AS LETTERMAN WOULD SAY: WILL IT FLOAT?

The Toronto Sun headline for the hottest newsmurmur going:

Perhaps we can also anticipate the follow-up article to Mark Steyn's October 2004 speculation that "He's Bin Laden to rest":

As for this Bush-failed-to-get-bin-Laden business, 2-1/2 years ago I declared that Osama was dead and he's never written to complain. There's no more evidence for his present existence than there is for the Loch Ness monster, which at least does us the courtesy of showing up as a indistinct gray blur on a photograph every now and again. Osama is lying low because he's in no condition to get up.

This most recent Frenchly-rumored scenario-- that OBL succumbed to typhoid in remotest AghanoPakistan-- would go a long way to explain why his #2, Ayman "Big Al" Zawahiri, and not OBL himself, turned up in the "Favourite Fatwas: Bridges to Babylon Fifth Anniversary Tour" video released to Big Al Jazeera this past 9/11.

OBL-ah-dee, OBL-ah-dah, OBL-ah-dead?

It works for me. And, oddly, for President Dubya too, since it takes OBL off the table (as it were) as an election issue, without anyone being able to accuse the Republicans of having busted, bombed, or buried him and then held back the news until it fit the "October Surprise" model.

The truth is OBL is more or less a dead issue anyway in the grand scheme of thwarting Big Al Qaeda-- despite the Democrats' best effort to periodically dredge him up into an anti-Bush bat-- since (to quote another British invasion limey bastard, Donovan) "the organization ain't really organized", and has pretty much outgrown his control. His money was probably not getting out as freely as it once did either, major funding having been taken over by their good friends in Iran, and perhaps some quarters of Saudi Arabia.

So we'll wait with less than baited breath to see if, like Twain (in this and no other way), "Rumors of his death will prove to have been greatly exaggerated."
May he rest in pieces.

OMIGOD! OMIGOD! OMIGOD--
it's H-i-i-i-i-m !!!!
(leftover stray enthusiasms from attending Toronto Film Fest premiere of "Alatriste" with Lord Aragorn, or as they say in Elvish, "King Ethelstud the Uncoiffed", traipsing the carpet. He had the jacket, but didn't seem to own a tie.)

OH MY BLOG! OH MY BLOG! OH MY BLOG!
It's......
Yes, it has fallen silent this past week, and will be so again for the next ten days. Trips to Texas, Quebec, and Newfoundland in the offing.
And this at a time when there is so much happening it’s hard to know where to begin.

NEWSFLASH—House minority leader NANCY PELOSI seen WEARING WHITE AFTER LABOR DAY.
Northeastern establishment aghast—would this have happened in a Kerry administration? Mrs. Heinz could not be reached for comment.
Neither could Mary Jo Kopechne.

DEPARTMENT OF ORWELL STUDIES:
THAT’S THE TIN-POT DICTATOR CALLING THE BARBEQUE BLACK—

Venezuelan kleptocrat HUGO CHAVEZ did his well-prepared stand-up routine against the golden backdrop of the United Nations Chamber, and had ‘em rolling in the aisles with the old “What is that smell?” schtick

"The devil himself is right in the house. And the devil came here yesterday. Right here. It smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.”

And then he made a dandy sign of the cross that would have put Madonna to shame, folded his hands, and cast his eyes heavenward. [By “devil,” of course, he meant President George W. Bush, who had addressed the august body the day before, with a veritable slurpy of conciliatory words about the world’s reasonable expectations of the nasty nations. Chavez also called him a liar and tyrant, and has since announced that Bush plans to have him assassinated.]

Chavez had prefaced these diplomatic overtures with a brief commercial message peddling Noam Chomsky’s latest pastiche of re-cycled columns in book form, called "Hegemony or Survival" . This show of America-hating unity, this delicious juxtaposition of venomous madmen cuddled together on their surrealistic pillow was an inspiration to see.

CHAVEZ’s clown act was such a hit he took the show on the road to a Harlem church (where he was joined by patriots Danny Glover and Cornell West, representing Hollywood and academentia, respectively) and re-played the devil routine, supplemented by an equally hilarious bit about George Bush’s battle with alcohol—what a hoot!

But of course, Chavez was only the opener for the nutty Iranian comedy stylings of:

MAHMOUD AHMADINNERJACKET
(He’s got the dinner-jacket—but he doesn’t seem to own a tie.)

Later that same day, Iran’s spunky little president mounted the podium (and probably an orange crate) to address the august body (or was that the September corpse?) of the United Nations General Assembly with several pages of the kind of Zionist-butt-kicking banter that always kills ‘em (literally) in the Catskills.

He closed his remarks by addressing someone else who, as far as we know, has not been formally admitted to the august body, that is, our buddy Allah (no relation to Kevin Smith’s “Buddy Christ”? But I digress).

That’s right—Mahmoud took it upon himself to make a public prayer.

