Its immensely fascinating that within the first society in the history of civilization to establish an untrespassable barrier between church and state, the obtuse, pig-headed aphoristic formulation “I’m a man of faith” is permitted such unquestionable exaltation and immediate, almost by default respect. “Oh my, that Senator says he’s a man of God, that automatically elevates his respectability in my book!”. Its a bizarre, and universally acknowledged and adhered point of undocumented etiquette, if someone of power professes their alleged spirituality, they must be decent candidates for persons of high character, honestly, and intellectual fortitude.

This is foolishness, a squalid surrender of our most basic human drives of self-respect and critical cerebral faculties. When three Republican candidates (Huckabee, Tancredo, and the now obsolete Brownback) profess their denial of the scientific fact of evolution (yes fact, the only reason its labelled a “theory” is because an epoch transcendtion apparatus hasn’t been manufactured yet to evaporate that .01 percent probability of an evolutionary biology fallacy, just to clear things up for all the religious bumpkins out there) and have capitulated their intentions to indoctrinate the feeble masquerade of a disguise for creationism that is (un)intellgient design, this is something everyone should be incredibly concerned about.

When Mitt Romney is the latest in a dynastic crime family which has wielded considerable influence in the patently flagrant cult and scam-artist outfit that is the Mormon church, an organization that was officially racist up till 1978 (when it received a convenient revelation, just in time for the Civil Rights Act) and has made dogmatic worship of wholly fabricated “holy” texts which capitulate the extra-legal authority of church elders, and have taken advantage of such preachments as evidenced by the blatantly totallitarian, repressive, regressive, racist, male supremacist theocratic armageddonist colonies initiated by Mormon leaders operating within the boundaries of a country governed by a secular constitution.

He has recently been delivering tirades against critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the brainchild of a pathetic little convicted liar and con-artist named Joseph Smith), arguing that they’re “discriminatory”, and failing to recognize the irony that the church was openly racist up to a few decades ago. A representative of this diabolical and heinous organization is now a front-runner for the next president of the United States, this is something people should be intensely worried about.

But no one is worried about any of these blindingly apparent harbingers of doom. From Mormonism to Islam and all the worthless gunk in between, outright charlatans and frauds peddling belief systems so ludicrous that any child could cut through them in seconds and would otherwise be subject to universal societal ridicule and contempt are granted an inpenetrable veneer of political correctness shielding. For some inexplicable reason, its not culturally or politically expedient to attack individuals based on their supposedly most core and sincere ideals, which paradoxically is what most matters when granting someone the right to govern over you.

People like Mike Huckabee can get away with spitting on the very foundational frameworks of science, boast that he will tear your children away from a serious education, gleefully accepts campaign contributions from Falwell Jr, the son of an open theocratic fascist and terrorism-masochist, and promises that he will bar potentially promising and medically lucrative stem-cell research, and the confluences of the masses react with reticence. In fact, they respect him more for it because he’s “a man of the book”, and give him more votes. This is grotesque, shameful, and utterly disgraceful to the original premise of the American experiment engendered by the founding fathers, a group of highly intellectual deist thinkers constantly conjured up by the religious right to boost their agenda, but always in complete failure of cognition.

For shame, America. For shame. From the Middle-East, to the Middle-West, hucksters and demagogues are trying to dismember the glorious gift of secularism that makes this country so spectacular and unique. And you’re giving it away without a fight, in fact, you’re applauding and rewarding your oppressors. The side of liberty will fortify Jefferson’s Wall as long as possible, but until the masses wake up and stop their pattern of supplying their murderers with armaments, we cannot be fully free from this tyranny.

God bless America, God help us all.

There are few companies that have accumulated an aura of nearly universal name-recognition, respect, admiration and incitations of long nostalgic musings of golden days of yore as Nintendo. Even as a foreign corporate outfit, the Big N is an American cultural hallmark, kids trust Mario more than their parents, parents know that a package affiliated with the notorious Japanese digital wizardy group is safe for the kids. Nearly everyone, regardless of age group, has fond memories with a Nintendo product at some point or another; whether it was figuring out the secret passageway to Bowser’s castle in the old-skool Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo, or having a Gameboy be your only company for those long bus rides, or even shooting at your drunken friends all night long on GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64, just about everyone, even grimace-faced Xbox fanboys who’ll deny it to the death while selling their bodies to Master Chief, have had cherished memories because of Nintendo’s handiwork. Everyone loves Nintendo.

