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October 31, 2003RELIGION OF PEACE WATCH: RAMADAN PRAYERSWhile President Bush was inviting Muslim leaders to the White House and insisting Islam means peace, this is what a leading Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia had to say: Shaykh Salah Bin-Muhammad Al-Budayr delivered the sermon, which he devoted to hailing the month of Ramadan, urging Muslims to spend it in piety and charity. The imam continues with the same theme in the second sermon. He warns against wasting food in Ramadan. The imam concludes with a prayer to God to support oppressed, destitute, imprisoned, and persecuted Muslims everywhere. He prays: "O God, support Islam and Muslims and destroy the enemies of Islam, including Jews, Christians, and atheists. O God, whoever wishes our country or Muslim countries evil, busy him with himself and make his plot turn against him." He also prays: "O God, support our oppressed brothers against the usurper Jews in Palestine. O God, deal with Jews for they are within Your power. O God, show us the miracle of Your power on them. O God, shake the land under their feet, instill fear in their hearts, and make them booty for Muslims and a lesson to others. O God, free the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque from the clutches of the Jews." 
October 30, 2003STUDENT PROTESTFrom inside the belly of the beast of British anti-semitism comes surprising news: "Oxford students today said they were disappointed at the university's decision to suspend a professor who refused to admit an Israeli PhD student on political grounds, claiming it did not go far enough to tackle discrimination....
October 29, 2003WAR, DISEASE, DISCRIMINATION: BUSH TO BLAMEThe latest entry in the blame Bush sweepstakes conducted by candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination came from Gen. Wesley Clark: "In a blistering review of President Bush's national security policy, Gen. Wesley K. Clark said on Tuesday that the administration could not walk away from its responsibilities for 9/11." How can the remaining candidates top this at their next debate? Here are some Horsefeathers suggestions- assuming Gen. Clark is right in his views on the feasibility of time travel. With a hat tip to: R. W. Texan, Howard Dean lays responsibility for Pearl Harbor at Bush's feet; adds that the President failed to build a broad enough coalition when he invaded Europe in 1944, causing bitter resentment towards U.S. occupying forces. Rev. Al Sharpton claims oppression of blacks and women is President's fault: "We had a civil war because Bush sought to retain white patriarchal privilege." Lieberman adds: "Amen, brother". Kerry and Edwards blame Bush for death, but not taxes- which they promise to increase in order to create a more perfect world: "When I am President", said the French looking senator who also fought in Vietnam, "I promise to solve our health care system's problems by eliminating disease." Edwards added, "Someone must be to blame for the epidemic of death in America. Our lawyers should be free to institute malpractice suits against any doctor failing to cure any illness." Dennis Kucinich blamed Bush for the longstanding presence of gender differences: "If he had any compassion he would realize that differences between the sexes lead to discrimination against gays and women. When I am President I will insist on free surgical elimination of these differences under my universal health care plan. When everyone is the same there will be no more conflict and no more war." Carol Mosely Braun smiled in agreement.
October 27, 2003ACADEMIC ANTI-SEMITISM UPDATE: OXFORD AND ANDREW WILKIEHorsefeathers reported a few months ago on the Oxford Jew hater, Professor Andrew Wilkie. Exposing such creatures to the light of day can produce results: 10/27/03 Anti-Israel Oxford scholar resigns Horsefeathers wonders which Ivy League school will be first to offer Wilkie a tenured job.
October 24, 2003BUSH POLICIES TO BLAME"A strong dose of space weather is forecast to hit Earth Friday afternoon, potentially disrupting satellite communications and posing a threat to power grids on Earth..." Paul Krugman, writing for the NYTimes, condemned Bush: "His support for Jewish space science has enabled the Sharon government to create these disruptions that will surely fuel Muslim resentment of the West."
