The French Attack on the Political Egotist Rick Perry Kicks Off

Needless to say, the (David J Phillip) photo of Rick Perry chosen by Le Monde's print edition to illustrate Sylvain Cypel's article on the Texas governor's joining the Republican race has Perry and his image on the screen behind him looking like a maniac.

The opening sentence of Sylvain Cypel's article suggests that Rick Perry is an egotist, politically speaking at least, who is delighted with the degradation of America's debt, since that will (quelle horreur) hurt Barack Obama and since that in turn will benefit Perry's election prospects.

D'un point de vue égoïstement politique, Rick Perry, gouverneur du Texas, a pu suivre les suites de la dégradation de la note de la dette américaine avec délectation : les candidats à l'investiture républicaine pour l'élection présidentielle de 2012 se poussaient tous du col pour dénoncer un Barack Obama " entraînant l'Amérique à sa perte ".

What with Sylvain Cypel's description of Rick Perry as close to Christian fundamentalists, Le Monde readers are fretting about someone who believes he has a direct line to God (shades of another former Texas governor, George W Bush), about Rick Perry's election leading to a world war, and about a description of the USA as "humanity's civilizational mistake".

Is it Time to Start a Death Watch?

When Jon Bon Jovi's hair becomes the subject of conversation, even among unmedicated adults, methinks so.

Memories of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

In one of innumerable summer series published in Le Monde, short and long, to keep French(wo)men interested in the daily during the July and August months, the newspapers presents a series on stories from the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the barrier which was erected by the Warsaw Pact on August 13, 50 years ago.

Bloggers From Around the World

In another summer series, Le Monde presents a dozen portraits of bloggers around the world, a few of them interesting, but apart from a couple (The Arabist, Generación Y…), none of them as exciting as InstaPundit or as… No Pasarán:

1) Claire Ané sur le blog de Elsa Fayner, créatrice de Et voilà le travail

2) Florence Beaugé sur Issandr El Amrani, créateur de The Arabist

3) Pascal Galinier sur Ophélie Neiman, créatrice de Miss Glou Glou

4) Audrey Fournier sur Ian Ference, créateur de The Kingston Lounge

5) Philippe Jacqué sur Pierre Dubois, créateur de Histoires d'universités

6) Pascale Santi sur Christian Portal, créateur de Pour une médecine écologique

7) Adrien Le Ga sur William Réjault, créateur de Ron l'Infirmier

8) Véronique Lorelle sur Tavi Gevinson, créatrice de the Style Rookie

9) Pascale Robert-Diard sur Jean-Yves Moyart, créateur de Maître Mô

10) Paulo A. Paranagua sur Yoani Sanchez, créatrice (cubaine) de Generación Y

11) Nathalie Brafman sur Manuel Dorne, créateur de Korben

12) Xavier Ternisien sur Anne Lataillade, créatrice de Papilles et pupilles

13) Brice Pedroletti sur Li Chengpeng, créateur du blog du même nom

The Same to You, Spanky

Behold the image that graced the website of the permanently dyspeptic besserwisser German magazine Spiegel since 2009:

Nearly. Three. Years. Now that the concept of individual savings lost to dramatic drops in the market are closer to home, and people they are capable of imagining are human are involved, the picture has been taken down. NOW, you see, it's in poor taste.

But Apart From Those (Insignificant) Details, the Cartoon Hit the Mark!

It isn't Obama's money and it isn't — far from it — lunch money…

It is a bit tiring seeing the number of political cartoons that still don't get it, such as John Darkow's GOP Bullies drawing in the Columbus Daily Tribune.

Reminder to leftists, to statists, and to other Obama supporters:
It is not your lunch money, Barack Obama;
it is not the government's lunch money, leftists and Obama supporters…
It is our lunch money!

Is that idea starting to seep into your New York Times propaganda-addled brains?!

In fact, it is more than just lunch money; it is a good deal of our (responsbily-earned) savings and we do not want Obama — or anyone else — to throw it, or any part of it, out the window…

Before you know it, They'll Have us Wear Uniforms and Carry a Little Red Book

Which is no surprise given the chillingly broad range of life features that watermelons meddling in building design and construction are willing to indulge. This, from an email I just got:

As the LEED Pilot Credit library is now open, this webinar is a timely event to learn about Pilot Credits such as the LEED Pilot Credit for Physical Activity.

