Why Barack Obama just lost my respect

"Kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to his will and dedicated myself to discovering his truth."

Sounds like something President George W. Bush might say, doesn't it? Actually these are the words of Democratic Illinois Senator Barack Obama as he admonished his fellow democrats for neglecting to pander to the evangelists and the rest of the God-loving people of America.

"Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation. Context matters"

says Sen. Obama. My question to him is, how is the mention of God even relevant to the duties of a public servant? Why the need to mention God at all? And what determines this overpowering necessity to mention God, is it the religiosity of the public or that of the public servant? If, say, the public servant is an atheist, is it still incumbent upon him to keep bringing up God just to score a point with his voter base?

Obama further says, "millions of Christians, Muslims and Jews have traveled similar religious paths, and that is why we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse." Sure, they all followed similar paths, the similarity lying in their intense common desire to wipe each other off the face of the planet. That and an unwholesome belief in an imaginary Supreme Being, one who is benevolent only towards their own particular faith.

"Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square", he further adds. But no one is asking you to leave your religion at the door, Sen. Obama. You may be as feverishly religious as you desire. The only expectation we have from our leaders is not to craft sex toys out of their religious fervor and repeatedly shove them up our butts in a manner popularized by our current president and his Congressional sidekicks. Be religious on your own time, not on taxpayer funded time.

Sadly, I believe that in spite of my dismay with Sen. Obama's statements, this is probably the shrewdest stance he could have assumed within the American political theater. It is sure to catapult him to a prime position for running for President in the near future. However, it is also a very selfish and condescending position to assume because not only does he unilaterally elevate himself above the common garden variety democrat as he floats on a cloud of moral righteousness, he also marginalizes the rest of the Democratic party, whose secular members might find it ethically questionable or just plain stupid to play the religious card in order to garner a few votes.

Measuring tape shortages causing hemline violations to rise in Madhya Pradesh

An acute shortage of measuring tapes in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh is causing it to descend into a vortex of criminal activity involving rising hemlines.

Madhya Pradesh, a state which is passing a law restricting women from wearing short skirts in educational institutions, is doing away with traditional police accessories such as guns, batons and handcuffs, instead, providing law enforcement officers with measuring tapes that will help them regulate limb visibility. These measuring tapes will be useful in tracking down and prosecuting female students who are guilty of violating the law by wearing skirts that culminate above their knees.

Sushma Arya, a member of the Madhya Pradesh Women's Commission, elaborated on how the measure would help women by forcibly disallowing them from looking good enough to rape. "One would think that the best way to curb crimes against women would be to arrest the perpetrator of the crime, but one would be wrong", said Ms Arya. "We now know that the root of the crime lies not in the man's sexually deprived mind but in the erotic content of the victim's legs."

In order to make way for this new law, previous laws requiring police to arrest eve-teasers and sexual predators have been scrapped, thereby freeing up manpower that would be better utilized elsewhere, for example, installing roadblocks to carry out random hemline measurements. However, police have complained that even after divesting them of their old equipment, the state government has yet to send them the requisite number of measuring tapes they need to prevent these feminine offenders from getting themselves molested.

"We have been receiving a huge number of tip-offs from people who say they've seen a short skirt here and an exposed calf there", said police constable Ramdas. "Even though most turn out to be false leads, we are still not able to follow up on all of them since we are basically guesstimating the skirt-lengths. God only knows how many bare legs we have mistakenly let loose on society and how many innocent men will be lured to a life of unavoidable crime on being seduced by their buttery charms."

Ms. Sushma Arya has responded to the measuring tape shortage by proposing a temporary alternative solution. "Till such a time as we are able to provide law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to prevent hemline violation crimes, the only permissible garments women will be allowed to wear are full-fitting black robes that would cover their bodies from head to toe," said Ms Arya. "This isn't a religious thing, it is merely a precautionary measure to protect society from these long-legged fiends."

Angry fathers refuse to yield spotlight to refugees on World Refugee Day

Male American parents, fresh from the adulation and appreciation bestowed upon them by a grateful nation on Father's Day, which was celebrated two days ago last sunday, have indicated their reluctance to yield the stage to the refugee community on the occasion of World Refugee Day, which will be observed on tuesday. In a joint statement, irate fathers all over the country complained about their extremely short tenure on the nation's pedestal and proposed that in order to rectify the situation, World Refugee Day be celebrated next week instead of this week.

