Quick Hits

This gives me something to do while I try to ignore the horror show that is "The Interpreter" on my teevee.

• Michelle Bachmann, freshman Rep. from Minnesota, is a clairvoyant, having access to secret knowledge of Iran's plans to split up Iraq, which included putting the Shiite region in the area most dominated by Sunnis. Her local paper is demanding her to explain how she got this information, which is silly of them, for nobody, not even Bachmann, can explain the inner workings of the human mind!

• Hey, guess what, Somalia's the next Afghanistan!

Weeks after Ethiopia routed the ICU from Mogadishu and the rest of the country, violence is flaring in the capital and throughout Somalia. While some of this violence is being instigated by the Islamists who lost power, there is evidence that warlords who have returned to the country after being defeated by the Courts movement are also to blame (somaaljecel.com, February 22). Reports coming out of Mogadishu claim that some warlords are rearming their militias and planning attacks on Ethiopian and TFG troops. These warlords—such as Mohamed Dheere, Muhammad Qanyare Afrah and Abdi Nur Siyad, who have allegedly formed an alliance—are angry over their role in the TFG government that is now controlling Somalia; the three warlords were reportedly seen purchasing large supplies of arms at the Bakaara weapons market (Shabelle Media Network, February 22).

That's a tribal country, one that would never become pliant in the face of an imposed governmental structure and a show of force from the country they hate most, Ethiopia. It was lunacy to think that they'd be pacified and have that be that.

• In more news of "making the world less safe," Venezuela is spending a mint on weaponry!

• John Kerry Swiftboated a Swiftboat Vets for Truth contributor yesterday at a Senate hearing. Crooks and Liars has the vid. It's a few years late, but Kerry realy raked this guy, a nominee for an AMBASSADORSHIP for cryin' out loud, and revealed him in all his hypocrisy. It was a clinic.

• This happened a little while back, but Prince Harry is going to serve in Iraq. No word on the military readiness from our version of the scions of royalty, Britney Spears' kids.

• Yet another Virgin Mary found, this time on a school cafeteria cookie sheet. I know the Lord is supposed to work in mysterious ways, but with baking grease? By the way, that looks as much like a guy flipping the bird as it does the Virgin Mary. I guess it's all how you look at it.

• This is an absurd ruling in Florida, where election officials simply decided that everything was fine with the election in the 13th District, and that the 18,000 missing votes had nothing to do with the voting software. Naw, those voters were probably just tired and skipped the most contested, most high-profile race on the ballot. Christine Jennings, who's been royally jobbed by this, has vowed to keep up the fight to obtain the voting machine source code.

• Last week the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi stepped down from his post because he couldn't get a foreign policy vote adding troops in Afghanistan and expanding a US military base in Northern Italy through the Parliament. Two Communists pulled out of the center-left coalition to vote against Prodi. We've really triggered a global isolationist movement. Afghanistan is in bad need of help. But our wrongheaded policies that look like imperialism have caused the whole world to adopt this isolationist pose, making things more dangerous. Prodi then survived a no-confidence vote to maintain his position, narrowly defeating Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing faction, and the only positive in all of this is to see Berlusconi lose again.

• Why aren't more people talking about the fact that a GOP fundraiser has been accused of funding terrorist training camps? And why doesn't anyone know that the President met yesterday with an anti-Semite who gloried in the killing of American soldiers? Why don't we have a media that reports this more often than the latest twists and turns on American Idol?

• And finally, a new study shows that college students are more narcissistic than ever... I'm sorry, what was I writing about? I was too busy Googling myself and touching up my Facebook picture in Photoshop to remember.