Whether we like it or not, justice, peace and virtue will sooner or later prevail in the world with the will of the Almighty God…All divine prophets… have all called humanity to monotheism [Hindus take note—emphasis added—ed.], justice, brotherhood, love and compassion. [Zionists take note—this does NOT mean you—ed.]…
Oh Almighty God, all men and women are your creatures and you have ordained their guidance and salvation. Bestow upon humanity that thirsts for justice, the perfect human being promised to all by you, and make us among his followers and among those who strive for his return and his cause.

AMEN, MahDUDE.

He refers, of course, to the coming of the 12th imam, Muhammad al Mahdi, whose reappearance has been awaited lo these thousand years. And when it happens, well, Kaboom. Or something like that.

What do I like best about this Cirque de Psychosis? That the tent, the bleachers, the clowns, and the verbal candy-floss were all on the generous tab of the United States of America, THAT BASTION OF THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.

Where were the voices of the left complaining about this egregious highjacking of the mechanisms of government in the name of private superstitions? (Probably the same place they hide every time the Dalai Lama comes to town, who once famously condemned homosexuality as "astonishing" and "wrong, full stop," and condemned all sexual acts carried out in, ahem, alternative orifices. But this doesn't keep him off the cocktail circuit. But I digress.)

Can any of us imagine the baying at the moon if President Bush had stood at the UN podium and folded his hands in prayer? If he had prayed to Jesus Christ to bless this world and all its people until He comes again in glory? If he had referred to any of the declared enemies of the nation that he governs (or, Allah forbid, his nation’s best customer for its principal export) as a malodorous Satan?

Imagine.

Imagine there’s no Heaven—it’s easy if you try.
No hell below us—just the devil in a dark suit and tie.

From the preamble of the United Nations Charter—1945:

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED…to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours...

As "speech codes" go, this is it. It’s sad to discover that the UN Charter does not appear to contain another single word that might be construed as a standard of conduct of the representatives of member states assembled.

I suppose if it did, we might have seen some penalty imposed Krushchev for his shoe incident, which seems to have been, up until the Chavez speech, the only overtly boorish act to ever disturb the playing out of the raving farce which is the daily business of the General Assembly. Maybe it’s time to enact some regulations about ad hominem attacks and name-calling—perhaps that such acts would incur a six-month suspension of participation.

After all, ideally shouldn't one be unfailingly courteous when presenting resolutions to blame Israel and the Jews for everything wrong everywhere (also the daily business of the General Assembly). We could call it Gibson's Law.

BURR LODGED UP EX-PRESIDENTIAL BUTT

The second-worst ex-president, WILLIAM JEFFERSON BUBBA CLINTON, lost his composure while taping an interview with FOXNewsDude Chris Wallace—one in which the ex-prez's own ground-rules were that half of the 15-minute session must be devoted to Clinton’s Global Initiative project, and half to topics of Wallace’s choosing.

Clinton’s explosive response to Wallace’s question about whether he might have done more in eight years to stop Osama Bin Laden says a lot about the ex-president’s monumental hubris— in view of the recent docudrama Path to 9/11, this is a timely and obvious question, one that would have guided a man of lesser ego to prepare an answer, so as to parry with his customary deftness any accusation of negligence under his administration.

But Clinton appears to have been blind-sided—as if he could not have conceived that anyone to whom he had granted audience would dare to be so unpleasant. And, to his (I expect) regret, his ire manifested itself in precisely the same red-faced, squint-eyed, scolding, finger-wagging, steam-shooting-from-the-ears posture that most Americans recall from his bald-faced lie about what he did or didn’t do with “that woman—Miss Lewinsky.”

BOTTOM LINE ON THE PATH TO 9/11:
Mr. Clinton and his hench-persons railed like Cassandra against scenes of his cabinet's bumbling or even deliberate dropping of the Osama ball, scenes said to be more drama than docu. But from what some insiders have reported, Bill should consider himself LUCKY that the scenes did not reproduce, verbatim, what was actually said-- by many accounts, the TV show only scratched the surface of the Clinton administration’s “own goal” on the matter—and the less of it recounted factually, the better for the Clinton legacy.

Which insiders? Well—take them with a grain of salt, to be sure—Michael Scheuer and Louis Freeh, for instance. Each has axes to grind and his own nest to feather (not unlike Richard Clarke, whose self-serving book provides much of the basis for the TV drama, and makes of him the towering hero.) But they are not alone, and should not be ignored.

Captain Ed looks at the Clinton fault-line: You say Al Kayda, and I say Al Kyda-- "Let's call the whole thing off" -- and move on to figuring out what we do now. He's got a point.

Anyway, when it comes to rotten representations, it's basically a cat-fight: hard to say whether Condi Rice or Madeleine Halfbright comes off as more of a bitch. Clinton and Bush do not appear as characters, and both should be grateful.


Want to know what Pope Benedict actually said about Islam (or rather, about Socrates)? Look here.

Want to know what he meant? Start here.
Nice capsule comment here.

Au revoir, y’all.