October 22, 2003October 21, 2003
The FBI is taking this kid to court instead of giving him a job. He’s a twenty-year-old junior at Guilford College. He set out to demonstrate that the Transportation Security Administration procedures currently in place are completely inadequate to prevent any determined terrorist from bringing weapons aboard commercial airliners. He did this by depositing box cutters, a bottle of household bleach, matches, and modeling clay in the lavatory compartments on planes in Houston and New Orleans. They were left in bags with notes that indicated that the items were intended to challenge Transportation Security Administration checkpoint security procedures.
Naturally the FBI tracked him down because he signed his name and e-mail address. And instead of thanking this kid and giving him some kind of medal, they’re hauling him up before a judge and making his life miserable. At an age when many college students enter frat house beer-guzzling contests or spend their weekends bungee jumping young Heatwole engages in public service activities. He attends a school that values civil-disobedience, pacifism, and other Quaker ideals and is a serious student who is admired by his teachers. Although Horsefeathers may not agree with his pacifism, it takes Heatwole’s principled actions seriously, protests the government’s blockheaded actions, and thanks this smart, courageous young man for his public spirited efforts to keep us safe.
October 19, 2003October 19, 2003
Steve Bartman, as our readers know, is the poor bastard who tried to catch the foul ball from his place in the left field stands at Wrigley Field in the eighth inning of the sixth game of the National League Pennant playoff. Bartman’s attempted catch deflected the ball and kept Moises Alou from making the out, some believe. And furthermore they think that Bartman was somehow magically responsible for the Cubs’ tailspin and subsequent loss of the sixth game and, of course, the pennant. Even the Boston Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan, driven mad by the Red Sox traumatic loss, rages against the hapless Bartman. “Only a Red Sox fan can properly identify with Cubs devotees right now….It’s true that [Bartman] didn’t boot a ground ball or make pitches that resulted in the Marlins scoring eight runs in that inning, but Bartman did inject himself into the action,” and, speaking from within his psychotic rage with god-like grandiosity, he intones, “AND HE MUST BE MADE TO UNDERSTAND THE ENORMITY OF HIS TRANSGRESSION. THIS SHOULD BE A LESSON FOR ALL TIMES…” If he were able Ryan would no doubt have turned Bartman into a pillar of salt. And even though you might have expected more sanity from the governor of a sovereign state, the moronic governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, fanned the flames of this irrational hatred against Bartman, implying that lynching the guy might not be a bad idea. “I hope he made it home, but I’m angry at the guy.” Bartman turns out to be a nice guy, a heartfelt Cubs fan and lover of baseball all his life. He even coaches the Renegades, a team of 13- and 14-year-olds in his neighborhood. The New York Times reports that Roger Shimanovsky, whose son was coached by Bartman on that kids’ team not long ago, says, “He taught those kids how to play, how to win right, and how to lose right.” The day after the game Bartman issued a statement: “There are few words to describe how awful I feel and what I have experienced within these last 24 hours. I’ve been a Cub fan all my life and fully understand the relationship between my actions and the outcome of the game. [sic] “I had my eyes glued on the approaching ball the entire time and was so caught up in the moment that I did not even see Moises Alou, much less that he may have had a play. Had I thought for one second that the ball was playable or had I seen Alou approaching, I would have done whatever I could to get out of the way and give Alou a chance to make the catch. “To Moises Alou, the Chicago Cubs organization…and Cub fans everywhere, I am truly sorry from the bottom of this Cub fan’s broken heart. I ask that Cub fans everywhere redirect the negative energy that has been vented towards my family, my friends and myself into the usual positive support for our beloved team on their way to being National League champs.” A manly, sensible, and redeeming declaration. Only he takes upon himself too much blame. After all, his action didn’t cause the team to fall apart and give up eight runs. The Cub pitchers gave up the runs. A championship team doesn’t fall apart because a player makes an error or misses a chance to make an out. The extreme reactions of Cubbies suggest that they live in a dream-world where wishing can make things happen. The fact is that the Chicago Cubs were a good-enough team. Good enough to be a contender for the championship title, but not good enough to be champions. Baseball is a game of