Well, leave it to an environmentalist to take a piss all over this wispy picture.

Yep, make way for the world’s most useless and paradoxically pretentious watchdog group, Greenpeace. The tree-huggers brigade has named Nintendo the most ecologically toxic electronics manufacturer in the nation in its latest “Guide to Greener Electronics”.

And the cited reasoning behind this slander?

Greenpeace charges that Nintendo’s refusal to abandon polyvinyl chloride plastics, by consensus one of the most industrially crucial and molecullarly versatile production components available, is stable grounds for Nintendo’s indictment. Without substantiation the plastic is deemed by Greenpeace as hazardously poisonous, and Nintendo must cease its deployment of it as a production material immediately. No regards to labor standards or energy use are paid, but then again, environmentalists don’t really know much about such tangible, non-abstract, proveable and measurable principles, they wouldn’t be environmentalists otherwise.

But the true fallacy of Greenpeace’s allegations is their second line of reasoning: Nintendo is a environmental scourge for the sole fact that their business model incorporates no means by which customers can recycle their old products.

Now, lets think about this carefully for a minute. I think even a braindead herbosexual can come to the conclusion that this is just absurd. Recycle videogame platforms? What twisted chemical reaction gave you such a patently nonsensical idea! People either keep their old consoles for nostalgia’s sake or sell them at garage sales, I don’t even think a tree-whoring hippie could posess the sheer stupidity to attempt to recycle them. Yeah, a worldwise multi-billion dollar video entertainment company doesn’t have a “Recycle your Gamecube Department”, I can already hear the anguished cries of the polar bears!

What grotesque, flagrantly fatuous fabricated formulations. But this is nothing new, one of Greenpeace’s trademarks is its baseless attacks and lies against financially illustrious enterprises. Last around the same time they awarded this same “most eco-unfriendly” tripe to Apple, whom had hit its market-zenith around the same period. Now, with Nintendo financially rejuvenating itself in spades with its universally appealing Wii platform selling a staggering 650,000 units in two weeks in November, it makes for an easy target for the ghastly sensatinoalist paranoia-profiteers of the environemtalist corps. After all, when you yourself produce nothing and are hated by most, why not make up lies about those who are actually effective and productive members of society?

No matter. Nintendo doesn’t give a damn, and why should they? No one takes anything Greenpeace says seriously, and this won’t hurt their profits one infinitesimal incremental iota. Tree-hugging losers didn’t make a difference with their stoned masses screeching like monkeys on the streets in the 60s, and they still wield zero influence now in their fancy think tank headquarters and media centers. A braindead primate is still a braindead primate, Greenpeace can shove a Wii-mote up its ass and no one will care.

J.J. Abrams has always been one of Hollywood’s finest, a man whom can seemingly create cinematographic masterpieces out of all of his properties without any effort at all. In a boundless sea of broadcasting abject mediocrity, he spearheaded the genius Alias and Lost. His instantiation of the MIssion Impossible series, MI: III, was bar none the best in the series. His unique, singular presence as a scholarly nerd amongst non-sapient numbskulls awarded him the priviledge of being conscripted as the director of a long-awaited and badly-needed new incarnation into the Star Trek film franchise, a profoundly challenging endeavour I have faith he will succeed in. He also has an adaptation of Stephen King’s prolific The Dark Tower series in the pipeline, which should be awesome. I need hardly complement these fawning adulations with the post-script that yeah, I’m a huge Abrams fan.

So its no surprise that since July I’ve been pretty heavily embroiled into the rigorous online fanfare over that then untitled 1-18-08 Project, a film who’s existence came into being through a cryptic and tantalizing teaser trailer which preceded the astoundingly overrated CGI-masturbation fest that was the new Transformers movie. This initial teaser fomented an astonishing mealstrom of hyper-active speculation, rumors, conspiracy theories, news websites devoted solely to the miniscule smidgeons of information that were occasionally leaked about the movie, hoax websites, and likewise.

This buzz, nay, deafening noise, was generated almost solely as a consequence of a brilliant marketing move by Abrams. To my knowledge the trailer in question was the first in history not to actually reveal the title of the movie, it would simply disclose the release date “1-18-08″, and cut to the silly feature presentation involving animatronic visualizations and revolting teen comedy. When people saw this, a trailer involving some sort of monster attack but no sight of the monster and no title to speak of, they were aghast. And thats exactly what Abrams intended.

