[BRIEF NOTE] Oh what I've missed out on

The story of Oklahoma House of Representatives representative Sally Kern, who in a speech given to a group of Republicans that was videoed and uploaded to YouTube "criticized gay people for indoctrinating children, lamented the growing number of gay politicians, [. . .] said gays will “destroy this nation”" and claimed that the gay community "poses a “bigger threat, even more so than terrorists or Islam,” to the United States" has gotten quite a lot of coverage in the United States and elsewhere. (Kern stands by her statements.)

"Review - Datawind UbiSlate 7Ci" (Watch on YouTube)

It's at times like these that I'm reminded of the old joke about the Jewish reader of Der Stürmer.

"Two Jewish guys are sitting on a bench in a park, one is reading Haaretz, the other one is reading Der Stürmer. The Jew reading Haaretz looks worried, the Jew reading Der Stürmer is smiling all the time.

"The Haaretz reader says: 'It's not good, what's happening in the world. It's not good what could happen to the Jews.'

"The Der Stürmer reader says: 'Of course you start to think like that. You are reading the wrong newspaper.'

"The Haaretz reader says: 'The wrong newspaper? What are you reading?'

"The Der Stürmer reader answers: 'I am reading this antisemitic paper. They write the Jews own the world, we have all the power, we run all the banks, all the political parties, all the big companies. After reading this, I always feel a lot better.'"

[BRIEF NOTE] They keep hanging on

As expected, the 2008 Alberta provincial election resulted in a resounding victory for the ruling Conservative Party.

The Conservatives made it look easy in Alberta again Monday night, rolling to another comfortable majority victory in the provincial election.

It was a major win and vindication for rookie Tory Leader Ed Stelmach, the unassuming farmer-turned-premier who took the keys to the Conservative kingdom from Ralph Klein almost 15 months ago.

Stelmach's win extends the Conservatives' 37-year reign in Alberta and delivers the party its 11th consecutive majority government.

It's good news," a grinning and laughing Stelmach said after being told one media projection was pointing to a majority victory only 20 minutes after polls had closed.

"That's very early, 20 minutes."

Early morning results showed the Tories were elected in 72 ridings while the Liberals were elected in just nine and the New Democrats were elected in two. The numbers put Stelmach in charge of a majority government a few notches above the one that existed when the election was called, when the Tories had 60 of 83 seats, the Liberals 16, the NDP four and the right-wing Wildrose Alliance party one.

"We've shown, once again, that we're in tune with Albertans' values, we're in tune with Albertans' priorities," the beaming Conservative premier told a cheering crowd in Calgary.

"And in this election we've shown that we have new ideas, new energy, new leadership for a new century."

Canadian comedian Rick Mercer has noted that, at 37 years, the Conservative Party has ruled Alberta longer than the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola has ruled that unfortunate country, and is fast approaching the 41 years of rule that East Germany enjoyed under the Socialist Unity Party.

[LINK] "Pot Kettle Black: Yugoslav Map of the Near-Collapsing US"

Strange Maps features a rather remarkable Yugoslavian map of a United States nearing collapse thanks to internal separatism and external attack, scanned from a Communist-era encyclopedia seen in Dubrovnik.

Although the Soviet navy has got the North American continent completely surrounded, in my opinion, the map does not demonstrate a Soviet plan of attack, but restates the Communist ideological orthodoxy of the US as an aggressive, unstable monstrosity at near-collapse – a remarkable example of the pot calling the kettle black.

• Whereas blue indicates the US itself (Sjedinjene Americke Drzave, acronym SAD – but that is a coincidence, I presume), yellow indicates ’separatist’ forces at work in the North American continent, such as Quebec (although that is a Canadian, not a US issue) and Black Muslims (around Chicago) and Mexican-Americans (in Texas). Again, a pretty remarkable comment, coming from a Yugoslav atlas.
• Item #5 on the legend indicates, I think, ‘disputed’ marine boundaries, mainly between Canada and the US, thus misrepresenting the mainly friendly relations between those two countries – the disputes might be real, but their significance is relatively minor.

The discussion in the comments is quite entertaining, and enlightening. For all of its relative liberalism, it turns out, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia still was run by people who believed in the historic inevitability of worldwide Communism. It's a minor irony that independent non-aligned Yugoslavia would not have fared well in the aftermath of such a crushing Soviet victory over the United States.