Aria, since I’m guessing “akin4prez” is a guy, I’d suggest we round him up and give him a week or two in a maximum security prison. And more importantly, let him try going to the authorities with his rape story. Prison authorities rarely get involved with prison rape accusations (and in many “akin-friendly” states, they’ll go so far as to DENY such things occur) and most right-wingers seem to feel that such things aren’t important (obviously in Rightwing Nuttistan, anyone who winds up in prison obviously deserves whatever happens to them).

@Aria: How in the hell does O’Reilly even reach that insane conclusion? I mean, I suppose in an incredibly technical sense it could be true but it requires some “out of the box” thinking (and O’Reilly’s not really very good at the regular kind) similar to the old joke about how, if you’re driving along a highway, that all the tree branches are on just one side. (In that instance, they’re all on the “out” side of the tree.) Since tree limbs run around the tree, there’s obviously going to be a few limbs that will point to Mecca, but—just to point it out—there will also be some pointing to Rio and some to Fort Knox and some even to the North Pole.

Well, if she holds these beliefs so ardently, why the hell is she speaking? She should be letting her husband do ALL the talking while she just sits beside him, nodding her head at his every pronouncement.

Maybe someone needs to introduce a new word into Venker’s vocabulary: Hypocrite.

The simple fact about Dennis Miller that he doesn’t want people to know: He’s only funny when funny people write his material.

It was true on “SNL” and it’s even truer now.

Gov Martinez might want to be VERY wary of spending much time on FoxNoise (especially in suck-up softball interviews) if she does plan on running for the White House. Given the lack of success for GOP Presidential candidates when they get the FoxNoise “thumbs-up” (no matter how briefly), an “endorsement” from FoxNoise could very well be the proverbial kiss of death.

Paraphrasing an already famous song from an Andrew Lloyd Webber show comes that new hit duet from KKKarl Rove and Dick “the Toe Sucker” Morris, “Don’t Cry for Us, FoxNews Viewers.”

“Don’t cry for us, FoxNews viewers,
The truth is we never left you
Though our predictions
Were clearly insane
We followed our scripts
And now we suffer…..”

What the segment really needed was for Terrell to have said to Rush, “N-word, please” (of course, using the actual word, rather than the euphemism). I still remember that phrase being used with some regularity on “The Jeffersons” (especially in the first few years) when someone (usually George) would make some incredibly outlandish comment. It tended to have the effect of “Are you effin’ serious? Are you out of your mind? I cannot believe you said such BS with a straight face” but with an underlying sentiment that just couldn’t be expressed by words.

I think Ricky’s mistaking FoxNoise’s “softlighting” of its bubbleheaded bobbleheads for a “glow.”

I found this to be a bit interesting, "Flaherty is the author of “White Girls Bleed a Lot, the Return of Racial Violence and How the Media is Ignoring It.”"

What’s so amusing about the title is the fact that whenever you see a national news story involving a “missing” girl, the chances are greater than 95 times out of 100 that the girl just happens to be white. JonBenet Ramsey, Natalee Holloway, Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy—these are the cases the media can’t seem to get enough of. LaToyia Figueroa, Evelyn Hernandez—not so much. Or compare the stories of Jessica Lynch (white) and Shoshona Johnson (Black) and Lori Piestewa (Hopi Indian)—the three women soldiers were involved in the same ambush situation in Iraq, with Piestewa being killed in action, but the media turned Lynch into their “darling,” something which Lynch herself heavily criticized. (There seems to be a similar circumstance when it comes to missing boys, but—somewhat oddly—stories of missing boys is a bit less well-covered. Of course, we could look at the Etan Patz story—a case of a white boy who disappeared more than 30 years ago suddenly gets nationwide coverage after someone implicates himself.)

It seems to me that the media does a lot of covering “white girls” who are the victims of crime, regardless of who perpetrates the crime while ignoring “girls of color” (and let’s not even get into the media blindness when it comes to transgendered victims).

Average American Patriot: Ms Guilfoyle’s Catholicism is relevant, given her “twice-married and divorced” status. According to Catholic doctrine, divorce is a BIG no-no. It goes to the nature of her lack of character that she feels it’s important for people to know she’s a Catholic but, at the same time, she obviously feels she doesn’t have to abide by her own church’s positions. (If she were a pro-choice Catholic politician, there would be several dioceses where she’d be prohibited from taking Communion.)

Average American Patriot wrote, “Funny how not one of those a-wholes are moving out out the country but they will stay and bich, moan, whine for another EIGHT years.”

