Headlines

Relief from the agony over high gas prices finally arrived with completion of a high-capacity pipeline between the White House and the Fox News Channel. This pipeline is expected to aid the President in coping with public outrage against rising gas prices in the country by removing all obstructions in the smooth flow of propaganda from production facilities in the White House to consumers all over the country, in the process, bypassing the middleman.

Recognizing the hardship average Americans have had to suffer for the past few weeks due to $3.00 gallon gas prices, senators are lobbying for a bill which proposes that $100 checks be handed over to oil companies on behalf of every taxpayer in the country.

Over in the Middle-East, the Pentagon is planning to cut American troop strength in Iraq by 30,000 within the next few months. These troops will take the shortest route home through neighbouring Iran in order to take in the sights, sounds and machine-gun fire of the country.

Weapons of Mass Destruction were finally spotted in Iraq flying overhead as they made their way from North Korea to Iran (via fark).

Pepsi's new condom-flavored soda bombed in the Indian soft-drink market. The soda-guzzling public expressed unhappiness with the company's perceived intrusion into the government's population control initiative (via RawStory).

And finally, The Heavenly Times reports that our God, the God of Gods and Lord of Lords has informed his tour manager Pope Benedict XVI that He has changed his mind about the use of condoms by his favored species, the humans. In a press conference, God said that after realizing that creating the AIDS virus had been a dumb idea right from the start, He would now be relaxing his rules against contraception in order to allow couples from infecting each other with the disease. God also promised that going forward, He would try not to create any new lifeforms while under the influence of Jack n' coke.

Airbus to return to its roots as a transporter of the masses

Airbus Industrie, after a long and glorious career of transporting passengers in relative luxury and comfort through the air, is planning on returning back to its roots as a purveyor of the masses (via RawStory).

The company, which was founded in 1970 by Pierre Francois, a Paris bus driver who, after having had enough of the city's notorious traffic congestion caused by jaywalking American tourists, decided to invent an alternative mode of transport for his clientelle. The first airbus was literally a bus with plastic wings attached to its windows that enabled it to fly through traffic signals and jams. Soon the fledgeling company grew into a multinational conglomerate, ceasing production of its older winged buses, instead, applying modern aerospace technology to develop sleek new planes capable of seating passengers in comfortably upholstered chairs instead of requiring them to stand near the driver-pilot chatting about the weather.

Now, with most of the world mired in economic turmoil and recession, Airbus is planning on making air travel again accessible to the masses. With passengers being required to stand in the aisle throughout the duration of the flight, enjoying the sweaty aroma emanating from each other's armpits, this new business model is sure to attract a lot of attention from commuters in cities like New York and Chicago who are already acclimatized to these conditions on their subway systems and actually kind of miss those strange hands groping their privates on a normal plane flight.

Airbus CEO Gustav Humbert says he has many more innovative ideas to propel the company forward especially in high-growth markets such as Asia and Africa. Apart from saving space by making people stand on the plane, the new Airbus business model also involves plans to have a two-tier pricing system where coach-class passengers will be bent into the shape of a chair so as to allow business-class passengers to recline on them. Future proposals to reduce operating costs also include the design of hybrid planes where coach-class passengers will be required to collectively blow into mouthpieces attached to dual human-powered jet engines while they are being urged on by business class passengers sporting whips and paintball guns.

Headlines

Aishwarya Rai expressed regret about accepting bicycling lessons from President Bush following their recent tryst during his visit to India.

Back in Washington DC, President Bush apologized for any discomfort that visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao might have had to endure due to Americans' indecorous abuse of the First Amendment by protesting his presence in the US. He assured Jintao that for his next visit, the US military would take pre-emptive anti-protest measures by patrolling the streets of DC in armored tanks.

President Bush and President Hu Jintao made significant progress in their talks regarding the human rights record of both countries. Jintao issued an official promise that imprisoned Chinese blogger Hao Wu would be allowed access to legal representation and due process in return for President Bush providing illegally incarcerated Guantanamo Bay prisoners with access to blogging.

Instapundit made tremendous headway towards his ultimate goal of achieving blogosphere irrelevance by linking to a post that claims, without any factual basis, that Morgan Spurlock's documentary on unhealthy McDonald's fast food may have contributed to the recent skyrocketing of its business.

Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth II began serving a new term in office today by celebrating her 80th birthday. According to reports, the queen said that she was looking forward to commencing work on her primary project during this term, which would be to stay alive.

Ex-Press Secretary's wife glad husband won't be bringing work home anymore

After learning that White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan had resigned from his post, his wife Jill said that she was very happy to hear about it and that the best part of the whole deal was that he wouldn't be bringing his work home anymore.

Mr McClellan, whose duties for the White House in the capacity of spokesperson routinely involved the fabrication of statements that had little or no basis in reality, always made it a practice of bringing his work home, according to his wife. In a press conference attended solely by her marriage counsellor, Mrs McClellan said that the couple had been having some domestic problems due to Scott's refusal to shed his press secretary persona even after leaving the White House briefing room.

