen. The miniseries is available on DVD if you don't get Sci-Fi channel, and I think they rerun it on NBC sometimes(?).

And now, the question at hand: What do we call it for short? "Battlestar" or "Galactica"?

These are the truly important questions of our times.

Senor Zarqawi could stand to learn quite a bit from Battlestar Galactica's resident "freedom fighter"/morally ambiguous good-baddie.

"We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it."

APOCAMON: THE FINAL JUDGEMENT

Derek is finally teaching classes on Spooky Doom, (check out the documentary on circuit bending) and at the bottom of this page you'll find a drawing I did Freshman year. You'll probably be able to guess the one.

Oh, how he bothers me.

Blogger Bainbridge tries to make sense of the 2008 GOP slate. Here's a sample of his short critique.

John McCain (OLD AND TOO MAVERICK)
Bill Owens (WHO?)
George Pataki (PRO-CHOICE; PLUS HE'S FROM NY)
Tim Pawlenty (WHO?)
Condoleeza Rice (I'M A FAN; DON'T KNOW HER POSITION ON LIFE ISSUES)
Tom Ridge (WHY?)

It's definitely a...shall we say, complex group. It could be a great group if the GOP High Command decided to go with pro-choicers. Then we'd have a legit shot of running Rudy. And I'd kill for a Rudy vs. Hillary race. Ah, the hilarity of two NYorkers campaigning in the South.

Anyway, the social cons dominate the party's machinery...but, the GOP's first love is power and winning. And the desire to win races usually trumps the desire to stay true to whatever their ideology is at the moment. The GOP Fat Cats may just go with a pro-choicer, especially if the Dems run a conservative. Wouldn't it be crazy if in 2008 the GOP ran slightly to the left of the Dems? It could happen.

Argh. I can't believe I'm actually posting on social security. I'm just as "feh" on this whole non-issue as everyone else. Don't we have a war or something to fight? Or probes that need landing on Saturn? Why are we reworking social security rightthisveryminute? Let the chump in 2008 handle this. Hell, I don't even really know how social security works. All I know is that I'm already responsible for paying it by myself. Every four months I have to estimate just how much SS the Federali need (to then send BACK to me 40 years hence) and send it in. The Bush plan is currently being tested on me! And he doesn't even know it.

Annnnnnnnyway...

This fascinating article looks at the "moral" implications behind the pet conservative/libertarian cause of changing social security. You know, if the Cato Institute is behind it, it might not be half bad...

Conservatives used to speak derisively of liberal social engineering. The attempt to create private Social Security accounts is, so to speak, conservative social counter-engineering. Government should help provide for unforeseeable contingencies: tsunamis, unemployment, open-heart surgery. But if there is one event in all of human life that is wholly foreseeable, it is the advent of old age. Why, then, shouldn't people save for their own retirement, instead of relying on welfare from the government -- which is what Social Security, as currently constituted, really is?

Tanner argues that people who own assets behave differently and see their place in society in a different light. Private accounts, he says, would encourage a culture of saving and personal responsibility; they would discourage political class warfare; they may, he argues, improve work habits, and even reduce crime and other social pathologies. Create private Social Security accounts, and millions of low-income Americans will be stockholders and bondholders. Republican political activists look at the way portfolio investors vote -- and salivate at the prospect of millions more of them.

There's definitely something here. This idea of, "If we have assets, we feel empowered. We have a stake in society, and therefore politics. We might become a BETTER society!"

It's been said that young (18-25) people don't care about politics precisely because they have no stake in it. They don't have kids, they don't own property, and they don't really pay substantial taxes. Especially property, estate, or business taxes. Us young'uns USED to have a stake when there was the draft, but that was a hollow stake. "Our stake is that we might DIE!!!!"

"Dad's stake is that he's worried some new zoning law will prohibit him from building a pool."

Lame.

