Georgia just can't get Vladimir Putin out of its mind.

A new cartoon of extremely poorly-drawn yellow characters on Georgian TV called The Samsonadzes -- an obvious knock-off of The Simpsons -- is rising high in the ratings chart. Creator Shalva Ramishvili disavows his show is a copy:

The Samsonadzes is a native Georgian serial about a Georgian family... I want to say to Simpsons fans, please do not think that our show is an imitation or a rip off of The Simpsons. Yes of course it was an inspiration for us, but the Samsonadzes is not a copy.

A recent episode featuring Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin makes it hard to disagree on the "native Georgian" part, at least. Ramishvili described the importance of including Putin and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a recent episode:

Having the Russian leaders on the show was like fulfilling a civic duty. The whole world is interested in the relationship between Russia and Georgia and we all know what Russia did in Georgia during the war [of August 2008].

Apparently, there's a trend of Eastern European knock-offs of The Simpsons: check out this "cult hit" on YouTube of The Simpsons set in rural Estonia.

A "prophet row" has emerged in Turkey after Emine Erdogan, wife of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was denied access to a military hospital because of her headscarf. Heated exchanges in the Grand National Assembly followed, as opposition politician Osman Durmu of the Nationalist Movement Party sarcastically called Prime Minister Erdogan a prophet:

How dare you not allow the wife of a prime minister, who is accepted as a prophet, to [the Gülhane Military Academy of Medicine]? Who do you think you are?

Erdogan was not amused:

My wife was not allowed to visit a patient only because of her headscarf. Rather than criticizing this prohibition, they are joking about the incident... It is unbearable to hear such a definition about me. They claim ‘Erdogan would like to be the prophet’… What a silly argument. It is obvious they are sinking to new lows.

The hijab has long been a divisive symbol in Turkey. Erdogan's Justice and Development party (AKP) passed legislation to ease the Turkish ban on headscarves in universities in 2008, but the statute was overruled by the Constitutional Court later that year.

Not every day does Bill Gates lay the smack down on a sitting premier, but that was the case when the Microsoft founder slammed Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's foreign aid policy. Berlusconi's stolen Italian headlines in the last week (but when is that not the case?) for a post-hair-transplant bald head -- and Gates couldn't resist making a not-so-subtle reference:

And in a clear reference to the notoriously image-conscious Berlusconi, Gates told Süddeutsche Zeitung: "Rich people spend a lot more money on their own problems, like baldness, than they do to fight malaria."

Italy's foreign aid budget was approximately 0.11% of its GDP in 2009, one of the lowest figures among developed countries, and half of what it was even in the prior year. Gates didn't mince words on his views:

"Dear Silvio, I am sorry to make things difficult for you, but you are ignoring the poor people of the world," he told the Frankfurter Rundschau.

Italy's "biggest company" is doing just fine in the recession: 

Italy's mafia crime syndicates bucked the recession in 2009 to raise 'profits' by almost 8 percent with the financial crisis making companies and even the stock market even more vulnerable to cash-flush mobsters.

"Mafia Inc. is reinforcing its position as the number one Italian company," said a report published on Wednesday by a body whose members bear the brunt of mafia extortion and crimes, the small business and shopkeepers' association Confesercenti.

It estimated that the impact on business equalled about 7 percent of Italy's economic output, enjoying healthy growth in a year when the Italian economy shrank by almost 5 percent.

Today, on Fox News Radio (via The Hill), Rep. James Clyburn, the House majority whip, let loose with some nasty words for the upper half of the U.S. bicameral legislature: "[Senators] tend to see themselves as a House of Lords and they don't seem to understand that those of us that go out there every two years stay in touch with the American people. We tend to respond to them a little better."

It's an easy statement to sympathize with. In the past year, the majority-rules House has seemed a paragon of populist efficiency, passing cap and trade and the health care bills with relative ease -- before the Senate's long horse-trading process winnowed public support for the latter, and before the Democrats lost their 60th Senate seat and thus their ability to stop Republican filibusters.

But it left me thinking -- if only the Senate were like the House of Lords!

At the very least, Britain realized that the institution was anti-democratic and unpopular -- and reformed it, diminishing its power and changing its crusty composition. Parliament has progressively reduced the number of hereditary peers, the land-owning barons of old, replacing them with life peers appointed for career excellence. Plus, in the future, Parliament will likely start making peers elected. (See the composition of the House of Lords here.)

