“On an issue that relates to war and the conduct of war, we have always said from the start this is completely an individual decision. There is no leadership conversation about this in terms of encouraging members to go one place or another, not like an issue like prescription drugs or Social Security, which are core issues to the Democratic Party. People have their own views on it, and we all respect them.”  --- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, quoted By Dan Balz Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, December 16, 2005; Page A23
Pelosi hails Democrats’ diverse war stances

Months ago, all sorts of people gave Pelosi the benefit of the doubt when she said things like that. For example, when she told the Post that there would be no party position on Iraq, the Post headlined the story, “Pelosi hails Democrats’ diverse war stances.” That was a very nice way to put it. But with all due respect to the next Speaker, what the hell kind of policy is that? The our-policy-is-to-have-no-policy position might have been good enough to get Democrats through the election, but now it’s looking worse and worse each day....Still, what would you expect from a party leader who not only doesn’t know what to do about the war — she doesn’t even know what to call it?  “This isn’t a war to win,” Pelosi told Fox News’s Brit Hume last week. “It’s a situation to be solved.”  Put that statement together with her comments during the Murtha controversy, and it’s fair to conclude that Pelosi believes the way to solve the situation is to redeploy from the situation.  Pelosi to redeploy from ‘situation’ by Byron York, November 16th 2006 The Hill Newspaper

"Diversity" is a code word for Corporate Greed and San Francisco-type Liberal arrogance. Corporate types say they are "celebrating diversity" when they hire H1B Visa workers at half the going rate of American citizens. On the other hand, liberals like say things like "celebrating diversity" to prove they are morally superior to other white people, almost always folks a lot lower on the economic ladder who suffer the most from the competition from immigrant labor.

But it has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard when I Nancy Pelosi used the word "diversity" to describe the sad fact that the Democrat Party hasn't got a clue on what to do about Iraq!

Residents of a remote Romanian village filed a $30 million lawsuit Monday over their depiction in the hit movie "Borat," accusing the filmmakers of misleading them into thinking the project was a documentary about poverty....The plaintiffs alleged that 20th Century Fox Film Corp. and others involved in the comedy exploited them, telling them the movie was a documentary about extreme poverty in Romania that would fairly depict their lives, occupations, heritage and beliefs......"Nothing could have been further from the truth," the lawsuit said. "The project was intended to portray the plaintiffs ... and other villagers as rapists, abortionists, prostitutes, thieves, racists, bigots, simpletons and/or boors."

'Borat' Suit Says Villagers Were Misled By LARRY NEUMEISTER
Associated Press Writer November 20 2006

The young men "engaged in behavior that they otherwise would not have engaged in," the lawsuit said...."They were induced to agree to participate and were told the name of the fraternity and the name of their school wouldn't be used," said the plaintiffs' attorney, Olivier Taillieu. "They were put into an RV and were made to believe they were picking up Borat the hitchhiker." After a bout of heavy drinking, the plaintiffs signed a release form they were told "had something to do with liability issues with being in the RV," Mr. Taillieu said.

'Duped' frat boys sue 'Borat' By Meg Kinnard ASSOCIATED PRESS November 13, 2006

The controversy over the movie "Borat" reminds me of the old Jewish joke about the young man who murdered his parents in cold blood, and then begged for mercy because he was an orphan.

The movie Borat is subject of several lawsuits, which 2Oth Century Fox has taken steps to assure doesn't cut into it's enormous PROFITS! It's done so by inventing the most nonsensical defense that only the idiots who form our chattering classes in the media would accept with a straight face. Sasha Cohen and Fox's corporate lawyers have cooked up this defense that Cohen's hateful manipulation of the economic desperation of Mideast peasants and drunken teenaged boys was actually a morally uplifting expose of America's latent anti-semitism!

What all Cohen has done is dig up old Polish Joke and reconstruct for a new generation of urban sophisticates, who like to think of themselves as morally superior to the peasants who live in the hinterland.  Cohen's humor is the same Borscht Belt humor that standup comedians like Henny Youngman popularized 50 years ago. Designed to appeal to well-to-do urban Jews vacationing in resorts in the Poconos Mountains of Pennsylvannia, Borsht Belt humor was admittedly a mixed bag. But most often it had nasty racist tinge that appealed to urban Jews' fears and prejudices. Back in Henny Youngman's day, this "Borscht Belt" humor used to target blacks and gays as well as "Polacks". In more recent times, it was Jewish comedian Jackie Mason who last represented this tradition of ethnic and sexist "humor".

America's well-to-do Jewish population still carry their traditional prejudices against the people their tribe has always considered their enemies: Eastern European rural peasants and farmers and more recently, Muslims. And this movie exploits all these stereotypes, merely updating them to include white southerners and the poor (ironically non-Slavic) Kazakhstan Muslims.

Of course jokes about People of Color or homosexuals are considered politically incorrect so FOX wisely excluded it. But Muslims and North Carolina White Frat Boys are acceptable targets of public humiliation according to our politically correct, Hollywood elite. 

What really bothers me is that all the Borat stereotypes sound suspiciously like the same stereotypes that were used to incite the United States to invade Iraq without just cause.  After all, according to President Bush, isn't the US engaged in a "War on Terror"---and those in the Mideast who would oppose Israel's expansionist plans, or Corporate America's plans for the conversion of the Islam into the spiritual equivalent of Unitarian-Universalism must be hopeless crude and dangerous "extremists". 

Except that economically desperate Eastern Europeans are NOT America's enemies. And neither are South Carolina teenagers. Baron Cohen & Fox Studios are money grubbing opportunists. And Baron Cohen has no more of a moral message to his humor then Jackie Mason! Let's hope their money machine gets wacked by these lawsuits.

Key Iraqi lawmakers yesterday confirmed reports swirling in the Arab-language press of the three-way summit, according to the Associated Press....All three countries intend to hold a three-way summit to discuss the security situation and the repercussions for stability of the region," Iraqi lawmaker Ali al-Adeeb, a close aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, told reporters in Baghdad.....the Baghdad newspaper Azzaman over the weekend reported that Mr. al-Moualem's visit was meant in part to discuss a "partnership" among Iraq, Iran and Syria and a series of coordinated steps to stabilize the security situation inside Iraq.....Under the accord, Iraq would repeal the law barring members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party -- who had close ties with their Syrian counterparts -- from government posts and would move to expel fighters from the anti-Iranian Mojahedin Khalq still based inside Iraq.  Both Syria and Iran would move to tighten their own borders against foreign fighters infiltrating into Iraq, and Iran would "deal with" al Qaeda figures inside its borders with suspected ties to terrorists in Iraq. Iraq, Iran and Syria set for 3-way talks By David R. Sands THE WASHINGTON TIMES November 21, 2006

Ironically, it seems the only concrete goal that President Bush seems to have accomplished in Iraq is to unite Iran and Syria against the Arab world's common enemy---the United States. 

The public has no clue to when the Congress and President will finally admit that the United States has lost the Mideast. The US is on it's way out, it's just a matter of time, and how much pain and suffering our people are willing to endure on behalf President Bush's failed Imperial dream.