"People have a work-life and then they have a family-life", said Mrs McClellan. "Scott, however, due to his tremendous dedication to his work, continued to be a press secretary, lying and making things up even after he returned home. For example, the other day when I asked him if he had taken out the trash, he said yes, but when I found out that he had not, in fact, taken out the trash and requested an explanation, he claimed that we had already gone over this matter yesterday and that I should publicly apologize on the air for misrepresenting his position on trash disposal."

According to Mrs. McClellan, Scott continued to diligently perform his lying duties right upto the moment of his resignation. "Yesterday I asked him about his work, and he claimed that he was about to be promoted to Vice President", sobbed Mrs. McClellan tearfully. "Luckily for me, he was just in press-secretary mode and talking through his ass."

President Bush thanked McClellan for his service to the country while accepting his resignation. "It's going to be hard to replace someone endowed with a gift such as he", he said, referring to Mr McClellan's talent for mendacity. "Although I taught him most of what he knows about dodging incisive questions from the press and throwing them back at the reporter in a way calculated to besmirch his patriotism, it is now clear that he is currently the best in the profession, surpassing even me in bullshittery."

Mr McClellan, who was asked for a comment on his resignation, said, "The media is deliberately playing up negative stories from Iraq such as the one about my resignation, which, by the way, is not true to my best recollection. I never said I was resigning and even if I did, it would only be true if I admitted it, which I won't. Anyone who continues to insist otherwise is displaying a pre-9/11 mentality. Next question."

Why you should care about Gitmo

You say you don't care about those ragheads picked up from Iraq and Afghanistan who are now locked up in Gitmo? You feel that even though they've been stowed away from the public eye for God knows how long with no access to legal representation and who aren't even accused of anything yet, that it ain't the end of the world? You say you don't give a flying fuck even if they are tortured or sodomized or fed their own feces? You say they deserved it just 'cause they are from one of those Middle-Eastern countries with all those terrorists who do not allow us the luxury of picking and choosing who we incarcerate so hell, lets just throw 'em all into our cellars and swallow the keys?

Well, fuck you then. 'Cause it could be you in there. Especially if you have brown skin. Or if you have an accent. Or if you think the Iraq war was a sham. Or if you hold the firm belief that George W. Bush is a joke perpetuated by the ghost of Karl Marx on all mankind. Or if you don't have a sense of fashion, who the fuck knows. So if not merely for the inhumanity of it all, at least give half a rat's ass for your own skin. 'Cause it could be you in there tomorrow, rotting away in a prison cell watching your flesh atrophy along with the rest of the huddled bunch. And it will be then that you begin to wonder at the apathy of your fellow citizens to your plight and try to identify the exact moment during which the world shat in its collective pants, succumbing to the dying wishes of a few crazed lunatics who flew into a couple of buildings praying that their actions would destroy the fabric of Western civilization.

Give a fuck. For your own sake.

Bizarre co-existence of war hawks

Lately, I've been thinking about all these war hawks who support the Iraqi invasion. The great thing about these guys which I have mentioned before and which works to their advantage, is that they have so many different justifications for the war. Like if, say, you ask someone, hey man, where are all those WMDs you guys were talkin' about, and he'll say fuck you, I supported the war not to find weapons, but 'cause I had a nagging itch in my prostate for freeing the Iraqi masses from Saddam's tyranny and giving 'em a taste of good old-fashioned Western democracy. Then you ask someone else, my friend, if you're such a democracy freak, how do you feel about handing the country over to a fundamentalist Islamic regime that's gonna be as supportive of human rights as your wife's gonna be of you having an affair? And he'll say, oh, but Iraqi democracy never had a place in my war manifesto, I supported the Iraqi invasion so that we could fight terrorists over there instead of here. And so on and so forth.

What no one appears to have noticed till now is how all these various pro-war justifications are fundamentally incompatible with each other. For example, consider the farmer in Asscrack, Mississippi who wants to fight terrorists in Iraq 'cause that will keep 'em too occupied to fly planes into his barn. And contrast him with the stockbroker from Westchester, New York, who is pro-war because of his passion for bestowing a peaceful democratic Iraq unto its residents. If you think about this for a minute, you'll recognize that there's just no way for a scenario to exist where the objectives of both these gentlemen could be achieved simultaneously.

In order to create a so-called "flypaper zone" for terrorists to get sucked into, it follows that this would entail keeping Iraq in a perpetual state of destabilization and war, allowing its borders to be porous enough to soak in terrorists from Syria and Iran and all those other axes of evil in order to occupy their attentions there, thus keeping the rest of the world safe from their machinations. On the other hand, if a peaceful Iraq were to be ultimately established, couldn't that be construed to be a failure of the "fight them over there instead of over here" objective? 'Cause if you want to keep those bastards occupied, wouldn't you want the war in Iraq to continue unmitigated, year after year after year, the insurgency to carry on as it is, or exacerbate? Wouldn't every car bombing, every beheaded corpse denote success in the war?

