This item has been making the rounds lately, but I thought I'd post it in case you hadn't seen it.

Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim-Americans, according to a nationwide poll.

Drumroll:

The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims’ civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.

and the Big Shocker:

Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim-Americans.

The crispness of the logic does give one brief pause for admiration before the onset of nausea. Having determined that we are hated for our freedoms the most obvious solution to stop the hate is to take away the freedoms. Perfect. Airtight.

Note to terrorists: You can stop hating us now. You've won.

Note to self: Get whole head in front of shotgun.

"I think that there is a terrible possibility now, in the World. We may not brush it away, we must look at it. It is possible that They will not die. That it is now within the state of Their art to go on forever--though we, of course, will keep dying as we always have. Death has been the source of Their power. It was easy enough for us to see that. If we are here once, only once, then clearly we are here to take what we can while we may. If They have taken much more, and taken not only from Earth but also from us--well, why begrudge Them, when they're just as doomed to die as we are? All in the same boat, all under the same shadow . . . yes . . . yes. But is that really true? Or is it the best, and the most carefully propagated, of all Their lies, known and unknown?

"We have to carry on under the possibility that we die only because They want us to: because They need our terror for Their survival. We are their harvests. . . .

"It must radically change the nature of our faith. To ask that we keep faith in Their mortality, faith that They also cry, and have fear, and feel pain, faith They are only pretending Death is Their servant--faith in Death as the master of us all--is to ask for an order of courage that I know is beyond my own humanity, though I cannot speak for others. . . . But rather than make that leap of faith, perhaps we will choose instead to turn, to fight: to demand, from those for whom we die, our own immortality. They may not be dying in bed anymore, but maybe They can still die from violence. If not, at least we can learn to withhold from Them our fear of Death. For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross. And at least the physical things They have taken, from Earth and from us, can be dismantled, demolished--returned to where it all came from.

"To believe that each of Them will personally die is also to believe that Their system will die--that some chance of renewal, some dialectic, is still operating in History. To affirm Their mortality is to affirm Return..."

--Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, pp.539-540.

From the New York Times:

LOUISIANA: SUSPENSION FOR JUDGE AFTER RACIAL JOKE
The State Supreme Court gave a six-month suspension to a state judge who dressed in an Afro wig, handcuffs and a prison jumpsuit for a Halloween party at a restaurant. The judge, Timothy C. Ellender of Terrebonne Parish, said he was joking that his new wife, dressed as a police officer, had control of him. Unsatisfied with the joke's reception, the Ellenders applied blackface.

More.

Judge embroiders Ten Commandments on judicial robe

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - A south Alabama judge refused to delay a trial Tuesday when an attorney objected to the judge wearing a judicial robe with the Ten Commandments embroidered in gold on the front of the garment.

Circuit Judge Ashley McKathan showed up Monday at his Covington County courtroom Andalusia wearing the robe at the start of a week of jury trials of cases that were being appealed from lower courts - mostly cases like driving under the influence and possession of marijuana.

Let me just say that I think the Honorable Ashley McKathan (that's a man, by the way; for a region that hates gays, the South sure does love naming their boys with just the cutest names!) is really on to something here. What is up with those boring old plain black robes, anyway? What's fun about that? Um, hello judiciary, I don't think there's any "law" that says fashion must remain in the chamber?

Anyway, I hope other judges around the country will keep the "fashion mo'" going. Some other ideas for things judges could wear/have in the courtroom:

1. A staff

2. Viking helmet

3. Enormous totemic rubber phallus (strapped on)

4. Fright-wig

5. Blackface makeup

6. Angel or butterfly wings

7. Suit of armor

8. Nose/lip/eyebrow piercings

9. Elaborate "bling"

10. Chef's hat

11. Other robe embroideries:

a. paisleys

b. Chinese ideograms

c. Masonic symbols

d. Scenes from the Kama Sutra

e. "West Side"/"East Side"

f. Pokemon

g. Birds/Plants of America


Any other ideas for ways judges could express their fashion "values" in the courtroom?

