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Swaziland is Africa’s last remaining absolute monarchy and has been under a state of emergency since 1973. Public criticism of the monarchy is extremely rare, but a journey to Europe and the Middle East by eight of King Mswati III’s 13 wives, their children, maids and bodyguards, in a specially chartered aeroplane, has provoked outrage.

And yet if he were Muslim nobody would blink an eye.

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Well, that’s one way to solve the problem of too many old people.

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Let that be a lesson to us all. Animals are not your friends.

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Of course, a government-run health care system is a fine thing. Just ask dental patients in Britain.

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Aw, mom…..

Steve Sailer takes on modern sports.

One contributor to the unwieldy giganticism of the Olympics is the perceived need to hold a women’s event for every men’s event, no matter how unpopular the sport is with women, or, in many cases, with both sexes. For example, modern pentathalon (in which you pretend to be a courier during the Napoleonic Wars and swim, horseback ride, run, shoot, and fence your way to delivering your secret message — okay, in theory, it sounds pretty cool, but in practice, nobody cares) hasn’t been all that big since George S. Patton finished fifth in it back in 1912, but, nonetheless, the Olympics added women’s modern pentathalon in 2000.

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Harold Ickes is the prototypical insider, a career political operative who knows as much about how Washington works as anyone.

Just don’t ask the former Clinton White House official and Democratic superdelegate what ward he lives in.

The presence of these high-profile figures simultaneously excites and frustrates the local delegation, made up of city officials and activists, including Evans, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and D.C. Democratic Party Chairman Anita Bonds. As it does every four years, the D.C. delegation will use the convention to renew a public push for congressional voting rights. But even though the big shots command media attention and enjoy outsize influence that could help the District’s cause, most aren’t planning to spend much time with the locals or join them at a voting rights rally at Denver’s U.S. Mint.

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There you go — everything good is bad for you.

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Apparently not. Think you’ve had a bad tech support experience? Hah. Read this, and weep.

My wife and I had Cingular mobile phone service — the service was fine, but God help you if you had to have a change or make a correction to a bill. We eventually gave up and switched to AT&T (old style), and were happy as clams — until Cingular bought AT&T, whereupon all of the old problems re-arose.

Don’t be fooled by the name — I say it’s Cingular, and I say to hell with it. (And, ironically enough, that’s where you’ll be if you call their tech support. See, it’s all this big circle….)

A useful map.

Turns out the regions Georgia is so keep to keep aren’t even inhabited by Georgians.

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The biter bit.

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And the glass ceiling just dropped another ten meters.

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Yeah, that’s the ticket.

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Possibly the dorkiest tie in existence.

Of course, it would only be worn by people whom you would expect to be wearing the dorkiest ties in existence, so the confluence is almost poetic in its elegance.

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Boy, those South Africans are sure lucky they’re no longer under the boot of that oppressive white regime.

Thank God for the U.N. and the international community, or who knows what sort of hell they’d be living in now.

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So far, reaction in the US to Russia’s invasion of Georgia has been all Vladimir Putin could have wished. Exhausted in every way by its experience in Iraq (a failure not much mitigated by recent progress there), its authority and sense of purpose quite depleted, the US looked slower and less decisive than Europe in its initial response, and that is saying something.

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Gee, I wonder why?

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Although why anyone ought to give a shit what “animal rights campaigners” think is not explained.

Miss Paltrow, 35, who is married to the Coldplay singer and vegetarian Chris Martin has won praise for her impeccable green credentials and is a fan of holistic practices and yoga.

Oh, I see; it’s treason they’re bitching about. Sorry, guys; money talks.

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Let’s see — which drugs are politicians more likely to need?

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The United States government has poured large quantities of money into higher education. As a result prices have risen. Increases in demand often cause prices to rise. Now the morons in the US Congress are going to try to pressure colleges to ignore the extra market demand created by the government.

What follows? Why, rationing, of course. There will be more people wanting places than places wanting people. Which means that somebody, somebody, is going to be choosing who goes to college (and qualifies to join the ruling class) and who doesn’t. And on what basis will that choice be made? Well, perhaps you can find a clue in looking over the Harvard or Yale or Princeton application materials concerning what sort of students they like to see.

Can you say “politically correct”? Can you say “fashionable minority”? Can you say “art history major rather than engineer”? I’m sure you can.

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Donald Duck in a toga? Say it ain’t so.

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Government doesn’t solve problems; government creates problems, and then takes your money to “solve” them.

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These self appointed intellectuals, whom Ayn Rand had labeled as Witch Doctors, claim the position of authority in a division of labor economy through the claim of being in possession of superior knowledge. Such so called superior knowledge must by necessity contradict the knowledge gained by direct perception of objective (commonly perceived) reality.

And if this wasn’t bad enough there are now false authorities who claim to represent something other than a human population, such as the Gaianist witch doctor Al Gore.