And after realizing this, shouldn't Westchester stockbroker guy, who's such a sucker for Iraqi progress, step up to the plate and say, hey man, what the fuck, your dream of a never-ending war in Iraq is in direct conflict with my goal of a peaceful democracy in that country. But do you see anyone saying that? Heck, no. In reality, we see both these warmonkeys making sweet love on the same bed even though one of them wants to have babies and raise a family, while the other is trying to remember who the fuck he's gonna be sleeping with tomorrow.

Next, consider the justification for the war which involves turning Iraq into a democracy. And contrast that with the goal of making Iraq a terrorist-free zone. Looks like Iraq might actually soon be a democracy, although it will be ruled by a fundamentalist Islamic government at the center. So can this goal of democracy co-exist with that of making Iraq terrorism-free? Not really, if you look at how the fundamentalist Taliban government led to the rise of Al Qaida in Afghanistan. See what I mean? Again, two mutually exclusive goals.

Which is why it amazes me when George W. Bush calmly uses a number of these different justifications for the Iraq war in the same breath, which are quite obviously incompatible with each other, and then expects everyone to believe in the honesty of his mission. That he can say he wants to fight terrorists over there instead of over here, and then, at the same time, explain that the war is all about bringing peace and stability and democracy to the Middle-East. This is just ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. And I am even more astonished that no one has called him on this nonsense yet.

Taking a moment to stop and ponder

So nothing's really been happening in the news lately. Except of course, the small factoid that's come to light recently regarding the president lying about finding WMDs in Iraq. Even after the team of experts sent by the Pentagon informed him that what he was calling trailers used to manufacture biological weapons were actually hot dog stands or something akin, he still went ahead and lied that coalition troops had actually stumbled upon WMD production facilities in Iraq. And when the Washington Post reported on this presidential mendacity, White House spokesman Scott McClellan ,who, seriously man, has balls of titanium, requested the media to apologize for having had the temerity to report the truth.

Then there's Ruth Malhotra, a female student from Georgia Tech, part Indian, part fundamentalist Christian, who is currently trying to get the university to pass a law allowing homophobic hate speech on campus by citing her right to religious expression (via HuffPo). I am not so sure if she would be similarly supportive of the white supremacist group that is sure to follow in her trailblazing footsteps, citing their right to racist expression in demanding a similar relaxation of university policy that currently forbids them from calling her a fucking half-breed brown currymuncher.

As great a fan as I am of the ACLU, I think sometimes they can be a trifle overzealous. Like when they protest on behalf of female tennis players against Missouri State University for cutting the women's tennis program (via Fark). The ACLU, in its defense, is citing a rule that prohibits sex discrimination in any educational program that receives federal funds. The question is, how can it be called sex discrimination when the university is cutting male athletics programs as well? In fact, wouldn't it be sex discrimination against men if the university were to cut male programs exclusively while leaving female sports untouched? Sorry, ACLU, I can't support you on this one.

Maharashtra government proposes self-destructing garments for fashion shows

The ruling Congress-NCP coalition of Maharashtra State, in a joint effort with the BJP-Shiv Sena opposition, has proposed a new regulation which requires that all catwalking models on the Indian fashion scene would hereby have to exclusively wear garments manufactured out of a unique self-exploding fabric. If these garments, that have been successfully tested by suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan, were to get detached from the model's body due to a wardrobe malfunction, they would explode instantaneously, thereby incinerating the model before her naked flesh were to have an opportunity of making a public appearance and outraging the morality of the leering audience.

These high-end designer clothes, most of which would be used to cover the upper torso of the female model, require her to undergo a mastectomy in order to make space for the wads of highly explosive fabric they would be composed of. This, however, shouldn't be a problem, according to Shiv Sena leader Pramod Navalkar, since "female breasts do not have a place in civilized society anyways."

Indian fashion designers have protested this governmental intrusion on their art. "This fabric is not that easy to work with", said Arjun Khanna, a prominent practitioner of the trade. "It smells of gunpowder and has to be handled carefully. Plus, we are running out of models to try it on."

Critics of the proposal have argued that these garments, although a huge improvement over the previous non-exploding ones, might not be entirely morally safe. They claim that the small time interval between the garment's disengagement and the model's explosion would still allow eagle-eyed audience members with fast-action cameras to capture a shot of her bare skin just before it vaporizes along with the rest of her body.

However, Bombay Dying, the company that manufactures this fabric, has issued a public assurance that a newer and upgraded version of this incendiary material will soon be available and market-ready. This technologically advanced fabric would additionally discharge a toxic gas upon explosion that is designed to blind enterprising camera-ready members of the audience and thus, further improve its moral safety factor.

Iranian president asks Bush to disregard his own approval ratings

In a gesture of friendship and empathy, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran today called up American President George W. Bush and asked him to disregard the latest drop in his approval numbers as something that is "just a part of every dictator's life". White House insiders report that while the president was gratified by this support from unexpected quarters, the proposed military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities are still very much on the table.

The Iranian president comforted President Bush by saying that even if most Americans are unhappy with his job performance, George W.Bush would still be Iran's favorite infidel commander-in-chief. Mr Ahmedinejad also advised the president that when his approval ratings go down, punching a pillow or having the pillow accompany Vice President Dick Cheney on a hunting expedition would be a better outlet for releasing his pent-up frustrations than the invasion of a sovereign nation, such as, say, Iran.