Update--Stand Up and Holla! adds the following:

13. Arabian Goggles

14. Thong, rape whistle

15. T-Shirt Reading: "I Need a Man with a V.C.R.!* *Very Cute Rear!"

16. Oversized novelty sombrero

17. Nylon blouse, Chinchilla-fur athletic supporter

18. False cleft-palate made of latex, coonskin cap missing tail

19. Overalls (one strap off shoulder), neon yellow painters cap with back-flaps advertising local amusement park

20. Full-body tattoo depicting 9/11 tragedy, rainbow beanie

21. Paper cloak soaked in gasoline, pair of dreamcatcher earrings

22. Ruffled pantaloons, "Who Farted?" button pinned directly onto bare chest

23. 3-D glasses, self-inflicted stigmata

24. Only a condom

25. Full Klan outfit, rose-tinted monacle, lightsaber

26. Blue Man Group make-up, semi-automatic handgun

Update--speakingcorpse adds:

27. Transparent diaper

28. Long rifle hanging out of asshole

29. Monocle affixed over small "eye" on penis

30. Arafat-style kaffiyeh

31. Miniature nativity scene in a box, hung around neck

32. Large jar filled with pink water (resembling amniotic fluid) in which judge, bound in fetal position, is immersed

Update--Holla! keeps the fun rolling:

33. Denim jacket bedazzled with sequined unicorns, swastika armband

34. Fiberglass unitard painted in the colors of the African National Congress, novelty Groucho Marx glasses

35. Tassled pasties, body glitter, crucifix attached to back

36. Beekeeper's helmet, oak cockring

37. Wax lips, cauliflower ear, lavender cummerbund

38. Hypercolor sports bra, patchy merkin

39. Motorized wheelchair, Maori warrior facial tattooing

40. Dioxin-poison-induced pockmarking, Osh Kosh B'Gosh short-pants

41. Severe jaundice, Ugg boots

42. Old fashioned reporter's fedora, tighty-whities

43. Von Dutch mesh ball cap, bejeweled anal-monacle (or "anacle")

Update--Bobo adds:

44. crotchless leather pants, fake mustache, anal beads

45. magenta unitard, pet monkey, wedding cake figurine necklace

46. loin cloth, nun-chucks

Update--Holla! adds:

47. Pith helmet, beard of bees

48. "This Dick's Not Gonna Suck Itself" t-shirt, respirator

49. Flapper gown, neuticles

50. Burlap modesty cloth, single hair-plug

51. Cape of wax, eggplant-sized hickey

52. Jeweler's loupe, Burmese neck-stretching rings

52. Hasidic peyes, dull machete

53. "Prince Albert," Member's Only jacket

54. Tilted kente-cloth fez, erection

55. "Hillbilly" body armor, seeing eye dog

Check out The Selling of the President 1968 by Joe McGinniss. It’s a blow-by-blow account of how, in the months leading up to Richard Nixon’s defeat of Hubert Humphrey, a team of New York advertising execs and television producers (including a young Roger Ailes… yeesh) crafted and executed the country’s first modern, substance-free, demagogic television presidential campaign for Nixon.

The concept was: our candidate is loathsome and unappealing, and we can’t change him, but we can go a long way toward crafting the public’s perception of the candidate by carefully managing his appearance on television screens.

Obvious echoes to the Bush falsifying media apparatus, and fascinating also to consider the myriad of ways in which the Nixon era was so similar to the one in which we find ourselves today, socially, culturally, politically, economically:

Unpopular war waged on false pretenses with no end in sight. Meticulous Republican rollback of successful social and economic policies of the prior Democratic regime. Widening socioeconomic, racial, ethnic disparities splitting the nation into two distinct, unequal Americas. Rank executive branch corruption, venality, chicanery.

Sad thing is, this Bush administration makes Tricky Dick look like Honest Abraham Lincoln. Good thing is, if we’re following a Nixonian timeline, it won’t be long before the Bush administration crumbles in the face of public revelation of some massive, criminal enterprise.

In this prescient passage from the book, McGinniss drops by the bar of New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel, the Nixon campaign’s Election Night headquarters. Seated are New York Newsday’s Jimmy Breslin (a guy who knows something about presidential campaigns and who, in his last regular Newsday column, vowed a big Kerry win) and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Murray Kempton of Newsday and the New York Review of Books.

McGinniss writes:

Jimmy Breslin, Murray Kempton, and Bill Barry, who had been bodyguard to Bobby Kennedy in his campaign, were having a sad drink together.

Kempton had written a column that morning, which began, "We are two nations of equal size…. Richard Nixon’s nation is white, Protestant, breathes clean air and advances toward middle-age. Hubert Humphrey’s nation is everything else, whatever is black, most of which breathes polluted air, pretty much what is young….