inches, someone once said, and in a game of inches you need more than luck to win a seven-game series. Luck, or chance, or fate, or the unexpected, or randomness, or whatever you want to call it plays an important part in competitions—sports, war, and especially, life. Anybody who has lived a little bit knows that Captain Ed Murphy, the man behind Murphy’s Law, was right: In any complex undertaking, if anything can go wrong it will. And anybody who has lived a little longer knows that O’Tooles commentary on Murphy’s Law is also right: Murphy was an optimist. Real champions—consistent winners—know this about life and sport. They expect it, they don’t depend on luck. They expect the unexpected whether it is a gust of wind going in the wrong direction, or the quarterback spraining his ankle, or Steve Bartman deflecting a possibly playable ball. Something unexpected and adverse will always happen. And the best way of not letting bad luck overwhelm you is to have overwhelming superiority and extra gas in the tank—reserves. It may be a peerless bullpen, or a really talented young reserve quarter-back, or overwhelming air superiority. Even these may not guarantee victory on occasion because of the phenomenon of the “perfect storm”—a collection of events that are three standard deviations away from normal bad luck. But real champions never win a hundred percent of the time, only mostly. The Chicago Cubs nowadays are nowhere near champions—they’re contenders and that’s why they lost the NLCS, not because of Steve Bartman. They don’t have what it takes to win without luck. Maybe it’s that their management doesn’t have the smarts, or the team hasn’t collected enough talent, or they haven’t spent enough money to get it. Yes, money. Maybe that evil man, George Steinbrenner, that rich, ruthless bully, has grasped the secret of life in the world of baseball—money. Maybe it’s not the whole secret, but maybe it’s a big part of creating a really championship team, unfair as that may seem. Steve Bartman’s instinctive impulse to catch that oncoming ball was that of any red-blooded baseball lover. Every boy growing up in the rough-and-tumble of middle-class American boyhood is taught to catch the ball. He must learn to keep his eye on the ball, to overcome every little boy’s instinct to flinch and turn away and protect himself. It is one of the rites of passage into boyhood. Many kids don’t make that passage into boyish rough-and-tumble and become violinists or psychoanalysts. No matter, as long as there are the Steve Bartmans around at the decisive moment. The time to start worrying about America is when no one is there trying to catch that oncoming ball.
October 18, 2003LIBERAL LOSERS: THE BOSTON RED SOXHorsefeathers wonders if anyone was surprised by the NYTimes editorial board’s ecumenical, multi-cultural yearning for the Boston Red Sox to beat the New York Yankees. No home town loyalty for them; that would be right wing chauvinism. And we all know the Yankees' long and consistent success has engendered envy and resentment, especially amongst the wordsmith intellectuals who imbibe their anti-capitalism early at the Ivy League schools that value verbal intelligence above all else. The Yankees have always represented, in the fevered imagination of utopian intellectuals, the harshness of capitalism—the cruel rapaciousness of exploitative corporations. In our recent discussion of Moneyball, we noted that money alone—and what’s wrong, by the way, with a franchise making money by putting out a consistently good product?—can’t guarantee success. Billy Beane, employing Bill James’s ideas consistently does well at Oakland, within severe budgetary constraints. However, the recent Red Sox-Yankees playoff exposed a flaw in his approach. James’s creative thinking challenged the authority of baseball’s received ideas, while correspondingly downgrading the real life, everyday authority of the on-field manager. In the deciding game 7 of the Yankee-Red Sox series, that proved disastrous. Beane regards his manager as a minor cog, overvalued and easily replaceable-- certainly not an important figure in the overall success of the team. Boston, following Moneyball principles, installed a manager, Grady Little, who by all accounts is a very nice guy, well liked by the players who regard him as a good friend. Boston paid him $500,000—a minuscule amount compared to high ticket players like Manny Ramirez and Pedro Martinez. In devaluing the manager financially, they weakened his authority and essentially put the children in charge of the family fortune. At the pivotal moment of the deciding game, Little consulted with his obviously weakening pitcher and let Pedro decide to continue in the game. Pedro’s “feelings” outweighed the cold, rational calculation needed to win. How modern! How kind and considerate! How touchy-feely! A perfect New York Times, feminized moment. Such emasculated leadership meant that authority