New immigration bill to put legal immigrants on fast track to citizenship

The new guest worker program proposed by President George W. Bush is expected to help a number of legal immigrants attain American citizenship through illegal immigration.

Many legal immigrants, most of whom are of Indian or Chinese origin, will be benefited by this new bill which the president is requesting Congress to pass just in time for the Christmas holiday cross-border rush. These legal immigrants, many of whom work in the US on an H1B visa, have been languishing in a permanently uncertain status due to huge backlogs of green card applications, most of which take more than 6 years to be approved. After that, it is another 10 years before these people can apply for American citizenship.

Now, with this new guest worker program in the works, legal immigrants will now be able to jump on the fast-track to citizenship by first turning into illegal immigrants. Once this is done, they will be able to shed their highly paid software developer and consultant positions, instead, seeking employment as fruit pickers, hotelroom maids and toilet cleaners, working their way up the citizenship ladder till they are able to attain permanent residency. This will then allow them to become US citizens in a much shorter time period than it would have taken them, had they pursued it through normal legal channels.

Many Republican senators have expressed their support for this guest worker program, saying that it was high time that these highly educated and hardworking legal immigrants were put to work on jobs average Americans didn't want, instead of being employed in professions Americans want but aren't qualified to perform. Moreover, these legal immigrants, unlike their illegal counterparts, contribute nothing to the country except hefty infusions of cash into the social security trust fund and the economy, especially during Christmastime when most of them visit their home country, taking along with them more than half the goods produced in the US during the year.

The passage of this bill will be a huge victory for legal immigrants, who have been lobbying for it for a long time, using highly visible methods for garnering public attention such as hushed inter-cubicle whisperings and frustrated table thumpings during dinner time. Their problems have been compounded by the fact that even though their large numbers presented a substantial vote bank for any beltway politician who would be willing to fight for their cause, they would still, through force of habit, continue to vote for a Gandhi family member for election to the US Congress.

Inane Instapundit post of the day

Glenn Reynold's points to this post by Confederate Yankee, an apparently confused right-wing simpleton, who, in a very cute wide-eyed manner asks,

"DEAR NEW YORK TIMES: When the largest single fatality-causing event for your (well, our) soldiers in recent months is a single vehicle wreck, isn't it officially time to retire the theme that we're losing the war?"

Dear Confederate Yankee, it really depends on what you mean by the phrase "win the war". If winning the war for you merely means less American soldiers dying in battle, then yeah, America is probably winning the war. But if that were to be the only criterion of victory, what's stopping the US from pulling out of Iraq entirely? Wouldn't that be the ultimate victory in the war? No troops in Iraq, no troops getting killed?

Now on the other hand, if you weren't as much of a simpleton as you appear to be if one were to judge you by the contents of your blog, and actually stopped to think about what the fuck it is that you are asking, you would realize that even your beloved president believes that winning the war is about more than just American soldiers not being killed. Winning the war involves stabilizing Iraq politically, kickstarting the Iraqi economy, improving the standard of living of its residents to such an extent that they wouldn't look back at life under Saddam as having been the lesser of two evils. Winning the war also involves reducing Iraqi casualties due to terrorist attacks. Right? Right? 'Cause isn't that what this war is about, isn't it all about the poor downtrodden Iraqis who've suffered so much under the tyrant Saddam, isn't it about forcing democracy down their grateful parched throats? Isn't it about giving them a better life? And has America won that war? Nah, I didn't think so either.

But wait, didn't you guys say that winning the war is about making Iraq a terrorist base so that we can fight them there and not here. Or was winning the war about successfully not finding WMDs? Fuck man, you lost me now. See, that's why you shouldn't keep redefining the purpose of the war. 'Cause when you do that, whatever point it is that you were making ceases to hold any meaning. And then there's really no standard of victory that you can point to and claim that we've achieved it. Which is why I thought it was pretty simplistic of you to ask the NY Times such a naive question.

And Glenn Reynolds, Jesus man, do you even read the posts you link to? Do you even spend a single moment pondering over what the post says or means? Maybe you should. Or maybe it's me who's being naive now. One thing's for sure, though. The righties are panicking. They are falling over each other's feet, trying to come up with newer and more implausible justifications for why their community of lunatics is right and the rest of the world is wrong, trying to desperately look for silver linings where none exist.

Why I stopped doing fake news

Because it keeps turning into reality.

Here's what I satirized last month :

Clerics from the All India Muslim Personal Law Board have ordered all Muslim women in India to undergo a sex-change operation once they have fulfilled their duties of womanhood (via RawStory). This command came in the wake of many young Muslim women discarding the traditional Hijab in favor of Western dresses, which they then proceeded to shamefully flaunt in public shopping malls, where members of the opposite sex could get an eyeful unfettered.
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The sex-change operation would have numerous benefits for Muslim women. After their sexual transformation, women would be able to live their lives as productive members of society, which their old gender would otherwise have not permitted them to.

