http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/009438.html

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.

The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement.

And a compelling argument for bringing back public floggings.  When I am king of the world, it will be so.

Yes, well I hope, and expect, that he will prevail in a Russian court.

As much as I admire him, he doesn't hold a candle to Boulder, Colorado's "El Dildo Bandido".  Apologies in advance for this, since it is a bit on the "adult" side, but this is culturally relevant, and Don Wrege's and Peter Boyles' response to is is just downright funny. Sometimes rampant evil done by the kind of intellectual derelict and emotional cripple who inhabits Boulder, CO is just so banal that you have to make light of it. (And I believe the demons in hell shriek when they are so mocked.) Here's a link to the story.

Mr. Wrege did a parody song about the Boulder librarian, Marcelee Gralapp (what a name), who hung the "units" on display. The MP3 file has disappeared from Wrege's site, but the lyrics are still there:

Marcelee Gralapp
to the tune of "Eleanor Rigby" by Paul McCartney

Marcelee Gralapp
She caused a big flap when she refused to fly the flag
She's such a drag

Ben Nighthorse-Campbell
Wrote her a letter requesting that she change her mind
She still declined

All the dangling dildos
Anatomically correct
All the dangling dildos
Multicolored and erect

Changes her story
Now says the flag is too big to be hung in this place
With a straight face

Republic of Boulder
They support free speech if they agree with what you say
(Other)wise no way

What must she be thinking?
Well one thing leaves no doubt
(As) library director
It's time to check her out

Ahhh...look at all the dangling dildos
Ahhh...look at all the dangling dildos

Then Tom Tancredo
Drafted a bill that he knows won't see the light of day
But what the hey?

Marcelee Gralapp
Tries to defend her unpatriotic stance today
Please go away.

All the dangling dildos
Anatomically correct
All the dangling dildos
Multicolored and erect

And here are the lyrics to El Dildo Bandido:

El Dildo Bandido
to the tune of "El Paso" by Marty Robbins

Out in a town called Boulder Colorado
There was a public librarian there
She thought the American flag was insulting
But hanging penises so debonair

Young people gawked and asked their mothers questions
About the artwork called hung out to dry
Hanging a flag is no longer objective
21 Penises though are all right

Then Peter Boyles got wind of the case
Media followed in stride---
A public employee thinks that our flag is offensive
Only in Boulder could she survive

So in anger
El Dildo Bandido felt he should take action
The situation had come to a head
He took the penises down from the display
Left an American flag instead

El Dildo Bandido is proud of his country
Proud of the freedom of speech that we share
But genitalia found hanging in public
Is out of place when the children are there

He staged a daring escape from the place
Out by the Canyon side---
Penises jangling he jumped into his car
Headed for Heatherwood where he resides

And the artist's
A psychology student who¹s seeking some answers
Maybe she¹ll find out why her art is sick

Then when the Boulder police did arrest him
El Dildo Bandido gladly confessed
Boulder Police had fin'ly found a suspect
Mainly because he gave them his address

Boulder's a place where even a nut case
Can be elected the Mayor---
But if you try to apply common sense
Buddy you don¹t have a chance or a prayer

And for now Bandido
Has been arrested and faces a court date
For his brave actions a veteran is tried
We should let Boulder officials hear our voice
Let them know that we are all on his side.

Whither goeth chivalry?

By Loredana Vuoto
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Chivalry is dead, Edmund Burke famously declared. Perhaps the news of chivalry's death was premature — in 1790, Burke was denouncing the arrest of Marie Antoinette in the French Revolution.

But gentlemanly courtesy and honor have become increasingly rare, says Brad Miner, and today the chivalrous man is "ex mille electus," one in a thousand.

There "have never been many chivalrous men, but they are essential in the life of a society," says Mr. Miner, author of "The Compleat Gentleman: The Modern Man's Guide to Chivalry."

The archaic spelling of "compleat" suggests that traditional ideals are long gone. Mr. Miner contends that Americans now live "in a time in which the idea of a gentleman and of chivalry are in retreat."

Mr. Miner says fathers are partly to blame for the decline of chivalry. Fathers "make clear what the virtues of a gentleman are by example," he says.

"If you yourself don't aspire to be a gentleman, you certainly won't instill that aspiration in your sons," Mr. Miner says. "It is always easier to take the easy way. That is why, both past and present, you don't have many men aspiring to be chivalrous."

Terrence O. Moore, principal of Ridgeview Classical Schools in Fort Collins, Colo., shares this concern over the loss of gentlemanly ideals. Young men today — the "sons of Murphy Brown," he called them in a recent essay — tend to be either "wimps or barbarians," rather than seeking a "golden mean" of manliness.

Many boys are "disappointed in the culture and sometimes in their parents, for not having taught them the basic ideas of courtesy, gentlemanliness and authentic manliness," Mr. Moore says.

Mr. Miner says his book was inspired by a scene in the 1997 movie, "Titanic," As the ship is sinking, philanthropist Benjamin Guggenheim and other male passengers go to the bar dressed in white tie and tails. When one of the ship's crew urges him to don a life jacket, Guggenheim responds, "No, we are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down as gentlemen."