World Refugee Day, which is intended to force Americans to take some time off from their busy daily schedule and spend an evening watching television anchors discuss the plight of refugees worldwide, has come under fire for prematurely evicting the memory of Father's Day from the nation's collective psyche.

"Even though sunday was the official Father's Day, under normal circumstances, paternal benefits continue to accrue through the rest of the week as long as the father makes sure that he keeps bringing up the topic", said a spokesman for the Union of Disenfranchised Fathers (UDF). "However, this year, due to the wholly unforeseen arrival of World Refugee Day a mere two days after Father's Day, paternal benefits have been cut short, leading to a callous neglect of the nation's sperm-givers. It's an outrage!"

The Global Committee for the Allocation of Special Days has taken the matter under advisement. However, a spokesman for the committee has expressed unhappiness with the UDF's demand. "If World Refugee Day were to be rescheduled, it would wreak havoc on the rest of the year's Special Day schedule", said the spokesman. "World Lactose Intolerance Day would have to be pushed to the week after next, resulting in World Hawaiian Shirt Day having to be cancelled entirely. And that's really my favorite day", he added wistfully.

However, the UDF has adopted a stubborn unyielding position with respect to this issue. An angry father brandishing a shiny new electronic scheduler made his stance clear. "If the refugees refuse to part with their day voluntarily, we will force them to flee and seek refuge in a different section of the calendar".

Monday morning hafta

Vande Mataram, knock knock jokes, big pharma and much much more. When I say much much more, of course it means that's all I got. But you know what to do.

What the fuck is happening to America?

This is the best example of how war fucks up a country's morality. How it destroys a sense of what is decent and what is not. How it completely turns upside down and inside out people's abilities to gauge what is right and what is wrong. How it eats the very soul of a previously compassionate nation, turning it into a bloodthirsty vengeful beast that cares naught as it barrels through the innocent bodies that feed its desire for closure.

Recently a US marine wrote a song and made a video which then circulated on the internet. The song describes a graphic scene involving a marine who uses an Iraqi girl as a human shield and watches her explode into bits with a vindictive satisfaction. The marine claims this song and the video were a joke.

Let me post the lyrics to this song, just so you know what I'm talking about here. (via Malkin(s)watch)

Hadji Girl

I was out in the sands of Iraq
And we were under attack
And I, well, I didn't know where to go.
And the first think I could see was
Everybody's favorite Burger King
So I threw open the door and I hit the floor.
Then suddenly to my surprise
I looked up and I saw her eyes
And I knew it was love at first sight.
And she said

Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
Hadji girl I can't understand what you're saying.
And she said
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
Hadji girl I love you anyway.

Then she said that she wanted me to see.
She wanted me to meet her family
But I, well, I couldn't figure out how to say no.
Cause I don't speak Arabic.
So, she took me down an old dirt trail.
And she pulled up to a side shanty
And she threw open the door and I hit the floor.
Cause her brother and her father shouted

Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
They pulled out their AKs so I could see
And they said
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah

So I grabbed her little sister and pulled her in front of me.
As the bullets began to fly
The blood sprayed from between her eyes
And then I laughed maniacally
Then I hid behind the TV
And I locked and loaded my M-16
And I blew those little fuckers to eternity.
And I said

Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
They should have known they were fucking with a Marine

Not only is this song obscene beyond belief, it is also racist and is repugnant in its glorification of violence. No doubt, it was written as a joke under the stress of war, as the marine claims he did, and I will not judge a soldier for the manner in which he chooses to release his stress as long as it's in a non-violent way. But for the rest of us who are sitting in our air conditioned offices typing out words, who have no reason to be as cynical and bloodthirsty as the man who wrote it, to find humor in the song is just bizarre. A battle-weary marine to use this medium as a release for his frustrations can be understood on some level. For ordinary people who are not engaged on the frontline to revel in the slaughter of an innocent Iraqi child and find it comical is inhumane.

The rot has set in. God help the American soul.

The Official God FAQ

All you ever wanted to know about Him.

(via Gods4Suckers)

Monday morning hafta

Go here. It is up.

Friday Morning Glenn Reynolds hilarity

In this post, Glenn Reynolds points to a post by Ann Althouse about a Gallup poll that shows that what Muslim women find most objectionable about the West is "the general perception of moral decay, promiscuity and pornography that pollsters called the "Hollywood image" that is regarded as degrading to women". Glenn Reynolds, agrees, saying, "I blame Hollywood", but then, mysteriously, goes off on a pro-war tangent, adding that "No doubt antiwar Hollywood producers and talent will begin self-censorship at once to remedy this problem."