And here's what's really happening in Saudi Arabia today : (via God is for suckers)

Tired of playing second fiddle to men in conservative Saudi Arabia, five women decided if you can't beat them, join them.

Al Watan newspaper said the five women underwent sex change surgery abroad over the past 12 months after they developed a "psychological complex" due to male domination.

Women in Saudi Arabia, which adopts an austere interpretation of Islam, are not allowed to drive or even go to public places unaccompanied by a male relative.

It's hard out here for a prophet.

Stupid Mr Kaloogian

Here we go again. We return back to this weeklong conservative whining about the lack of "good news" from Iraq. One future congressman took it to the next level. Howard Kaloogian, a Republican from California, published on his website a photo of Baghdad, showing a calm, peaceful, almost idyllic city, saying "We took this photo of downtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be."

But Mr Kaloogian had a problem. The Truth Nazis at DailyKos had already swung into action, and based on investigation, common sense and a healthy mistrust of anything that ever came out of a Republican's mouth, discovered that the idyllic picture Mr Kaloogian had purportedly snapped was not really Baghdad, but Istanbul, Turkey. Ah, that explains the hand-holding woman in the picture, you say? Correct.

Then, Mr Kaloogian, who, by the way, has now been informed by Fox News that they have a news anchor position waiting for him in that organization just in case he decides to leave Congress, replaced the fake Baghdad photo on his website with a (purportedly) real one taken from a hilltop which might as well have been taken from Mars.

But this is what puzzles me. On his website, Mr Kaloogian says, "I just returned from a 10-day trip to Iraq to talk to our soldiers and Marines about their experiences in the war against terrorism." So are we to believe that even after travelling to Iraq with a camera, a crate of Dasanis, an all-consuming mistrust of the American media and a fanatical eagerness to take pictures of a calm and stable Iraq, all he could come up with was the snapshot of an Istanbul neighbourhood? What does this say about his claim of media bias then?

If Howard Kaloogian, an extremely biased pro-war Republican wannabe congressman, wasn't able to capture a single scene of calmness and stability in Iraq during the course of his travels within that country, instead, having to bolster his argument of Iraqi progress by presenting a fake photo as evidence, doesn't it basically tell us that there is no discernible progress in Iraq? That his entire argument is false? That the media isn't being biased and that its reporting accurately depicts the violence occurring over there?

Either that or Mr Kaloogian accidentally flew to Turkey instead of Iraq, took pictures of Istanbul thinking it was Baghdad, and now he cannot admit it because it would make him look like a fool. Take your pick.

Jury still out on whether praying helps gunshot victims

The results of a new study were released whose purpose was to determine whether praying for heart patients aided in their convalescence. The answer, unfortunately, turned out to be "What are you, an idiot?" In fact, a greater proportion of patients who were aware of the praying efforts being undertaken on their behalf had further medical complications. These complications were reportedly caused due to hospital staff leaving their posts in order to join the prayer team in singing devotional hymns in the lobby.

Researchers were adamant that this study was not meant to prove or disprove the existence of God. As the lead researcher emphasized, "That's a question for another time and another fake research project to delve into."

This project was funded by the Templeton Foundation, an institute whose mission involves identifying the best methods for injecting religion and superstition into science without actually appearing to do so. In that, it follows in the pioneering footsteps of the Discovery Institute which is currently engaged in the admirable task of attempting to discredit the theory of evolution by asking pertinent questions such as "if mankind did actually descend from apes, how come men don't enjoy flinging their own faeces at others as much as they used to?" The Templeton Institute has also previously allocated funding for scientific projects such as "Does reading the Bible four times a week inhibit tooth decay" and "Can conversion to Christianity be an effective tool to be abused by a daughter-beating Afghani asshole in order to obtain political asylum in a developed country governed by a fundamentalist Christian moron."

Although the research project might appear to have been a failure due to 59 percent of the patients who knew they were being prayed for developing a complication, versus 52 percent of those who didn't, the Foundation is calling the exercize a success since it does not conclusively disprove the role of prayer in helping to heal gunshot victims. In order to carry out further research on that issue, the foundation has applied for additional grants from the American nutjob community.

Freedom on our terms

Bush on Iraqi freedom :

"History will prove whether I'm right. I think I'll be right because do believe freedom is universal."

Bush on the duly elected Iraqi Prime Minister :

Senior Shiite politicians said today that the American ambassador has told Shiite officials to inform the Iraqi prime minister that President Bush does not want him to remain the country's leader in the next government.

Bush on Iraqi freedom :

"I remember it wasn't all that long ago that 11 million Iraqi's went to the polls in the face of terrorist threats... and said, we want to be free... That sentiment still exists in Iraq."

Bush on the duly elected Iraqi Prime Minister :

Ambassador Khalilzad said that President Bush "doesn't want, doesn't support, doesn't accept" Mr. Jaafari to be the next prime minister, according to Mr. Taki, a senior aide to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Shiite bloc.

