Best Cuban Joke Ever

Mario Loyola’s translation made me laugh out loud.

It can only be better in Spanish.

Update:

It is, slightly. Loyola kindly sent me the original.

Vladimir Putin en una reciente visita que hizo a Cuba encontró que la mayoría de los cubanos tenían los zapatos rotos, y le preguntó a Fidel

Oye chico, cómo es posible esto después de 40 años de “mejoras”?

Fidel molesto le contestó : ¿ y en Rusia qué, Chico ? ¿ es que acaso ustedes lo han hecho mejor?

Ombe chico, le contestó Putin, cuando quieras te invito a Rusia y si te encuentras a alguien con los zapatos rotos tienes permiso para matarlo. No hay problemas…

Se montaron en el avión de Putin y fueron a Rusia. En cuanto Fidel salió del avión lo primero que vio fue una persona con los zapatos rotos, entonces sacó su pistola y PUM, lo mató.

Al día siguiente todos los periódicos de Rusia tenían el siguiente titular:

VIEJO BARBUDO MATA AL EMBAJADOR DE CUBA EN EL AEROPUERTO DE MOSCU

I was wrong

Well, I hoped I would be.

Something still smells funny about the plane crash, though. I can’t imagine what level of distraction would have me fly into the broad side of a high rise building while looking for a place to ditch. Maybe it was a bad case of eyes in the cockpit or a stall/spin.

Glad it wasn’t terrorism, though.

Maybe they think the Genius Bar serves booze

Some Islamists are upset about the NY Apple store.

According to the message, the cube-shaped building which is being constructed in New York City, on Fifth Avenue between 58th and 59th Streets in midtown Manhattan, is clearly meant to provoke Muslims.

The Register reports

Sadly, it’s a bit late for that, since the store opened for business back in May. We do have some good news, though. As far as we’re aware it’s not called the “Apple Mecca”, it does not serve alcoholic beverages, and neither Jack Straw nor Salman Rushdie work behind the counter.

LGFHas a theory that maybe they reacted to what it looked like under construction. Or maybe that the vile moonbat at sfgate, to whome I shall not link, started it.

Capitalism, the Dynamo

Jonah Goldberg says of this essay:

If you missed this shockingly long essay in the Wall Street Journal by Nobel winner Edmund Phelps, print it out and save it. One day it will be useful to force your college-age kids to read it for deprogramming purposes. I think some folks at Tapped simply burst into flames when reading it.

I agree, except for calling it “shockingly long”.

I still haven’t read any Hyek (and yes, I know I should), but I’ve read Rand. Phelps put them in nice perspective for me:

We all feel good to see people freed to pursue their dreams. Yet Hayek and Ayn Rand went too far in taking such freedom to be an absolute, the consequences be damned. In judging whether a nation’s economic system is acceptable, its consequences for the prospects of the realization of people’s dreams matter, too. Since the economy is a system in which people interact, the endeavors of some may damage the prospects of others. So a persuasive justification of well-functioning capitalism must be grounded on its all its consequences, not just those called freedoms.

Frist Foolishness

Gotta love Andrew Stuttaford’s take on Frists dumb anti-gambling move. The part that makes my head real is not this quote:

“If an adult in this country, with his or her own money, wants to engage in an activity that harms no one, how dare we prohibit it because it doesn’t add to the GDP or it has no macroeconomic benefit. Are we all to take home calculators and, until we have satisfied the gentleman from Iowa that we are being socially useful, we abstain from recreational activities that we choose?… People have said, What is the value of gambling ? Here is the value. Some human beings enjoy doing it. Shouldn’t that be our principle? If individuals like doing something and they harm no one, we will allow them to do it, even if other people disapprove of what they do.”

It’s who said it.

Update 12 Oct :
Stuttaford got some feedback from the Hill which may be illuminating.

Place Your Bets

Fearlessly speculating, Buttle’s World hereby predicts that this plane crash in NYC turns out to be a suicide, not an accident. And I’m going with better than fifty percent odds that the pilot (no passengers) turns out to have a middle-eastern name, whether given at birth or recently taken.

