I'm still here

I'm still here, but I've been quiet for the past couple of days because of (a) work; (b) a computer that's uncooperative, if not outright hostile; and (c) a bout of weltschmertz.

So meanwhile, I invite you to do the following:

1. Consider my proposed new benchmark for the Jewish vote, written in November 2004. Am I way off base?

2. Look at the speech Sarah Palin would have given at the anti-Ahmadinejad rally, had she not been unceremoniously "disinvited," and tell me how much the Jewish Democrats have harmed the cause of American Jews and Israel, using a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is not at all and 10 is utterly and irreparably.

3. Read this article ("Clinton: 'I get why Palin is hot'") and watch this clip at HotAir. Then tell me whether Bill Clinton has read my most recent photo comic or, alternatively, whether his behavior is so obvious that I had little trouble getting it down to the last, er, electoral vote.

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Barack Obama wins the Super Bowl

Obama: . . . and people keep asking whether I can break the tackle or hit the receiver, and I've addressed that often before, but in terms of my abilities, you don't have to just look at my words. You can look at my deeds. Just last January, the New York Giants, who are my team, the team I quarterback for, won the Super Bowl. And I think that will ratchet up the pressure on Iran, which has been trying to develop the Bomb to overcome the running advantage of its neighbors . . . .

Story

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Qs and As with John Bolton

I'm way behind on my serious reading. In fact, my end table next to my bed is stacked high with books I've started reading or should have started reading.

But it's tempting to add John Bolton's memoir "Surrender is Not an Option," to the stack, because pretty much everything he says is a breath of fresh air. (Previous posts on Bolton here and here.)

Bolton is interviewed in today's New York Times Magazine by Deborah Solomon, and we'll assume it's a fair rendition of the interview, for whatever that's worth.

My favorite question, which I'm absolutely not making up:

Why do you think Iran shouldn’t have nuclear weapons?

Here's Bolton's answer:

When you have a regime that would be happier in the afterlife than in this life, this is not a regime that is subject to classic theories of deterrence. Retaliation for them, which would obliterate their society, doesn't have the same negative connotations for their leadership.

Short and to the point.

And my second-favorite response from Bolton -- about the Nobel Peace Prize that Al Gore won: "At least they didn't give Gore the prize for economics."

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Sunday linkfest

Man, I've got a whole bunch of links burning a hole in my pocket, and I just don't feel like writing an entire post about any of 'em. So here's my linkfest. Hope you enjoy these.

1. A "Mom Job"? Oy. You'll be pleased to know that even mothers of college-aged children are having this plastic surgery. "'I had been thin all my life until I had my son and then I got this pooch of overhanging fat on my abdomen that you can’t get rid of,' Ms. Birkland, 39, said. 'And your breasts become deflated sacks.'" Mind you, this is a woman with a 20-year-old son. She was about 19 when he was born, and now she's concerned with her looks -- and blaming him? I shouldn't be surprised about her. Get this line: "There is more pressure on mothers today to look young and sexy than on previous generations, she added. 'I don’t think it was an issue for my mother; your husband loved you no matter what,' said Ms. Birkland, who recently remarried." Personal to Ms. Birkland's new husband: If that's what she thinks, ditch her now; she'll only get "worse" looking.

2. An observatory on the roof of your house? Cool. "'The reason why people don’t use their telescopes is they are such a pain to haul out and set up,' said John Spack, 50, a certified public accountant who had a domed observatory built on top of an addition to his house in Chicago last year. 'Now, if I want to get up at 3 a.m. and look at something, I just open the shutter.'"

3. "Pro-semites" on JDate? When, some years ago, Irving Kristol said, "the danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them," he was right on the money. It turns out that something like 11% of members of JDate aren't Jewish but are interested in meeting Jews. Pollster Mark Penn writes in a new book "that 'the number one reason they [people he calls "pro-Semites"] gave for desiring a Jewish spouse was a sense of strong values, with nearly a third also admitting they were drawn to money, looks or a sense that Jews "treat their spouses better."'"

4. Vegans dating regular vegetarians. As a former "vegetarian" who actually ate dairy, eggs, and even fish, and the father of a former vegan who was actually serious about it until he had a revelation (that vegans are morons, or something like that) and is now a proud carnivore, I have to admit this line tickled me: "'I'm in a relationship with a murderer,' bemoans Carl, one of many vegans who wrote in to the 'Vegan Freak' podcast for romantic advice." My son was never like that when he was a vegan.

5. Speaking of vegetarians, if you work for Countrywide and you didn't get the memo, W.C. Varones got it for you. Heh!

6. Stupid pickup lines. I did like the final one, which is charmingly cheesy: "Well, here I am. What are your other two wishes?"

7. "There are signs that the global Islamic jihad movement is splitting apart." Discuss. (via protein wisdom)

8. WTF? I saw this bumper sticker on a car on the highway in Maryland: "God Bless The Whole World / No Exceptions." Yeah, I understand it now: God bless Johnny, and God bless Billy, and God bless Osama. Because, heck, we're no better than any of those guys who are trying to murder us.

9. Here's a concert I'm glad I missed: Beethoven's 9th, redone according to the "aural graffiti" that Gustav Mahler wrote on the score. Tim Page lays the smackdown on Leonard Slatkin: "Somebody should sit Leonard Slatkin down and explain to him, firmly but not without compassion, that Ludwig van Beethoven actually knew what he was doing when he composed his Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, and that the work he created needs no enhancement from Gustav Mahler or any of the other musicians who followed in his shadow."

