MoveOn gives us two things to do to help.

1.) Sign this petition telling the murderous Antichrist Bush to stop murdering babies long enough to chip in a respectable amount of relief money.

http://www.moveon.org/tsunamirelief/

2.) Donate your own money through Oxfam. Please be generous.

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=631

The so-called "Citizens for a Responsible Cirriculum" have a new "sister site" at the rather misleadingly named www.mcpscurriculum.com. The hilarity continues at the "sister site."

Many of us might not be aware that MCPS has effectively revived Plessy v. Ferguson, right in our own backyard! Who knew!?

Our concerns were summarily dismissed and our recommendations put down as a mere “minority report.” Unlike the cruel stereotypes to which some of our critics describe us, we are your neighbors, friends and fellow taxpayers seeking to halt a very serious discrimination aimed at our families, our cultural background [sic], our children and our County.

“Separate but equal” is not a term that any resident or professional educator of this County would want to describe any course or instruction associated with our MCPS. Designing courses that segregate our children can not be considered encouraging diversity. Thus, in attempting to teach “tolerance” this action being recommended by the BOE may actually cause intolerance in our schools as some of our children may be ridiculed or bullied for adhering to their family and cultural values.

That's right: it's not the faggy kids who get bullied in the hallways and locker rooms--it's the good Christian kids (oops, I'm sorry--"Children of Faith"), being tormented for nothing more than coming from a certain "cultural background"!

And remember: the CRC are our "neighbors, friends, fellow taxpayers"...not "angry radicals"! In fact, they just want what we want: what's best for everybody.

As evidenced by the recently released national survey on teen sexual activity, we are proud of the contributions that Montgomery County and the Board of Education has made to helping reduce the instance of teen pregnancies and improved awareness of sexually transmitted diseases. We applaud all their efforts in making this possible. We want to help build on that legacy by working with them and others to make rational and cost effective changes to improve, but not degrade, a good program already in place.

See how moderate these folks are? They actually like the BOE--they "applaud" its efforts, they want to "help build," they want to "work with them and others." Funny that the CRC's original website was--and still is--called www.recallmontgomeryschoolboard.com. Well, it seems that all of the "recall" language has been purged from the site (the CRC is, if nothing else, damn good at purging information). The CRC's stated goals have evolved from recalling the entire school board to "working with them." But why would the school board want to "work with" people who as of two weeks ago claimed to be assembling legal teams with the aim of recalling them?

Well, just to show you how tolerant of all different "cultural backgrounds" they are, the CRC has posted in the "Faith Positions" section of their site a useful synopsis of the Muslim opinion on homosexual relations:

Muslims believe that every human action leads to consequences. Good actions entail good results, and evil actions entail evil consequences. Some of these consequences may not become known for many years after a certain action. The consequences of some actions will become manifest only after death when one enters a new, everlasting life. To understand this point, consider the fact that often people contract a deadly disease which is diagnosed many years after the fact. A common mistake among humans is that if they do not see any negative consequences for their actions they consider their actions harmless. Human experience has taught us that a source of superior knowledge can be of tremendous benefit to humans. In the past, doctors unwittingly gave blood tainted with the AIDS virus to thousands of patients. If a source of superior knowledge had warned us beforehand, and we paid attention to that warning, we could have saved many people from this deadly disease.

Evil consequences...superior knowledge...AIDS... get it? Do you "get" the Muslim position?

The CRC will continue to work toward a cirriculum that is acceptable to all of our families.

And remember to go read the counter-blog at MCPS Vigilance, and post your comments there.

I have to admit I'm not feeling too creative these days, but maybe some of you can help me out. We ought to have some sort of year-end, "Top Ten" (or "Top 100") list...but of/about what? "Top 10 Shittiest Things that Happened this Year?" Bo-ring. "Top 1,000,000 Most Murderous Crimes of the Bush Administration, 2004"? Yawwwn.

I'm sure we can come up with something better. Ideas in the Comment window.

In the comments thread of Dawkins' entirely truthful post about the shitter in Catalunyan nativity scenes, reader Josh R points us toward Matt Taibbi's fantastic Christmas column in the New York Press. Here is the beginning:

Dear Editor,

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, 'If you see it in the Sun, it's so.' Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O'Hanlon, 115 West 95th Street

NO ONE NOTICED, of course, but last year, I did not file a column on Christmas week. This was not because I was too busy with a long schedule of holiday merry-making.

On the contrary: As editor Jeff Koyen can attest, I actually tried to write a column on Christmas last year. I spent three long days reading and rereading the old New York Sun's hideous "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" column, and tried to come up with a satisfying counter-argument. The opening was easy enough:

Dear Virginia,

Your little friends are right. There is no Santa Claus. And not only that, but within about five years, you'll be on your knees in a Port Authority rest room, sucking a stranger's cock for a dollar...

The column degenerated into a string of obscenities. If I remember correctly, the ending was something like, "Oh, and incidentally, Francis P. Church died in the arms of another man, broke and scorned by his family." It was a really angry piece of writing. Too angry to be coherent. At the end of the three days, I gave up and asked Koyen for a mulligan. A week later my fangs had retracted, and I was back cheerfully offering my worthless opinions on the political issues of the day.

Keep reading. It gets better.

P.S. I thought you'd all be happy to know that in a staff editorial in today's New York Daily News (not the 'conservative,' Murdoch-owned Post), we are told that the murderous and fraudulent loser of the second and fair Ukrainian election, because he is now reluctant to concede defeat, is kind of like "the Al Gore of Kiev."