You don’t just bump into the broad side of a building in VFR conditions like that.

I hope I’m wrong. Just putting a time stamp on my guess here.

The Road to Serfdom

A depressing bit of reality from Ray Haynes this week. Speaking of the business community in California, he writes:

They are afraid, they tell me, of retaliation from the government, if they don’t oppose the initiative. Local governments are telling business and developers that, if they don’t oppose Proposition 90, they will make their business lives miserable. They are being told that if they donate money, their projects will be fast tracked. However, if they don’t help, their projects will go into some sort of governmental purgatory, lost in the bowels of some regulatory or planning agency until the new temple is built in Jerusalem. I am told that they have to oppose us because they just can’t risk it.

That is how far down the road to socialism California has gone. So much of the financial future of our business community depends on government action that the business community trembles in fear of the government officials. The ruling class in California knows that Proposition 90 will be their Waterloo, and they are trying to enlist the aid of all of their economic slaves to fight this last battle. The business community, now the economic slaves of our state government, is willing to sell out the freedom of us all to stay in business.

Curse Hayek for being so right.

When I Run for Office

I’ll have David Zucker do the campaign ads.

Probably.

Keeping an Eye on the Apologists

Two resources making sure that the jihad apologists at CAIR are unmasked:

The Anti-CAIR and CAIR Watch.

Potpourri

Just moved. Still unpacking. No time to blog. A few quick items:

It’s really time to celebrate diversity – from the safety of your own home.

Richard Miniter has a nice summation of the Clinton Legacy.

If all that gets you down, just visit the Nietzsche Family Circus.

I know I’m not supposed to ask this

but… Why do stupid people seem to go out of their way to, well, look stupid?

Challenging Kelo

I was heartened to read this in today’s Patriot Post:

The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment states: “…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Completely ignoring the words “public use,” last year the Supremes held that a city could forcibly take your home to build a privately owned shopping mall (Kelo v. New London). In
response, the House recently passed a bill that would overturn Kelo (no odds yet on whether the Supremes will let such a nefarious law stand, if indeed it becomes a law), and many states have considered bills that would, in effect, restore the Takings Clause to our jurisprudence. That is, if the government takes your home, it must be for a public purpose and they must pay for the right.

Well, that sure got some folks in a tizzy. Turns out that these newfangled counterrevolutionary (read: constitutional) laws may cover a significant portion of land-use restrictions. These laws not only reinstate the public-purpose test, but they might also reinstate the just-compensation part. In other words, the government would actually have to pay for the right to prohibit you from using your land as anything other than a public park.

At the risk of sounding like 1960s radicals, we say “Right On!” Horror of horrors, paying when you take private property. Why, with this sort of potential collapse of the social order, it might soon be legal to eat junk food in New York City.

I’ve long thought that rent control and even zoning laws are an unconstitutional “taking”. I hope this trend catches on.

Predicting the Future

Here’s a valiant try at predicting life in 2000, published in 1950. It’s an object lesson in just how hard it is to predict the future. Some of the guesses are laughably wrong. And yet…

Fast jet and rocket-propelled mail planes made it so hard for telegraph companies all over the world to compete with the postal service that dormant facsimile-transmission systems had to be revived. It takes no more than a minute to transmit and receive in facsimile a five-page letter on paper of the usual business size. Cost? Five cents. In Tottenville the clerks in telegraph offices no longer print out illegible words. Everything is transmitted by phototelegraphy exactly as it is written—illegible spelling, blots, smudges and all. Mistakes are the sender’s, never the telegraph company’s.

That’s pretty close on the cost, if not the speed.

Wafa Sultan, Eagle

My wife has taught our daughter that she can choose: Be an eagle, a sheep, or a pig. I reinforced the lesson by pointing out that all a sheep gets to see is other sheeps’ bottoms, producing giggles and, no doubt, powerful learning.

