Yaacov Ben Moshe is brilliant again.

Almost everything you need to know about life you can learn from Marty Feldman.

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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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The old Britain still exists, it’s just well-hidden.

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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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What truce? When operations continue, there is no truce.

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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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Brought to you by Joss Whedon, so you know it’s good.

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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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Just another garden-variety honor killing, nothing to get excited about.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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Needs a machine gun.

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This is getting pretty silly. Although I suppose it would come in handy if you were stranded on a desert island that just happened to be covered in roses that badly needed pruning.

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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.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

Network effects are inevitable. It’s not a conspiracy, although, as always, there are paid promoters involved (for example, John McCain’s top foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann was a lobbyist for the country of Georgia).

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With good reason.

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I’ll believe it when I can buy it.

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If you have the less common rs16969968 form of the CHRNA5 gene and you smoke a cigarette you are more likely to get hooked.

Well, then, don’t smoke a cigarette. Problem solved.

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Ever wonder how trees grow as tall as they do?

No, neither did I. But it’s an interesting read.

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Doin’ his best to stimulate the economy.

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Yeah, but can he run down a fox?

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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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It was the Soviet Union’s desire to crow over depression-stricken America that encouraged it to let hundreds of workers, desperate for jobs and a new start in life, immigrate there in the early 1930s. Exactly how many nobody knows; almost all ended up in mass graves.

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

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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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He actually ought to be in a beach chair with a smoothie, but one cannot expect the Fashionable to be up on all the cultural nuances embraced by us proles.

In order to be realistic, of course, there ought to be seal guts all over the place.

I wonder whether the ice floe gets smaller over time? That would seem appropriate.

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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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It’s funny watching reporters for the New York Time try to cope with black people who don’t buy their SWPL culture.

Later, when I mentioned that it could be hard for a white journalist to understand all of the nuances of race, he looked over at his press secretary, who is black, and interrupted me. “He’s not black?” Nutter deadpanned, motioning back at me. “You guys told me it was a skin condition. I thought I was talking to a brother.” Nutter is known to have a dry sense of humor, but I also had the sense that he was tweaking me in these moments, watching with some amusement as I tried to navigate subjects that white and black Americans rarely discuss together. He seemed to think I was oddly preoccupied with race.

Oh, ya think?

I asked Nutter if he found it insulting to have me come barging into his office, demanding to know why he didn’t pick the black guy.

“It’s not insulting,” he answered. “It’s presumptuous. It demonstrates a continuation of this notion that the African-American community, unlike any other, is completely monolithic, that everyone in the African-American community does the same thing in lockstep, in contrast to any other group. I mean, I don’t remember seeing John Kerry on TV and anybody saying to him, ‘I can’t believe you’re not for Hillary Clinton.’ Why?”

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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.

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Nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina devastated their city, New Orleanians are deeply dissatisfied with the rebuilding and feel overlooked by the federal government, the national media and the American public.

In other words, they aren’t getting enough handouts and unconditional love.

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For Nikki Tinker, Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District hung as sweetly as a plum in the state’s Democratic primary. It has a black majority, is full of churchgoing African American women like herself, and includes the hallowed ground where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white man.

But in an election season in which racial appeals may be losing their power, Tinker discovered that looks can be deceiving. On Election Day, she was crushed by her white opponent, Rep. Stephen I. Cohen, whom Tinker labeled as anti-prayer in one campaign ad and tried to link to the Ku Klux Klan in another.

“It was the first time in a state election where race could have been a factor and wasn’t,” said Larry Moore, an associate professor at the University of Memphis. “She fit the demographic perfectly. She was active in the churches. The majority of voters are female. And she got blown out.”

To James Lileks.

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At length, I went to the middle-aged shop owner and asked where she’d hidden my favorite treats — this gift from the gods to those of us who want to pretend our cookies are merely crackers.

“We used to stock those,” she said, sweetly, “but we kept running out, so we’ve stopped.”

To the extent that the French enjoy a natural advantage, it is in their inefficiency: They are the world’s most efficient producers of structured indolence. They are the kept women of the global economy; their status depends, in part, on their practical uselessness.

Reinvent the British and you get a global finance center, edible food and better service. Reinvent the French and you may just get more Germans.