In France even local Sarah Palin is cooler than ours. Felation, inflation – who the hell cares!
French MEP Rachida Dati confuses oral sex with inflation

A few years ago I very much enjoyed Steven Colbert performance at the White House Correspondence Dinner where he appeared in full character.

He did not squander such a unique opportunity. It also made me realize that a large number of people in this country don’t understand what satire is. Colbert plays a well-meaning but misinformed blowhard but many people apparently think this is what he is. The over the top praise of everything the administration was doing was expected at that dinner and he gave them that, while subtly mocking it. It was funny at first, but then it started to dawn on everybody in the room what he was doing, making even Bush himself red with anger and embarrassment. Somebody who booked Colbert must have gotten into some trouble afterwards.

Stephen Colbert testified today before the Congress on farm labor using illegal immigrants. Again, he appeared in character.

I hope this time it was expected, although I’m still puzzled as to what the Congress tried to achieve by that. If it was entertainment they have succeeded. As if they needed Colbert to be entertaining. Colbert is doing the job that any self respecting journalist is supposed to be doing, but these days I guess, it takes a clown to do serious job. Hey, whatever it takes. Journalists are obsessed with giving “equal time” to “opposing views” even though one of those “views” is that the Earth is flat. But somehow that deserves equal coverage. In the meantime, serious reporting is a niche reserved for late time comedians.
What was interesting this time, however, is not that Steven was in character – it was that in order to drive the point home he had to step out of the character in the end and speak as Steven Colbert a citizen. Here’s what he said:

CONGRESSWOMAN JUDY CHU: Mr. Colbert, you could work on so many issues, why are you interested in this issue?

COLBERT: I like talking about people who don’t have any power. And this seems like some of the least powerful people in the United States are migrant workers who come and do our work but don’t have any rights as a result. And yet we still invite them to come here, and at the same time ask them to leave. And, you know, whatsoever you do for the least of my brothers, these seem like the least of our brothers, right now. And I know that a lot of people are the least of my brothers because the economy is so hard, and I don’t want to take anyone’s hardship away from them or diminish it or anything like that, but migrant workers suffer, and they have no rights.”

By the way, I read a profile on him some time ago, and he’s actually a practicing Christian. So I’m not surprised that he decided to recite Bible. I’m only wondering where the self-proclaimed Christians like Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell got their priorities. You know, shooting Commies and regulating sex lives of others?
I’m not religious and I don’t mean to sound preachy, I just love to point out inconsistencies. Apparently, brotherly love is not on the contemporary conservative agenda.

Guys, I’ve discovered Facebook, that’s why I was absent for a few days. In the meantime, look what I found.
GOP Candidate Freaks Out

He’s definitely on something. Too bad he didn’t get the nomination.

So the war in Iraq is officially over. It ended with a whimper and a worn out president declaring the end of it. So much has been written and said about that I won’t add anything new. I just wanted to organize my thoughts about it and make my own summary.

I objected this war from the beginning, although I supported the invasion of Afghanistan – the memories of 9/11 were still fresh in the fall of 2001. And from another perspective I thought that it was appropriate for Americans to clean up the mess in Afghanistan that ensued after the American support of Taliban to push the Soviets out in 1980s. My reasons are very clear – if I had to choose between a military dictatorship or a theocratic state I will always chose the former. That is – if there’s only those 2 choices, and, alas, in poor countries that is usually the case. The reason being is that under military dictatorship, while your life is miserable enough – you can, at least in theory, indulge in drinking, gambling and other immoral activities as long as you keep your antigovernment thoughts to yourself. Under theocracy, in addition to the possibility of being executed for anti-government sentiments you can also be executed for immoral activities, making life utterly unbearable. Other reason was that I always thought that deal making is easier with crooks than with those who hear voices.

That’s why I didn’t see Saddam as a threat, but I saw him as a man with delusions of grandeur who bluffed about having WMD with a very bad poker face. But the Bush administration was only happy to be fooled as they were eager to call Saddam’s bluff. It’s nice to be a wartime president, it accomplishes many things – shuts up critics at home as unpatriotic, makes you seem tough, which is important for a man who hasn’t gone to war and for a cowboy who was afraid of horses; you can be portrayed as a liberator, and other smaller benefits, like multi-billion government contracts to your friends, let’s not name names here. Besides, being at war also almost always assures your second term. So these were the reasons for war that I concluded to myself back in the spring of 2003 and turned out I was mostly correct.
There’s nothing to celebrate here, let’s just have a collective exhale that at least this nightmare is (somewhat) over. Before helping somebody next time let’s first make sure that they want to be helped.