Etiquette tips by Paul Krugman. Maestro Krugman teaches us to value truth above politeness.

{ 11:55 AM }

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Last night's program "Truth, War and Consequences" on the botching of the Iraq invasion effort was FRONTLINE's usual excellent job, forcing me to reconsider my opinon of Jay Garner as perhaps too harsh and my opinion of Ahmed Chalabi as not harsh enough.

Chalabi came off as the super-evil, super-lying brother of his evil, lying identical twin Dick Cheney. The fraudulence, the incompetence, the arrogant air of privilege — all in full view. Like Cheney, Chalabi is less shocking than disgusting in his bald banality.

See the Washington Post review of the program.

{ 11:54 AM }

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For our Austrian friends in California, and for our Californian friends in Austria, we are proud to present the joke site Fuckbush in the original German, or in Google's hilarious automated translation offering something that sort of resembles English:

The UN Ambassador of Saudi Arabia terminated and goes a straight speech to outside into the lobby where he president Bush meets.

They vibrate themselves the hands and as them together continue, ask to the Saudi: "knowledge you, I has a question because of something, which I saw in America."

President Bush says: "now, I want to do your Eminenz, which always I can also do fur you, gladly."

The Saudi whispers: "my son saw this" Star Trek "series, and therein it gives but no Arabs to Russians, black ones and Asians. It is very applied over it. He does not understand, why there are no Arabs in Star Trek."

President Bush laughs, leans more near to the Saudi near and fluesetert back: "comes along, because it plays in the future..."

That Bush! Always vibrating the hands with the Saudis!

{ 11:20 AM }

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Condoms prevent Catholics. Sure to slaughter thousands in developing countries, there's a global epidemic of a menacing new virus — logic-resistant Catholic leaders (Yahoo News):

LONDON (Reuters) - The lives of Roman Catholics in some of the countries worst hit by HIV/AIDS are being put at even greater risk by advice from their churches that the use of condoms does not prevent transmission of the disease, according to a British television program.

[...]

"The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon," Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, told the program.

"The spermatozoon can easily pass through the 'net' that is formed by the condom."

[...]

The Archbishop of Nairobi, Raphael Ndingi Nzeki told the program: "AIDS...has grown so fast because of the availability of condoms."

While in Luak near Lake Victoria, Gordon Wambi, director of an AIDS testing center, said he had been prevented from distributing condoms because of church opposition.

[Steve] Bradshaw [reporter on the BBC Panorama program "Sex and the Holy City" that will be aired in Britain on Sunday night] told Reuters the program team did not go out looking for the story, but stumbled across it during research.

"We heard the same line so many times from different people in different places that we decided to approach the Vatican," he said.

[...]

"These incorrect statements about condoms and HIV are dangerous when we are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million people, and currently affects at least 42 million," the WHO told the program.

It conceded condoms could break or be damaged and permit passage of semen, but said they reduced the risk of infection by 90 percent and were certainly secure enough to prevent passage of the virus if not torn.

Panorama said scientific research had found intact condoms were impermeable to particles as small as sexually transmitted infection pathogens -- a view rejected by Trujillo.

"They are wrong about that...this is an easily recognizable fact," he told the program.

From Nicaragua to Kenya and the Philippines, the Panorama team found the same tale from the Catholic church -- that condoms can kill.

"Condoms can kill."

In yet another Catholic irony of cause and effect, condoms can also kill the chances for parishioners to make the children that priests can sodomize and church leaders can pretend not to know about.

The willingness to endanger or kill people in distant countries by propagating the most blatant of lies is one more total collapse of moral leadership — most recently political leadership in the United States, now Catholic leadership in the Vatican.

Good Catholics, like good Americans, must rise up and demand accountability from the murderous liars who have seized control of their respective credibility — as a world religion, and as a world power.

Every condom is a killer. Here's the BBC story. Every sperm is sacred. Here's Monty Python.

{ 11:49 AM }

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More where that came from. Dick Grasso, disgraced chairman of the NYSE, isn't alone in his self-directed generosity (WSJ, sub. req'd):

The New York Stock Exchange's two top remaining executives have accumulated retirement pay totaling about $30 million apiece during their respective 30-year careers at the Big Board, according to people familiar with the matter.