devolved to the person least qualified in the heat of battle to make decisions. This is madness, even if the entire editorial board of the Times says it’s fair and right and considerate. Contrast this with the Yankee approach. Joe Torre is highly paid and is clearly the repository of authority for his team. He is the leader, the benign but strong father figure. He makes the decisions and takes responsibility for the results. In a society where paternal authority has steadily weakened this is a rare phenomenon. When Torre decided to drop his highest paid player, Jason Giambi to seventh in the batting order, he simply made the decision, then told Giambi why it had been done, and Giambi graciously accepted, knowing that responsibility for such decisions resides with the manager. There was no lengthy, therapeutic concern for how Giambi would feel. It was assumed he could deal with the unavoidable reality that he wasn’t playing well. Then, when the great Roger Clemens was getting shelled early, Torre didn’t ask him what he’d like to do, he simply and firmly removed him from the game. In any individual game, managerial decisions can be critical. In raising strong questions about baseball’s conventional wisdom, Billy Beane, and Bill James performed a great service. However, weakening the authority of the manager has consequences. The Yankees have the intuitive wisdom to know that a baseball team will function best when responsibility for tactics and strategy resides with a figure of authority. Joe Torre is not a ‘friend’ of his players; Derek Jeter refers to him as “Mr. Torre”. It wasn’t the Curse of the Bambino that cost the Red Sox a trip to the World Series this year: it was the curse of the post-modern collapse of paternal authority, and the sooner the Red Sox 29 year old Yalie general manager realizes it, the sooner the Red Sox will win it all.
October 13, 2003FOLLOW THE (SAUDI) MONEYHorsefeathers has argued that the United States must focus on Saudi Arabia as the enabler of radical Islam. Regrettably, the Bush administration has not yet fully confronted the problem. Saudi Arabia has spent many years and much revenue bankrolling ex-State Dept. officials and pro-Saudi propagandists. Here is the latest story of the corrupting effect of Saudi money: "...The New Republic magazine is coming under attack for co-sponsoring a recent forum with Saudi Arabia and allegedly agreeing to the kingdom's demand that it withdraw its invitation to a leading critic of Riyadh. Author Stephen Schwartz told The Forward that he was removed from the panel at the behest of Saudi Arabia, which co-sponsored the October 2 panel discussion on the kingdom's political future and has advertised in the magazine. "I was deeply shocked," said Schwartz, a convert to Islam and author of "The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'Ud from Tradition to Terror" (Doubleday), in which he accuses the Saudi government of being the principal backer of the Palestinian militant group Hamas and funding the spread of the puritanical form of Islam known as Wahhabism. "My book says that this evil alliance of the cult of Wahhabism and the House of Saud has had a devastating effect on Islam," said Schwartz, a former Washington bureau chief for the Forward and currently director of the Islam and Democracy Program at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. "I'm the person that has caused them the most trouble. It is because of who I am..."
October 11, 2003OUR FRIENDS THE SAUDIS EXPLAIN: YARMULKE=SWASTIKAWriting in the government controlled Arab News, Tariq A. Al-Maeena explains:
October 09, 2003CIVILIZATION VS. BARBARISMCancer Diagnosis Technique gets FDA clearance PA TV started re-broadcasting a short video clip that reaffirms the fundamental PLO- PA message, that the goal and end result of Palestinian violence will be Israel's destruction. In this visually powerful clip, the PA conquest of Israel is depicted by visual symbols accompanied by verbal messages in song. The Visual depicts three stages. Stage 1- A heart is dripping blood beneath a formation in the shape of Israel, symbolizing pain, loss or sacrifice because of or linked to Israel's existence. Stage 2- Arms grasping stones sprout from the land all over Israel, symbolizing violent attacks throughout Israel. Stage 3- The PA flag appears, covers all of Israel and then rests above Israel, symbolizing the PA conquest of all of Israel. The words sung while the PA flag hovers over Israel, include: "Allah Akbar! [Allah is Great] Oh, the young ones,
OUR FRIENDS THE SAUDI ROYALS1: Saudi Princess Assails American History and Policy
Didn't another Saudi royal, Adel al Jubeir, explain how hurt and offended he was by any American doubts of the Saudi committment to the war on terror? Or did that only apply to non-infidels? How long will the Bush administration make an exception to the Bush doctrine ('You're with us or with the terrorists') for the Saudi thugocracy?
