Calling all Bill O'Reilly impersonators




Can you do a passable Bill O'Reilly impersonation? If so, then Al Franken wants you. O'Reilly was sued, and ultimately settled a sexual harrassment suit, brought by an underling at Fox News. His accuser apparently taped steamy phone conversations, which ultimately forced O''Reilly to settle the suit for millions of dollars. Unfortunately, those tapes will never be heard - their non-disclosure is part of the the settlement.

So enter Franken who is asking Air America listeners to read the following script, in their best no-spin zone voice. It's from a desposition taken in the lawsuit:
"You would basically be in the shower and then I would come in and I'd join you and you would have your back to me and I would take that little loofa thing and kinda soap up your back... rub it all over you, get you to relax, hot water... and um... you know, you'd feel the tension drain out of you and uh you still would be with your back to me then I would kinda put my arm -- it's one of those mitts, those loofa mitts you know, so I got my hands in it..."
It gets better. You can read it here.
9.12.04 20:08


Grab shot




Is there a genetic predisposition to posing for CD covers? That's my six-year-old daughter on the left.
10.12.04 03:51


Yeah

10.12.04 19:35


Muktar's story


Nick Kristof at the NY TImes travelled to Pakistan back in September and met a remarkable woman named Muktar Mai Basti. She is a 30-year-old Muslim woman who lives in a village with no electricity or running water. In June 2002, the police say, members of a high-status caste raped one of Muktar's brothers and then covered up their crime by falsely accusing him of having an affair with a high-status woman. The village's tribal council ruled that the suitable punishment for the supposed affair was for high-status men to rape one of the boy's sisters, so the council sentenced Muktar to be gang-raped. As members of the high-status tribe celebrated, four men stripped her naked and took turns raping her. Then they forced her to walk home naked in front of 300 villagers.

Ho hum, just another day in the Muslim third world.

According to Pakistan's conservative moral values, virtuous by the fact that they are firmly held by a majority of God fearing Pakistanis, Muktar should have committed suicide. But Muktar was a libertine, and very much out of the mainstream. So she took her case to activist Pakistani judges, who defied public opinion and traditional family values by trying Muktar's attackers. With the help of a rogue prosecutor, the high status men were found guilty, and two were sentenced to death.

Muktar's story was widely reported, and the Pakistan's president awarded her $8,300 and 24/7 police protection from the traditional family values people who wanted to help Muktar kill herself. Muktar could have spent the money on flashy, high-status items like a Chinese motorbike, or a new yurt, but instead she built two schools. One for boys and one for girls. "Why should I have spent the money on myself?" asked the poor, misguided liberal feminist. "This way the money is helping all the girls, all the children."

But the Pakistani government failed to fund the school's operating expenses, and Muktar has run out of money. But she does have a website, and soon will be taking PayPal donations.

Do Muktar a favor and spread the word. Empowering people like Muktar is just as important to the War Against Terror as killing Osama, and a hell of a lot more effective than invading Iraq.

Atrios? Andrew? Glenn? Are you listening?
11.12.04 15:36


You go to war with the wantwits you have


"You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time." - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to 2,000 US troops in Iraq.

"In early March 2003, just weeks before the invasion, when Turkey unexpectedly told the Pentagon that it would not allow the 4th Infantry Division to pass through its territory, Rumsfeld decided to launch the war without a northern front--or the 4th Infantry. In other words, he very consciously, and quite literally, decided to go to war without the army we have." - J. Peter Scoblic in The New Republic.


Cement wooden overshoes for Osama



Jihadists in the Netherlands should be more careful about the enemies they make. Dutch police have arrested a Moroccan born pizza delivery guy and part-time jihadist for plotting to blow up brothels in Amsterdam's famous red light district. The naive terrorist didn't know that the Dutch underground has a lock on the Amsterdam prostitution biz.

This would make a terrific movie. What could be cooler than shadowy underworld figures stalking and rubbing out mideast terrorists? There could even be a romantic subplot: Groot, the brooding son of the patriarch of Amsterdam's red light district, falls hard for the alluring Ghaniyah, whose brother heads up the cell of sexually repressed jihadists who are plotting mayhem. In the final scene, Ghaniyah jumps to her death from atop a windmill, rather than wear a suicide belt during her final tryst with Groot.

