Chicken Little Went to Town

"One day Chicken Little was walking in the woods when—KERPLUNK—an acorn fell on her head. "'Oh my goodness!' said Chicken Little. 'The sky is falling! I must go and tell the king.'"

Al Gore has come a long way since the days when he was moping around the house in his bathrobe all day, looking under the sofa cushions for his misplaced presidential election victory. He grew fat; he grew a beard. His future looked grim.

Al was having a tough time getting over being robbed, in 2000, of his chance to take joyrides on Air Force One. And even some of his hardcore fans hadn't forgotten the slightly tawdry spectacle of those endless vote recounts during which the Al-Gore-For-President Creative Recount Team struggled mightily to include, on their side of the ledger, hanging chads, pregnant chads, and even chads that weren't pregnant yet but hoped to start a family some day.

The whole thing looked a bit unsporting, and that wasn't the only thing. Al is rumored to have a tendency to polish the apple just a little too much, like allegedly claiming that he and Tipper were the inspiration for the book and movie Love Story; or that he exposed the trouble at Love Canal, even though, strictly speaking, he didn’t; or that he "took the initiative in creating the internet," and so on.

But that’s all behind him now. Even the coveted Presidency is nothing compared to Al’s accomplishments of late. George W. got to be President of the United States, but big deal: Al got to be Captain Earth!

It’s been a wild ride. Books. A docu-drama. An academy award. An Emmy. And then… the Nobel Prize!

Al won the Big Enchilada—and for peace, no less! So what if Planet Al hasn't contributed anything to peace, specifically? Neither did any of the recent menagerie of Peace Prize recipients, like the vile terrorist toad, Yassir Arafat. Or that perennial embarrassment, Jimmy Carter, for that matter - although Yassir and Jimmy did talk a good game on the subject. Or Rigoberta Menchu, that fraud, who proved that even lying, Marxist, gravy train hobos like herself can still get a fast plane ride to Stockholm if the political tailwinds are favorable.

Still, who would have believed that there was a Nobel on the shelf for Al? How do you motivate a bunch of old ninnies who live in a place guaranteed to have nine months a year of brain-numbing sub-Arctic cold at the absolute northern edge of nowhere - how do you get that crowd whipped into a fearful frenzy about the WARMING of anything?

Well, you can’t. The fact is that they gave the peace medallion to Al for other reasons. (“Castigate the industrial West and win a prize!”)

Arafat, Carter, Menchu, et al - those awards are not the hoof prints of your standard collection of conservationist crackpots and free-range tree huggers. Al’s global enthusiasms are beside the point. The Nobel panel is a different sort of beast - a political animal. “Bugger the details of this global warming thing,” seemed to be the general tone on the Prize Committee. “I like the cut of this Gore fellow’s jib.”

During the Deluge According to Al, the oceans will rise up and swamp the arid precincts of Kansas and Missouri. We'll be fishing for trout off ledges in the Rockies, and there will be beachfront property high in the Appalachian Mountains. Suntan enthusiasts will compete with moon shiners for the best spots to spread out.

And who’s to say Al isn’t right? Who can prove it? Everybody likes to drag out the 70's version of this story - global cooling - as if they've uncovered some grand canard. Sure, global cooling hasn’t come to pass just yet. But so what? This isn't over, and it never will be. The globe will be cooling and warming and cooling again forever, and nobody will ever be able to prove that it's not our fault.

Surely every blink of the human eye is a horrible affront to Nature. It must be so. What else are we to think, when there are surely too many of us for our own good; when our very existence fouls the land and the water, and every breath we exhale helps convert the oceans to a boiling, toxic stew? Or so say Chicken Little, and Henny Penny, and Cocky Locky, and Goosey Poosey. And Al.

From Zero Population Growth through The Late Great Planet Earth, from the ozone layer to global cooling to global warming - right through to whatever comes next - stalwart nags like Al have been telling the true believers that WE are the problem for so long, we reflexively roll over and beg for forgiveness, and for further instruction on how to do better - how to leave a smaller, lighter ‘footprint’ upon the sad and angry face of the Earth.

The Earth hates us; we know that now, thanks to Al and his friends. Yes, fish befoul the water with their effluvium, and never give it a thought. But fish are part of Nature, whereas we are... something else.