And even with the draft, it was still only the boys (and only white boys at that, for a long time) who had this stake. And not all the boys even wanted this stake. (See Vietnam.) In the late-1960s, young people collectively decided that we'd rather get high and bang girls at Berkeley than participate in this "glorious" stake. I certainly don't blame them for that. But, yeah. SS accounts in private hands. Maybe that would makes us more responsible. Maybe.

Young people kinda suck balls at saving. I can't imagine explaining to a bunch of 20-year-olds that suddenly they're going to be responsible for keeping track of their retirement funds. But, you know what? It's also hard explaining to a bunch of 55-year-olds in Ontario, CA that sooner or later, gays are going to be able to get married. Everyone has to sacrifice a little and learn something new from time to time. Why not hold everyone to a higher standard? For once.

Without question, this is one of the funniest, and yet, most inappropriate uses of music I've ever heard on a website.

I think it ranks up there with that one crazy DC site Asa showed me. The guy had "Hazy Shade of Winter" playing on a loop.

I have a question.

Before he really broke out this year, with his roles in Ray and Collateral, was anybody out there a fan of Jamie Foxx, The Comedian?

I mean, the guy's 37. He's been around a while. And yet, all through the '90s, I never once heard people go, "Man, Jamie Foxx is in town. You gotta check out his act. It's fresh!" Or whatever we said in the '90s.

Even if you count just black comedians, I still don't think anybody was ever really into Foxx. Not when you had Chris Rock bringing down the house. Or Dave Chappelle frequenting Late Night. Or even Damon and Keenan Ivory Waynans putting on some awesome sketches in the first couple years of In Living Color. Hell, I think even Tim Meadows was a better known "black comedian" than Foxx for a while there.

Yet another example of the Right Wing Media Machine.

Virginia, there is no liberal media. Just a bunch of lying conservatives.

Oh man, these people just can't stop lying. Digby has a great roundup on the Right Wing Media Machine. You know, the one they keep calling Liberal so that it will keep getting more conservative? They're so smart it hurts. Anyway, there's a whole drummed up non-scandal based on utter lies about Kos taking money from the Dean campaign.

This part is hilarious: "HUGH HEWITT [AUTHOR]: No, Bill. In fact, the idea of payola is very dangerous. Bloggers on the take are very bad for the business of blogging. Blogging of real journalists, and people like Power Line and like InstaPundit and myself, we don't like it when Daily Kos shows up on the take of the Howard Dean campaign. Now Daily Kos says, this is one of the bloggers from the left, says he disclosed it, but not to the satisfaction of anyone who watches him. I didn't know.

O'REILLY: Aw, this is bunk. This is bull. Nobody knew about this.

HEWITT: That's right."

Now, as someone who was reading DailyKos at the time, I was well aware that he was a paid consultant for the Dean campaign, and there was even a permanent disclaimer up on the site. This smear is, quite honestly, sickening in how intellectually dishonest it is. It's amazing how easily and happily these people just lie and lie and lie.

This is great. I mean, sure, pictures of an alien world are great. But you can also listen to an alien world. The future. It's just so good.

Jonah Goldberg at the National Review's blog is laughing about the curious wording of PA's gun rights amendment.

A reader informs me that the Pennsylvania state constitution says "The Right of Citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state shall not be questioned."

I love that. Presumably there's a specific history to that language and how it should be interpreted. But I just love that a layman's reading suggests that it's unconstitutional to question the right to bear arms. It certainly sounds like this is an imposition on free speech.

I mean, if I'm sitting at a I-Hop in Philly and I say "You know Tom, I think we should revisit the whole 'right to bear arms' thing..." can a cop draw down on me and tell me to lie down on the floor and put my hands behind my back?

Remember when that post I found said that DC actually beats Marvel when you account for reorders, and then i checked the numbers and decided that person was wrong? Well in market share they're still wrong, but in terms of top 10 books they were dead on. Marvel's policy of (almost) never reprinting forces retailers into larger initial orders and inflates their monthly standing, but if you check out the year end totals the Top 10 is chock full of DC books. Of course when you move to the Top 100 there are about twice as many Marvel books as DC.

