Zoo News Review

Apt title for a review of current events. Remember the New Zoo Review? It was a few decade before Barney but just as mindless. Onward.

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a fierce critic of the Bush administration, said Saturday that he's pulling for U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to win the White House. "I'd be very pleased if Hillary Clinton would become the next American president," Schroeder said to applause from a largely Saudi audience. (Article)

What I find interesting about this quote is not the profound stupidity and lack of grace of a former head of state commenting on the internal politics of another country, but the forum he chose. First, it was Saudi Arabia. A country important to the US. So numb-nuts takes a backdoor swipe at the current American administration. As I said, no grace, even less class. But then – get this – he is suggesting that a woman run the US. Here is what he was seeing in the audience: Schroeder made the statement during a discussion of global women leaders at a gender-segregated theater where a plastic barrier separated women from men. Wow. I wonder if it would enhance or diminish the audience reaction if they knew Hillary was lesbian. If she is elected, she’ll have a much more difficult time sneaking away for weekend to NYC as she did when Bubba was in office.

Illinois would become the first state to offer universal pre-kindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-old children, under an election year proposal Gov. Blagojevich will announce today, officials said Saturday. Under the five-year "Preschool For All" initiative, all Illinois families would have the option of sending their children to state-funded preschool, an opportunity long pushed by education researchers and advocates as critical for children. (Article)

An election-year proposal. An election-year proposal. An election-year proposal. Let’s see. Illinois has 12.7 million people, of which 7.1% is under five years of age. Assume that half are age 3 or 4. That is 450,000 children eligible under this election-year proposed program.

The American Federation of Teachers says it costs $7,300 per kid to provide high quality pre-Kindergarten to. For 450K kids, that is $3.3 billion.

For FY2006, Illinois spent $6.1 billion on education. They got an additional $2.1 billion from the feds. Add over three billion dollars? Election-year proposal. What a joke. Why do these people promise things they can never deliver?

It also ignores the entire industry of day-care and private pre-school. A lot of those folks will be driven out of business so that big daddy government can do it better. Pathetic. Spend your money on vouchers for parents to select the place to send their kids. Don’t create a new bureaucracy that grows the department of education by 50%.

From Europe's biggest-selling newspaper, the Sun: ''Furious Muslims have blasted adult shop [i.e., sex shop] Ann Summers for selling a blowup male doll called Mustafa Shag." Not literally "blasted" in the Danish Embassy sense, or at least not yet. Quite how Britain's Muslim Association found out about Mustafa Shag in order to be offended by him is not clear. It may be that there was some confusion: given that "blowup males" are one of Islam's leading exports, perhaps some believers went along expecting to find Ahmed and Walid modeling the new line of Semtex belts. Instead, they were confronted by just another filthy infidel sex gag. The Muslim Association's complaint, needless to say, is that the sex toy "insults the Prophet Muhammad -- who also has the title al-Mustapha.'' (Article)

The article calls Muslims, “Toon Deaf.” Spot on. Muslims are blowing it big time. They should suck it up and move on. Their need to orally vent their enlarged frustration is embarrassing. The problem is hardened, ironically, by the flaccid European response. If Europe had a set of cahones maybe the Muslims would refrain from this throbbing orgasm of emotion spreading through the world like syphilis in Paris before penicillin. There are places they can put their members and allow a daisy chain of expression without forcing the rest of us to grab our chastity belts: I see a place where the beach front goes miles inland and the camels are willing partners.

Saddam Hussein and the seven co-defendants in his trial are to start a hunger strike on Monday, the former Iraqi president's defense team said on Sunday, citing sources inside the detention center where they are being held. (Article)

And this is news because … ? Let’s see, we save on food. Check. We save on rope otherwise needed to hand them. Check. We save on toiletry supplies. Check. We save on housing because they’ll be dead rather than appealing. Check. We save on casket size. Check. We save on labor to dig a smaller hole. Check. Go Saddam! You’re the man! But you can’t start now, can you? You want to eat one more day, eh? Your actions reveal your agenda, buddy. Too bad the press will be mindless accomplices by giving us daily updates. It would serve everyone better if the next piece of news was a short blurb in the Obits – Hussein, Saddam. Passed last evening from starvation. His lips were cracked and bleeding, his stomach distended. His eyes were milky white and his hair was long since fallen out. His last words came three days ago. He stated simply, “Look, Mom, no hands.” He died with his favorite music playing, Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” over and over again on a continuous loop. Donations in lieu of flowers can be sent to your local fire company. Saddam often said how he missed riding around Baghdad in is fire truck.

What a loser. A hunger strike as a protest. Don’t waste my time.

Iran is prepared to launch attacks using long-range missiles, secret commando units, and terrorist allies planted around the globe in retaliation for any strike on the country's nuclear facilities, according to new US intelligence assessments and military specialists. (Article)

Yeah. OK. And Saddam was going to fight the “mother of all battles.” The only reason it took two days to take Baghdad is because the Chinese take-out order for the US Army 1st Calvary Division was so large it was delayed several hours.

And Ghaddafi (how ever he spells these does) drew a line in the waters and told Reagan not to cross it. “You crossed my line! OK. New line. Don’t cross THIS one! OOHHH YYOOUU! OK, last line.”

Israel slaps them back in seven days.

I’m struggling here – have they ever won a war? Even when they fight themselves, like the Iraq-Iran War, they just stop after several years. They had a war and no one won. Amazing.