Here's a thesis you might call "chilling," from Benny Morris, an Israeli historian: Israel will almost assuredly bomb Iran by early 2009, and if they don't, an Iranian-Israeli (and possibly American) nuclear war will almost assuredly follow. Sounds like a wacko doomsday scenario, except it's not.

So you can chalk it up to yet another mind-bogglingly irresponsible lapse on the part of the Bush administration. Unless, of course, you subscribe to the equally likely possibility that they've been pushing all parties to this point deliberately.

Talk about going out with a bang.

It is ironic that the "controversy" about the New Yorker's recent cover (see here) has occurred in the week after it became clear that Obama is going to try to run a "centrist" campaign designed to appeal to racist/fascist "independent" voters -- who retain that designation only as a way of convincing themselves that they are not really racist/fascist, and then, inevitably, vote for the killing of the dark-skinned people.

Of course the "centrist" strategy has destroyed the last two candidacies sponsored by the DESM (Democrat Establishment Suicide Machine). People voted for Osama (woops, I mean Obama) precisely because they knew Hillary was lining herself up for another such fucking. But now Obama is asking for it, too. And the thing is, it is almost impossible to get off this path once one starts down it. Obama's reversal in support of the FISA "compromise," the pro-death-penalty BS, etc., register as flip-flopping and pandering because everyone knows that he doesn't mean it. And now Obama is stuck with those positions: if he changes, he is flip-flopping again; if he doesn't change, he still looks like a flip-flopper because no one believes him anyway. This logic determined Hillary's and Kerry's fates from 2002 onward; thus the absurdity of her refusing to acknowledge that her vote for the war was wrong, which only screamed her wrongness -- and her hypocritical willingness to have done wrong against her own conscience.

Anway, now that Obama has taken a large step toward running a candidacy premised entirely on McCain's brain damage and face cancer, now that Obama has tried to cover up the only attractive aspects of his own candidacy, the New Yorker -- of course the ultimate pro-Obama rag -- has published its "Obama the terrorist" cartoon. And they're getting flack from Obama and everyone else. The irony is that it's actually a sort-of clever cartoon. Remnick -- however much I hate to admit it, since I hate him -- is correct when he says that the image (of a sort of "Obama bin Laden" punching fists with his wife, who is decked out as a Black Panther) simply represents what the various conservative fascists have been saying about Obama all along.

(This doesn't make Remnick or large portions of his staff any less the liberal fascists that they are -- as evidenced, last week, by Adam Gopnick's bigoted and condescending review of the writings of the great novelist and Catholic apologist G.K. Chesterton -- who described the entire death apparatus with precision in the 1920's).

Update: below is a better cartoon than the one on the New Yorker cover.

This article from the BBC about recent incidents in Germany became a big sensation around my office this past week, for various reasons. Some found it hilarious. Others, not so much.

Am curious to hear the AmCop community's views.