And you'd have to look at the whole Top 100 to see this incredibly depressing tidbit, though you can get a good idea of it looking at the Top 10 anyway: "in other words, there is not one comic in the Top 100 for 2004 (this time counting Conan) that was created less (or based on one created) than 40 years ago."

NEWSARAMA - TOP COMICS, GRAPHIC NOVELS FOR 2004 DATA RELEASED: "The Top 10 comics for 2004 in terms of quantity (purely the number of comics shipped) were:

1) Superman #204
2) New Avengers #1
3) Superman/Batman #8
4) Identity Crisis #1
5) Astonishing X-Men #1
6) Superman #205
7) Superman/Batman #10
8) Identity Crisis #2
9) Superman #206
10) Superman/Batman #9

Again, the 2004 Top 10 list represents a virtual reversal of any monthly Top 10 list from the year, that is, usually; Marvel would hold eight or so slots, with DC holding two. Unarguably, the numbers were higher for DC on their top 10 books due to overprinting and heavy reorder/reprint activity on many of the Top 10 titles.

The Top 10 comics for 2004 in terms of dollars (a function of both cover price and amount shipped) were:

1) Identity Crisis #1
2) Avengers/JLA #4
3) Superman/Batman #8
4) Identity Crisis #2
5) Astonishing X-Men #2
6) Superman #204
7) Green Lantern: Rebirth #1
8) Superman/Batman #10
9) Identity Crisis #3
10) Identity Crisis #4

As Alex would say... It made it!

mmm boy:

NEWSARAMA interviews Brad Meltzer and he has some pretty interesting things to say about Identity Crisis (which I really do need to reread). I really agree with most of what he has to say, even when it sort of pisses me off. Most importantly though, he finally solves the mystery of why almost every IC tie-in was written by Geoff Johns, and why almost every Geoff Johns book has an IC tie-in:

"Beyond that, there were no long term plans worked out until the series was done, and almost all of those were with Geoff, who happened to be trapped in my house during the Baltimore hurricane a few years back.  He read the entire series right there and then we just got our geek on."

NYT's Thomas Friedman offers his 8 tips for reporting on the Middle East.

Rule 1 Never lead your story out of Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq with a cease-fire; it will always be over by the time the next morning's paper is out.

Rule 2 Never take a concession, except out of the mouth of the person who is supposed to be doing the conceding. If I had a dime for every time someone agreed to recognize Israel on behalf of Yasir Arafat, I would be a wealthy man today.

Rule 3 The Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always make sure that they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary.

Rule 4 In the Middle East, if you can't explain something with a conspiracy theory, then don't try to explain it at all - people there won't believe it.

Rule 5 In the Middle East, the extremists go all the way, and the moderates tend to just go away - unless the coast is completely clear.

Rule 6 The most oft-used phrase of Mideast moderates is: "We were just about to stand up to the bad guys when you stupid Americans did that stupid thing. Had you stupid Americans not done that stupid thing, we would have stood up, but now it's too late. It's all your fault for being so stupid."

Rule 7 In Middle East politics there is rarely a happy medium. When one side is weak, it will tell you, "How can I compromise?" And the minute it becomes strong, it will tell you, "Why should I compromise?"

Rule 8 What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in Arabic, in Hebrew or in any other local language. Anything said in English doesn't count.

I thought all the dog lovers out there would find this service rather adorable.

Somebody buy this book for me and Asa.

And this one, too.

Bush lets us in on a secret: "President Bush said yesterday that he doesn't 'see how you can be president without a relationship with the Lord,' but that he is always mindful to protect the right of others to worship or not worship."