Rumor mills churned at quantum-speed, within days there were whole blogcasts and Youtube examination videos devoted to the task of dissecting the trailer, figuring out the title, the backstory, and whatnot. Abrams fed the flame he had ignited with masterful precision, creating official mini-sites with puzzles and clues about the movie, going as far as to making a site which sold t-shirts which were seen in the movie. There would be mock interviews with the cast in character posted on various sites, sites in Japanese with clues about the movie embedded deep within, revealing scraps of mythology behind the backstory of the movie (apparently the monster is some sort of underwater alien incited to violence by the scent of a chemically volatile soft-drink, or some such thing, this is how insane and meticulous the momentum for the film had become. And all this was engineered, coordinated, and planned by Abrams and his crew as marketing fodder for the film.

Throughout the last couple months the movie had no real name of course. There were various code-names, Abrams mentioned “Project Cloverfield” at Comic-Con, but various other names including Monstrous, Overnight, and bizarrely enough Cheese were also used by the Bad Robot boys. Hype and fan devotion to the movie reached its zenith at around mid-September. Things were going good, the movie didn’t even have an actual name yet and already it had whole networks of fan-sites genuflecting at its feet. Abrams was catering to this quite well, specifically creating media about the movie, divulging miniscule bits of information here and there to satiate the masses, but not enough to actually shed any light on anything.

And then came October. And things sort of his a glass ceiling stasis. Incipiently or explicitly, the official updates from Abrams all but evaporated, there wasn’t any word about the movie for a month and a half. It was as if they were cultivating a huge cathartic fan reaction, and then cutting it short with no pay off. The long-awaited second trailer never came. Updates all but ceased on the official side of things, and a whole orchestra of fan forums and blogs were left without any tunes to play. Or so one would have imagined.

No, no, you can’t stop the fans. You can never, ever stop the fans. This is one thing all creative engineers should realize quite early, apparently Abrams forgot. The forums, in an absence of legitimate points of discussion or articulation, began festering into a nonsensical flurry of absurdly ridiculous frantic speculation. Wholly fabricated “inside leaks” began to show up all over the place, idiotic theories devoid of any plausibility were composed left and right, inane fan ramblings about impending “break-throughs” in the movie were rampant. It was almost as if some of these network administrators gravitated their lives around Cloverfield, that they had gained all their recognition and popularity from this movie, and now with its apparent hiatus in information, they had some sort of psychological implosion. In the absense of actual news, they manufactured it, and I have to tell you it was really annoying reading this stuff, and Abrams should have forseen it. You don’t just build up astronomical hype just for two months of almost absolute down-time.

But then, I don’t know if anyone could have predicted such cultist fans, creating what was essentially a spiritual altar to what was barely a movie, a tiny teaser trailer with no title. Some of those guys really needed to make some friends outside their little online forums.

Well, yesterday he finally ameliorated that problem, with the full theatrical trailer of the movie playing in front of the Transformers-esque substanceless visual-effects demonstration (and wholly non-related to the literary masterpiece of the same name) Beowulf. Apparently having been faced with the avalanche of fan demands for what the title should be, he simply reverted to the default and called it Cloverfield. What that name means, if anything, and how it at all relates to a giant monster rampaging through New York City is yet to be determined.

In any case I have to say I’m pretty damn stoked for this movie. It looks like a pretty impressive hybrid of a The Last Broadcast-style docuhorror movie with old-school Godzilla and a bit of a 28 Days Later twist, with insinuations of urban contaminations and infections being a plot convention in the movie, as evidenced by the stills of a biohazard suit equipped person in the movie. The fan fervor over Cloverfield was pretty ridiculous for a couple months and hard to stand, and admittedly the marketing scheme for Cloverfield has been pretty esoteric, if not superfluous and silly at times. It seemed like it was actually a harbinger for a forthcoming apocalyptic alien onslaught rather than a movie. But then, that was probably the intention.

But why devote a whole editorial about this movie?

Because I guarantee, whether this is a shining pinnacle of filmographic excellence or a disgraceful epitomizer of the industry’s downfall, this is going to be one of the biggest movies of 2008. We haven’t yet gotten a real look at the beast in the movie, but I can tell that its colossal enough to make even a flop attraction great attention.

Let there be no mistake, I have no doubt this movie is going to kick some serious ass. It won’t be a numinous masterpiece, but it’ll be a definitive big-screen, classic popcorn flick. I’m going to say right now that its going to prove that CGI is great, but it ain’t everything. I’m sure it’ll put the sodden jokes of movies that its trailers premiered before to shame.

