Knife Fight in Caracas!
Even though F.D.R. did a mostly laudable job as President of the United States (with the damnable exception of gift-wrapping the whole of Eastern Europe for Josef Stalin), the Twenty-second Amendment was ratified less than six years after his demise. Hugo Chavez, friends, is no F.D.R.; so, my heart soared upon learning the Venezuelan people rejected Chavez's naked grab for life-long power: El Jefelink.

The Great White North
Egads, who doesn't get along with the Canadians? They are a nation dedicated to being as inoffensive as possible, even at the cost of being, with the brilliant exception of hockey, just about the most boring people on Earth: Persialink.

The Body of Chinese Gordon
As I remarked to a colleague last week, every time I try to fend off the sad tide of anti-Islamic hysteria and anti-Muslim bigotry, something like this or the Danish cartoon lunacy comes along: Teddy bearlink. The Cross and the Crescent were mortal foes for a millennium, but it doesn't have to be that way anymore. We can live together in peace! Idiocy like this is intensely unhelpful. It was just the name of a teddy bear, you hair-trigger buffoons!

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Student Rick, "In the Cold" from Soundtrack for a Generation (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Let the earth be smothered beneath a flawless white oblivion. Let the Accursed Sun be cloaked by an endless gray ceiling. Let there be pitiless ice and a merciless wind that chills to the bone. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

"The cruel, hot Summer
Led into the long, hard Fall
Becoming the dark, killing Winter
Until Spring replenished us all."

Welcome to the dark, killing Winter.