I smell Oscar.
12.12.04 03:41


Quote of the day


"Morality" for the Christian extreme right refers to one thing and one thing only: sex. People can kill, maim, steal, bribe, cheat, and lie. All of those are fine. But God forbid we talk about sex on national TV. Talk about sex today and civilization will be over before tea time tomorrow." - MOK at Julie Saltman's blog


Child bride

Another day in the third world:
Tihun Nebiyu the goat herder doesn't want to marry. She is adamant about this. But in her village nobody heeds the opinions of headstrong little girls.

That's why she's kneeling in the filigreed shade of her favorite thorn tree, dropping beetles down her dress. Magic beetles.

"When they bite you here--" Tihun explains gravely, pressing the scrabbling insects into her chest through the fabric of her tattered smock "--it makes your breasts grow."

This is Tihun's own wishful brand of sorcery--a child's desperate measure to turn herself into an adult. Then maybe, just maybe, her family would respect her wishes not to wed. She could rebuff the strange man her papa has chosen to be her husband. And she wouldn't have to bear his dumb babies.

Tihun kneels in the dirt, eyes closed: an elfin figure whose smile is made goofily endearing by two missing front teeth. She holds her small hands over her nipples. She is waiting for the bugs' enchantment to start. Seconds pass. But nothing happens. Eventually, she starts to giggle. The beetles have escaped--by crawling up her neck.

"It doesn't work!" Tihun says, disgusted. She heaves an exaggerated sigh and squints out across the yellow-grass hills surrounding her world: "I will just have to run."

But this is childish bluster. Tihun's short legs can't carry her away fast enough from the death of her childhood. Her wedding is five days away. And she is 7 years old.
At least she won't be having sex outside of marriage.

The story goes on to say that early childbirth in immature bodies can cause ruptures, which can leave young girls incontinent for life.

The second class status of women in the third world is a human rights issue that left and right can rally behind. No politician, no interest group, no national leader can afford to excuse these types of abuses as unimportant, irrelevant, or legitimate cultural practice.


DeLay cheated out of Vietnam service

Via Patriotboy, here's how GOP house majority whip explained how he avoided militay service in the sixties:

"He and (Dan) Quayle ... were victims of an unusual phenomenon back in the days of the undeclared Southeast Asian war. So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself."

I say Congressman DeLay should take steps to right this terrible injustice, and volunteer to fight Godless terrorists in Iraq. As an important House Republican leader, The Hammer is sure to find himself guarding the front lines with his fellow patriots in no time.


Milestones

The Cost of the Iraq War Counter at the top the this page turns to $150 billion today. Congratulations to everyone that made this possible! Here's looking forward to $200 billion!

On an unrelated note, my daughter's school is asking for donations to buy pencil sharpeners.


More blather

Wingnut Adam Yoshida argues by analogy, with predictable results:
By invading Iraq, President Bush has clearly chosen to destroy Islam in the same way that the United States destroyed Soviet Communism. Spread the ideals of freedom and the truth of democracy, this line of reasoning goes, and no totalitarian society can survive. The world of modern Islam, this theory holds, will collapse in the face of freedom and be replaced by a new society which, ideally, will be post-Islamic in the way that our societies are post-Christian.
Radical Islam flourishes precisely because the United States has repressed freedom and democracy in the mideast. The people of Eastern Europe rose up against Communist totalitarianism precisely because western Europe and the US gave them hope. If we gave them aerial bombardment and prison rape, history would have turned out differently.
13.12.04 16:17


Declaration of Independence suit explained,
Sean Hannity still a hopeless wantwit


Stephen Williams, the Cupertino, California teacher who made right wing hearts flutter when he was supposedly prevented from teaching the Declaration of Independence, now says he was never prevented from teaching the Declaration of Independence.

Speaking on Fox New's fascist-oriented Hannity and Colmes, Williams said it "would be a stretch" to conclude that the Declaration was banned. But that didn't prevent GOP mouthpiece and host Sean Hannity from declaring "[W]e have gotten to the point where we don't even allow our kids to read real historical documents. ... Can we read in Cupertino? Can we read in Cupertino, to give our kids the Declaration of Independence anymore?"
14.12.04 03:37


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