and now to something completely off topic, but Roger is my go-to guy on the movie scene: I had a good time watching “Beowulf”, and I thought the monster thing was tied together really well (better than Tolkien’s attempt…)(where did Angelina acquire that Euro accent anyway?)
however

why did they put in that grotesque anti Christian stuff? There is John Malkowich with a huge cross clanking around his neck, and when he isn’t kicking his slave around, he absolutely exudes EEEEvil…; and muttering about the “Triune God”… when, let’s face it, Beowulf was in essence, PRE CHRISTIAN!!! And the whole movie was a rifff on a story around the bonfire, the kind I like…

Did Zemeckis do all that just to make me angry??

Haven’t the Irish been default “neutrals” for awhile now? Odd given the cultural proclivities of some irish, but Bono and Bob probably default to staying out of foreign wars and not fighting — at least in large group conflicts.

Haven’t the Irish been default “neutrals” for awhile now? Odd given the cultural proclivities of some irish, but Bono and Bob probably default to staying out of foreign wars and not fighting — at least in large group conflicts.

Where I give both Sir Bob and Bono (who has also praised Bush for his African aid policies) credit is that, when it comes to their chosen bailiwick, they acknowledge what the evidence tells them and they don’t hesitate to speak out when the evidence contradicts leftist/transnationalist dogma. That shows intellectual honesty.

I suspect that if Geldof were to give Iraq as much attention as, say, Michael Totten has, his opinions would be at least a little different.

The best – and worst – part of this excellent article is that Bob Geldof has just given us a better article about GWB than perhaps any mainstream journalist ever has. Bob Geldof. The guy who played Pink in “The Wall.” That’s who beat every trained professional journalist on a payroll in America today at writing a balanced and readable account of the man behind the Oval Office, even though he dislikes a solid portion of GWB’s agenda. It’s a slap in the face of Time Magazine, from within her own pages. Hire him for PJ Media, stat!

It’s the way opponents of the war separate AQ and Iraq. We must go after AQ – just not in Iraq.

Angelina couldn’t quite bring herself to saying w/o the troops the humanitarian work won’t get done and the refuges won’t come back to Iraq. But when you read her article that is the only logical and inescapable conclusion.

He felt he was supposed to believe [what he was saying about Iraq]….

I think you are right, and what Lem says is right.

It seems to me, too, that he doesn’t really believe this anti-war tripe. Since he knows that his peers insist that anti-war rhetoric is a sign of “virtue,” he is, in an odd, inverted way, again confirming that old saw that “hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.”

Jamie Irons

Bob has a permanent stage pass. Bob has to face other club members… for the rest of his life.

Survival instintcs are at times… insurmountable

I think he believes them, all right. At the end of the day, he’s still in the “make love, not war” camp.

Geldof’s comment about America being unable to act unilaterally in Darfur displays an odd morality–that it’s okay to go to war to defend his pet projects, but not to depose a virulent, genocidal, militant, terrorist-supporting state that had comitted repeated acts of war against the United States.

Besides, Geldof misses the larger point: that unless radical Islam is eradicated, Darfur will be the prototype for Islamic treatment of Africans.

Even so, I still get a sense of paternalism from both Bush and Geldof, as though neither of them really believes that Africa will amount to anything without solutions from outside. Isn’t that just an extension of the old colonial argument? At what point do Africa’s problems become the responsibility of Africans? (See Walter Williams’s column: jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams022708.php3)