Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic knows a threat to freedom when he sees it, and he calls this one right. If given power, Greenies won’t just tell us how to live (meager, drab, constrained lives), they’ll tell us where to live as well (crammed into dark and dangerous urban cores, while nature again takes over the beautiful spaces).

My only gripe with Klaus’ quote is his use of “ambitious environmentalism,” because “ambition” is not an inherently negative word. I would substitute “radical,” “doctrinaire,” or — just to get their goat — “fundamentalist.”

Hat-tip: Mark Steyn via Hatless in Hattiesburg

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I don’t even know how to write this. How do you tell people that in New York there’s a place one can buy a … a … a … Santa With Butt-Plug to mark the holiday season? For $100, yet?

This past Easter, it was Chocolate Jesus, now we have to suffer through a chocolate Santa with a butt-plug. Is there a lower basement our culture can settle down into?

Here’s the photo and the story, which unfortunately for America’s reputation ran in the Times of London:

Is it a raunchy festive talking-point? Is it a work of art? Whatever it is, the $100, 10in tall chocolate Santa with Butt Plug is the talk of chic New York – and is delicious, even if the sugar rush could keep you awake.

I’m not 100% clear what one would use a butt-plug for, and please don’t tell me. It’s enough to know that this little bit of sickness is the creation of one Paul McCarthy, “the 62-year-old Los Angeles-based artist whose reputation was forged in the 1970s with performances that involved him rolling about on the floor, filling his pants with tuna and cramming his mouth with frankfurters.”

The Times said “artist,” not me. Shoot me, but I still feel artists create works that lift us up and inspire us, not works that exist only to outdo the last abomination foisted on us by the likes of McCarthy.

McCarty is selling his Sick Santa’s in a gallery run by Michele Maccarone (say the name, don’t just read it). Yes, a gallery, not a store, because this is art, you know. One thousand buyers thus far, many of them “art cognosenti” tell us it’s art, as does The Times:

It’s all part of [McCarthy's] stream of thoughts about the infantilism of much contemporary culture, of how it all leads back to ingesting and defecating, to food and sex and toilet training.

Shudder. I actually agree with McCarthy: Much of contemporary culture is infantile indeed. But I bemoan the fact; I don’t go around celebrating it by turning a revered childhood symbol of giving into a ass-inine attack on what’s left of our culture.

And since you may be thinking, “What good is a chocolate sex toy anyway,” and thereby contributing all the more to society’s slide into hedonism, I’ll leave it to Maccarone to explain:

“Well, if you want to break this off and stick it . . . I wonder. It might work . . . I haven’t tried.”

It appears there remains room for Maccarone to get sicker still.

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Any guess what the inflation rate in the once paradisiacal country of Zimbabwe was last month? 100%? 1,000%? 10,000%? I’ll have the probable answer in a minute.

It’s anyone’s guess, really, as the Times of London reports:

Zimbabwe can no longer calculate the rate of inflation because there are not enough goods left in the shops to allow price comparisons, the Central Statistical Office claimed yesterday.

Moffat Nyoni, the Director of the CSO, said that it had been impossible to compile reliable data for the past month because of “the unavailability of required information such as prices of goods, due to their shortage on the formal market”.

Robert Mugabe’s single-handed destruction of the former Rhodesia now appears to be nearly complete. Of course we’ve said that before, only to find that the inventive despot can find new ways to make things worse. He has won the record as the world’s current foremost example of why countries and markets should be free.

The inflation rate? Well, figures leaked to the paper peg it at 14,840%, up from 8,000% last month — this as the Carteresque Mugabe assures his countrymen nation of prisoners that his government is whipping inflation. At least that’s what he says when he’s not whipping the businessmen who refuse to go along with his solution to inflation: Forcing retail price drops below the cost of goods.

And you wonder why they can’t find enough goods on the shelves to get a reading of what the inflation rate is?

Mugabe takes not one whit of blame for this mess, blaming inflation instead on a conspiracy of Zimbabwe’s battered business community and the African version of the bogeyman — “Western governments” — who are conspiring to create economic chaos, forcing Mugabe from office.

That’s not a bad idea, actually, and I hope the CIA Africa desk at Langely is elbows deep in such a conspiracy … if indeed anyone but a nation’s leadership can manufacture inflation. I think that would be tough because inflation is, in one sense, a measure of a populace’s faith in its government; the higher the inflation, the lower the trust.

The solution, then, appears obvious: Change the government.

Of course we’ve said that before, too, only to find that the inventive despot can find new ways to hang onto power.

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With an election coming up, Vladamir Putin wants to make sure his United Russia party makes a good showing; anything less would be embarrassing and detrimental to his daydream of re-establishing the old Soviet-style government. So …

MOSCOW (AP) – With the Kremlin determined to see a high turnout in Sunday’s election, many Russians say they are being pressured to vote at work under the watchful eyes of their bosses or risk losing their jobs.