Wafa Sultan, the bravest woman in the world, is an eagle. Here she is discussing the necessary transformation of Islam, and the cartoon furor, on Danish TV.

“…and this is my receipt, for your receipt.”

If you’ve seen Brazil, you’ll know why this story is being linked on Buttle’s World.

Maps of War

Jonah Goldberg posted this cool map showing about 5,000 years of middle east history in 90 seconds.

Don’t Get Me Started

It’s an over-produced product of yet another left-wing TV talking head, this time from England. And yet this documentary is a breath of fresh air. Why? Because, at last, we have leftists saying there’s no excuse for terrorism.

It’s up on that link in four parts. Worth watching, I’d say. (If for no other reason than to hear one of them say “Michael Moore is an idiot”.) But it’s more serious than that. I had never seen footage of Galloway before. What a piece of work he is.

The Emptier the Bottle

the more noise it makes when you pour it out.

Keith Olbermann, the mental midget with a microphone and a camera, seems hell-bent on convincing me that I should never go back to watching television.

Hero Vindicated

Niel Armstrong is my kind of hero. When the best available evidence was that he muffed his line on the moon, dropping the “a”, he accepted that he may have screwed up. But now it seems that (as I suspected all along) the “a” was just obscured by static. Says Armstrong:

“I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford’s analysis of it, and I find the technology interesting and useful,” he said.

“I also find his conclusion persuasive. Persuasive is the appropriate word.”

No word yet on whether or not he really found Allah on the moon.

Why We Need Bigger Government

Ray Haynes is truly a treasure. In this week’s Monday Morning Memorandum he patiently explains exactly why we need bigger government. A sample:

[G]overnment education, child care, and children’s programs. Parents don’t love their children, and want to be sure that every child they raise grows up ignorant and starving, so government must have school breakfast and lunch programs. Childhood obesity is a growing problem, especially among children on government run school breakfast and lunch programs. Ignorance is a growing problem, especially at government run schools, so government needs more money, more power and more bureaucrats.

Got that?

Kip Hawley may or may not be an idiot

But some of his TSA goons obviously are.

Passengers are now allowed to take drinks and other liquids onto airplanes if they bought them in airport shops located inside the security checkpoint. Air travelers can also carry on toiletries in containers of 3 ounces or less if they’re in a zip-top bag no bigger than a quart.

It was just that kind of bag that got Byrd crossways with airport security officials. Inside were his hair gel and toothpaste. On the outside was the message critical of Hawley.

Even more jaw-dropping is the claim by a TSA superviser that “he had no free speech rights inside the airport’s security checkpoint.”

Time to buy a few more of these.

Patriot Post

The Patriot Post, formerly known as The Federalist is “a concise, informative and entertaining analysis of the week’s most important news, policy and opinion” that you can get for free in your inbox. I hope that all Buttle’s World readers already subscribe. If you don’t yet, you can remedy that by signing up here.

They’re not always right, but when it comes to constitutional matters they have a near perfect batting average.

Loyola on the NAM

Mario Loyola finds Chavez both dangerous and indicative of coming change

.For all their pitifully unintended comedy, last week’s events in the General Assembly represent an ominous milestone in modern history. Anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism have long been a hallmark of the General Assembly; and the world’s myriad of petty dictatorships have long found in that forum both real comfort and false dignity. But never before have their rants been so unified in content and purpose. And never have their international intrigues been so extensively coordinated, now along an arc stretching from South America, across the Middle East, and to the Pacific Rim.

He foresees a collapse echoing the one that went before.

Remember that the legacy of the Non-Aligned Movement’s first generation was largely wiped out by its second. Nasser was followed by the capitalist and ultimately pro-American Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. In Indonesia, Sukarno was followed similarly by Suharto, and then by democratically-elected presidents. Perón was followed eventually by (mostly) pro-American presidents who were decidedly capitalist, even if they weren’t very good at it. Ultimately, the inevitable failure of the collectivist experiment impels people toward democracy and liberalism.