10. Andrew Ferguson in the Weekly Standard has an amusing review of Alan Greenspan's new book: "Alan Shrugged." ("Ayn," Alan would say, overcome by some Randian insight, "upon reading this, one tends to feel exhilarated!")

11. Columbia's newest friend, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has another insight: Move the damn Jews to Alaska. Seriously. (Via HotAir) He must have been reading the latest dreck from a Jewish writer suffering from Weltschmerz. Can you imagine the Jews in Alaska? All the Jewish geezers would sit around all afternoon saying things like this: "Oy, it's so cold here." "Moses got the desert, but we're stuck in this icebox."

12. And you just can't miss this last one, but don't listen to it at work, unless you can close a door behind you: Don't try that satire s--- in f---in' New Yawk. (Bad language alert.)

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Report from Columbia U.

A correspondent -- we'll call him "Number One Son" -- was in New York and got close to the events at Columbia, where one of the two remaining leaders of the Axis of Evil was speaking.

Here is a lightly edited version of his report. A few photos he took will follow.

So I heard that Ahmadinejad was coming and I couldn't pass up an opportunity to maybe have chance to toss a bag of doo doo at his motorcade. Too bad that when I got uptown and met up with XXXXXX, members of the anti-Semitic New York City Police Department were cruelly preventing everyday Hebrew citizens like myself from rushing the building and kicking Ahmadinejad in painful places as hard as we could.

Anyway, I couldn't get into Columbia's campus with out a Columbia ID so XXXXXX and I stayed on the west side of Broadway first near the ZOA protest. A lot of kippahs, long skirts, and political opinions that I'm not gonna say whether or not I agree with.

Of course, the crazies came out. Signs like "Honk if Bush is a War Criminal". XXXXXX and I told the guy he was at the wrong protest. Also "The US is to Iraq as Israel is to Palestine as Nazi Germany is to Jews" and "Ahmadinejad Is Bad, Bush is Worse something something I'm An Incredible Moron That Enjoys Smoking Crack Cocaine On A Regular Basis. Oh Yeah And Impeach President John Kerry Or Something".

Luckily these people were yelled at a lot and it was explained just how stupid they were, as if they deserved even being spoken to. It's annoying how they get attention just because they are so outlandishly stupid. If you missed the rest of their protest, you can probably get all the details at the home of the president of Iran, although I don't think these people advocated nuking Israel. (To be fair, I didn't specifically hear any of them say they did).

At this point XXXXXX and I left because the civil, respectful, and well reasoned debates over US-Iran policy and whether or not Bush knocked down the WTC with special mind beams he got from Neo-Conservatives got to be a little much. There were a lot of good signs that I didn't get pictures of and in general I was happy that there was such a good showing. Apparently there was a much bigger protest at the UN.

With these photos, I'm going to append the captions supplied by NOS.



At the ZOA protest.





"My name is Shiri Negari and would like to speak at Columbia too but I was murdered when Iran gave money to Hamas to blow up the bus I was on."





Classic.





"Supports terrorist organizations, Denies Holocaust, Calls for Islam to Dominate the World" plus more stuff I can't remember or read on the sign. The last thing was "Is a [unprintable]."*

_____________________
* Suffice it to say that the word NOS describes as "unprintable" is the compound D-word thrown around a lot at Ace of Spades HQ.

UPDATE: Lots more from Michelle Malkin.

UPDATE (9/26): And even more from the Washington Times Culture, Etc. Blog, especially about Shiri Negari.

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Lazy Sunday linkfest

1. Another Ivy League triumph. As you know, Columbia has invited our dear friend, the Holocaust-denying potential genocidalist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. But I'll bet you didn't know that Columbia Dean John Coatsworth has said, "Why, we would have invited Hitler, too!" Seriously. The video is here. [UPDATE (9/24): The Columbia U. School of Terrorism? (via LGF) and perhaps Ground Zero will visit Ahmadinejad. (hat tip: fee simple)

2. This is peculiarly amusing, starting with the post title: "Jewish lesbian dKos diarist: I’ve got a crush on Mahdi even though he’d probably have me killed."

3. On a less appalling subject (unless you're one of those lefty wackjobs), here is an article about the Forbes 400 richest individuals that mere mortals can only gawk over. Tip: You need $1.3 billion in net worth to break into the club. Better save those pennies. Also, once you're in, you still can be dropped like last month's fashion: "Also dropping off the list is caffeine king Howard Schultz, whose Starbucks stock has languished over the past year." Put that in your latte and smoke it. Or something.

4. Along the same lines, here are the "priciest zip codes" in the country. Hint: They're not where you live, buddy. Well, maybe you, but not me. Most seem to be in California.

5. Almost forgot: All you need to read in David Margolick's review of Jeffrey Toobin's book on the Supreme Court is the first 5 or 6 paragraphs, which is all I've read, by the way. All of it basically elaborates on this point: "But to anyone who watches the court, or watches those who watch it, Toobin’s descriptions afford something else, arguably even more interesting: the chance to ponder which of those justices talked to him for this book, and which did not."

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Iranian street theater

Iranian women wearing Western clothing are told by burqa-wearing women that they are not modestly dressed. But sometimes they don't take kindly to that advice.

(both links to video via HotAir)

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Tehran Times writes about anti-war protests

I guess it really doesn't matter whether you read about it in our domestic press or in the Tehran Times. Mostly the same difference.

But there's something quite bracing about reading an Iranian article, in English, called "Americans tell Bush 'enough is enough.'"

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