October 08, 2003
HORSEFEATHERS GOES TO THE MOVIES FOR FUN AND FINDS PROPAGANDA One can take only so much of the New York Times’ handwringing, negativism, and tiresome Henny Pennyism. Every once in a while we need some respite. So we went to the movies the other night to see “Under the Tuscan Sun.” We knew that Frances Mayes, on whose books the movie is based, had written a couple of very popular books about her adventures in an Italian village. In her attempts to buy and renovate a small villa she and her loverl/husband have many comic encounters and learn to love the beauty of the land, the people, and folkways that are endearing and simple. We looked forward, as we handed our admission tickets to the usher, to a couple of hours of escape from the social and political agonizing of the American media and to being transported to scenes of beautiful Tuscany and some comic encounters with Italian contractors and workmen. What we got was a homily on Sisterhood and a stealth lesson on the joys of Lesbian Motherhood. Our hero, Frances, gets betrayed and screwed over by her estranged husband. To console her, her gay girl friends give her a trip to Tuscany with a gay men’s tour group. (Throughout this movie gay people are depicted as unfailingly bright, cheerful, warm, and accepting.) Clearly, from the beginning one can see the outline of an agenda taking shape. The director/writer Audrey Wells has transformed an innocent and enjoyable travelogue into a message movie. You get to see some of the adventures with the contractors and workmen, and a few scenes of the beauty of the countryside, but the heart of the movie centers on the lovesick, moping Frances and the feminist lessons she learns about the inconstancy of men. Although Frances is supposed to be a writer and professor of literature neither she nor Ms. Wells appears to have read or understood “Madame Bovary” or “Anna Karenina.” Her emotional life seems stuck at the level of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Again and again men are depicted as exploitive, manipulating, disloyal, unfaithful and disappointing. And women are depicted as the only people you can depend on. In the end her lesbian friend and her new baby comes to live with Frances under the Tuscan sun and become her nuclear family, supplemented perhaps by a series of men who will drift in and out of her life. At the end it was a great relief to get back to reading the worried writing of the New York Times.
October 06, 2003SENSITIVE PEOPLESince liberalism devolved from a serious philosophy into a pose, an attitude, a posture- moral superiority and intelligence has become its adherents major claim. Here's a sample: "...I have a confession," wrote Salon Executive Editor Gary Kamiya on April 10. "I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong. Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have identical feelings..." Many in the mainstream Western media have decided the cowboy President is not up to their level of intelligence. He lacks their sophisticated wordsmith sensibilities and it's an outrage that he is President. See the entire article by Bret Stephens on Our Media Jihadis
October 05, 2003PALESTINIAN FAMILY VALUES"For mad bomber Hanadi Jaradat, the carnage she wrought yesterday was "like her wedding day, the happiest day for her," according to her family." The reaction of the young lawyer's 15 year old brother: "We are receiving congratulations from people," said the grinning teen. And lest we forget, the upper middle class, well educated killer was devoted to the ROP. According to an admiring story in al Jazeera:
October 04, 2003SMILE AMERICA AND BE NICE, THE MUSLIMS DON’T LIKE US