Fucking hypocrite. And finally,

"How can they do this?" Mr. Ubady, a spokesman for Mr Jaafari said. "An ambassador telling a sovereign country what to do is unacceptable."

"The perception is very strong among certain Shia parties that the U.S., led by Khalilzad, is trying to unseat Jaafari," he added.

You know what, lets just send Jeb Bush over to Iraq. Looks like he'll be the only person America will be happy to hand over a democratic Iraq to.

How to win the war in Iraq Bush-style

President Bush is miffed at the American media. And rightly so too. The evil conglomerate of American newspapers, television networks and online news outlets is turning out to be the shadowy figure behind the scenes responsible for the rapid descent of Iraq into a civil war. The reasoning behind this is so flawless, only someone who is not the president of the US or one of his conservative minions could fail to grasp the beauty of its logic. The president's treatise is that the war in Iraq has already been won by coalition troops. Iraq is blossoming into a prosperous and healthy democracy. However, it is the American media who is guilty of an irresponsible and abject failure in heralding this great American victory and communicating it to an anxious citizenry back home.

The president spent all of last week vociferously elaborating this point through news conferences and press releases. Ironic, considering that he was relaying his message about the untrustworthiness and incompetence of the media, through the media. But his point was that the real reason behind the American public's disenchantment with the Iraq war has less to do with America's performance in that war and more to do with the public's perception of that performance. Now, many people have been placing the blame for the Iraqi debacle squarely on insufficient troop numbers on the ground in Iraq. And since military recruitment numbers have been going down, the only way this problem could have been solved was by reinstating the mandatory military draft. You know, that hallowed American practice of the 60's where they used to grab babies from their cribs and place them in foxholes. But now we know it's not really the troop level we need to be worried about. It's the reporter level in Iraq that is the problem. Insufficient journalists on the ground to cover all the good news that is not making it's way across the Atlantic, is what's behind the cherrypicked bad press coverage of the recent spurt of violence in Iraq. Due to a lack of manpower, reporters will only publish the interesting stories. Stories of violence and gore. Not stories of humanity and kindness and progress. At least, that's the treatise.

As the president informed us, the US is lacking journalists who will venture into terrorist infested neighbourhoods outside the Baghdad green zone in order to relay back all the cute happy cuddly news that cannot, in the words of conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, be effectively ascertained merely by standing on a hotel balcony and peering through binoculars. Far too much good news that is trying to make its way through the swirling smoke hovering above Iraqi streets after an IED explosion, has been lost due to uncooperative and cowardly reporters who will merely give it a passing glance as they hungrily snap pictures of smoldering cars and charred bodies. In fact, it is only a select few of that profession who will bother to look past all the charnel-house scenes prevalent in big cities such as Baghdad, Fallujah and Najaf and engage in some good old-fashioned field-journalism in the smaller villages and towns where Iraqis in possession of their heads still outnumber those who don't.

So this is my recommendation to President Bush. Forget about increasing troop levels. Hell, send all the troops back home. 'Cause they've already accomplished what they set out to do. Saddam Hussain is gone and Iraq has been handed over to the bloodthirsty religious militia. Which was the plan in the first place. Now it's time to put the press to work and institute a mandatory draft for journalists. It is time for the media to step in and finish off the mission by feeding the American people lies and half-truths, by painting a picture of Iraqi Valhalla where smiling Sunni insurgents lay down their weapons and lovingly place flowers in the hair of their Shia brethren as they sit together on a grassy meadow with a picnic basket, holding hands and watching the sun set in the west. We need more reporters in Iraq who will selectively sift through all the useless chaff of explosions, beheadings and lootings in order to find the hard-to-obtain grains of happiness. We need someone who, when faced with an image of bodies rotting in a gutter, will actually look past all that grimness and pessimism and capture the innocent delight of little children as they play with those corpses, exuding a joy that can only be attributed to living in a Saddam-free Iraq.

And having a mandatory journalist draft would also allow those conservative columnists who, uptil now, had been shackled in their whoring for the White House by concerns for their own life. Concerns that disallowed them from being any more proactive than watching CNN and screaming at the lack of good news on it. These people would now be able to take matters into their own hands and be footsoldiers in the war against bad truthful press by marching to the battlefront and engaging in some patriotic misreporting. And that's what America needs right now, not more soldiers in Iraq who would actually keep the peace, but more American media outlets that would broadcast an illusion of peace.

"Awwwww" moment of the day

The ACLU as everyone knows, stands for the "American Civil Liberties Union". Which basically means, that it is an institution whose objective is to protect civil rights and liberties of the individual. So how do you react when a right-wing website calling itself Stop the ACLU pens a blogpost decrying the execution of an Afghan Muslim who's being sentenced to death for committing the sin of converting to Christianity?

"Awwwwww, how cute", you go. "Stop the ACLU is actually defending people's civil rights", you say. "Come here, Stop the ACLU, let me pat your head", you say. "My, how you've grown, welcome to the world of adults. Now sit tight while we explain to you where babies come from and how your body's gonna change in the coming months as you begin to bleed outta strange places."