That chivalrous gesture, Mr. Miner says, inspired only laughter in a group of young teenage boys sitting behind him in the theater where he saw "Titanic." Baffled by their response, he says, he began to explore why gentlemanly ideals were no longer respected.

The "compleat gentleman," Mr. Miner says, exhibits qualities of a lover, a monk and a warrior:

•As a lover, a gentleman "gives his wife her own way. He respects her as a person, and respects therefore, her decisions as a woman."

•As a warrior, a gentleman fights for what is right and stands up for what he believes in. In the Middle Ages, the "warrior code that was emerging, was also the practice of courtly love," Mr. Miner says.

•As a monk, a gentleman must embrace learning and have a stoic attitude toward death. Monks live "in the presence of death all the time," he says, "and so should a compleat gentleman, because it focuses his mind on why things are worth fighting for."

At the heart of chivalry, Mr. Moore says, is the idea of noblesse oblige — an ethic of service: By placing others first, men learn how to be courteous and respectful.

This is more than a problem for boys, the Colorado educator says: Young women are looking for virtuous, chivalrous men and are discouraged by not finding them.

Feminists have "undermined the idea of traditional manhood" and it is for this reason women must "appeal to the heroic in men," Mr. Moore says.

Charlotte Hays, senior editor at the Independent Women's Forum, blames "this haglike feminism that has developed" for destroying chivalry by denying differences between men and women.

In order to recover gentlemanly ideals, she says, society must "reject what is generally called feminism — the kind that wants to send women into combat ... and recognize that men and women are basically different, and that it is historically the role of the male species to put the lady first."

Feminists disagree.

The decline in manners is not just about men, says feminist author Naomi Wolf, co-founder of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership.

"Young men and young women are not taught to be kind to elderly people, to give up their seat to a pregnant woman, to be as good as their word," she said. "I don't see this as feminism causing this decline. I see it as a set of social factors which are degrading the values of young men and young women."

Ms. Wolf cites such influences as pornography, MTV, reality-TV shows and the fact that "the left insists that education be secular."

Patricia Williams, feminist and columnist at the left-wing Nation magazine, says society is facing "a decline of manners among both men and women and has nothing to do with gender."

She says a "kind of nostalgia for the man who believed in civic virtue and the woman who embodied ... true womanhood disguises the extent of the many deplorable social problems we have now."

However, Mr. Miner says, many men use feminist arguments as an excuse for behaving like cads.

"Some men take the claims of feminism in order to reject the idea that men ought to show deference to women. But to a compleat gentleman, none of that matters," he says.

Chivalry and courtly love were really "a kind of proto-feminist idea that was a force for civilizing men," says Mr. Miner, saying that medieval women taught men the virtues of civility. "Just as it was in the Middle Ages, so it is now, that men must learn the most important things of all from women."

Mr. Moore agrees: "If men know they have to prove themselves and that they have to marry the women they have sex with, men will have to become marriageable and manly, rather than just cool and funny," he says.

Gee, ya think?

The following was received 21 March 2002 from P. Parker.

French Intellectuals to be Deployed to Afghanistan (Reuters)

The ground war in Afghanistan heated up yesterday when the Allies revealed plans to airdrop a platoon of crack French existentialist philosophers into the country to destroy the morale of al-Qaeda by proving the non-existence of God.

Elements from the feared Jean-Paul Sartre Brigade, or "Black Berets", will be parachuted into the combat zones to spread doubt, despondency and existential "anomie" among the enemy. Hardened by numerous intellectual battles fought during their long occupation of Paris' Left Bank, their first action will be to establish a number of pavement Cafes at strategic points near the front lines.

There they will drink coffee and talk animatedly about the absurd nature of life and man's lonely isolation in the universe. They will be accompanied by a number of heartbreakingly beautiful girlfriends who will further spread dismay by sticking their tongues in the philosophers' ears every five minutes and looking remote and unattainable to everyone else.

The brigade leader, Colonel Marc-Ange Belmondo, spoke yesterday of his confidence in the success of their mission. Sorbonne graduate Belmondo, a very intense and unshaven young man in a black pullover, gesticulated wildly and said, "The al-Qaeda are caught in a logical fallacy of the most ridiculous. There is no God and I can prove it. Take your tongue out of my ear, Juliet, I am talking."

Marc-Ange plans to deliver an impassioned thesis on man's nauseating freedom of action with special reference to the work of Foucault and the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

However, humanitarian agencies have been quick to condemn the operation as inhumane, pointing out that the effects of second hand smoke from the Frenchmen's endless Gauloise cigarettes could wreak a terrible toll on civilians in the area.

Speculation was mounting last night that Britain may also contribute to the effort by dropping Professor Stephen Hawking into Afghanistan to propagate his non-deistic theory of the creation of the universe. Other tactics to demonstrate the non-existence of God will include the dropping of leaflets pointing out the fact that Michael Jackson has a new album out and Jesse Helms has not died yet. This is only one of several Psy-Op operations mounted by the Allies.

Oh yes we can:

Here.

And here.

The "first tier" be damned.  Damned to hell.  To the ninth tier thereof.

Can you blame them?