By Jack Engelhard The story goes that Rockefeller was about to walk out the door in shabby clothes. His wife said, "You won't impress anyone in that outfit." "Whom do I have to impress?" snapped Rockefeller. That folklore comes to mind after reading this current headline in the New York Times: "U.S. Must Counteract Image In Muslim World, Panel Says." They came here and murdered three thousand of us, and it's up to us to impress them. I don't quite get the logic. You'd think it should be the other way round. They should be required to fix up their image. Here's more from the Times on the panel's conclusions: "The U.S. must drastically increase and overhaul its public relations to salvage its plummeting image among Muslims and Arabs abroad." But maybe public relations won't reach people who are busy in another line of work, like driving passenger airplanes into American buildings and planting bombs that kill seven-month-old babies in Israel. Maybe, after everything is weighed and considered, we're right and they're wrong. Can I get me an Amen? Let's try that again. We're right. They're wrong. In that case, no amount of PR will do any good. There is no reasoning with a culture whose extremists view eternal bliss as not about golden rule righteousness, followed by the shade of heaven's vine and fig tree, but rather suicide/murder, followed by carnal access to 72 virgins. No amount of PR can whitewash a generation so thoroughly brainwashed. Besides, who cares if they love us? Whom do we have to impress? We're the United States of America — and if only tiny Israel could find the chutzpah, the daring, that once made it the little nation that could. Again from the Times, and that 13-member panel: "Hostility toward Americans has reached shocking levels." I could have told you that without a panel...and oh dear, there go my vacation plans to Kabul. You mean they hate us MORE after 9/11? They hate Israel MORE after murdering more than a thousand of its people? "Shocking levels." Now what have we done to upset nearly a fifth of the world? Forgot to do the dishes? The panel, led by Edward P. Djerejian, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Israel, points the finger partly at...take a guess. This is multiple choice. Denmark. Sweden. Portugal. Umm. Israel? "What's required is not merely tactical adaptation but strategic, and radical, transformation," says the panel. Radical transformation. That is diplospeak for "throw Israel to the wolves." This finding, from a group of academics gathered together by the Bush administration, assumes that the Palestinian Arabs once loved the Jewish people, and then the Jewish people did something bad. Like exist. They hate the Jews. The Jews must be to blame. Or that Osama bin Laden once loved America, and then America did something naughty. Like proclaim liberty. Yes, the fault must be with America. There's no word in the Times as to a panel from the Muslim world, about concerns for their image in America and Israel. Apparently, there is no discomfort in that part of the world, no need to put on a better face, no instinct to re-evaluate the impression it makes, upon us, when you commit bloodshed in the name of Allah. The term "shared values" comes up in this article in the Times. The U.S. spent millions on TV commercials about our "shared values" with the Muslim world. Didn't work. The Muslim world laughed. Here's a possibility. Maybe we have no shared values. They have their values. We have ours. Never the twain shall meet. Doesn't mean we have to hate one another. Doesn't mean we have to love one another. Just leave us alone. We don't bother you on the road to your mosque, and you leave us alone in our churches and synagogues. How's that for shared values?
October 03, 2003BILL KELLER=HOWELL RAINES MINUS THE SOUTHERN CHARMIt now appears that Jayson Blair's main fault was that he got caught. Had he learned from the headline writers at the NYTimes, he might still be on the fast track to editor. We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG [Iraq Survey Group] has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. . . . Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts . . .: A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW [chemical and biological weapons] research.