But seriously, do you think Stop the ACLU would have cared as much if it were an Aghan Muslim who'd turned to atheism and been sentenced for that crime? Hell, forget Stop the ACLU, you think anyone in this country would have cared? Would Michelle Malkin have scampered off to attend a rally in his defense? You think President Bush would have exerted political pressure on the Afghan government to release him if the guy had been a vegan Budhhist who drank his own urine? Fuck no. Which is why it's so goddamned cute to see all these right-wing hypocrites all dancing around waving their hands in the air making a huge fucking deal about Abdul Rahman.

Now, I've got nothing against Mr Rahman, in fact, he has my full and unquestioning sympathy and in my opinion, any government that has a clause in its constitution that says religious conversion is punishable by death is a government comprised of fascists. But what do you think is actually going on today in Afghanistan anyways? Rahman's probably just one of thousands of people whose rights are being violated in that country which is basically still being ruled by religious clerics, if you believe media reports. But Rahman has one thing going for him. The only difference between him and the others is that he's being executed for conversion to Christianity. He gets all the media attention because he's an elite soldier in this great motherfucking religious war. And that's why protecting his civil liberties is so fucking important to Malkin, to Bush, to Stop the ACLU and every other right-wing asshole who never raised a single voice of protest when their own government was torturing and executing innocent Muslim prisoners in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. So it's not about civil rights and liberty and freedom as they want you to believe, it's about a Muslim government killing a converted Christian.

And that's the "Awwww" moment of the day. Enjoy your fucking weekend.

Update : I think this picture from the Save Abdul Rahman rally explains the right-wing attitude better than anything else.


Dear faceless shithead behind the stupid-ass signboard, the difference between you and the ACLU is that the ACLU fights for civil rights regardless of the religion of the victim it is representing.

Another blog post on the same site titled "Could I be more American right now", says :

"On the way back to the office, I swung by McDonald's, and now I'm chowing on a Quarter Pounder meal that cost $5 and was served to me in, literally, 15 seconds. This is why we fight, folks."

Indeed. And that's what Abdul Rahman is fighting for as well. The opportunity to chew on a McDonald's burger a mere 15 seconds after he orders it.

Advani to use form-changing Rath for Yatra

BJP leader L.K Advani, who will be embarking on a National Integration Yatra to protest the Varanasi bombings, has said that he will be using a state-of-the-art chameleonic Rath that would be able to change its appearance at will.

Mr Advani, in a press conference, said that due to his stature as a prominent leader of the country, it was imperative for him to do all he could to protect his own well-being during the Yatra even as he set out on an expedition that is sure to endanger others'. Since the Yatra would be passing through numerous territories hostile to him and his ideology, he would be taking the precaution of driving a Rath that would be able to change its appearance according to the ethnicity of the neighbourhood it would be passing through.

While moving through a Muslim-dominated area, the Rath would be able to borrow a page from Mr Advani's politics and assume the shape of a Crescent in order not to incur the wrath of its residents. In case the Yatra were to strike camp in a Naxal infested forest, the Rath would promptly change its color to red and modify its shape to resemble a hammer and sickle. And even though the itinerary currently does not include a detour through Pakistan, the Rath is fully capable of featuring Mohammed Ali Jinnah's smiling visage on its side if the occasion were to demand it. Only after the Rath reaches the safety of its final Hindu-populated destination of Varanasi would it assume its original form as Lord Rama's war-chariot by turning into an air-conditioned Mazda bus, equipped with an internet connection and a DVD player.

The Rath would also be featuring bullet-proof glass windows in order to disallow Mr Advani from reflexively shooting at Muslim protesters who are sure to line the streets, demonstrating against the Yatra as it passes by.

Congress and Communist party leaders are calling the Yatra a political gimmick designed to instigate communal unrest within the country, saying that they will be organizing their own Rath Yatra in protest, featuring a state-of-the-art Rath that would be powered by human muscle due to ideological constraints.

Is Jesus an introvert?

Sometimes it so happens that you read two things one right after the other and have a brainstorm. For example, take this incredibly accurate article about introverts (via Jabberwock), and then this story (via Pharyngula) where some churchgoing folk in Alabama observed that Hurricane Katrina had buckled their church's dry wall into an image, which, to their pious eyes, appeared to bear a pretty striking resemblance to their crucified Lord and Savior. The article further goes on to say that numerous people, after touching this dry-wall, were healed of their ailments, most prominently a guy who got his kidneys healed and a woman whose eyesight underwent significant improvement.

So lets consider three possible scenarios, the first of which assumes that the churchgoing folk are correct in their assumption that the dry-wall is actually a manifestation of Jesus Christ who has temporarily taken up residence in the church. Based on these facts, let us try and construct a psychological profile of the guy. Why would Mr Christ, if he really wished to make his presence felt to all mankind, turn to such a low-key location such as this bombed out church, that too, in Shitholeville, Alabama? 'Cause if I were Jesus, and I were to decide, fuck this, I've had it with this godforsaken shadowy life where some atheistic fools are even beginning to question my very existence. "Father, I'll be right back, I'm just gonna step into the spotlight for a second, let me know if you need anything from the grocery", I would call out to God as I leave my heavenly abode and walk on to the heavenly escalator that would take me down to earth.

