The Onion, + Obama + Cimmerians = Nirvana

Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To
'Savage Sword Of Conan' #24

It's the dawning of a new era, as The Specials once promised.


Spectacular.

Totten on the Mideast Quagmire

Dan Schueftan made a similar point much more bluntly when I met him last week in Israel. “Ariel Sharon believed we could change the world by force,” he said. “Shimon Peres believed we could change it by being nice and stupid. They are both megalomaniacs.”

Michael Totten, read it all here:

Save MAD, Not Some Bullshit Car Co.

MAD goes quarterly, reflecting the crisis in print pubs and the lack of pride at Time Warner.

Handling the news with style typical of MAD, Editor John Ficarra said, “The feedback we’ve gotten from readers is that only every third issue of MAD is funny, so we’ve decided to just publish those.”

Story at The Beat, via Comics Journal

New Nails Pt 5769

The more things change dept. This doesn't surprise or shock, it's just more piles of shit. I don't regard the Pope as a "friend". Remember:

Almost every year, Israel's two chief rabbis travel to the Vatican in order to convince the pope to return all the Jewish original writings and the Temple Menorah. Until today, the Vatican possess the greatest Jewish library in the world and especially during the Middle Ages, the church stole (or took) many Jewish original writings. The Rambam (Maimonides) may be the most famous case. When the Romans plundered the Second Temple after its destruction, they obviously took the Menorah to Rome. The question is "Where is the Menorah today?" And many people say: "In the Vatican".

Link

But occasionally I manage to work up a spark of outrage anyhow, over the fuckupness of these shits:

"Among the men reinstated Saturday was Richard Williamson, a British-born cleric who in an interview last week said he did not believe that six million Jews died in the Nazi gas chambers. He has also given interviews saying that the United States government staged the Sept. 11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan."

NYT full article.

I know, it would be preferable to resort to snark here, like, "Williamson also believes that Paul is Dead and has accused Brian Wilson of hiding the real tapes for Smile" but the evil compounded stuns me into sobriety.


Lyrics to New Nails by Mission of Burma here:

"There was once a special book
It got changed by facist crooks "

Aftermath in Gaza

Read this:

Having Hamas as a neighbor is like living next door to a serial killer who abuses his children and threatens to kill them if you go in after him. You can defend yourself, but if the police won't arrest him, the only choices left are to build a wall around him, stop him from getting weapons, and send in food.

Barry Rubin, Jerusalem Post

IDF officer: Hamas use of children during Gaza op was 'monstrous'
Haaretz story:

Israel has been heavily criticized for the high number of Palestinian civilian casualties in the operation. Eisenberg, however, asserted that Israel Defense Forces soldiers adhered to moral principles while fighting in Gaza.

Palestinian civilians, meanwhile, have accused Hamas of forcing them to stay in homes from which gunmen shot at Israeli soldiers during the recent hostilities in Gaza, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported Thursday.