The Sun of the 21st Century

Happy Generic Patriotic Holiday. I hope you appropriately celebrated the combined birthdays of Washington, Lincoln, Cupid, Jason (of the Friday the 13th movies), and Kim Jong-il, who turned 62 and is now called “The Sun of the 21st Century.”

Khatami is an idiot. He is encouraging the electorate to vote in the illegitimate Iranian elections. Vote for whom, I’m not quite sure.

Is San Francisco charging a fee for those gay marriage licenses, and will it give the fee back when the licenses are overturned in court?

By the way, little-known fact: the first political party in California to endorse gay marriage was Peace and Freedom, back in 1988 when I was involved with it. Guess who proposed it, if proposed is the word I’m looking for?

An article on rich countries’ increasing refusal to send troops to UN peacekeeping missions. Of the 40,000 UN troops now on 13 missions, barely a thousand come from the 5 permanent members of the Security Council. This is comparable to rich white folks sending black kids to Vietnam, or paying substitutes to die in their place in the Civil War. Poor countries like Bangladesh are willing to let their people be used as cannon fodder because they get $1,000 per month per soldier. Under Bush, exactly 7 US Marines were sent to one operation, in Liberia, which is the equivalent of tipping a bad waitress a nickle.


Governor Terminator has acted on an issue close to his heart: he plans to rip part of the roof off the state capitol so people can smoke cigars there, unfettered by California’s public smoking laws. No word on whether there’ll be a special groping room.

In Shrub’s latest snub to the French, he’s not telling them whether or not he’ll show up for the 60th anniversary of D-Day.

US occupation authorities have had to admit that the attack on the Bastille, sorry the police station in Fallujah, was not by foreign (read: Al Qaida) militants, as Paul Bremer claimed, but Iraqis.

An American Christian missionary was shot outside Baghdad in a drive-by, which is very funny. Tragic, I mean tragic.

From Ananova: “Italian police are looking for a woman with huge breasts who has gone on the run after failing to pay for £5,000 implants.” Insert obvious running-bra joke here.