I truly appreciate your optimism but Obama will only be in charge for another FOUR years. After that is truly anybody’s guess. (Of course, I’d much prefer continued Dem control of the White House for the next few decades but I have to bow to reality and recognize that’s not likely to happen—unless the GOPers continue to run Presidential candidates who are so woefully out-of-touch with average Americans who AREN’T brain-dead FoxNoise viewers or racist teabaggers.)

I think the Church has some special dispensation for lying as long as it serves a “higher purpose.”

@truman: And there’s not a gay man who’d want any of it.

No, Bill. “Christianity” IS a religion. It has produced a number of philosophers who’ve expounded on various aspects of the religion but the primary difference between a “religion” and a “philosophy” is that a “religion” involves, by definition, the worship of a “God” or other supernatural being. A “philosophy,” on the other hand, does not involve “worship” of anything. Its primary objective involves thought and learning (the very word comes from the Greek words, “philos” meaning “love” and “sophos” meaning “wisdom”).

As noted, philosophy CAN be used by religion; indeed, a number of major religious thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Soren Kierkegaard are highly regarded philosophers who’ve used philosophy to defend religion. However, many other philosophers have largely ignored religion in their studies. People like Plato, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau have used philosophy to explain ethics and political theory while Pythagoras and Rene Descartes have used their backgrounds in mathematics to influence their views of reality. It would be the height of utter stupidity (something with which O’Reilly is very well familiar) to presume that any philosophers worship their writings (again, Thomas Aquinas would likely be the last person to acknowledge “worshipping” any of his own writings).

I do understand O’Reilly’s confusion—to a degree. There are several major religions—primarily Taoism—which began as philosophies but over the millennia, have adopted a number of formal practices that enshrine the philosophical aspects into ceremonies of worship, although there’s no central deity or series of deities in these religions. Buddhism, likewise, has no real focus of worship in the sense of any “higher power” (the ultimate belief in Buddhism is “becoming one with the universe” or, in a rather pessimistic view, the complete annihilation of the soul or spirit). Confucianism, which many consider a religion, is more accurately described as a philosophy which both absorbs and influences other religious and philosophical teachings (the main reason people think of Confucianism as a religion is the way many Chinese folk religions adopted Confucian philosophy—in much the same way that Haitian voodoo adopted aspects of Roman Catholicism so that practitioners have shrines to both the voodoo loa as well as Catholic saints and the Virgin Mary in their homes; pure Confucianists, however, don’t worship anyone—reverance for ancestors exists, but it’s not real “worship”).

Y’know, if O’Reilly knew half as much as he thinks he knows, he’d really be dangerous.

Memo to O’Reilly: Simple fact, Pinhead. Roger Williams was PERSECUTED (as you claim so many of today’s Xtians are), but for reals. This is a man who was exiled by the Puritans (maybe you remember those “seekers of religious freedom” from that Turkey Day story?") because he believed that everyone should be FREE to worship God (or even the baby Jebus—or no one at all, if it came to that) as the individual saw fit. He did believe that organized religion had a place in society, but one that, um, “knew its proper place” (a phrase you might recall from the South in the 1950s). Now, in those early days of Colonial Amurka (back when the folks considered themselves to be loyal subjects of the Crown), the punishment of “exile” (aka “banishment”) was often tantamount to the death penalty. The offender would be led (or pursued) for many miles away from the community—often being forced to leave at the crack of dawn and only being “freed” at sunset. Oh, did I forget to mention, the offender was rarely allowed to pack many belongings (not that they really had that much) nor was he given much, if anything, in the way of provisions, like dried meat or even water? And then, of course, there were the Native tribes, many of whom had already learned a hard lesson about the whites and their general lack of trustworthiness, so it wasn’t like an exile could rely on the kindness of strangers.

But, somehow, Williams made it to the area we now know as Providence and vowed that he would establish a settlement where people truly would be free to worship as they saw fit. If they wanted to cook beans and boil potatoes and roast a chicken on “the Sabbath” to avoid starving, they could do so without the local “morality police” (whoops—those are in Saudi Arabia and Iran, aren’t they? Well, the Puritans had them too but likely used a different name) inspecting their homes to see that they weren’t engaging in “labor” on the “day of rest.” Or if a man had worked morning till night from Monday through Saturday and was bone-tired come Sunday, there wouldn’t be anyone coming by to round him up to go to Church.