The FBI is in hot water after using a Spanish parliamentarian's picture to create a ‘What would Osama Bin Laden look like now?' image. The photo, released last week, took parts of United Left party lawmaker Gaspar Llamazares' face and combined them with an older photo of bin Laden, to create the digital image -- and Mr. Llamazares is not amused.

"Apologies are not enough," he told a news conference at Spain's parliament after the U.S. ambassador issued an apology Monday. "I want a thorough investigation into this disgraceful case, which not only causes concern but also worry and indignation over the behavior of the FBI."

The FBI claimed the new bin Laden image was created with "cutting edge" technology. However, after the comparison was made, the Bureau admitted that it had taken a photo of Llamazares' 2004 campaign poster off Google Images. FBI Spokesman Ken Hoffman told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, "The forensic artist was unable to find suitable features among the reference photographs and obtained those features, in part, from a photograph he found on the internet." Sometimes, the warnings about taking things off the internet come embarrassingly true.

As an isolated incident, it's odd enough, but this is now the third bizarre diplomatic row between Spain and the United States in the last few years.

This isn't the first photo related row between the two countries. Last year, a photo of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero, wife, and two daughters caused uproar in Spain after being released by the State Department. The picture, taken with Barack and Michelle Obama in New York, was the first public image of the two daughters (Zapatero has been adamant of protecting their privacy) ever shown.

Via Andrew Sullivan, I see that Bell Curve author Charles Murray is expressing shock and dismay at the number of "African blacks, Middle-Eastern types, and East Asians" in Paris these days. He adds:

Mark Steyn and Christopher Caldwell have already explained this to the rest of the world—Europe as we have known it is about to disappear—but it was still a shock to see how rapid the change has been in just the last half-dozen years.

Well, as it turns out, Europe is going to be just fine, thank you. Here's Brookings scholar Justin Vaïsse, writing in the new issue of FP about the Eurabia genre:

By relying chiefly on anecdotes rather than data, these books misrepresent the complex evolving picture of Islam in Europe. They also eliminate social and economic conditions, including discrimination, from the picture. [...]

The most likely scenario for the next few decades -- increasing integration of Muslims accompanied by continued cultural tensions, occasional terrorist bombings, and differentiated outcomes in various countries -- is a conceptual impossibility for most Eurabia authors because for them Muslims can't really become Europeans. It is, however, already the reality. Maybe it is time they take notice.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Here's one of Clive Davis's commenters on what's really wrong with Murray's post:

On a side note, how seriously should we take the comments of someone who uses the word “marooned” to describe three free days in Paris?

As today's photo essay shows, winter is in full force across Europe, causing havoc with the lives of millions. Airports have shut down, roads are treacherous, and rail derailments are becoming a frequent occurence. But most of the temperatures Europeans are complaining about aren't all that bad. Yeah, sure, it's a bit chilly, but come on:

Judith Moritz reports from Woodford in Cheshire, where temperature overnight plunged to -17.6C, below that recommended for a domestic freezer.

The high temperature over the holidays in my native Iowa reached that level once, or maybe twice. Edward Lucas, in The Daily Mail, agrees with my sentiment:

Timidly shivering in their badly insulated houses, or tottering along unswept pavements in unsuitable footwear and inadequate clothes, the British present a pathetic sight in winter.

Not just incompetent in the face of the challenge of a cold snap - but too often joyless to boot.

What a contrast to Russia and other East European countries where I have spent most of my adult life.

Despite my pooh-poohing, the cold-wave sweeping the continent is having a severe effect. British demand for gasoline is at a record high, a Eurostar train stalled in the Channel Tunnel, and rather sadly a million Scottish sheep are in danger of dying. Perhaps most distressing for Britons, a wave of football fixtures this week have been postponed, with even more games slated for this weekend put on hold.

Europe is lucky in one regard this winter. The ever-constant threat of gas flow disruptions, as a result of geopolitical arguments in eastern Europe, has yet to rear its head this season. The only hiccup this far has been a row between Belarus and Russia, with Belarus threatening to cut off the flow of gas to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad over an oil price dispute.