The American Spectator

July is adjourned, and none too soon for the Prophet Obama and his earthly spokesman, Vice President Joe Biden. In all the major polls the Prophet’s approval ratings have slipped into the negatives, from -3 for Gallup to -12 for Rasmussen Reports, with only Reuters adjudging him even. Time magazine gave had him a positive score (+4), but nobody reads it. According to the Washington Post, 6 in 10 voters have no faith in him as his polling data close in on those of Congress, which has 7 in 10 against it. The young are against him, the independents are against him, and an increasing number of African Americans are pointing out that he is white. Obama’s only good news in July was that he was not Mr. Al Gore, who had two more masseuses turn up, one of whom said that during her ministrations he pointed to his undraped male member and said “Take care of this”-memories of our 42nd president, no?

Cuban revolutionary leader, Dr. Fidel Castro, was back in the news. Dressed in his trademark jogging suit, he appeared at Cuba’s National Center of Scientific Investigations. Created in 1965 by Dr. Castro himself, the Center has not made one notable scientific discovery in any of the long years of its history. Not a torture chamber, not even a significantly painful means of execution-what the hell was the old tyrant doing there? Possibly he was reviewing the Center’s progress on health care: for instance its exciting work with placing dirty socks round the neck as a cure for cancer, or maybe he had heard that they had a leech that could cure his intestinal blockage. Later in the month Walter Kendall Meyers, 73, was sentenced to life imprisonment for spying on behalf of Cuba. He will also have to forfeit $1.7 million to the government, but the waggish Judge Reggie Walton allowed him to keep his 38-foot yacht. In Kampala, Uganda, at least 76 people were killed at a sports club when a bomb went off while they watched the World Cup soccer championships, which according to Sharia law is haraam. The Shabab, an Islamist group, took full credit for the atrocity, while Spain took the World Cup. In the Yemeni town of Zinjibar, a band of gunmen, associated with al Qaeda, attacked two security buildings, leaving four people dead and several others injured. Yet, later in the month Sultan Amin opened his luxury hotel anyway in the northern city if Saada amidst general gayety and small-arms fire. The amiable Mr. Amin quipped, “We had to stop every time the war was renewed, but two weeks ago we finally finished.” And he is open for business as the tourists pour in from nearby festive Somalia. A huge whale leaped from the sea off Cape Town, South Africa, landing on the yacht of Miss Paloma Werner, snapping the ship’s mast and leaving it in a heap. The American Spectator has long identified whales as a leading environmental problem. They are the oafs of the ocean and every year hundreds lumber up on the world’s beaches. The sad condition of Miss Werner’s yacht is but the most recent evidence that we should “Nuke the Whales,” or at any rate sign no more anti-whaling treaties.

The French National Assembly nearly unanimously voted to ban the burqa, a full-body robe occasionally worn by some Muslim women attempting to secret their children onto the Paris subway and otherwise impose upon French hospitality. The Mohammedans insist that they wear the burqa for modesty’s sake and in hopes of spreading the Mohammedans’ conception of beauty-but why not a nice floral arrangement? Back in the States it seemed that the burqa was being employed for more nefarious purposes when a woman wearing a bulky scarf robbed a McDonald’s fast food joint. But no, upon further inspection of the surveillance film it appears that she is not wearing a burqa at all, but rather had covered her head with a pair of men’s jockey briefs, and is not only a thief but some kind of weirdo. The investigation continues. This lady needs help!

In religious news from holy Islam, the Taliban hung a seven-year-old boy for spying on them and collaborating with the Afghan government of Mohammed Karzai. In the Holy City of Mecca, a man has consigned his son to be chained in the basement owing to the diabolical infestation of a genie, and it is not even his own basement but that of his former wife, Helga, or something like that. The son, 29-year-old Turki (pronounced simply tur´kee), has been shackled there for six years, and the genie still will not go away, even when the Koran is read. Turki’s problem seems to run in the family, as his father suffered the torment for four decades. “I used to see a woman,” the father said, “who would at times appear very beautiful and at times extremely ugly.” He preferred the ugly one. Yet there is also the good news from Araby. In Manama, Bahrain, Mrs. Khadija Ahmed’s Khadija Fashion House is doing a booming business in lingerie, sex toys, and ointments from her shop in the bizarre, just down the street from the local Mosque. Opened in 2008, Mrs. Ahmed is now planning to expand to Dubai and Lebanon, and she even has an e-mail address, www.khadijamall.com. Check it out, as they say. There are some things she will not sell. “I don’t sell vibrators, for example, as this is against Islam,” she says. Yet she does a terrific business in vibrating rings and tasty ointments, and for Islamic traditionalists she has bondage kits, leather chain neck collars, and the ever-popular Beaded Cat-o-Nine Tails. However, for the more traditional sex toys of the region, for instance, sheep and goats, one has to go out unto the countryside. They create a terrible mess in Miss Ahmed’s tidy shop.

In cultural news, two off-duty employees of Six Flags Great America theme park in Gurnee, Illinois, were arrested for beating up Porky Pig. The fellows took their pictures with Porky but then became incensed with him, beating him about the head and shoulders possibly upon discovering that he is actually a she, a 24-year-old woman whose name has been withheld until she feels better. A 34-year-old performance artist was arrested in Kingsport, Tennessee, when her stunt went awry and she passed out in a drive-thru lane of a local Taco Bell at 11:30 p.m. Police confiscated several open cases of beer and pills from the woman’s purse. They also arrested the two people in her audience, both of whom had passed out and neither of whose names was released. Finally, in San Diego, California, police are looking for a professor, possibly of the humanities, in that bank robbery in which the thief escaped on a skateboard. The thief covered his face with a green paisley bandana and a beanie. Otherwise he looked perfectly normal.

There has been an outbreak of verbal barbarity in Europe. In Germany a man was charged with violating the German constitution for having on his mobile tone ring a short yet customarily rambling speech by Adolf Hitler, the late German chancellor. Sounding vaguely reminiscent of Mr. Howard Dean’s famed “yell,” it alarmed fellow riders on a Hamburg train, and quick police work was rewarded when they found the weirdo’s phone engauded with swastikas and a picture of Mr. Hitler with the words, “The greatest commander of all time.” Think about Stalingrad! In Britain, Mrs. Shirley Brown, a Bristol Lib Dem, was convicted under the Public Order Act for using “threatening, abusive, or insulting words, with intent to cause harassment, alarm, or distress.” Mrs. Brown directed her invective at Mrs. Jay Jethwa, whom she called a “coconut.” Finally, Mr. John Bercow, who is short but not that short, received an apology from Tory MP Simon Burns for calling him a “stupid sanctimonious dwarf.” The apology came after Walking With Giants Foundation protested. No group has protested the rest of the charge, so presumably the charge sticks.