Oh, one last thing, Pinhead—you DO know how the Puritans felt about Christmas, right? Not only did the Puritans ban the idea of any sort of celebration, but they also LOATHED the Catholics. IOW, they would’ve felt about you and your Christmas the same way you seem to feel about anyone disagrees with your idea of how the holiday season should be celebrated.

(I do apologize to any and all Clive Barker fans who may have been offended by my referring to O’Reilly as Pinhead. As we all know from the “Hellraiser” films and stories, the Cenobite Pinhead was a far more reasonable being and far less of an obsessive personality. Oh, and he wasn’t quite as much of a dick as O’Reilly. All in all, if you gave me a choice of spending eternity in Hell with Pinhead or O’Reilly, I’d gladly choose Pinhead. At least he seems to have fun doing his job; O’Reilly seems to be perpetually miserable.)

Yeah, I’d like to see the ACLJ(ackasses) be approached by an 18-year old man who claims that registering with Selective Service violates his freedom of religion (because his Christian denomination strongly believes in pacifism) and see how quickly they show him the door because “registering with Selective Service is the law.”

I’m about to a point where all these Christian Talibanists need to be rounded up and taken to Saudi Arabia or Iran where they can learn how tough it is to be a Christian where their religious principles really are ignored (or even punished) by the government. Let them spend a decade or so in a country where they’re really forced to worship in hiding and their beliefs are kept silent from the public-at-large, and they might finally understand the kind of whiney runts they’ve been. (Of course, I’m not sure the potential host country would be willing to accept them but who cares?)

But Sandman, surely you understand the difference. Then it was a GOPig in the White House and now, it’s that damned Kenyan Socialist Nazi Muslim blah who spent 20 years listening to Jeremiah Wright’s sermons.

Actually, in the TV cartoon “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” it’s LINUS, not Charlie Brown, who recites the passage from Luke.

However, I can safely say that the late Charles Schulz would be horrified at the idea that HIS characters would be being used as a propaganda tool. Schulz was a devout Christian, but he was NEVER exclusionary and would never approve of the “evangelical” Christian Taliban’s use of his show in this way. (I’m actually unaware that “A Charlie Brown Christmas” has been approved to be done as a live stage show like “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” I wonder if the Schulz estate knows of this?)

Furthermore, the idea of “opt out” is meaningless, especially in the South. Any kid whose parents decided to “opt out” from the trip will come under a lot of “peer pressure” (or all-out bullying) for not coming along.

And the question about kids going to see “the story of Judaism” (which was so skillfully UNanswered) is incredibly absurd. Anyone with the least bit of knowledge of Judaism (which, one would hope, includes a priest whose seminary training have to have included readings from the Old Testament—beyond the Song of Solomon done “after hours” and “under the sheets” when you couldn’t find a “brother” to “lend a helping hand”) would know that there is NO “story of Judaism” to speak of. The closest tale would the Exodus which is related through the Catholic Church-approved film “The Ten Commandments” (which continues to find its way onto network TV most Easter seasons—which just happens to usually coincide with Passover week). But, as I noted, the Exodus story is accepted by even the most right-wing of the Christian Taliban. Now, there are two other major “stories of Judaism”—one is included in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) and the Old Testament while the other isn’t found in either (although Catholic Bibles do include the second story in the Apocrypha). The first story is that of Esther (and explains the story of the festival of Purim) and the second is that of the Maccabees (which forms the basis of the story of Hanukkah). Of course, neither of these “stories of Judaism” are ever really given much consideration to the Christian Taliban because they don’t really have anything that applies to Christianity (Esther, while the story of persecution should seem to apply, falls by the wayside because there are so many other persecuted figures in the Old Testament—Job, Daniel, Jonah—whose tales are less about Jewish persecution and more about general persecution; and the Maccabees—well, they’re all about Jewish militants fighting to establish their own homeland, something the Christian Taliban feel they already have but they want everyone else, especially those dreaded “others,” to mind their place and stop rocking the boat of their “Christian nation”).

The two faces of FoxNoise: “George Soros is the antiChrist. He’s the embodiment of pure evil in the world. He spends his billions of dollars to make sure you pay higher taxes.”

“Koch Brothers? Who are these Koch Brothers of whom you speak? Are they some new musical act?”

@Richard: And yet, somehow, the GOPers manage to get enough of those “working class folks” to vote against their own interests, especially on the tax cut issue. The Dems HAVE to figure out someway of waking up these people to how they’re hurting themselves.