A Texas businessman responds to the building of an Islamic mosque near his property in a Houston suburb.

By holding pig races.  On Fridays, the Muslim holy day.

And then he says this to the press:

Shocking.  How could anyone possibly get such an idea?

Adam Hochschild wrote an amazing book called King Leopold’s Ghost a few years ago.  I interviewed the guy on my old radio show and was mightily impressed, both with him and his book.  It’s about the murderous Belgian colonization of the Congo, but it’s also an object lesson in the rationalizations of empire — about how hifalutin words like generosity to the natives so often turn out to be simply a fig leaf for self-interest, brutality, and plunder.

Bizarrely, George W. Bush recently claimed to have just finished it.  In which case, his reading-comprehension level must be near zero.

Adam just took the guy apart in the L.A. Times today.

Well, damn.

I just realized that the swearing-in of a new Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, means that Prisoner of Trebekistan’s goofy example of how to remember all of the Secretaries-General, in order (see pp. 96-98), is now obsolete.

Allow me to insert this addendum to the fifth full paragraph on page 97:

You may have to read the book to understand how that fits.

And no disrespect meant whatsoever to the former South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade who speaks three languages and holds a Masters Degree from Harvard.

Gee, hard to imagine.

Apparently the White House doesn’t want people reminded of how many opportunities they missed in handling Iran.

Really, don’t all of us feel this way sometimes?

But the pudu just keeps swimming, and he gets to the other side.

Worth remembering.

PS: Near as I can tell, the Spanish means "blessed, powerful river… wild Petrohu