Bill Keller's headline writers sum it up:
ROP WATCHNo doubt the multi-cultural utopians will indignantly protest this "slur" on Islam. Reported by Andrew Sulllivan "As an American I understand that Islam is not the enemy. But what about as a gay man? Have we forgotten that there is no sect of Islam worth considering that even tolerates homosexuality, and in countries where Islam predominates, punishment can be anything from imprisonment to torture to disfigurement to death. Islam may not be the enemy of my country, but I'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger enemy of gay people. Islam is perpetrating a massive, egregious assault on human rights -- and what does the Human Rights Campaign have to say?" - David Lee, co-creator of TV's Frasier, accepting an award at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Leadership Awards Sept. 28 in Los Angeles
October 02, 2003OUR FRIENDS THE SAUDISHorsefeathers has long argued that Saudi Arabia should be targeted if we are to prevail in our war on Islamo-Nazi terror. Here is further evidence of the Bush administration's reluctance to face the reality of Saudi hatred and treachery. Hopefully we are awakening from our politically correct, multicultural dreams that Islam means "peace",and are prepared to confront our enemies. "On Aug. 20, 2001, Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman Hussayen, a man who would soon be named a minister of the Saudi government and put in charge of its two holy mosques, arrived in the United States to meet with some of this country's most influential fundamentalist Sunni Muslim leaders. His journey here was to include meetings and contacts with officials of several Saudi-sponsored charities that have since been accused of links to terrorist groups, including the Illinois-based Global Relief Foundation, which was shut down by U.S. authorities last year. He met with the creators of Islamic Web sites that U.S. authorities contend promote the views of radical Saudi clerics tied to Osama bin Laden. And among the imams on his travel schedule was a leader of a small religious center tucked into a nondescript office building in Falls Church, the same site used for a time by the spiritual leader of a group of area men indicted in June as suspected jihadists. On the night of Sept. 10, 2001, Hussayen stayed at a Herndon hotel that also housed three of the Saudi hijackers who would slam an aircraft into the Pentagon the next day..." See the rest here
October 01, 2003October 1, 2003
Inspired by this humane trend Horsefeathers suggests other venues for its expression. Doctors might identify to a deceased patient’s family that he or she is “A” for “almost alive” instead of “D” for you know what. Or instead of “B” for the harsh term “Bankrupt,” how about “C,” “close to solvency.” And wouldn’t it be nicer if instead of “G” for “guilty,” the judge declared that the defendant was “I,” “in the neighborhood of innocent.” A political candidate might be spared the painful outcome of “L” for “lost” by the letter “O” for “on the point of winning.” Horsefeathers invites other Desperate Euphemisms from its readers.
GUILTY WHITE MALES FIND ABSOLUTIONThe healing power of art: California style- "...Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante isn't the only rising star in his family -- his 39-year-old sister, Nao Bustamante, is making news for herself as well, as an avant-garde performance artist. Her more notable performances include: -- Wrapping herself in clear packing tape and emptying an entire can of hair spray into her hair while perched atop a 15-foot ladder. -- Exploring the pop cultural relations between Mexico and the United States by traveling to fast-food restaurants dressed up as Ronaldo McDonald. -- Strapping on burrito-dildos, upon which white males feast in an absolution ceremony for 500 years of colonial guilt. Vegan burritos only -- no meat..".
WESLEY CLARK: MAN OF FAITHImagine the reaction if George Bush announced that he believed in time travel and didn't accept Einstein's formulation of the relationship between space and time. Instead it was Wesley Clark, first in his class, Rhodes Scholar, who informed an eager campaign audience that he would not accept the limits imposed by modern physics. I'm sure our media will place a dunce cap on his head for saying: "...I can't believe that in all of human history, we'll never ever be able to go beyond the speed of light to reach where we want to go," said Clark. "I happen to believe that mankind can do it..." "I've argued with physicists about it, I've argued with best friends about it. I just have to believe it. It's my only faith-based initiative..."
BRAVE AND LEARNED MUSLIM LEADER CAPTUREDHas anyone noticed how many of the men responsible for planning the murders of innocents have the honorific title, 'Sheikh'? Here's the definition according to Britannica.Com. Sheikh: also spelled Sheik, Shaikh, or Shaykh, Arabic Shaykh, Arabic title of respect dating from pre-Islamic antiquity; it strictly means a venerable man of more than 50 years of age. The title sheikh is especially borne by heads of religious orders, heads of colleges, such as Al-Azhar University in Cairo, chiefs of tribes, and headmen of villages and of separate quarters of towns. It is also applied to learned men... Meet Sheikh Bassam Sa'adi, described by Reuters as a leader of the "militant" (not 'terrorist'--that would violate Reuters' guidelines)group, Islamic Jihad. This brave and venerable scholar was caught hiding under a car. Evidently his boldness only shows itself when he sends out suicidal adolescents to kill women and children; when it's the IDF he has to face, this man of God behaves like an ordinary, everyday coward.
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