First of all, what the fuck? What does the "anti-war" attitude of Hollywood producers have anything to do with the perception of moral decay and pornography of the Muslim world about the West? Jesus, Glenn, I guess you pushed one crayon too many through your nose. 'Cause, you know that the Jehadists are not really waging a war against the West in order to strip away Sharon Stone's God-given right to uncross her legs without wearing underwear, right? You know that, right? 'Cause we could always ask her to stop doing that, and being the patriot that she is, she would do it too, in the interests of the country.

Oh but wait, this isn't the best part. From the post mentioned above, one would assume Glenn Reynolds would be against the moral decay and pornography rampant in Hollywood, yes?

Well, not quite. Just a few posts earlier, he points to this news story which mentions that Playboy magazine's Indonesian editors recently defied militant Islamists by publishing the second issue of the magazine.

Playboy's publishers said they were producing the magazine to defend democracy and freedom of expression against fear and intolerance.

An editorial called for "the absence of a monopoly set of values and views in our beloved country".

Our boy Glenn applauds those fearless editors. "And rightly so", he exclaims with democratic glee. Now as anyone who's ever been in second grade, did I say second grade, I meant tenth grade, knows, Playboy magazine is pretty much a bastion of Western "moral decay, promiscuity and pornography". But I guess all that good stuff is okay as long as it wasn't manufactured by anti-war Hollywood producers, eh?

So I guess hypocrisy is spelt with a Reynolds. Hypocreynoldsrisy. Nah, that doesn't sound right. Anyways, you know what I mean.

Gay marriage amendment blocked : Homosexuality expected to rampage through US Congress

President Bush has warned Americans to get ready for an outbreak of homosexuality to run unfettered through the halls of Congress this fall just before midterm Congressional elections. In a lunch-hour televised address to the nation intended to capture the attention of restaurant-going Americans who would otherwise have changed the channel if they had been sitting at home, President Bush explained that today's blockage of the anti-gay marriage amendment, which is intended to ban and criminalize same sex marriages in the US, would most likely result in hundreds of Congressmen turning gay before the elections in november.

Election years have traditionally seen an increase in homosexual activity among members of the US Congress. Political experts say that this might be due to inordinately long hours of campaigning carried out away from home and family, along with extended periods of time spent in the company of sweaty, sexy campaign advisors. "Put a sexually repressed Republican senator in a brainstorming session with his all-male staff and lock the door", says Lee Waters, a political consultant, "Nine times out of ten, when the room is reopened, it will be a frothing mass of naked arms, legs and 'Support The Troops' boxer shorts".

Hence, every election year, in spite of critics' claims of this being a transparent ploy to rally his Christian Right voter base, President Bush has made it a point to bring up the anti-gay marriage amendment for consideration in the US Congress in order to protect the US Congress from itself. The last time the issue came up was during the presidential election in 2004 when President Bush, deeply disturbed by his growing attraction towards campaign advisor Karl Rove's combover, frantically tried to bring the amendment to a vote in the House of Representatives.

Many members of Congress such as Republican Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma were disappointed by the results of the Senate vote. Sen. Inhofe, who has proclaimed that he's proud to say that in the recorded history of his family, they've never had any kind of homosexual relationship, now says that the failure of the government to protect him from his inner gay cowboy makes it extremely unlikely that he will continue to be a fan of the naked female form by the time America goes out to vote come november.

White House press secretary Tony Snow, who has an adequate understanding of the dangers involved in working closely with handsome young Republicans from his years with the Fox News Network, said that by blocking the anti-gay marriage amendment, the Senate had failed to uphold the civil rights of heterosexual Congressmen. "Without the threat of getting their asses hauled to jail, the nation's lawmakers would have no incentive not to indulge in some hot Congressman-on-Congressman action culminating in homosexual wedlock", said Mr Snow, "thus jeopardizing their civil right not to be gay".

With the anti-gay marriage amendment not expected to be rammed down American throats anytime soon and all other major issues affecting America and the world already resolved, Congress is now expected to turn its attention to another hotly debated matter of extreme urgency, namely, whether there is a need for a constitutional amendment requiring a minimal dress code for America's Barbie dolls.

Hafta Magazine

Sidin from Domain Maximus has founded a new online magazine called "Hafta" and has kindly asked me to contribute a weekly satirical column. The first issue just went online today. Go, check it out. And here's my column for this week.

Oh, those insane right-wingers

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