And if it really does fail?

Remember Abrams, the fans will make your monster look like Dennis Kucinich: scared, pathetic, and weak.

You have exactly two months.

You better make us proud.

I’ve more than once expressed my visceral contempt and personal vendetta against the cognition-rending cosmic mediocrity of an outfit that is the entertainment industry. Its like a dysfunctional machine that produces nothing but broken and ineffective products with the utmost inefficiency and yet still makes a profit, all the while gleefully patting itself on the ass in self-satisfied reverberations of toxic smugness. I want the entirety of Santa Monica Boulevard immolated into a nuclear crater wasteland, I want Broadway burned to the ground, I want Hollywood to be incinerated by an unending firestorm of enchanted hellfire. They all damn well deserve it, and I truly thought they could sink no further.

But astoundingly, they have. Hollywood has just crossed the line. The picket line. And now even the eternal ravaging torment indicted in my preceding capitulations is too good for these sordid bastards.

Apparently it wasn’t enough for these college drop-out dolts to receive wholly undeserved hundreds of thousands of dollars for their pathetic, laughably miserable prose they call scripts. Sodden and disgraceful abominations of linguistics, the vast majority of Hollywood screenwriters posess writing capabilities tantamount to autistic 4th graders. And yet they receive their meaty commisions and win their ugly little awards and receive bags of equally repulsively composed fan mail from their sycophantic audiences. You’d think that would be enough, that they would be gracious and grateful that only in America can undiluted non-talent be offered handsome monetary benefactions. You’d think they would leave well enough alone and shut the fuck up.

But no, like all such pompous vermin, they’re proud of their unparalelled mediocrity. They’re not content with their fabulously over-compensated salaries, these greedy little urchin want more. And the best part is the comically ludicrous pretext by which they’ve framed their stilly little strike. Basically, they’re arguing for significant residuals on not only DVDs, but also on the episodes that are streamed via the major networks broadband-streamed content distribution pipelines. Because thats the “wave of the future”.

Now, the WGA is arguing for a extravagant doubling of their residuals for DVD sales. This is insane, DVD production incurs a great deal of effort and technical costs, with the engineering of menus, special features, packaging, and likewise. These are all facets of DVD distribution that writers have absolutely no part in, they’re already being paid for essentially nothing, now they want double? Just because your name may be attached to something, doesn’t give you jurisdiction over its sales. This makes about as much sense as a licensed musician, who contributed a single track to a movie soundtrack, demanding for double the financial gratification to a project he was barely invovled in.

But the real crux in the absurdity of the WGA’s argument is its take on internet content provision. Basically the contention they’re making, that online video outlets will be the primary medium of content consumption in the future, may or may not be a prospective reality 5-10 years down the line. Currently ABC’s own online video distribution service has fairly meager viewership curves when compared to its traditional television ratings. NBC’s is even more pathetic since its not delivered in HD.

So these blathering fools are engendering a picket-powered white noise cacophony over a trend potentiality that may or may not be envisaged within the next decade, and are demanding exuberant compensation for their nonsensical little exercise in economic speculation. Could this be any more absurd? The stupidity of their allegations could be correlated to a similar, hypothetical strike in the early 80s whining about Betamax. They might as well be on boycott untill they receive healthy dosages of money in anticipation of Blu-Ray’s “imminent” popularity explosion.

I really couldn’t have cared any less about this strike had its effects been a little more domesticated. The mentally-impaired staff of Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy could go to hell for all I care. But apparently egocentricity and aggrandizing self-images is a rampant plague that has afflicted even the more talented of Hollywood’s by in large intellectually bankrupt script-writing apparatus. The strike has now put Lost, The Office, and 24 on indefinite hold, as their cast and crew go babbling on about the streets pontificating concepts far beyond their comprehension. This ego-trip disease has even spread to Broadway, wherein the equally talentless stage-hand union is whining for pay-raises, terminating nearly all performances and rendering a sea of beleagured New York City vistors disillusioned owners of wasted airline tickets. Truly a universally grotesque and shameful spectacle.

