Mark Steyn's latest column features this incandescent opening:

Everything's difficult, isn't it? In the Democratic presidential candidates' debate, Sen. Barack Obama was asked what he personally was doing to save the environment, and replied that his family was "working on" changing their light bulbs.

Is this the new version of the old joke? How many senators does it take to "work on" changing a light bulb? One to propose a bipartisan commission. One to threaten to de-fund the light bulbs. One to demand the impeachment of Bush and Cheney for keeping us all in the dark. One to vote to pull out the first of the light bulbs by fall of this year with a view to getting them all pulled out by the end of 2008.

In 1914, on the eve of the Great War, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey observed, "The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." Whether he was proposing a solution to global warming is unclear. But he would be impressed to hear that nine decades later the lights are going out all over Washington.

To understand what a topsy-turvy world our political class has entered due to its need for emotional displacement, check out the sign that a protestor in Turkey is holding, and note the two elements that make up the protestors' symbol for the ruling AK Party. Note which one the left in the US wants to ban, and which they want to promote.

Update: In a way, it's too bad this woman's headdress doesn't come in black and obscure her face. Then you'd have one story that truly ties together all of the elements of the modern (err, actually anti-modern, to be precise) political zietgiest.

Another Update: "And so as America slides ever closer to the 14th century in their pathetic bid to appease these uncivilized extremists, countries like Malaysia move decidedly toward the 21st century".