They say they also are being told to provide lists of relatives and friends who will vote for United Russia, the party of President Vladimir Putin.

United Russia is expected to win handily. But Putin has turned the parliamentary elections into a plebiscite on his rule, and the Kremlin appears to be pushing for nothing short of a landslide. …

“The plebiscite will become a mockery if only slightly more than half of the people vote and if only 60 percent of those vote for United Russia,” as the latest opinion polls predict, political analyst Alexei Makarkin said.

In one example cited in the article, a school teacher says her school’s administration got absentee ballots for the entire staff, and they will meet on Sunday to cast them together, under the watchful, totalitarian gaze of their union boss. And that’s not all, by a long shot:

Similar accounts have been given by teachers, doctors, factory workers and others around the country. Some have said they were warned they would lose their jobs if they did not comply.

Hundreds of people have called an election hot line to complain about the use of absentee ballots, the Central Elections Commission said in a summary of the complaints posted on its Web site.

Some complaints came from hospital patients, who said they had been threatened with early discharge if they did not produce absentee ballots.

Election officials have promised to investigate … as soon as they mark their absentee ballots while their bosses look on.

Next up: Military hardware on display in Red Square next May 1?

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We are in the process of switching all our accounts, corporate and personal, from Wells Fargo to Citibank, the result of some mighty poor customer service from Wells Fargo following about 15 years of giving them our money to play with.

So imagine my thrill when I read this:

Citigroup Inc., seeking to restore investor confidence amid massive losses due in credit markets and a lack of permanent leadership, is receiving a $7.5 billion capital infusion from the investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government.

The investment by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority will help rebuild Citigroup’s capital levels, which have been eroded by a credit crunch that began in the summer. ….

As a result of the deal, the investment authority known as ADIA will become one of Citigroup’s largest shareholders, with a stake of no more than 4.9%. The stake will exceed that of Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, long known as one of Citigroup’s largest shareholders, according to a person familiar with the situation. (WSJ)

So the new investment along with bin Talal’s longstanding stake, means my bank may be up to 10 percent Arab owned.

Actually, that makes me feel pretty good. As noted below, Koran Kraziness is a pretty sick disease, but here we see some mighty big Muslim dudes heavily investing in an entity that makes most of its money by charging interest, in defiance of said Book That Shall Not Be Flushed.

Either we’ll see the board of ADIA and bin Talal bend over to get their 40 lashes, or we’ll see a force for moderation within Islam. Neither would upset me much.

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Name a teddy bear Jesus and get 40 lashes? I don’t think so. But then Christianity is a much more fun-loving religion than Islam, where teddy bear names can indeed lead to really big owies:

A British teacher is facing 40 lashes in a Sudanese jail if convicted of insulting Islam’s prophet by letting children name a teddy bear Mohammed.

Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, was arrested on suspicion of blasphemy on Sunday.

Ms Gibbons allowed her class of seven-year-olds at the Unity High School in Khartoum to name a teddy bear Mohammed as part of a lesson about animals’ habitats.

Apparently Mohammed does not s*** in the woods.

Mohammed is sacred to Islamic philosophy and the penalty for blasphemy is 40 lashes, a large fine or a jail term. The British Embassy in Khartoum confirmed the arrest.

A source close to the school said one teacher was angered by the naming of the teddy bear and complained to the headmistress. (Sky News)

If you ask me, the Khartoum Krazies are being way too lenient. Sure, give Gibbons her lashes, but lash those pesky seven-year-olds, too. They’re the ones who named the bear, for cryin’ out loud (which, one gathers, they would if held to the same standard as Gibbons).

All this fanaticism over images of Mohammed are based on nothing more than this, from chapter 42, verse 11 of The Book That Shall Not Be Flushed: “[Allah is] the originator of the heavens and the earth… [there is] nothing like a likeness of Him.” For that, embassies are burned, teachers are lashed and the cultural norms of most of the world are spit on by angry and intolerant Muslims.

They are more than angry and intolerant, though. Sky News quotes Hassan Aberdeen, a researcher at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies:

“This could be more to do with who is saying it than what is being said. It might not have been an issue if this was a Sudanese person. The fact that this was a European teacher is highly likely to be one of the key causes.”

Nice, huh? Add racist to Islam’s ills.

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It just dawned on my I’ve been terribly unfair to Redacted, Brian De Palma’s strident anti-war flick. I last wrote that it opened 50th at the box office in limited release, but I never checked back to see how it’s doing in broader release.

Guess what? There is no broader release.

On Box Office Mojo’s rankings for the last weekend, the film simply does not appear at all. Box office oblivion.