The pay of the executives, Catherine Kinney and Robert Britz, the NYSE's co-chief operating officers, could cause a stir at the exchange, which has been roiled by last month's ouster of former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Dick Grasso after disclosures that he had accumulated retirement pay of nearly $190 million in his 36-year exchange career. A NYSE spokesman declined to comment.

[...]

At a securities-industry dinner earlier this year, Mr. Grasso teased his lieutenants about their chances [to succeed him]. Ms. Kinney and Mr. Britz had "suffered" about "60 years collectively of Dick Grasso," the then-chairman said, and were "just a heartbeat away from providing the leadership of the stock exchange that it sorely needs." To drive home the point, Mr. Grasso joked about what Mr. Britz would typically say to his boss on arriving at work at 7:45 each morning: "How's your heart?"

Heart? What heart? These aren't people — they're cyborgs from the future... no, wait, that's not the NYSE, that's California.

{ 9:31 AM }

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Sellers of hope in the Christian afterlife drop 30%. Evangelists' sales production is dropping sharply, as both they and their congregations scrounge for money in America's deteriorating faith-based economy (Associated Baptist Press):

As the popularity of revivals continues to wane, evangelists must hold out faith that God will provide, their leaders say.

In 25 years as a vocational evangelist, Rob Randall has witnessed a steady decline in the number of churches holding revivals. While it once was common for churches to hold two revivals a year, some congregations now have one every five years at best, Randall said. Countywide revivals are increasingly rare.

The number of Southern Baptist evangelists also is down. There are about 500 on the mailing list of the Conference of Southern Baptist Evangelists, down from more than 700, according to Benny Jackson, president of the group.

Consistent work is difficult to come by for an evangelist, and some have picked up part-time jobs or found other full-time positions to support their families, Randall said. Even when a revival opportunity comes along, the evangelist is at the mercy of a congregation's love offering for support.

"The evangelist ... has to live by faith," Randall said. "He doesn't have a regular check. He doesn't have a large support base usually. He is out there to sink or swim based on his own ability to raise money."

[...]

"Our pews are full but full of people who do not want to give," Randall commented. "Our pews are full, but full of people not willing to commit. Our pews are full of people not willing to share their faith."

Hughes agreed that revivals have been cut back, but that's because individuals are "time poor," not because they are uncommitted. People are juggling many things in their lives and don't have time to attend a weeklong series of services.

The gospel message evangelists deliver is badly needed in churches, Randall argued. "There's a newness and a freshness to the evangelists' message," he said. "And the church needs to hear that."

The gospel is needed, Hughes agreed, but the way evangelists deliver it in the future may be different. He noted even Billy and Franklin Graham have altered their approach slightly, choosing not to call their efforts crusades and changing the music a bit.

A crusade by any other name would smell as sweet. Franklin Graham, the guy who called Islam a "wicked religion," runs a series of festivals designed to reach "uncommitted individuals" that include dazzling guest appearances by superhero Bibleman.

Feeling holier than thou? You can pray for Bush or you can pray for Rush.

A mystery I've yet to figure out: I thought Christians were supposed to pray for sinners. How come they always throw the weight of their worshipful prayers behind privileged Caucasian idols whom they consider beyond reproach, and never pray for those colorful Democrats whose behavior they regard as morally repugnant — even sinful?

{ 12:34 PM }

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A brief illustrated history of the Republican Party.

   

{ 10:40 AM }

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In honor of George W. Bush's Marriage Protection Week (October 12 through October 18, 2003) dedicated to "building strong and healthy marriages in America," we remind married readers to say to the lump in your bed, "I'm thinking of my future, and you're not in the picture."

{ 4:44 PM }

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Impeach this poem. He's not only America's worst president, but also its worst poet:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Oh my, lump in the bed
How I've missed you.
Roses are redder
Bluer am I
Seeing you kissed by that charming French guy.
The dogs and the cat, they missed you too
Barney's still mad you dropped him, he ate your shoe
The distance, my dear, has been such a barrier
Next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier.

The lump in the White House
for his negligence should
end up in the right house,
that is, prison, for good.

{ 2:37 PM }

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After Bush policies bring about the End Times, his faith-based constituencies will disappear from the earth via The Rapture.

Thanks to a new service called Rapture Letters, they will be able to send free email from their privileged positions in heaven to the rest of us infidels left behind.

This service clearly demonstrates that Dubya's fundamentalist supporters are always thinking ahead, except when it comes to reality.

{ 12:04 PM }

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