Besides, there's money in this thing. Companies like the one Al is invested in can sell "carbon credits" the way the Vatican used to sell Papal indulgences, and who's the wiser?

Al’s really onto something this time. He’s a Big Picture guy, and the picture doesn’t get any bigger than this. Why settle for even a grand role on the great stage when he can be Captain Earth? What’s more important than Everything in the World, and the world, too?

March of the Confused

Extremely confused demonstrators in front of the White House.

There is straightforward honesty in that sign, whatever its other shortcomings: "CAN U TELL THE DIFFERENCE [between Bush, Hitler, Israel, and Nazi Germany]? I CAN'T."

There may be a few other things these two haven't quite figured out just yet.

I won't be the first to point out that If they had tried this in front of Hitler's house, their confusion would have been very short-lived.

The Saudis: Very Foreign Policy

Audience with King Saud, December, 1932

Hello, Your Majesty! I know you’re a busy man, what with the new government and all the wives and kids and the squabbling among the tribes and whatnot, so I’ll get right to the point:

Have I got a deal for you! Bear with me while I outline the plan. You see, we have this thing we call oil. You may know it as that stuff that sometimes gets the camels’ feet all black and sticky. You chaps over here don’t have any use for it, but where I come from in the Heathen West, we’re crazy about the stuff.

So here’s what we want to do: first, we run around all over our side of the world developing a fine appetite for everything about oil. We do it all: we invent machines that need it, develop whole new technologies that use it, and come up with processes to turn it into all kinds of useful stuff. In other words, we create a huge market for it!

Next we send some people over to explore for oil in your neighborhood —with your kind permission, of course, sir!

Did I mention this is a no-lose proposition for you? See, if we don’t find any oil, we just go away! No cost, no obligation on your part, and sorry we bothered you.

But if we do find some oil — well, King, this is your lucky century! We’ll send our engineers over here to get it out of the ground; pump it and ship it and tidy up afterward; and (here comes the really good part) pay you so much for it that you’ll be rich beyond imagining!

That’s right! Instead of, say, killing you and taking your oil (the way you guys have always done things, if you don’t mind me saying so), we’ll make a deal with you to pay you enormous sums of money to take the oil away!

But wait, there’s more! We’ve done our homework, sir, and we happen to know that you’ve already made arrangements with the Wahhabis and various other wild and crazy local boys who happen to infest your fine sandbox over here, to sort of let them call the shots, religion-wise, if you just stick to the governing thing. And a fine arrangement it is, Your Grace. You’re a sly fox, you are! Because they’re a bloodthirsty bunch, if you’ll pardon my candor, and anything you can do to keep that crowd in line is well worth the effort.

See, here’s where we come in again. We are going to pay you so much for oil that you can dole out goodies to those rascals and keep them occupied running madrassas and raving in mosques until the camels come home. And just in case they still get a little restless once in a while, they can go raise hell with somebody over the borders somewhere, and leave you alone.

Now we also recognize that occasionally those rascals of yours are going to wander a little far off the reservation (as we say back home), and we might even find some of them causing trouble in our neck of the woods. Not to worry! As long as the oil keeps flowing, you’re an ally and that’s all there is to say about it.

Want to build a few madrassas in our neighborhoods? No skin off our noses. The radical lads want to get a nice head of steam and blow up a few things? Who are we to object too much? A deal is a deal, and that’s just the way it is.

You see, we have our own bunch of troublemakers, so we know what you’re going through.

It’s because of them that we don’t just drill for oil in our own backyard and keep all the proceeds for ourselves. And it’s because of them that we’ll make deals with the likes of you, Your Majesty, and risk having your religious rejects come over to our part of the globe to preach hellfire and ritual beheadings to the locals, and maybe even knock down a few buildings.

So what do you say, Your Kingship, Sir? Have we got a deal?

Saint Icon of the Rubble

The LEBANESE PIETA
...as promulgated by the New York Times.

Miraculously, the unfortunate young man lying across the center of the photo was seen later, alive and well, and ready for his next photo op.

For details on this and other photo frauds - as well as information about careers in the highly lucrative field of VERY creative news reporting - see ZombieTime

Take a Terrorist Home With You

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C.

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your recent letter voicing your concerns regarding our treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. My administration takes these matters seriously, and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington.

