Also, here's Pyongyang on Google Maps. Compare it with Seoul, South Korea. There are no cars in the entire city.

That great rendition of Kim Jong Il is once again being used by protestors:



Of course, the original:


BTW stay tuned. I'm gonna blog about a political issue I'm indirectly involved in. Well, maybe that's stretching it, but trust me it will be good.

My friend Danielle posted on her MySpace blog what she calls "Hard Questions." Danielle's one of the coolest people you'll ever meet, and we both changed from liberal to conservative at about the same time.

In this blog I will pose a number of tough questions that go through my mind at times. Feel free to answer any of them.

1)If "racism" and "oppression" are the explanation for Black underachievement, explain to me why West Indian and African immigrants are outperforming we Black Americans in education and income?

2)From 1948 to 1967, the West Bank and Gaza Strip were under Jordanian and Egyptian control respectively. Why didn't Egypt and Jordan give the Palestinians a state during this period?

3)To the anti-Semitic nutcases of all stripes who say that today's Jews are not the "real Jews: Why, on God's green earth, would these people want to lie about being Jews?For two thousand plus years they have faced persecution and death at the hands of hateful people.. If they were impostors as you claim, wouldn't it have made sense for them to just stop lying and admit that they are not Jews? Why suffer through all that hatred for nothing?

4)Why is it overlooked that Great Britain worked the hardest to abolish slavery-not just in its empires but throughout the world?(See Thomas Sowell's book "Black Rednecks and White Liberals for more info)?

5)Why are the multiple benefits of Western civilization ignored and its faults amplified?

6)Why are the faults of non-Western societies glossed over?

7)Why was South Africa (justly I may add) boycotted so strenuously while Black African dictators and tyrants were generally ignored? I'm sure we can all remember the "Free South Africa" marches from that decade. But where were the "Free Uganda", "Free Liberia", "Free Zaire", "Free Ethiopia" marches and protests? Does the world only care about oppression and injustice if the perpetrators are White?

8)We have made many advances in treating AIDS and prolonging the lives of those infected with HIV. But this comes at a cost. The virus mutates and as it does more drugs must be developed to treat it. As the political, social and financial costs from this epidemic continue to mount, shouldn't we start giving more airtime to methods like abstinence and marital fidelity?

I answered her questions to the best of my abiity:

1) Because West Indians and Africans come from environments of real oppression and lack of freedom, and know freedom when they see it.

2) Because the Palestinian issue is not as simple as we've grown accustomed to hearing, or as I believed it to be for a long time.

3) I don't understand this question.

4) The myth of the "evil white man" has been created and people won't allow it to be destroyed by facts. The fact that Britain and later America were the first countries in the world to ban slavery is indeed significant.

5) Because the Left is still in love with socialism and by effect tin pot populist dictators like Hugo Chavez.

6) See above.

7) Shit, I haven't ever thought of it that way. I guess since Africa's injustices don't affect us directly, we prefer to ignore them. And I imagine South Africa's struggle was easy to hook along with that of the civil rights champions in America.

8) Yes, but that would make us prudes.

Why not say you have a Martian living in your bedroom, sir? Watch the video. It's great.

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Also, watch The Damned Spot, a little spot that Slate has where they take apart campaign ads. The Rhode Island is my favorite, it's hilarious.

Sigh.

Apparently there's another insider tell-all book about the Bush Administration, this one saying that Bush doesn't actually believe in the Rapture and the second coming and all that but is only using Christian voters to keep a Republican majority.

The office’s primary mission, providing financial support to charities that serve the poor, never got the presidential support it needed to succeed, according to the book.

This is the total opposite of the argument that I've heard for a long time: that the Administration hates science and believes in theocracy. We've been hearing that since Bush dared to suggest that teaching abstinence might help keep teens from having sex. What a radical idea...

You can hear the belief that Bush is a religious fanatic in Christopher Hitchens' appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, where Bill Maher said:


I guess this means that if Bush has been playing the conservative Christian voters for fools, he has also been playing leftists like Maher for fools. Quite a good performance for a President that's supposed to be an idiot.

I'm blogging about this a bit late, since the piece came out over the weekend. Christopher Hitchens, who wrote The Trial of Henry Kissinger, which I am yet to read, reacted pretty swiftly to Bob Woodward's revelation that Kissinger has played an advisory role in the strategy for the Iraq war. Hitchens has been a constant defender of the war, but didn't backtrack on his contempt for Kissinger.

Here's the portion of the piece I found most entertaining:

So, there you have it: Not only does a former secretary of state and national security adviser with a record of failure and betrayal in Iraq in the 1970s argue that the government of Iraq can be overthrown as long as none of its conservative neighbors really notice, but he also believes that the country has a Sunni majority. Even by Kissinger's usual standard of depraved politics and world-class disaster-mongering, this must rank pretty high.

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America: Superpower or Superpussy? Listen to this Mark Steyn interview.