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Apparently, when Google says “Don’t be evil” they actually mean “Don’t be Republican.”

Not news, really, but a useful reminder.

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And rightly so.

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Actually, it’s their wallets that need protection.

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They were dressed in costumes associated with the country’s ethnic minorities, including those from troubled areas such as Tibet and the muslim province of Xinjiang. Such displays of “national unity” are a compulsory part of any major state occasion.

But the children were all from the Han Chinese majority, which makes up more than 90 per cent of the population and is culturally and politically dominant, according to an official with the cultural troupe from which they were selected.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Why does it always astound people when a Communist dictatorship acts like a Communist dictatorship? You’d think that Tienamen Square never happened.

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The agreement highlights how Russia’s invasion of Georgia has prompted a swift reappraisal of the region’s security and alliances.

No shit. I imagine the Poles are getting pretty nervous right about now. They remember that they had the Russian boot on their necks for a couple of centuries — and 1989 wasn’t all that long ago.

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Will Hitler be next?

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Mr Moore was reported missing on Friday after failing to return from a solo day’s hike up the Mittagsspitz mountain.

Darwin Award nominee.

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Don’t suppose they could just fix the tower.

Council officials in Llandovery, Carmarthenshire, have told David Rees, the fifth generation of his family to wind the clock, that he can no longer perform his duty because it is a health and safety risk. Instead they want the clock replaced with an electric one.

Mr Rees, 68, attacked the decision, pointing out that there has not been a single recorded accident in the century and a half since the clock was erected.

Yeah, well, that doesn’t matter so much any more.

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It’s hard to compete with free, even when free sucks.

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When Palestinians turn out to lay a beloved entrepreneur to rest — i.e. somebody who actually improved people’s lives, rather than just talked a good game —  then we’ll see some progress in the Middle East.

And when the Wastington Post reports it in the same breathless tone as this article, then we’ll see some progress in D.C.

Until then, nothing.

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No good deed goes unpunished.

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When the majority becomes a minority, will it qualify for minority set-asides and affirmative action programs?

When the majority becomes a minority, will people whose lives depend on daily criticism of the majority refocus their angst, or just keep on whining?

Those will be interesting times. Fortunately, I’ll probably be dead by then. Unfortunately, you probably won’t. Good luck.

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Sing the chorus: “Do it ouuuur way! Do it our way! Do it ouuuur way, or you’ll be wrong!”

As an Egyptian, Muslim woman, I was proud last week to see 26 women on my country’s Olympic team. I was delighted to see a woman carrying the flag for Bahrain’s team and another doing so for the team from the United Arab Emirates — the first woman to represent her country at the Olympics.

I have a question: does this person have any identity other than her status as an Egyptian, Muslim woman?

Far be it from me to say anything positive about a Muslim country — and I’m not; I think Egypt (and most Egyptians) suck, and have for the last, oh, 1400 years. I just wish the Overclass would keep their noses out of other people’s business.

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The party of slavery has a convenient case of Alzheimer’s.

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Really, you’re breakin’ my heart here….

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1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in D.C.

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Can government mandates be far behind?

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilace, it could happen here. Probably in California. Imagine getting a ticket for not having had enough servings of fruits and vegetables today.

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With good reason.

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1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in California.

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Politicians in Annapolis are scratching their heads wondering what happened to all those chain smokers who were supposed to help balance Maryland’s budget. Last year the legislature doubled the cigarette tax to $2 a pack to pay for expanded health-care coverage. Eight months later, cigarette sales have plunged 25% and the state is in fiscal distress again.

It’s always amusing when politicians base policy on their fantasies of how people will behave rather than on how people actually do behave. One would have thought that Prohibition would have settled that.

Residents of Maryland’s Washington suburbs can shop in nearby Virginia, where the tax is only 30 cents a pack, and save at least $15 per carton.

The Maryland pols are so afraid this is true that they’ve made it a crime for residents to carry two packs of cigarettes that weren’t purchased in the state. In other words, the state says it’s legal to smoke, so long as you use cigarettes that the government can tax and thus become a financial partner in your bad habit. But if you dare to buy smokes across state lines, you can be fined.

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One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

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Hm — what if this technology were to fall into the wrong hands?

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Boy, wait till the other Muslims find out….

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Something I’ve long thought intriguing about Leftists is that the more well-read ones tend to talk a great deal about alienation, lifting it straight out of Marx, and how evil capitalism is the source of all of our alienation.

What I find intriguing about this is it seems that the Leftists eagerly push for things that are bound to produce alienation. In the US, they really like to push a loathing of our history and in particular a loathing of the concept of patriotism. They talk endlessly about the values of “diversity”, want as many immigrants as possible, and recoil violently against notions such as a national language. They despise churches. They despise large sporting events. They despise ideas about “core knowledge” as espoused by E.D. Hirsch.