Finding a Dead Rat in the Cobb Salad

To quote the old comic strip character Snuffy Smith, "Times shore doo change."

When you faithful correspondent was a laddie there were two radio stations that were not broadcast in the United States. One was Radio Free Europe. RFE was broadcast into Eastern Europe and the USSR as a voice of American freedom into European nations under Communist control. The other was the Voice of America. VOA was, to the best of yours' memory, broadcast world wide. It was, in a sense, the Yank version of the BBC without the posh accents and radio dramas.

Those days are long gone. Those were the days when the Republic had confidence in itself and it was assume that the American way of life was pretty darn good. Nowadays the elites of the nation have lost their confidence in the nation and claim that some Hottentot pounding on a hollow long with a stick is equal to a Samuel Barber piece and that female circumcision is not much more than an ear piercing. In other words, RFE and VOA were defunded and disestablished years ago and the world has to depend on reruns of Seinfeld and Gilligan's Island, and movie releases of The Short Bus and Magnolia to see what the good ol' USA is all about.

Meanwhile France, Germany, Great Britain, China, et al have shortwave radio broadcasts giving their particular nations' point of view on the news. They also have website. As does the Islamic Monster. And here's the point. The US has been doing a damn bad job of stating its position to our Islamic "brothers." -- U.S. seen balking at challenge by Islamist Web - Yahoo! News There are a jillion damn blogs in the US and the government can't even work up the energy to counter the propaganda from the Sons of Allah on the Internet. But we mustn't be judgmental, the guy said before his head was lopped off.

Once upon a time there was actually a mayor of Dublin, Ireland who was Jewish. The old joke was that during a Saint Patrick's Day Parade in New York in which the mayor was grand marshall a Jewish woman was told that the mayor of Dublin was a Jew. With tears in her eyes she answered, "Only in America." Well kids, those days are long gone -- Ireland: Pro-Palestinian protesters attack Israeli ambassador - News from Isra .

Our neighbor to the North -- Canada -- has done yeoman's work in Afghanistan. In fact, the longest recorded successful sniper shot was done by a Canadian sniper in Afghanistan. It was close to a mile shot. But Canada, as a society, seems to have, at least among the elites, seems to have taken the Chamberlain route regarding militant Mohammedans. There's a reason that militant Islamist move to Canada instead of, say, Mexico or Japan. But some Muslims just want the whole damn pie -- Al-Qaeda warns Canada. While reading the article note the complaint about Canada's "fanatic adherence to Christianity." Two points here. The first is that Canada is not a particularly Christian nation in its active faith. What Christianity that is there is from habit, not belief. Secondly, what does Al-Qaeda expect Canadians to be? Animists? Mohammedans? Sikhs? Do these idiots think that Canada is part of Andalusia?

This type of stuff is enough to make one want to drink gin straight from the bottle.