"There seems no place larger than Peoria from which [Nixon] has not been beaten back; he is the President of every place in this country which does not have a bookstore…."

Prescient?

Bill Barry finished his drink and left. This day was almost too much for him to bear.

Breslin was talking of leaving the country. Moving to Ireland. It seemed an appealing idea.

"That’s a marvelous commentary on the progress of the twentieth century," Murray Kempton said. "Joyce begins it by leaving Ireland to be free and Breslin ends it by going back."

The child is father to the man.

I don't know what the effect on me of reading this article will turn out to be. Will it finally penetrate the dense fog that descended over my eyes on "election" day 2004? Will a piece of "news information" finally reach into my heart deeply enough to engage my responsive powers and force my sluggish body into action? Or will this litany of allegations and suspicious details only seal the sheath once and for all around my dying soul?

Rumsfeld keeps troops entertained. Considers USO career for 2008.

Islamic Jihad Army debuts their first short film. Hey Oscar! Bring it on!

It starts off peaceful...




Then turns into a tussle...




And then whoosh--like that, it's all over.

Sigh. More fun from the D.C. metro area. From the WaPo:

Investigators Visit Home After Student Allegedly Wishes Harm on Americans

When the two plainclothes Loudoun County sheriff's investigators showed up on her Leesburg doorstep, Pamela Albaugh got nervous. But when they told her why they were there, she got angry: A complaint had been filed alleging that her 11-year old son had made "anti-American and violent" statements in school.
.....

They asked how she felt about 9/11 and the military. They asked whether she knows any foreigners who have trouble with American policy. They mentioned a German friend who had been staying with the family and asked whether the friend sympathized with the Taliban. They also inquired whether she might be teaching her children "anti-American values," she said.

You know, when I think back to the kind of anti-authority tantrums I was wont to throw in elementary school, I bet if you rounded up all the shit I said back then to teachers, or other kids, or just muttering to myself--by today's standards, I would have been locked up by age 7. Shit, by 11 I would have been off to Guantanamo.

Oh, and the Post's "analysis" of the interrogation?

The case illustrates the balancing act that schools and law enforcement must find between the free speech of minors and community safety.

"Balancing act." So, so true...shitheads.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A portrait of President Bush using monkeys to form his image led to the closure of a New York art exhibition over the weekend and anguished protests on Monday over freedom of expression.

"Bush Monkeys," a small acrylic on canvas by Chris Savido, created the stir at the Chelsea Market public space, leading the market's managers to close down the 60-piece show that was scheduled to stay up for the next month.

The show featured art from the upcoming issue of Animal Magazine, a quarterly publication featuring emerging artists.

"We had tons of people, like more than 2,000 people show up for the opening on Thursday night," said show organizer Bucky Turco. "Then this manager saw the piece and the guy just kind of flipped out. 'The show is over. Get this work down or I'm gonna arrest you,' he said. It's been kind of wild."

The article fails to mention that Savido's piece was clearly a response to "Bush Christs":



The question remains: how do we distinguish between the two?

So, the wingnuts are boycotting stores that don't display "Merry Christmas" (or, of course, "Happy Hanukkah") signs.

Can you imagine how sad the Baby Jesus must be, peering down from his celestial cradle, and noticing in our world that Macy's isn't displaying "Merry Christmas" banners?


Why does Bloomingdale's want to make my infant incarnation cry?

Actually, while I was searching for this article, I also came across this, which I think really would make the Baby smile:

(UNDATED) The Rev. Billy is not a man of God -- not in any conventional way. He is Bill Talen, a New York performance artist who strapped on a white collar in 1997 and began to preach a “Gospel of Stop Shopping.” His stage has been the floor of retail stores around the world where he performs his anti-shopping sermons for unsuspecting customers, trying to get people in wealthy nations to buy less. This year he was arrested Thanksgiving weekend, which has become an annual ritual, for exorcising the demons from a Starbucks cash register in Times Square.

Via AmericaBlog: partial transcript of Dec. 8 Scarborough Country on MSNBC, guest-hosted by Pat Buchanan. Topic: "Hollywood vs. the heartland."

BUCHANAN: Bill Donahue, what do you think about “The Passion of the Christ”? And as a practical matter, even if Hollywood hated the film, it seems to me as an artistic work of art, a smashing triumph, a film of great controversy and interest, it ought to at least be nominated for best picture. It pulled in more money than any other picture all year.