This webinar will address the following topics:
- tying improvements in health to improvements in the built environment
- increasing the physical activity of building users
- synergies between Active Design, sustainability, and LEED
- Intent & Requirements of the LEED Pilot Credit for Physical Activity and how it benefits building users
- What are LEED Pilot Credits and how can you participate in them
- Case studies of projects using the LEED Pilot Credit for Physical Activity
- Free technical assistance to help LEED projects implement the LEED Pilot Credit for Physical Activity

No preshha!

Felonious Munk: Stop Bein' a D*ckhead an' Balance the F*ckin' Budget, B!

(Thanks to Hervé in New York)

Line up Children, and Repeat After the Activist!

When foundations and other flunkies are engaging in post-modern behavior modification campaigns, sometimes they lose sight of what they're going. I'm being charitable. I don't think they are even remotely aware of where the missing word belongs here:

So it seems that you're expected to pledge that any loud mook
double-parking in Teheran is also your fellow American.

I was alerted to this by way of an email I received requesting that we post a link to this campaign on this site. It was addressed politely, but so badly thought out, that I simple have to decline. It was sent by someone, it turns out, who comes to this as an academic feminist: a real student of not just sculpting images, but from a school of thought convinced that it isn't founded on the principle of class warfare. I suppose she told herself that she had to be especially nice to the ones who aren't on the usual mailing list of foundation types whose "work" is inherently unproductive in any real social or economic terms: raising "awareness" among those whose awareness and personae is a caricature to begin with.

Besides: I KNOW that American Muslims are my fellow Americans. My sense is that everyone else I know knows that as well. SO WHO exactly is this ritual crapola for? Judging by the youth and geographic ambiguity of the people who have linked to it, my guess is that it's supposed to fit the feel-okay-this-is-nice-nothingness crowd that is largely made up of college students from the US and abroad. My sense is also that the audience for the display it a foreign one in a bid to "better like us", despite the fact that they know where they need to immigrate to, to experience genuine freedom of though and conscience.

It also seems to be structured around outlook modification based on a false premise that Americans, in a conflict with near-east terrorism are at war with a religion, in preparation of some supposed "orgy of internecine violence" that will overcome whitey on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

Sorry, but that mental bugaboo is THEIR problem, not ours. We are no more at war with Islam, as we were at war with the Orthodox Church when we were shutting down Solbodan Milosevic. We are neither that stupid, or that inhumane to fit the profile that activism imagines the public to be, or perhaps needs us to be to justify their existence.

Like all of these campaigns, they are tacitly insulting and patronizing. Muslim Americans are my fellow Americans - that's a fact that doesn't need some sort of "pledge".

Obviously, They're Oppressed

Feds? Look, whatever. The BBC is calling them "protesters", and the petri-dish trot are calling it "social justice". Hopefully, their ability to embrace reality is just an arm's reach away.

His Own Private Idaho Isn't Private Enough

Idaho police tell man to stop wearing bunny suit

"He's got the bunny outfit, a cowboy suit and a ballerina dress but you don't see him except where he's tripping through his backyard," she said.

So I suppose the local constabulary would prefer a Annie Oakley number, or something. Who can tell, when weirdness comes right up against the bleeding edge of the 2nd Amendment

Police warned Idaho Falls resident William Falkingham after a woman said she saw him dressed in the costume, peeking at her young son from behind a tree and pointing his finger like a gun, according to a police report.

An investigation of the sighting led officers to question other neighbors, "who expressed that they were greatly disturbed by Falkingham and his bunny suit," the report said.

It's all starting to look like DSK's retirement hobby once he's off of the little blue pills, if you ask me.

Young Man Killed by Polar Bear

And I'll bet you believed that they were made extinct every year for the past decade by people not thinking the correct thoughts.

A polar bear has mauled a 17-year-old British boy to death in the Arctic and injured four other UK tourists.

Horatio Chapple, from Wiltshire, was with 12 others on a British Schools Exploring Society trip near a glacier on the Norwegian island of Svalbard.

The fact is that it's a very sad thing to happen to a 17 year old with his entire life ahead of him. That doesn't stop the BBC from having a fit of Daddy drinks because you cry,. After all, nothing signals a Pavlovian response among the rugged, toothless outdoors-people of the BBC's ilk like the word "polar bear":

As climate change reduces ice cover, there are concerns that more polar bears will become displaced and will move further inland to seek food, bringing them into contact with more people.

