THE EARMARK

What do CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN and all the broadcast networks have in common?  Well that’s easy.  None have exposed Ronald Reagan and John D. Rockefeller as pro-art communist weasels!

Thankfully though, we have Fox News to pick up the slack.  Their exposé began last night, when they dispatched in-house art critic Glenn Beck to tour the headquarters of NBC — in a building constructed by Rockefeller and afforded landmark status by Reagan.  And horror of horrors, what did Beck find there?  Why paintings!  And sculpture!  And it gets worse:  Some of it was made by foreigners!

Here’s Beck critiquing a 1937 bas-relief by Attilio Piccirilli, an American who happened to have been born in Italy.  From the Modern Art Notes blog…

“Who is this? Who is this?” Beck asked, his voice rising to a yell. “This is the strong leader taking that, using that industry and those machines to lead us into the, uh, bright future, led by our children. Gee, who’s having indoctrination next week? Oh yeah, that’s right, our  president. Completely unrelated. This represents, at the time this was made, Mussolini. This represents Mussolini.”

As the tour continued, Beck pointed out more of Rockefeller/Reagan’s communist gems, including a Carl Paul Jennewein painting that features both a hammer and a sickle.  Although they’re on opposite sides of the painting, and also those symbols predate communism by centuries, but Glenn Beck is really angry so let’s just follow along and try to shield our eyes from the spittle.

Despite Beck’s vigor, the tour did not get past Rockefeller Center’s lobby.  Although we assume Rockefeller and Reagan stashed their most valuable commie cache up on the top floor, Beck could not venture so high for fear of a lightning strike to his tin-foil hat.

Senatorial bad boy Jim Webb (D-VA) touched down this morning in Myanmar (nèe Burma) to lay down the law with the nation’s oppressive military regime.

Webb is just the man for the job.  As a  highly decorated former Marine Corpsman and a much-feared Ultimate Fighting champion, the senior senator from Virginia has guts, stamina, and the killer instinct needed to deal with the leader of Myanmar’s junta, Senior General Than Shwe.  After all, this is a man who already took on and conquered a much more formidable foe: the vicious, noose-swinging Confederate reenactor Sen. George Allen.

Webb had this to say in a press conference last night:

She romped on top of Simolzak’s huge frame, straddling him with her hands on his chest, her back arched and her breasts flailing wildly in the air. Her back was to him and her long hair swung from side to side as if accentuating the abandonment of her screams.

Whoops, wrong quote. That one was from Webb’s recent novel, Lost Soldiers.  He actually said something regarding Myanmar.  The details are irrelevant.  What really matters is that this is an epic matchup.

In one corner: Than Shwe, the Asian sensation that’s oppressing a nation.  In the other corner: Jim Webb, the Ayatollah of Annapolis.  At stake: the fair hand of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese democracy leader.  The rules: none.

Bam whack!

I’m sorry, did someone ask for an elder statesman to show up get some shit done?  Because that’s exactly what just happened.

Former President Bill Clinton left North Korea early Wednesday, the state news agency reported, after securing a pardon for two jailed American journalists from the reclusive North Korean president, Kim Jong-il. It was not immediately known whether the journalists were allowed to leave as well.

The official Korean Central News Agency issued a brief dispatch, news agencies reported, saying that Mr. Clinton and his party had left by plane.

Next time you’ve got a problem with a megalomaniacal dictator holding innocent American women hostage, there’s only two guys you need to call: Bill and Clinton.  That’s right.  Sometimes it takes someone with a little more seasoning to do the heavy lifting around here.

So for all you young bucks out there who think you’re pretty hot just because you happen to currently be the president, just remember that old Bubba’s got your back when the going gets tough.  Just pick up the phone, honey.

Alright, international diplomatic crisis averted.  What’s up next for #42 to take care of?

What’s that?  Health care overhaul?

Aw, crap.

Okay, we admit it:  The above headline is a randomly generated combination of words that got spit out of a computer.  But it turns out that there’s a news story to which it correlates.

It seems that Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada (premier ministre du Canada), attended the state funeral of a Catholic governor general (gouverneur général) and was offered the traditional wafer representing the body of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (notre Seigneur et Sauveur Maurice Richard.)  And based on what happened next, let’s just hope the Prime Minister was on Atkin’s or something like that…

Harper, a devout Protestant, attended last week’s state funeral for Canada’s former governor general, Romeo LeBlanc, during which a Catholic priest offered him a communion host.

Television images, some of which have been posted on YouTube, showed Harper receiving the host. The camera remained on the premier for several seconds but it did not show him actually place the wafer into his mouth…

A Catholic official, vicar general Brian Henneberry, raised the controversy by openly wondering what Harper had done with the wafer.

Henneberry, who is chancellor of Saint John in New Brunswick where the funeral took place, said it would be scandalous had the prime minister put it in his pocket.

Our good friend Dennis DiClaudio at Indecision Forever notes that it’s simply un-Canadian to judge a head of state based on whether or not he partakes in an archaic medieval tribute to blood sacrifice; that tends to be the domain of the United States.

But just as Christ died for the sins of others, so too are American politicians covering our allies’ asses in the eyes of the Lord.  As if anticipating that Harper would one day refuse the body of Christ, prominent Catholic leaders like Ted Kennedy, Vito Fossella and Mark Foley have been consuming the blood of Christ at a frenetic pace for decades — all for Canada’s sake, of course.

Praise the Lord for good allies!

This may come as a bit of a surprise, but not every member of our United States Congress specializes in legislating.  Writing the law is a complex task and some minds are better geared toward it than others.  What we’re saying is that there can only be one Rep. John Hall (D-NY).

But there are other skill sets to be found in Congress.  For Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA), that means taking bribes from defense contractors.  For former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA), it’s taking bribes from anyone.  And for former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D G-GA)… the special skill set is getting arrested.

McKinney’s most notorious arrest came three years back, when she roughed up a Capitol police officer who mistook her for a tourist.  She got off easy as far as jail time goes, but a sadistic judge still sentenced her to a  year embarrassing herself in a futile campaign for the presidency.

Well now McKinney is back in the news (and possibly jail) with the report that she’d been arrested on a boat in the Mediterranean for roughing up a bottlenose dolphin.  No strike that — she was arrested on the boat for trying to smuggle goods into Gaza…

Israeli forces arrested McKinney and other passengers on board the ship, according to a group called Free Gaza, which said on its Web site that McKinney and the others “have been illegally incarcerated for their solidarity work with Palestine.”

The Israeli Consulate General of Israel in Atlanta, however, accused McKinney and her fellow travelers of waging a “reckless political stunt.”

This isn’t McKinney’s first clash with the Jewish state.  Following an election loss in 2002, McKinney’s father blamed “the J-E-W-S” for her defeat, and in 2006, the head of McKinney’s Black Panthers-staffed security team declared: “Why do you think she lost? You wanna know what led to the loss? Israel. The Zionists. You. Put on your yarmulke and celebrate.” (Or, we presume, put on your yarmulke and punch a police officer.)

Lastly — and this is just an aside — if the Israeli Consulate General is now concerning itself with “reckless political stunts,” it seems to us they might want to relocate from Atlanta to Wasilla, Alaska.

As we reported a couple of weeks ago, the White House apparently got so fed up with Vice President Joe Biden’s constant verbal blunders that they decided to hustle him out of the country.