Jacob Weisberg writes a piece arguing that Bush has f***ed everything up in the world over the last few years. Nothing new there, I guess. But you gotta admit, the above cartoon is fantastic.

The guys over at Slate should be rather proud that protestors are using their artwork:



The original:

Maybe we should set one up for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi too.

Sigh.

Hot Air has the video.

NoKo nuke device a dud:

“How can these guys possibly protect the United States of America from terrorists when they can’t even protect us from Congressman Mark Foley?” - John Kerry

Ann Coulter vs. John Kerry? Who is allowed to talk about killing world leaders? Pardon me, but I personally don't remember Coulter ever talking about killing presidents, though I admit I don't pay that much attention to her.

I do have to concede my appreciation for Real Time with Bill Maher. He's brings out the viciousness of his own on the Left, while bringing out the best in the Right. Anyone remember Christopher Hitchens' F-you moment from a few weeks back? If not, check it out.

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Right now I've been a bit annoyed by the Townhall.com blog service. The layout is great, the exposure is great and the connection to some of America's greatest political commentators is also great. It's also much less lonely and boring than ole Blogger.

The problem is that in order to leave a comment, you have to leave a good deal of information (like your phone number and address, for instance).

Now this is by no means a goodbye. I'll be running this blog for as long into the future as I know right now. I'm just letting you know that I'm a bit annoyed.

There's a short clip from Death of a President up on YouTube right now, followed up by a clip of an interview with the director. Towards the end, he denounces the critique that imaging the President being gunned down is offensive.

I know it parts ways with how many people who read this blog feel, but I do not have animosity with the making of this film. Maybe it's my love for alternate history. I think "what if" scenarios are great for political storytelling. What if Kennedy hadn't been assasinated? What if Reagan had died after the assasination attempt on his life? What if Clinton's fooling around had not come out during his Presidency?

The list goes on....

From the clip that I saw, it doesn't look much like the lefty porn of Fahrenheit 9/11 and the like.

UPDATE: Two US film distributors refuse to show the film:

WSJ has a pretty good article on the use of YouTube to embarrass (once) unexpecting politicians. You need a subscribtion to WSJ to read the article, but I'll post some of it:

In Clips on YouTube,
Politicians Reveal
Their Unscripted Side

HELENA, Mont. -- One after another, embarrassing videos of U.S. senator for Montana, Conrad Burns, have been posted in recent months on YouTube.com by somebody identified only as "Arrowhead77." There was the one of the 71-year-old Republican lawmaker nodding off at a farm hearing. Another where he warned constituents about people who "drive taxicabs in the daytime and kill at night." A third showing Mr. Burns joking about the immigration status of the "nice little Guatemalan man" who works at his Virginia house. (See videos posted by Arrowhead 77¹.)

The tapes are hampering Mr. Burns's bid to win a fourth term in November. They're getting widespread attention in the local press, feeding his reputation as gaffe-prone, and helping his opponent for the seat -- Democratic state senator Jon Tester -- run even, if not a bit ahead, in recent polls.

That's exactly the point. "Arrowhead77" is a 23-year-old staffer on Mr. Tester's campaign named Andy Tweeten, who posts the videos from his iBook notebook, having mixed them with music and added titles. Mr. Tweeten gets his raw footage from a fellow Tester aide, 24-year-old Kevin O'Brien. Since April, Mr. O'Brien has put 16,000 miles on his gold Nissan Sentra stalking Montana's folksy senior senator with a Sony camcorder in hopes of capturing embarrassing moments on tape.

It's an increasingly used tactic in the 2006 campaign, the first election in the age of easily accessible Internet video.

Campaigns have sent staffers to spy on each other for years. But in the YouTube era, young operatives like Mr. O'Brien are enjoying unprecedented importance and, in some cases, celebrity. They post their embarrassing snippets on the Web, where some of the clips can become instant sensations, spread by bloggers and political junkies.

As control of both houses of Congress hangs in the balance, any misstep by a candidate can mean more than just personal defeat. Democrats need to pick up 15 House seats and six Senate seats to take control of those bodies. Democrats believe they can take Montana this year.

So far, the most famous gotcha moment belongs to S.R. Sidarth, an Indian-American student, whose constant tailing of Virginia Republican George Allen on behalf of Democratic challenger Jim Webb infuriated the senator. That prompted Mr. Allen's now-infamous remarks to a crowd of supporters, about Mr. Sidarth: "Let's give a welcome to macaca here... Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia." "Macaca" is a racial slur in some countries, and the comment added fuel to critics' claims that Mr. Allen is racially insensitive, helping to erode his once-formidable lead.