The fact is that an excess of sea ice, that stuff that's supposed to have been a distant memory at this point, was the cause of the young Eatonian, part of a party of 80 having been in proximity to polar bears.

A blog on the group's website dated 27 July described polar bear sightings from their camp where they had been marooned due to "an unprecedented amount of ice in the fjord".

The Telegraph notes:

It added that students on the £2,900 expedition were told they would "venture into the untouched beauty and wilderness of Svalbard".

The repetitious environmental propaganda of modern education being the unbalanced thing that it is fetishizes it's chosen victims and special examples. Those that planned this trip undoubtably drew their interest on it.

Another local person, Liv Rose Flygel, 55, said: "It's not been the first time. Last summer a man was attacked by a polar bear and there have also been attacks on a man from Austria and a girl. Only the man in the attack last summer survived. He was taken in the mouth of the bear and his friend ran after it and shot it.
"The problem is, when the ice goes, the bears lose their way and cannot catch food. People don't really know how dangerous they are. One came down to the sea recently and people were running down to take pictures."

You can firmly blame it on grown-ups with such a zeal to program the young to act out the adults' desired will, that they'll neglect their obligation to transmit common sense or perspective to the young. Effectively, it's operant conditioning.

One out of three children aged 6 to 11 fears that Ma Earth won't exist when they grow up, while more than half-56 percent-worry that the planet will be a blasted heath (or at least a very unpleasant place to live), according to a new survey.

But that didn't stop an adult adherent of the cult of stupidity from prefacing it this way:

There's a new bogeyman lurking in the closet, and this one isn't imaginary.

With a sick air of things past, the anxiety is clearly more frequently being transferred to them by parents who have drunk the kool aid.:i>

Interestingly enough, kids vex over the state of the planet, especially when it came to safe and clean air and water, regardless of any pro-environmental measures on the part of their parents. A staggering 95 percent of the children surveyed said their parents pitched in by recycling, using rechargeable batteries, and conserving water and electricity.

Enough is enough.

Of the World's Mature Economies, The US is Still the Leper with the Most Fingers

José Manuel Barroso, the head of the European Commission, underlined the anxiety gripping the continent when he acknowleged: "The tensions in bond markets reflect a growing concern among investors about the systemic capacity of the euro area to respond to the evolving crisis."

Europe's economic minor league, the marginal fringe economies, having spent the past two years threatening civilization with cascading defaults, are exhibiting more weakness than ever. The press tries to cast this gross failure in terms of a "strain on leadership".

I suppose that's true, but it isn't the cause. It's just a sign that everything they do is seen solely through the prism of the political power of its' leaders. Frankly, they look like a bunch of bulldogs fighting in a gunny sack. Typical of that tone:

In a parliamentary speech delayed until after the market close, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, blamed the recent spike in its borrowing costs on factors beyond Rome's control.

Want to see how bubbles are made? When the financial world flocks to shelter in forex and singles out the Swiss Franc, one wonders how there could ever be enough volume there to support it. The notion of trading their goods and currency with other people's monopoly money has even lead those Knights Templar of finance to join everyone else in debasing their currency.

Switzerland's central bank made a surprise attempt to halt the rise in value of the franc on Wednesday, arguing the popular haven asset was "massively overvalued", but the initial impact of the move faded as the day wore on.
The Swiss National Bank cut target interest rates to "as close to zero as possible" and said it would inject SFr50bn in liquidity in coming days as it tried to halt the franc's relentless appreciation against both the dollar and euro.

Even the Swiss, the most notorious opportunists in the world of glow-ball finance are QEing, if you can believe it.

The Family Tree looks Like Kudzu, if you Ask me

But it's probably more like a wreath. From the WSJ:

There's no way to be certain, of course, but the speculation is the second woman from left in the group photo above, taken earlier this month at Pyongyang Department Store No. 1, is Mr. Kim's daughter Kim Sol Song. She is the third-eldest of Mr. Kim's seven children and the second-eldest daughter.

Like many a primitive tribal chief or ghetto thug:

(Mr. Kim had children with four different women.)

None of which seem terribly proud of the fact, so far as we can tell based on how they seem to dress the little guy.