Lost fans have undoubtably been hit the hardest. I’ve defended the show countless times in the past against half-witted critics who’ve never watched the show. But this period in time must be bar none the lowest point in the show’s history in its 3 year lifespan. Lost fans had to wait nearly an entire year for the premiere of season 4, which has yet to take place. Allegedly its going to happen around Febuary, but the season has been cut from its traditional 24 episodes to 16, and now to 8. 2/3rds of the show systematically disintegrated, the last portion of which is a direct consequence of this riduclous little phallic-measurement exposition. So basically the formula goes, wait a whole year longer for the new season, and be delivered 66 percent less episodes as gratification for the loyal fans. Lindelof and Cuse clearly don’t hold their die-hard and profoundly patient fanbase in very high regard, and the sentiment is quite mutual in my case.

Well, you know what? I’m going on strike too. Mine doesn’t involve brandishing a silly little placard like an idiot on the streets. I hereby pronounce I refuse to watch television, beyond South Park and Adult Swim, neither of which are associated with the cretins of the WGA. They’re homebrew, traditional outfits wherein the writers are also the producers and the animators, they don’t have an army of braindead morons writing for them. They’re actually what television is supposed to be, and I’m a proud consumer and fan of both.

But don’t get me wrong. I’ll still catch the latest episodes of The Office and Lost and whatnot. But just not on TV.

I’ll watch them through DVD and the network’s online portals. All the while relishing the fact that the non-sentient, slobbering goons of the entertainment business won’t be profitting from it. My strike will last indefinitely untill my demands are met.

My demands?

Everyone in Hollywood either grows a brain or kills themselves.

Let the fun begin.

Its virtually rendered impossible these days to tune in to a network news station without hearing a permutation of the names Clinton, Hillary, Bill, or conveniently enough an amalgmation of all three. And in a sense, I sympathize with the paranoiac cult of alamrist punditry that has been engendered around the Clintons the for the last year, and especially with a rigorous new fervor the last few months in particular.

After all, make no mistake that there is something to be seriously concerned about. It didn’t take an entire “Octavarium Romantum Clintonium” to adjudicate that the unscrupulous William Jeffersn Clinton was an atrocious leader and an almost psychopathic, evidently pathologically-impelled provocateur of untruths. This is a man who was almost undoubtably a habitual rapist and a colloborator for the longest time with genocidal sociopaths like Milosevic. These facts alone almost pale his other monumental attributes of loathing, namely his economic scourging (the only reason the economy was allegedly high at the time was the IT industry bubble, which finally imploded during the 2000s, and liberals ape-min dedly blamed it on Bush) and his role-playing as a peacenik goon in front of the imminent threat of the Bin Ladinists, an act of the most deplorable political tap-dancing which led to the 9/11 attacks. Thats a pretty damning track record for 8 years, and you can almost smell the stench of failure mixed in with the acrid waft of pompous smugness.

And the fact that his equally grotesque of a human being wife is both figuratively adn literally prostituting herself to his image for petty political ascension is just profoundly ghastly. Its a self-apparent, irrebukable fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton would have absolutely zero career or supposed credentials without her parasitic clinging to her assumed dynastic lineage. That in itself is horrid and shameless enough, but the fact that she’s templating herself off of such a monstrous and mediocre former president, thats just despicable. And so, in that sense I align myself with the tension-filled atmosphere of the right over the prospects of what could very well be an even more abject failure of a Clinton in the Oval Office a little over a year from now, this is truly a gruesome formulation.

But this is no excuse, no factor of exculpation for the appalling and degredating behavior of Republicans and Democrats in their campaigns bidding for the White House. The phenomenon in question is transcendant and universal, infecting every candidate in every party: making Hillary the subject from which all rhetoric and pontification gravitates. “Clinton, Clinton, Clinton, Clinton, Clinton”, thats all we ever here during these spectacularly pathetic circus expositions the networks have the gall to call “debates”. These fools don’t look like serious political candidates in a free and open exchange of ideas, they look like incumbancies attempting to re-consolidate power because Hillary Clinton is already the president.

When all your “principles” and “ideology” are fashioned under the over-arching aegis of anti-Clinton rhetoric, you simultaneously relenquish your credibility, your dignity, and most importantly your identity. Frankly I’m wholly unimpressed by all the candidates on every party, they all look exactly the same, just mouthpieces spewing innane sound-bytes centered around toppling an illusory Clinton straw-man. Its as if they’ve all already forfeited the presidency and are just trying to stir up trouble for an impending Clinton presidency, they certainly don’t act like presidential hopefuls, but they have all the characteristics of a Clinton-obsessed cultist, a Clintonian.