WILLIAM DONAHUE, PRESIDENT, CATHOLIC LEAGUE: I spoke to Mel a couple of weeks ago about this. And I don‘t think it really matters a whole lot to him. It certainly doesn‘t matter to me. We‘ve already won.

Who really cares what Hollywood thinks? All these hacks come out there. Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It‘s not a secret, OK? And I‘m not afraid to say it. That‘s why they hate this movie. It‘s about Jesus Christ, and it‘s about truth. It‘s about the messiah.

Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism. We have nothing in common. But you know what? The culture war has been ongoing for a long time. Their side has lost.

You have got secular Jews. You have got embittered ex-Catholics, including a lot of ex-Catholic priests who hate the Catholic Church, wacko Protestants in the same group, and these people are in the margins. Frankly, Michael Moore represents a cult movie. Mel Gibson represents the mainstream of America.

Nice Catholic, huh? Oh, you're asking, "Well, they must have someone on the show representing the Jewish perspective, who can appropriately rebut Bill Donoghue's outrageous remarks," right?

RABBI SHMULEY BOTEACH, AUTHOR, “FACE YOUR FEAR”: Well, firstly, let me just say that I hope that Michael Moore actually wins so we can finally confirm what Hollywood is. Hollywood has become an America-hating bastion that always portrays people in uniform in some sinister role. It‘s always the CIA killing President Kennedy.

And so when I see Michael Moore‘s “Fahrenheit 9/11” and he portrays our soldiers as a bunch of cutthroats who play Metallica while killing Iraqi civilians, let‘s confirm what Hollywood is by giving him this Oscar.

Great! Get 'em, rabbi! Go MSNBC!!

Send a bag of pretzels to the pres for Xmas.

From MoveOn:

Before the election, we stopped Sinclair Broadcasting from airing an anti-Kerry hit piece. But Sinclair continues to interject partisan bias into local evening news reaching 1 in 4 homes.

Every night, Sinclair vice president Mark Hyman broadcasts a conservative rant -- called "The Point" -- which most of Sinclair's 62 stations are required to air during their local news. "The Point" predictably attacks Democrats and progressives while praising George Bush. No counterpoint is offered. This is an abuse of the public airwaves.

Our friends at Media Matters for America are spearheading a campaign to demand balance on Sinclair's evening news by telling Sinclair's advertisers about the partisanship they're supporting.

Can you contact Sinclair's local and national advertisers? Click here to visit the new website, SinclairAction.com:

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=629

If you don't live in a local Sinclair market (we in NYC don't) just choose the national market, then click one button for an email addressed to every business in the market.

Stand Up and Holla! passes along the following memo:

Don't Leave Behind Any Holiday Orphans!

(This message comes from Security)

The following items of lost property were found after the Staff Christmas Party on Friday night. Please contact Security control (Xt. 1147) to claim items or go to Security Control in the closet by the cafeteria:

Burberry-style plaid shawl

Red Nokia cell phone with a sticker of a cat on it

2 Bank of America debit cards

Pair of Totes mittens

Wallet-sized photograph of Pol Pot

Rope

Baggie of cider

Oversized modesty cloth

1 baby, maybe pacific islander?

Bucket of Fire

Daguerrotype of African American baseball pioneer "Bullet" Joe Rogan, defaced

Gila Monster

"Junior Owl Musician"

Double eye patch

Manila envelope of newspaper clippings concerning obesity epidemic

Yard of Skin

Photo-realist sketch of older black man (Cosby?) on cocktail napkin, speech bubble asking "Do I wear the Hurt-Hat?"

Origami Christ Child

Pamphlet of Facts

Breath mint tin filled with stamp-sized sympathy cards

From MoveOn:

Fahrenheit 9/11 has been chosen as a finalist for the People's Choice award for "Favorite Film of the Year" -- the first documentary ever to make it so far. The winner will be chosen by online voting in the next few days, and your participation could help push F911 over the edge. Cast your vote here:

http://www.pcavote.com/voting/film/f01.shtml

And while you're at it, I suggest voting against The Passion of the Christ in the Drama category.

This good news just in, via our secret correspondent at KCUR-FM Kansas City:

Thought you would like to know that AAR debuts on Clear Channel's Washington, DC 570 AM WTNT Monday, January 20th, with The Al Franken Show live from the Presidential Inauguration.

Those of you inside the Beltway, prepare to tune in. (And yes, it is funny that AAR will be running on a Clear Channel station. Ha ha. HA.)