But there is this expected fact: International box office is now almost 300 percent of U.S. box office for the film. Beware,though, because you can play statistical mischief with small numbers. The film’s U.S. box office is a stunning stunted $25,628; it’s global take is now at $71,968.

Adding insult to infantile anti-Americanism, the film’s ranking among BOM’s readers slipped from D- to F.

Meanwhile, the most successful of the anti-war films, Lions for Lambs, fell 61% over the previous week, dropping from 8th to 13th. Not even Redford, Streep and Cruise can keep this diatribe running for more than three weeks.

BOM readers gave it a D, by the way.

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Youths Of Unknown Ethnicity rioted last night in France.

The Telegraph’s report wanders to the 16th of its 17 paragraphs before tossing in the word “immigrant,” as close as the story gets to accurately reporting on another round of Muslim youth riots in France.

The circumstances are familiar. In 2005, two youths fleeing police were electrocuted when they cut through an electrical substation, sparking (pardon the pun) a season of burned cars, wrecked businesses, and cell phone-managed hit-and-run attacks that drove the French crazy.

Last night, two youths on a moped and a police car collided, generating a night of the same sort of havoc.

And on both occasions, the press was hard pressed to be honest about who was rioting, focusing on economics not ethnicity or religion. These may indeed be riots stemming in part from France’s economic and social bias against Muslim immigrants, but they cannot be wholly and fairly reported unless what’s preached at the local mosques is also reported.

Anyway, here’s the police car that was involved in the collision with the moped. Apparently it was chasing the Y.O.U.E.s at high speed, passed them, whipped a speedy U-turn, and hit them head-on.

Will this be enough evidence of false rioting to allow the Sarkozy government to bring a quick stop to the unrest? If not, will Sarkozy deal with the rioting more effectively than his predecessor? Will the media ever use the phrase “Muslim youths?”

Stay tuned.

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News that Trent Lott is leaving his very effective job as Senate Minority Whip is bad news for the GOP on Capitol Hill. Thus far, the GOP has been able to outmaneuver many a dangerous or counterproductive Dem initiatives thanks to the superior skills of seasoned warriors like Lott and Mitch McConnell.

Politico and other outlets report that Lott is retiring before the end of the year in order to avoid new restrictions that would prevent him from lobbying for two years. For that, we lose his leadership through 2012.

Ask yourself this: Would Lott be any more a threat to the integrity of government if he had to wait just one year, as the current law requires, instead of two? What exactly is gained from a two-year restriction that a one-year restriction does not already provide? Nothing except financial hardship for Senators and Representatives who have long labored for less dough than most of them could have made in the private sector.

Like term limits, most high-minded anti-corruption legislation does nothing to stop corruption — the corrupt will always find ways to work the system; only the non-corrupt will be hurt — while depriving city councils, statehouses and Congress of the seasoned leaders we need.

Of course, the leftyblogs will mark the occasion by dredging up the unfortunate and much overblown comment Lott made in 2002 at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday, when he said America would not “have had all these problems” if Thurmond had become president. They may even throw in some lefty closet anti-gay jibes by reminding us that Lott was an Ole Miss cheerleader. To see Lott’s comment as racist, one must be a bigot, and unfortunately, most of the Left is.

Fine. We’ll write about Monica every time we mention Bill.

But the real news about Lott today isn’t what he said in 2002; it’s that Congress is continuing to create new problems (think McCain/Feingold) instead of effectively addressing corruption.

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As you may have heard, corporate greed drove America to invade Iraq, where now our troops spill their blood — and wantonly spill the blood of civilians — for oil, occupying and repressing a nation in defiance of the U.N. as part of America’s imperialist ambitions.

Right. And now this word from our sponsor, Reality:

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s government is prepared to offer the U.S. a long-term troop presence in Iraq and preferential treatment for American investments in return for an American guarantee of long-term security including defense against internal coups, The Associated Press learned Monday.

The proposal, described to the AP by two senior officials familiar with the issue, is one of the first indications that the United States and Iraq are beginning to explore what their relationship might look like, once the U.S. significantly draws down its troop presence.

As part of the package, the Iraqis want an end to the current U.N.-mandated multinational forces mission, and also an end to all U.N.-ordered restrictions on Iraq’s sovereignty.

Iraq has been living under some form of U.N. restriction since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the officials said.

American troops and other foreign forces now operate in Iraq under a U.N. Security Council mandate, which has been renewed annually since 2003. Iraqi officials have have said they want that next renewal — which must be approved by the U.N. Security Council by the end of this year — to be the last.

Do you suppose this might be the story most ignored by the Left … or do you more correctly suppose that they’ll simply see it as evidence of “our puppet government in Baghdad” and add it to their collection of false myths and outright lies?

I’m betting on the latter.

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