As an agnostic/atheist I want to be more pissed about this, but I know exactly where he's coming from. He is confusing, as so many do, a lack of religiosity with a lack of moral compass. More unforgivably he's confusing a lack of judeo(maybe)-christian religiosity with a lack of moral compass. But that aside, I wish that more people would come to terms with religion's role as a means of enforcing and promoting community moral standards, but not the only source thereof. Lots of Secular Humanists have the exact same moral system as Jesus, just without all that stuff about God.

I wonder if people like Bush really think we can't abide by our own morals without the threat of hell hanging over our heads. I imagine that says more about him, and the role of religion in his life, than anything else. Just because we aren't scared into it doesn't mean we aren't moral.

Groups it's still OK to be biased against:
-Gays
-The irreligious

Hilarious.

My sentiments on this non-story, courtesy of Instapundit.

WAS LINCOLN GAY? Andrew Sullivan cares, and so do the folks at The Weekly Standard. I can't seem to, though. The guy saved the nation, and I'm supposed to care about where he put his wing-wang?

Tee-hee. Okay, I have a new favorite bad movie reviewer. Now, I don't mean that this guy reviews bad movies. I just mean that he's a terrible reviewer who doesn't know how to write. Check out his movie reviews on Amazon.com. They're HI-larious. Please, please, please (!) scroll down and read his "review" of I, Robot. This guy is seriously better (well, worse) than even the amateur reviewers on IMDB.com.

Everyone is talking about ‘The Salvador Option’ which Newsweek says the Pentagon is considering for Iraq. I can see how that may be the only way to win this war, and I can see how the War-First crowd, more specifically those who find winning to be an end in and of itself, would find it attractive. But I just have to mention that once you've hired terrorists (and yes, Death Squads are most certainly government sanctioned terrorists) to fight the terrorists then you lose whatever moral credibility you thought you had after you said that Torture was totally awesome. I mean, we can make equivalencies until the cows come home, but if you want moral authority you have to actually be moral. Or at least keep up appearances.

Mark Steyn's latest piece is pretty good. I don't like the idea of "politicizing" something like the tsunami, but I can't help but be bothered by some of the crazier things being said from the usually crazy channels in the Muslim world.

Most citizens in the West look at the tsunami's victims and recognise our common humanity. When a chap is pulled down from a tree to survey the wreckage of his home and learn of the loss of his family, we see him first as our fellow man - a man in need. And if, afterwards, we happen to spot the sopping Osama T-shirt, we tactfully agree to overlook it – which is why I haven't seen that Sri Lankan AFP photo in any Western newspapers.

By contrast, Muslim leaders divide the world into the Dar al-Islam and everybody else. Yet the deaths of 100,000 members of the club in Banda Aceh alone isn't enough to catch the eye of the big shots in the Arab world. The Arab world's principal contribution these past two weeks has been the usual paranoia: "Was it caused by American, Israeli and Indian nuclear testing?" wondered Mahmoud Bakri in the Egyptian weekly Al Usbu. "The three most recent tests appeared to be genuine American and Israeli preparations to act together with India to test a way to liquidate humanity."

"It's OK that aid from the US is here," said Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, spokesman for the Islamic Defender Front. "But if they open bars, sell alcohol or open prostitution centres, then we will fight them." Almascaty also warned the Australian charity Youth Off the Streets that its plan to open homes for 35,000 Indonesian orphans was all very well, but on no account was it to try converting Muslim children. Jeez, man, would it kill you once in a while just to send a box of chocolates and a card saying "Thank you, you infidel sons of whores and pigs", and leave it at that?

But one day the smarter lads in the Osama T-shirts will begin to wonder what they're getting in return for their glorification of a multimillionaire whose followers these days spend most of their time killing Muslims - in Iraq, in Turkey, in Saudi Arabia, even in Indonesia. With friends like that, who needs tsunamis?

I bet you thought I was totally off my game, but no, I'm just a little bit off my game. So, a-ha! New Cash!

