Jimmy Carter Retrieves Aijalon In North Korea, Vladimir VS The Whale

Kathleen Parker
John Nichols
EJ Dionne Jr

"Instead of unity, we have dueling marches; competitions over "sacred" grounds; debates over religion and language that never should have been invited to the party. Who can articulate this misplaced American vision? Obama did so beautifully at the 2004 Democratic convention, but his words have lost power through their impotent application." - Kathleen Parker

"Republicans are in the midst of an insurrection. Democrats are not. This vast gulf between the situations of the two parties — not some grand revolt against “the establishment” or “incumbents” — explains the year’s primary results, including Tuesday’s jarring outcomes in Florida and Alaska... Liberals who saw Bush’s presidency as a failed right-wing experiment thought Republicans would search for more moderate ground, much as Britain’s Tories turned to the soothing leadership of David Cameron to organize their comeback. But this expectation overlooked the exodus of moderates over the last decade, which has shifted the balance of power in Republican primaries far to the right." - EJ Dionne Jr

We have them in every culture, people who are lost and seeking religious fulfillment. People who have opened their hearts, let their spirits fly, and cannot find their way back to mundane reality. We usually call them crazy and put them in hospitals or give them their own Hour of Power, but before that they were often taken care of by the churches. In India, Meher Baba called them masts, and spent much of his life looking for them and caring for them.

Now, we have Jimmy Carter flying into North Korea to ask for the humanitarian release of Aijalon Gomes, a 31 year old man from Boston who walked into the Forbidden Kingdom from China. Aijalon had been teaching English in South Korea, and had recently been attending services at the: "Every Nation Church of Korea in Seoul. American Robert Park, who attended the same church, had walked into North Korea one month before Gomes did. North Korea detained Park for six weeks but then released him." Every Nation Church also has several families who are defectors from North Korea, and they often have intense prayer sessions for the rest of those families still stuck in the North.

"I don't know why exactly he did it [entered North Korea] but he just — I'm sure he felt that God was saying to him good can come out of this,"

Even though Jimmy Carter's visit is supposed to be unofficial, the agreement to release our American mast had already been agreed to, with North Korea asking us to please, come and get him, he is crazier and more suicidal than any local we have under lock and key... Besides, it gives the US and North Korea an excuse to meet and talk about further relations instead of the positions that are blustered about in the press.

Here's hoping that this will be the last of these kinds of incidents, as we're running out of ex-Presidents that we can send. Hell, we can't even get George Bush to go out and support his wife's memoirs, and you certainly haven't seen him visiting any military families lately... Since Iran doesn't seem to be enamored by any of our politicians, who could we get to go there and get those hikers out of prison? Would Kobe Bryant do the trick, or would we be better off sending in Piper Perabo to charm Ahmadinejad's ass off? Inquiring minds want to know...

President Obama is mulling over whether to go to Jerusalem and Cairo in an effort to help spur along the Palestinian negotiations, once they get started in Sept. With the escalating in bombings in Baghdad, guess he won't be making any surprise side trips...

While Russia burns, it's very own Nero was videotaped shooting darts at a grey whale off the Kamchatka Peninsula: "Prime Minister Vladimir Putin fired darts from a crossbow at a gray whale off the Pacific coast on Wednesday in the latest in a series of man-versus-nature stunts designed to cultivate the image of a macho leader.


Putin held his balance in a rubber boat that was being tossed around in choppy waters off the Kamchatka Peninsula, and eventually hit the whale with a special arrow designed to collect skin samples."

"I hit it on the fourth try!" - a beaming Putin

Vlad has a strange way of trying to popularize himself, strangely reminding me of Sarah Palin at times. His other stunts have been: "... photographed fishing bare-chested in the Altai republic, and was shown on television diving into an icy river and swimming the butterfly stroke. In April, he attached a satellite-tracking collar onto a tranquilized polar bear. He also has shot a Siberian tiger with a tranquilizer gun and released leopards into a wildlife sanctuary." Figuring that his wussy Prime Minister won't have a chance against him if he decides to run in 2012, Putin's message to Mother Russia is that he is fit and ready, in a creepy macho way, that: "... it is Putin, rather than his junior co-leader President Dmitry Medvedev, who is equipped to look after Russia, its people and environment. "

Vladimir has two years yet to make his coy decision on whether to run or not. Are there any animals still living that can stand up to him and his staged events? If only John McCain had paid attention or hired Putin to run his presidential campaign, he would be president and we would be asking McCain for his birth certificate (born in Panama), and he wouldn't have had to prostitute himself to beat some old blowhard conservative hack like Hayworth...

For the past week the Jewish newspaper Haaretz has been hosting an article on the Nazis inspired architecture on a military base near San Diego. It was built 38 years ago and there were plans to fix the buildings, but either everyone was just too lazy, or there wasn't enough money in the budget that year, or they plain forgot, or they really don't care, the swastika still remains: