Oh, some like it hot, but I like it REALLY hot.

There's a lot of stuff I like about the idea of Senator Al Franken but am I a bastard because the thing that's exciting me the most is the prospect of seeing Bill O'Reilly's head explode?

Buenos noches, beautiful.

I try to avoid celebrity spats and nonsense as much as possible but have also always been a little sad that Jon Voight and his daughter Angelina Jolie seem to have such animosity towards each other. I've enjoyed Voight and Jolie's films (for obviously different reasons) and for some reason it just bugs me that they weren't talking. Until now...

Voight gave an interview with Crazy Bill O'Reilly last night in which he showed himself to be solidly in the Bush Kool-Aid camp.

VOIGHT: Right now, and it has something to do with, you know, what's going on with the religious fanaticism that's creating our enemy. We have a real enemy.
O'REILLY: You bet. The Jihadists want to put a bullet right in your head.
VOIGHT: We're facing people who want to destroy America. Want to destroy our democracy, all democracy.
O'REILLY: Right.
VOIGHT: And in this country, I'm really quite frightened, Bill, at the — what has happened to our great nation. We're being divided by extremists who really believe the propaganda that they're being fed on a daily basis by cunning professionals, I would say.
O'REILLY: You saw it up top. You saw it.
VOIGHT: And they — what I hear, you know, talking about our president. When I hear people saying quite unthinkable things about our president, when I see our president defaced, which is defacing our country. He's the leader of our country. He's the leader of the free world. It — my heart is very heavy.
And I know that we can't be defeated by military power. But we have been invaded by propaganda. It's very effective.
O'REILLY: Listen, I'm right there with you.
VOIGHT: When I see these kids in school — we send our kids off to school. They meet with — they meet with professors that have certain agendas. They come back calling America imperialist, which is an insanity. If there was ever a nation that wasn't an imperialist, it was ours, in World War II.

How far do you have to go off the rails before you have Bill O'Reilly cheering you on?

No wonder his daughter isn't talking to him. What a nut.

I must stop this whole thing! Why, for fifty-three years I've put up with it now. I must stop Christmas from coming... but how?

Since we have become the frontline soldiers in the War on Christmas (WOC) we might as well discuss tactics. The spotlight that dastardly Bill O' Reilly has cast on us these past few years has forced us to go underground and use guerilla tactics. Here are some strategies I cribbed from other secular warriors and some I came up with on my own-

Operation Wishes Aren't Horses - Kidnap a mall Santa, steal his costume and take his place. As kids give you their Christmas wishes tell them they're thinking to small and that Santa's going to bring them a pony. The dissapointed kids on Christmas morning will swear off Christmas forever.

Operation Frosty's Randy - Move the carrot noses on neighborhood snowmen down a couple of feet.

Operation Santa's Last Ride - Put together a fake Santa-tracking website mimicking NORAD's Christmas eve offering. Early in the evening make a grim announcement that Santa was accidentally shot down by Air National Guard just before reaching North America.

Operation Reveal the Double Entendre - Tell children what the song "Santa Baby" is really about. They'll be so grossed out they won't enjoy the holiday.

Operation Lamer Gamer - Build a state-of-the-art gaming system, make sure it's the "must have" item of the season, then only manufacture enough that only a few people are able to secure one for their kids.

Operation MistlePOWNED - Hang mistletoe around the office then file tons of harassment complaints.

Operation X-Mas Nativity - Rearrange the figures at the town nativity scene so they're now involved in lewd behavior. Replace the baby Jesus with a disco ball.

Good luck soldiers!

General Wormer

And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.

As if we needed another reason not to shop at Wal-Mart they've also joined the fray in Bill O'Reilly's "war on Christmas" nonsense.

“We, quite frankly, have learned a lesson from last year” and all of the threats of protest and bad publicity that arose from shunning “Merry Christmas” in the stores, Wal-Mart spokeswoman Linda Blakley told USA Today. “We’re not afraid to use the term ‘Merry Christmas.’ We’ll use it early, and we’ll use it often,” she said.

Apparently that "lesson" was that when the Right Wing throws themselves on the ground, kicking and screaming because you won't buy them a "real, live unicorn" that the thing to do is to give them what they want. Of course like most spoiled children all that'll do will be to enable them the next time they want something they can't have.

While I'm on the subject of Wal-Mart shame on the Salvation Army for allowing their charity to be featured so prominently in Wal Mart's holiday advertising. They're reputation as THE Christmas charity doesn't deserve to be sullied by association with the nation's leading corporate deadbeat.

We would not seek a battle as we are, yet as we are, we say we will not shun it.

Bill O'Reilly has a point.

I'll let that odd sentence sink in while I swear that I have NOT recently received a severe hammer blow to the head, been exposed to toxic fumes or found myself on a three day Peyote bender staggering through the desert in Eastern Oregon.

Progressives, from Randi Rhodes to Keith Olbermann to the guys at Crooks and Liars are jumping all over statements O'Reilly made during an interview of Gen. Wesley Clark a couple of days ago in which O'Reilly basically accused American forces in WW2 of committing atrocities similar to those recently revealed as having been perpertrated by U.S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq.
Rhodes, whose father served as an infantryman in Europe during the war, seemed to take great offense to O'Reilly's remarks. During a prolonged rant on her national show she went out of her way to try draw a distinction between shooting S.S. soldiers who had been shooting at our troops moments before surrendering or burning Japanese soldiers to death who were dug into caves on Pacific islands and the cold-blooded execution of civilian men, women and children cowering in their homes in Iraq. Her definition of atrocity hinges on whether the person being executed by U.S. troops was a combatant (or recent combatant) or a civilian.

While there is no doubt that captured Axis troops sometimes faced summary execution (Eisenhower issued an infamous order near the end of the war basically instructing that no German sniper would be taken alive,) it's difficult to find a documented instance of Allied soldiers executing unarmed European civilians. Nevertheless; it would be the height of absurdity to assume such atrocities never took place by American forces in the Second World War.

I wonder if Rhodes has ever heard the cities Nagasaki or Hiroshima. Wrong theater of the war? Then how about Dresden? On the low end of estimates of civilian casualties 25,000 non-combatants were killed in the carpet-bombing of that strategically unimportant city alone. Shock and awe aren't simply modern neocon military constructs. Terror is not just a tactic of crazy islamic fanatics. Civilians are never "off limits" in a war the United States was involved in, even to U.S. troops and even a war as just and righteous as a war to stop the tyranny of fascism.

Of course none of that supports O'Reilly's larger argument that the atrocities of other U.S. soldiers in other wars somehow absolve this administration or the Marines at Haditha of atrocities in THIS war*. Quite the opposite is true. The reality that war is a horrible, bloody terrible thing that often moots moral questions by it's very nature should never be an act of choice. This President picked this unnecessary war and bears culpability for it's atrocities.



* As a side note - I'm to lazy to check it at this point but wasn't O'Reilly one of those clowns who just recently was jumping all over John Kerry's post-Vietnam war assertions that U.S. troops committed atrocities in THAT conflict? Hypocrite much? Ah, where would conservatives be without moral relativism and deliberate self-induced ADD?

It's a wise man who knows not to push the limits of the law.

There's a certain karmic symmetry to a week that began with news of the death of Barney Fife ending with the news that Bill O'Reilly is now playing Barney Fife.

The king is dead. Long live the king!