He also calls for deft diplomacy. I hope the Bush White House is up to it.

Nurse Bloomberg Strikes Again?

Now the city of New York wants to limit trans fats at restaurants.

“Trans fat causes heart disease. Like lead in paint, artificial trans fat in food is invisible and dangerous, and it can be replaced,” New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said in a statement.

Yes, just like lead in paint.

I thought New York restaurants had a reputation for tasty food, but apparently it’s difficult to tell food from paint there. Or maybe it’s just that the New York City Health Commissioner doesn’t know sh*t from shinola.

QOTD

AllahPundit observes: “There’s nothing so pathetic, or entertaining, as someone stupid trying to sound smart…”

Calling Chris Wallace a monkey is only the beginning of this hilarious meltdown.

This is roll-on-the-floor funny it’s so unhinged. I was expecting his pea brain to pop out through his ears.

Afghanistan Heats Up

Bad news in Michael Yon’s latest dispatch.

There is a widespread notion that Afghanistan is safer for our troops than Iraq, yet Coalition and NATO combat deaths in Afghanistan are per capita nearly identical to those in Iraq. In 2007, per capita combat deaths will–-in my opinion–-likely be significantly higher in Afghanistan than Iraq. Why? There are many reasons, but one of the most important is that after years of neglect and dawdling, our European allies are awakening to the reality that a monster really is under the bed. But this awareness is not keeping pace with the threat. Our European friends are still not providing their people with proper equipment, all while the Taliban is getting stronger from the billion-dollar narcotics backwash that floods enemy coffers. As in Iraq, troop numbers are also dangerously low in Afghanistan, where the handfuls of friendly forces additionally lack sufficient air power to stretch their security resources.

NATO is tentatively confronting the proximate and growing threat by sending more troops into battle, but they are sending troops with insufficient force protection. During my trip, I visited several bases. Steve needed to meet some Danish engineers who were to fly into Tarin Kot the next day by helicopter. When Steve asked an Australian Special Forces officer how to identify which helicopter the Danish engineers would arrive in, the Australian officer grimly answered, “It will be the only helicopter flying alone.”

Al Qaeda Losing in Iraq

I don’t like polls. But this one does seem interesting (and the margins are wide enough to probably mean something.)

Iraqi confidence in Iraqi forces (as opposed to militias) is increasing while its confidence in US forces is decreasing. Given US policies there can be little doubt but that US forces have lost significant Shia support and gained some Sunni support. I suspect increasing number of Shia no longer believe that American forces are capable of protecting them and with increased confidence in their government’s capabilities no longer fear the consequences of an American withdrawal.

This is a case where decreasing confidence in the American Military is actually a positive sign – at least to the extent that it’s balanced by increased confidence in the Iraqi forces.

Married, with Children?

Odds are you’re living in Republican territory, according to a fascinating survey in USA Today. They find that the “fertility gap” may be an important factor in upcoming elections.

This “fertility gap” is crucial to understanding the differences between liberals and conservatives, says Arthur Brooks, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University. These childbearing patterns shape divisions over issues such as welfare, education and child tax credits, he says.

“Both sides are very pro-kids. They just express it in different ways,” Brooks says. “Republicans are congenial to traditional families, which is clearly the best way for kids to grow up. But there are some kids who don’t have that advantage, and Democrats are very concerned with helping those kids.”

From the Memory Hole

A Buttle’s World Geek-Out moment:

A FOIA request has resulted in the release of cumulative indices of four cryptological journals, and a crypto history monograph series published by the NSA. Bruce Schneier has the story.

Some of the sample titles are intriguing. The BS Attitudes: How Things Work in Bureaucracies, anybody?

Is This the Drip?

Michelle Malkin wonders if Paul Pillar is the CIA leaker who has been feeding cherry-picked secret data to the NYT. One does wonder what he was doing at the CIA. Apparently now he’s at Georgetown where, I hope, he no longer has access to secret documents.