You'll be pleased to learn that, thanks to the efforts of citizens like you, we are creating a new division of the terrorist retraining program. We call this new division the "Liberals Accepting Responsibility for Killers" program, or LARK for short.

In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided to place one terrorist under your personal care. Your very own detainee has been selected and scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard to your residence. Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud (you may just call him Ahmed) is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you demanded in your letter.

Above all, please heed the large orange notice attached to his cage: "DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS."

Although Ahmed is an extremely violent sociopath, we hope that your sensitivity to what you described as his "understandable attitude problem" will help him overcome these character flaws. We hope you are correct in describing his problems as mere "cultural differences" with heretofore neglected "root causes." Perhaps your plan to offer counseling will turn out to be just what he needs.

It may be necessary for you to hire some assistant caretakers. Note that your detainee's meal requirements are simple, but we strongly suggest serving meals that do not require utensils, particularly knives and forks.

Your adopted terrorist may bite you, given the chance, but the results of his rabies test have so far been negative, so there is probably no reason to worry. He is also very proficient in hand-to-hand combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail clippers. We suggest that you do not ask him to demonstrate these skills at your next yoga group.

Furthermore, Ahmed is expert at making a wide variety of explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to keep those items locked up, unless (in your opinion) this might offend him.

Your adopted terrorist will not wish to interact with the female members of your family (except sexually) since he views women as subhuman. However, he will be eager to assist with the religious education of your sons. And rest assured that Ahmed absolutely loves animals, especially cats and dogs. He prefers them roasted, but raw is fine, too, if they have not been dead for more than two or three days.

I want to thank you personally for taking on this responsibility; and if you have any advice for us regarding how to provide care for drug addicted, homicidal schizophrenics, I encourage you to share those views with us as well.

We can always use the help.

Cordially,
George W. Bush

The Clan of the Porpoise Heads

Peering out of the rubber mouth, the woman wearing the big porpoise head expressed frustration that her objections to free trade were not being taken seriously.

She and her cohorts, all similarly attired, were on a Miami street outside a meeting of the North American Free Trade Commission, complaining that the police were preventing them from fully expressing their views.

The anti-free-traders were many and varied, though not so many and quite a bit more varied than had been expected. That is, the crowds were smaller than anticipated, but the deviations from the subject at hand were many, like the woman from the Clan of the Porpoise Heads.

Maybe all the protesters should have carried little reminder cards with them, with "FREE TRADE BAD" written on them, so they could remind themselves why they were there.

Then again, maybe a lot of them were there just for giggles. Some things are just more fun when the press is watching. "WHAT DO WE WANT?" "SOMETHING!" "WHEN DO WE WANT IT?" "SOON!"

Not one of the protesters made a lick of sense when explaining their views, or why (or even if) they take exception to the exercise of free trade.

Many wore gas masks. There was not a clue available as to why. Did the gas masks signify that free trade stinks? Some wore gas masks and capes, like refugees from a Darth Vader look-alike contest.

One chap did manage to express his conviction that "big corporations" were going to make bunches of money, while somehow taking jobs away from everybody, too. He was unable to explain how the corporations were going to manage to make lots of money appear, while simultaneously making every job in two hemispheres disappear. (Some corporations with labor problems might like to know.)

Another enthusiastic participant, quite pleased with himself, announced that he was "for peace and freedom," and who can argue with that? What a splendid fellow! Although in his case, it turned out that he wanted to smash the front window of the place and barge into the meeting to express his enthusiasms more forcefully. He wanted the freedom to literally crash the party, and to be left in peace while he did it.

But of course it isn't free trade that these ersatz street philosophers object to; it's capitalism, which is a word to describe people buying and selling what they want, to and from other people who want to buy or sell it.

Communism still blights the landscape of three or four isolated outposts of human misery; but it wheezes with every breath and is slumping toward the graveyard of gruesome experiments. Socialism lives on, but mostly only in the hearts of people like those observed on the streets.

So with communism withering away, and socialism so widely discredited that even Marx, were he to come back to life, would whack himself on the forehead and cry, "What was I THINKING? THAT won't work!" - there isn't much left for your average free-range activist except to wear silly costumes and try to latch onto something to complain about.

Either that, or go get a job, before the big corporations somehow take them all away.