Common-Sense Cagematch #1: Castro v. Berlusconi

Question: Who's more out-of-touch with reality--an 84 year-old oft-hospitalized Communist dictator under a decades-long trade embargo or a womanizing Italian billionaire president?

Answer: Silvio Berlusconi

Viz:

"I hope that in Egypt there can be a transition toward a more democratic system without a break from President Mubarak, who in the West, above all in the United States, is considered the wisest of men and a precise reference point," he said.

-Silvio Berlusconi

"Mubarak's fate is sealed, not even the support of the United States will be able to save his government. The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization. 'From the top of these pyramids, 40 centuries of history are looking down upon us,' Bonaparte once said in a moment of exaltation when the revolution brought him to this extraordinary crossroads of civilizations."

-Fidel Castro

(courtesy HuffPo)

The wisest of men does not do...hmmm, let's see...just about anything Mubarek has been doing recently. Does the wisest of men reap millions of dollars from running a nation and then insist on sticking around to get his head chopped-off?

I think not.

If what Berlusconi said were true, Chateau Mubarek in the south of France would be bustling with activity right now, dozens of humble servants preparing for the master to retire there indefinitely and enjoy his spoils.

Instead, 'rental guillotine' has been the most searched-for term on Google Egypt for weeks now--among those with pirated internet access, of course.

Bon voyage, imbécile. May your blood stain the sands of Egypt sooner rather than later. I hope it was all worth it.

And somebody in charge of such things please grant Fidel Castro +16 cool points right now for understanding the will and power of the masses. Bravo, señor.

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Found It: The Cover of My Autobiography

Not bad, eh? Looks like not only a great impulse buy at the grocery counter, but a real page-turner to boot.

Hitting shelves in fall 2039, after a relaxing summer of editing/swimming with my breathtaking ghostwriter up and down the Amalfi Coast.

Donations encouraged.

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Old News: Vatican Corrupt

The world's smallest city-state is in the news once again and, once again, hopes its ridiculously inappropriate Foreign-Sovereign Immunity (which absolves it of all responsibility for child sexual abuse cases in the United States, fyi) will allow it to do whatever it wants while thumbing its nose at the peculiar secular world, where actions have consequences.

VATICAN CITY — Italian authorities seized euro23 million ($30 million) from a Vatican bank account Tuesday and said they have begun investigating top officials of the Vatican bank in connection with a money-laundering probe.

(courtesy HuffPo)

But don't worry, it's probably all a big misunderstanding--it's not like the Vatican has any history of highly-suspicious involvement with the mafia and/or catastrophic financial crimes:

The Vatican bank was famously implicated in a scandal over the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in the 1980s in one of Italy's largest fraud cases. Roberto Calvi, the head of Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 in circumstances that still remain mysterious.

London investigators first ruled that Calvi committed suicide, but his family pressed for further investigation. Eventually murder charges were filed against five defendants, including a major Mafia figure, and they were tried in Rome and acquitted in 2007.

Banco Ambrosiano collapsed following the disappearance of $1.3 billion in loans the bank had made to several dummy companies in Latin America. The Vatican had provided letters of credit for the loans. While denying any wrongdoing, the Vatican bank agreed to pay $250 million to Ambrosiano's creditors.

(courtesy HuffPo)

Yikes! But soft--who runs the Vatican Bank? Its problems can most likely be blamed on greedy secular bankers operating outside the church's sphere of influence, right? The religious folk just made a few careless mistakes in who they hired to run their financial operations, right?

Wrong:

More after the jump...