In Pennsylvania, a cable-TV channel captured embattled Republican Sen. Rick Santorum on tape arguing with a woman during a parade after she berated him for allowing state taxpayers to fund home-schooling of his children in Virginia. The exchange ended up on YouTube. In Missouri, Republican Sen. Jim Talent complained he was taken out of context after the Missouri Democratic Party posted on YouTube a five-second video that appeared to show him contradicting his own opposition to amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Conrad Burns seemed a particularly inviting target for a YouTube-driven campaign tactic. "Sen. Burns has hurt himself by a series of goofs or poor choice of words and a lack of discretion over the years," says James Lopach, chairman of the University of Montana's political science department. Jason Klindt, a Burns spokesman, says: "I don't think Montanans are voting based on a YouTube ad. I don't think it has a big impact."

The Tester camp's media team first started taking the videos so they could release them to the local media in hopes of generating stories about Mr. Burns. The idea of jazzing them up with music and posting them on YouTube came from "someone born in the 1980s," says Tester spokesman Matt McKenna, although he can't remember which staffer thought of it first.

Their most famous piece -- "Conrad Burns's Naptime," a one-minute video of Mr. Burns nodding off during a farm hearing in Montana this summer -- has been seen more than 75,000 times on YouTube, five times as often as any official campaign commercial posted by either Burns or Tester on the site. (See the Naptime video².) The Tester campaign considers a posting successful if it is mentioned in Montana newspapers, on radio or on television.

The nap video was picked up by newspapers in Great Falls and Missoula and also was seen on CNBC's "Hardball" and on CNN. The video of Mr. Burns's joking comments about Hugo, the "nice little Guatemalan man," was picked up by several national media outlets, including the Associated Press in Washington. That story was carried in several Montana papers, including the Great Falls Tribune.

Not all of the videos attract attention. On Wednesday, Mr. O'Brien taped the Senator telling a group in Havre, Mont., that more funding for body armor for troops in Iraq would "just bust the budget." The campaign quickly put out a press release accusing Mr. Burns of risking the troops' lives, but it wasn't picked up by the local media.

The Burns campaign has been slower to embrace the technology, although it has now posted a dozen of its own campaign ads on YouTube. The Burns campaign hasn't posted any of the video it has shot of Mr. Tester, other than a brief clip used in a TV commercial, but it's not ruling it out.

The hub of the Tester camp's multimedia operations is the basement of an office building in downtown Helena. There, a Dell PC is hooked up to a high-speed Internet connection, a videocassette recorder and a TV set. A tidy pile of videotapes sits in a dented gray bookcase. With a lot of territory to cover, the Tester campaign leaves three cameras with supporters across the state, in places including Missoula and Billings, in case Mr. O'Brien can't catch up easily with Mr. Burns. But the centerpiece of their YouTube strategy is Mr. O'Brien.

He joined the Tester campaign in April for a salary of $2,750 per month, knowing he was essentially signing up for an extended road trip. A Chicago native, Mr. O'Brien went to work for the Democratic Party in 2004 after graduating from Illinois State University with a degree in political science. From there, he went to work at Wal-Mart Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit opposed to the retail giant's business and labor practices.

"You never know where the stump speech is going to go," Mr. O'Brien says. He operates under a strict set of campaign guidelines. He never records the Senator's private conversations. He considers fund-raisers off-limits and he generally tries to stick with any remarks Mr. Burns makes to crowds.

"It's great when voters have more access to their public officials," says Mr. Tester, 50, an organic farmer whose family has taken over managing the farm while he campaigns.

The senator's staffers have made his job harder recently, as they've stopped posting announcements of coming events on their campaign Web site. But the Burns campaign has never actively tried to keep Mr. O'Brien out of an event or hinder his ability to shoot. And unlike his colleague from Virginia, Mr. Burns not only tolerates his young shadow's presence at most public events, they've developed a cordial relationship.

Riding on horseback at a recent rainy homecoming parade Saturday in Bozeman, Mr. Burns spotted the familiar Mr. O'Brien, sporting jeans and a sweatshirt, protecting a palm-size Sony camcorder under a wide black umbrella. "How ya doin', Kevin?" he hollered out genially.

"Fine, Senator, how are you? It's a little wet," yelled Mr. O'Brien, his video camera clutched in one hand. Mr. Burns smiled. "Good... good," he responded, before turning away.

"He's a nice kid. He's just doing his job," says Mr. Burns after the parade, as he dried out in the back seat of an extended-cab pickup truck on the way to a tailgate party. Such continuous scrutiny comes with the territory he says, before joking that his campaign has been supporting its young foe all summer.

"We have to feed him, 'cause the Democrats ain't paying him nothing," Mr. Burns says with a chuckle.

CNN: Always asking their viewers how they feel about the most important issues of our times.

Do you consider yourself a Star Trek fan?
Yes		49%	12331 votes
No		51%	13024 votes
Total: 25355 votes

You know, those results are very close to the 2004 presidential election. It looks as if the country is continuing to be polarized!

And speaking of polarized elections, be sure to listen to the Glenn and Helen Show on voter fraud.