I’m a single-issue voter. I know that no politician will ever be even close to fully compatible with my neolibertarian socio-political outlook, so I focus on one superior element and try to find a candidate that best champions it. In this case its the war in Iraq and its continued perpetuation. The only candidate that is serious about the conflict is Rudy Giuliani, and even he has seriously disheartened me as of late. Not just because of his election to employ Clintonianist rhetoric rather than expounding serious ideals and policies, but more recently his acceptance of the support of the revolting, semi-senile theocratic charlatan bufoon Pat Robertson. I’m familiar with the addage “you take your compliments where you can”, but I would have like to have thought Giuliani would have a little more dignity for himself and for his voters, I know full well he’s a pretty secular guy, why doesn’t he act like it? For the votes of illiterate evangelical  morons? Why doesn’t he be a serious thinker instead of a political prostitute?

But then again, this is the realm of American politics, after all. The number one rule of the game is political prostitution is the only rule. The Clintonians, a mismatched band of political outcasts and losers who’ve elected to completely compromise their integrity in exchange for the “anti-Clinton vote”, as well as the Clinton clan itself, a squalid lot of toxic liars and non-dignified hucksters who’ve profiteered off of the marketing of a self-evidently manufactured image of benevolent American royalty, testifies to that.

A bit of a post-script: the title of this editorial was inspired by Bentley Little’s short story “The Washingtonians”, which revolved around the premise of a cult of George Washington which knew his true secret, that he was a monstrous virgin-eating cannibal.  This is not to imply that Bill Clinton, on top of all of his other crimes against humanity, is a child-eating demon-spawn.

But then again, as the old saying goes “never see anything past a Clinton”.

No one can be positively cheered up by the recent absolute dictatorial conslidation of power instigated by Pakistan’s unscrupulous junta-boss Mr. Pervez Musharraf, an essentially Islamic seperatist thug who’s operations as an “ally” in the so-called “war on terror” have been dubious at best, outright suspicious at worst. The Taliban was  proxy-arm of the Pakistani government’s colonial efforts in Afghanistan, and a whole faction of Bin Ladinist gangsters have made Pakistan a save haven and a base of operations with hardly any resistance from the Pakistani administration.

The best case scenario here is that Musharaff has been so infinitely incompetent and dysfunctional as a leader that for 6 years he has been incapable of rooting out bomb-srapped bedouins hiding in caves within his own country, the worst case scenario is that he has no interest in finding them, or even more precariously, is accomodating them. The fact that his country also posesses apocalyptic nuclear armaments shouldn’t in the least console us either. In laymen’s terms, this isn’t a guy one can casually share a cup of tea with, I’m looking at you, Jon Stewart.

And yet, we must maintain our unsteady contract wih the fellow. The one thing Musharraf has at least been partly successful at accomplishing is barring the ascension of Bin Ladinists into positions of power in Pakistan. So its a dictatorship of a state, but at least its not a theocratic dictatorship. The only thing worse than totallitarianism is when its being run out of a barely intelligible sado-masochistic fairy tale anthology some call holy books. So thats one point for Musharraf.

Also, keep in mind the problem doesn’t lie with the fact that Musharraf is a dictator. In many scenarios a strong-willed and stringent leader is absolutely necessary in order to controvert the toxicity engendered by a deranged populous, as in the case of Reza Shah Pahlavi and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, both of whom maintained regimes which successfully expelled the psychopathic parties of God from encroaching themselves upon society. But unlike Musharraf, who’s regime has run the country into the ground with economic squalor and religious babble, the Shah and Ataturk were purely secular leaders who championed civil liberties for all who upheld them. Yes, they used nerve gas upon their people, as liberals sycophantically recant, but they used them on the mullahs, on people who were attempting to dissolve all standards of ethics and social dignity. They were also crusaders for free-market economics and magnates of Westernization and pro-American innuendo, all properties completely lacking in Musharraf.

But you play with the cards you’re dealt. Pakistan may not be a shining tableau of secular libertarianism, but at least its not an outright bastion of Wahhabism or Salafism. One day Musharraf will get his just desserts as well, but for now we require the temporary perpetuation of our shifty alliance. Untill the day all Middle-Eastern tyrants are finally sent into the dark, however, we must remember that the notion that Musharraf was a “loyal and honorable asset” in this campaign against ritualistic barbarism, is a copious and shameless untruth. Best the State Department has respect for itself and its country and not repeat it again, Musharraf doesn’t deserve any sort of opulent flattery.