And I sure-as-hell, pardon my French, wouldn't choose the Triumph Learning and Worship Center for Life in Saraland, Alabama to be the site of my miracle. No, sir. Not some crummy old dry-wall in a crummy old town. You know what would be a great miracle instead, one that would capture the hearts and minds of the faithful and cause non-believers to shit their pants in fear and join the Republican Party? I would turn the entire Statue of Liberty into my crucifixion. And instead of holding the torch I would just give the world the finger. They've had it coming for a while. And rather than make 'em take a Greyhound bus to Saraland Alabama (I don't even know if Greyhound does Alabama) to get healed after touching the dry-wall, I would just make 'em take the elevator to Lady Liberty's thorn-covered head and offer a simple prayer. Wouldn't that allow me to heal many more people at a time? Surely there are a lot more sick people in Manhattan and the Tri-state area than there are in Saraland, Alabama? 'Cause if I had the power to heal people and I didn't, what would that make me? A callous cruel bastard, that's what. Why would anyone even pray to me then?

But apparently Jesus isn't entering Lady Liberty's copper body. Instead, he's down south in Saraland, Alabama, sitting in a fucking dry-wall which probably smells like a sewer too 'cause of the hurricane. And the only scientific explanation behind Jesus' strangely antisocial behavior is that he's actually an introvert. He doesn't prefer to be in the limelight. He is only comfortable among a small group of men, mostly his friends, and has to take a couple of hours off for every hour he has to turn "on" in order to interact socially as he performs miracles.

Either that, or the entire story is bogus, it's a scam pulled off by the Triumph Learning and Worship Center for Life in Saraland, Alabama in order to extort cash from the gullible fools that comprise the citizenry in that neck of the woods.

The third and final scenario is one that I would very much hope for. Namely, that dry-wall has miraculous curative properties and that touching it can cure maladies as diverse as kidney failure and a poor eyesight. Hey, maybe it could even be the elusive AIDS medicine we've been looking for all this time. Or it could be that other elusive drug, the functionally impeccable erection inducer that never ever leads to a 4 hour erection, not even in the rarest of rare cases that might require you to go to a doctor and explain why you were taking an erection inducer in the first place. It might be too soon to celebrate, but hell, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

If you didn't hear anything, that was the sound of Glenn Reynolds not making a point

That strange little man Glenn Reynolds with his strangely popular blog Instapundit writes a characteristically inane post which seemingly doesn't make any point at all. As is expected, every right wing-blogger and his uncle have linked to this post 'cause there's a general consensus among the rubes that if Reynolds writes a post, even if it's just a list of winning numbers for the Oklahoma State lottery, it is worthy enough to be linked. So anyways, Reynolds points to this post by someone calling himself Proud Kaffir at RedState.org who says that the media shouldn't compare the Iraq war to Vietnam because not enough soldiers are dying in Iraq to merit the comparison.

You know how you sometimes go to a theater to watch a movie with your buddies and when its done and finished and you leave the movie theater saying, fuck what an amazing movie, the plot was superb and all, but I just can't figure out why the hero killed his partner towards the end. And then your buddies look at you like you're retarded and gently, in a manner befitting the occasion, ask you if you understood the plot at all?

Someday hopefully soon, there will be a day in the life of Proud Kaffir when he will understand the plot. Till then, I will take up the onerous task of explaining it to him. See, Proud Kaffir, whenever we, the anti-war brigade, speak of Iraq being a quagmire like Vietnam, we say it strictly in terms of the literal meaning of the word quagmire, which is a word used metaphorically to describe military campaigns characterized by small hope of victory, poorly-defined objectives and/or no clear exit strategy. I lifted it right from Wikipedia. You may look it up at your own leisure. So you see, Mr Proud Kaffir, the Iraq-Vietnam comparison has nothing to do with the number of lives lost in those wars. It is a matter of both wars being prolonged conflicts, both having being waged unnecessarily with little or no planning having gone into their culmination. Please let me know when this nugget of logic permeates to your brain. That way, through some quick mathematical calculation, I will be able to estimate the thickness of your skull.

Then, Glenn Reynolds, being smarter (one would assume) than the Proud Kaffir, omits any mention of the Vietnam comparison in his link to the post, instead, making another, even more irrelevant point. He provides us with some figures of the number of casualties during the reigns of the past 4 presidents of the United States and shows us that George W Bush didn't kill as many American soldiers during his presidency as the media believes. And he ends his post with the statement

"You'd think this would get more attention."

Why should this get more attention? What point is he making exactly? That since a lesser number of soldiers died during Bush's regime, that makes the Iraq war okay? Again, let me explain the point to Glenn. We, the anti-war brigade, are not opposing this war merely because it is killing American soldiers. We are opposing it because we feel that this war has been waged on fundamentally flawed grounds and false pretenses. So, Mr Reynolds, please, please, I beg of you, the next time you link to someone, at least have a coherent reason for doing so. And a point would also be a nice thing to have.