I don't even get the paper, but I'm still proud of my hometown boys, The LA Times, for dropping the Garfield strip. I've never heard of a big paper dropping such a popular strip because it's not any good, and boy howdy does it make me happy. It's like we live in a world that values quality over mediocre pap. Oh, I love that world.

It's pretty common knowledge that die-hard Muslim countries don't exactly have the best record when it comes to guaranteeing women human rights. You know, silly little things like the chance to wear jeans, or learn to read. But...

This article is REALLY strange. Apparently, the craze in some parts of the Arab world is fat women. Really fat women. Now, that's fine. It's a culture thing, I guess. But the bad part is that rich guys have mothers start force-feeding girls at an early age, causing all sorts of crazy ailments.

The International Obesity Task Force, a London think-tank, finds 83 percent of women obese or overweight in Bahrain, 74 percent in the United Arab Emirates, and 75 percent in Lebanon. (Trailing not far behind, some 62 percent of American women fit these categories). The Journal of Nutrition in a 2001 study found half the women in Tunisia and Morocco overweight or obese. Further, the rate of childhood obesity has risen rapidly. A 2001 survey estimated that 22 percent of Mauritanian women have been force-fed as girls.

I suppose the inverse of this is how some American moms guilt-trip their daughters into eating disorders and yo-yo diets. At least according to Spanglish...

Someone on dKos linked to this Susan Sontag speech and I just had to quote this one bit:

"Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.

Kind of a standard sentiment, but well put and worth repeating. The whole thing is rather good, about the divide (continuing, not just recent) between America and Europe. I'd never really known much about her, but since her death I've heard and read a lot, and she seems damn smart.

The Beat informs us of the good news: Frank Miller on All-Star Batman & Robin. Written by Frank Miller and drawn by Jim Lee? Superman by Morrison and Quitely?

When Dan Didio says All-Star he clearly isn't fucking around.

It's now okay for House members to use the words "Senate" and "Senator" in their talks. I know we really shouldn't surprised, but even I found this strange, old Congressional rule to be quite archaic.

Looks like they're opening up a Creationist Museum in Kentucky. I have no clue what might let the average schoolchild know the very important difference between this and an actual natural history museum, which is I suppose the point.

It astonishes me, the zeal with which the Religious Right wishes to demolish the Enlightenment.

It's also astonishing how easily everyone looks the other way and ignores that religious fanatacism is religious fanatacism, and the people in America with the most in common with Islamofascists are the Christiofascists in our own backyards.

This International Herald Tribune article talks about how far from being a super power, China's relatively poor response to the tsunami devestations illustrates their lack of power projection and financial resources. Especially when compared to those big bad capitalists.

Last weekend, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao announced that China would donate more than $62 million, one of its largest ever pledges of international relief aid. But that figure was quickly eclipsed when the United States increased its pledge to $350 million and Japan followed with a $500 million donation.

Moreover, China has watched as American vessels have moved quickly into the region with U.S. Navy helicopters delivering food and critical supplies to the hardest-hit areas of Indonesia. This week, another convoy of American ships is expected to arrive in Sri Lanka with more than 1,500 marines.

By contrast, China's primary contribution at the scene has been a 35-member medical team now treating patients in Indonesia.

I haven't read nearly enough of his work, but I've seen enough to know that his reputation is well deserved and then some. Will Eisner had died.

Be sad for just a little while today, because Will Eisner is no longer with us.

Assuming you're not still in a protracted moment of silence due to the tsunamis, which probably snuffed out a fair number of future Will Eisners.

Uuh, happy new year.

Powerline is looking at two new books analyzing Europe in the coming century.

Rifkin and Reid know far more about the new Europe than I do. But consider me skeptical about any claim that a "superstate" founded on tight government regulation of the economy, and dedicated to its citizenry's desire for leisure time, represents a serious long-term threat to American supremacy.

Amen. This has long been my stance, as well. (Scroll down to read the comments. From both Asa and I.)

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Do read this article on "Weimar Russia."