A scan of what, where, what, where, what, where, and what the hell the individuals crying out that Christmas is Being Attacked by Liberal Secularist Humanist Anti-Christian Hate-mongerers suggests that Ground Zero on the Assault on Christmas, and the remedy to improve the situation, is Fig’s Market in Raleigh North Carolina.

See, Fig’s Market has their store window decorated with the word “Happy Holidays”. This be a big “no-no” for all true-believing Christmas loving All American Christians.

And thus, in an act praised by right-wing radio hosts nationwide…

But Pastor Patrick Wooden believes being “open” closes the door on Christmas.

Critics argue the Upper Room Church should have spent the campaign’s $11,000 on helping the poor, but Wooden said the money is well spent. He adds the church helps the poor locally every week and has also donated money to hurricane victims.

Well, Pastor Patrick Wooden, good for you and your church for donating money to hurricane victims and helping the poor. But, you know, Pastor Patrick Wooden, that is $11,000 you could have spent on such causes (or, hell, I don’t care… you could spend some of the money on renovation projects at your church) that you’re currently throwing into a stinkhole of a cause which is at base level founded in a persecution complex.

It wasn’t enough for those democrat congressmen and senators to betray our troops who overthrew a dictator and are still fighting his forces in major battles. One Democrat is even on the ground in Bagdad defending that mass murderer Saddam Hussein. Over two thousand of our troops have fallen in battle removing Hussein and a DEMOCRAT Ramsey Clark is over there defending him. It’s time to start bringing traitors to justice. What kind of idoit supports such a party.

Skip sentence one, which is the standard holding of American troops as a rhetorical hostage. Go to the descriptor “DEMOCRAT” to describe Ramsey Clark. Ramsey Clark is not a member of the Democratic Party, and as far as I can tell hasn’t been since before the Carter Administration (who he piqued in the same way he’s piqued the Clinton and Bush II administrations). As anyone should know — and will be reminded whenever there are massive anti-war marches in the streets organized by International ANSWER, Ramsey Clark’s ties are with something called the “World’s Worker Party”, which runs their own presidential candidate every four years.

During the 2004 presidential election, “Accuracy in the Media” (and I believe “Human Events”), two right-wing media bastions, ran an article that suggested that Ramsey Clark favoured John Kerry for president. Perhaps, perhaps not; but from what I remember all I really saw was praise for his Vietnam anti-war service. It was moot… to the folks at AIM and Human Events, Kerry is melded in with Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark and John McCain in a 40 year plot to destroy America by losing the war to the Viet Cong.

The best I can say is that I saw the link I was referring to on the “Democratic Underground” message board suggesting that Ramsey Clark is a worthy individual whose support means something (shortly followd in the thread by an anti-Ramsey Clark whiplash), meaning that a Democrat or two or a hundred finds Ramsey Clark worthwhile. (For what it’s worth, I see that Ramsey Clark has a new editorial circulating out there. Read it and ponder some predictable enough omissions and emissions. Is there truth in what he says? There is some.

Miami police announced Monday they will stage random shows of force at hotels, banks and other public places to keep terrorists guessing and remind people to be vigilant.

“People are definitely going to notice it,” Fernandez said. “We want that shock. We want that awe. But at the same time, we don’t want people to feel their rights are being threatened. We need them to be our eyes and ears.”

When the hell did “Shock and Awe” become acceptable use for a police force to use, especially for police activity that could easily be re-branded “Community Policing” (except, I guess, that would require the police to lose the robo-cop gear). Last I checked, the original “Shock and Awe” was a massive bombing campaign meant to overwhelm Iraqi troops into utter fear to the point where they would surrender. Do words matter anymore? The Miami Police Department wants Miami bank customers to fear them?

This is what is going to stop Terrorists?

So, we can expect the ACLU to come out strongly against this, right?

Howard Simon, executive director of ACLU of Florida, said the Miami initiative appears aimed at ensuring that people’s rights are not violated.

“What we’re dealing with is officers on street patrol, which is more effective and more consistent with the Constitution,” Simon said. “We’ll have to see how it is implemented.”

I personally might respond with a similar even-handed “on one hand, on the other hand” response. Or I would if they didn’t describe their activity in the manner that they have, as a “Shock and Awe” campaign. But I’m not the freaking ACLU!! Here’s the question: has the Florida ACLU been “shocked and awed” in compliance, or are they actually secretly government agents?

Maybe I need to actually found this ECLU idea of mine. The ECLU. The EXTREME CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION. Now needed more than ever, because the ACLU is wimping out on us.

(More on wondering what this is supposed to do to fight terrorism here, and ponderings of the ACLU found here Thank you Libertarians.)

As I contemplate how all of this will play out in the streets of Miami – and, perhaps, in other American cities – I am reminded of the horrors depicted in 1940s-era films of German gestapo agents stopping people on the street and demanding “you vill show us your papahs!” In assessing such a police-state tactic, ACLU officials may turn to history to inform themselves as to “how it is implemented.”

Hm. According to the Fox News website, for tonight’s “O’Reilly Factor”: Enough Already! Dennis Miller joins Bill to sound off on the “assault on Christmas” and … [blah blah blah Iraq blah blah blah anti-war cowards]”

I can’t quite figure out what the hell happened to Dennis Miller. Placing himself as a Super-Hawk and an Iraq War Defender is one thing, but why the heck is he now “Defending Christmas” from the “Evil Secularists”? (Christopher Hitchens wouldn’t do such a thing, I don’t believe.)

I think I started to find Dennis Miller tedious when he co-anchored Monday Night Football, where I felt his schtick became schtickier and schtickier. (Take an athlete’s name, and make a reference to a famous figure from history who shares his name… clumsily inject this reference when the athlete does anything at all. Feign spontainety.)

Currently, I muse: Zell Miller, Judith Miller, Dennis Miller. What’s with the Millers?

In the meantime, I’ll just have to content myself with Bill O’Reilly’s latest defense of all that is holy with Christmas:

“Every company in America should be on its knees thanking Jesus for being born. Without Christmas, most American businesses would be far less profitable. More than enough reason for business to be screaming ‘Merry Christmas.’ But many will not. They’re afraid of being attacked by secular forces. It is now time to draw the line, ladies and gentlemen. We must decide whether we value our heritage or not. … George Soros and Peter Lewis, the money men behind the secular curtain, have financed a number of websites which routinely attack those with whom they disagree in the most vile ways. Most mainstream media avoid the far-left smear sites. But some help them. In the coming weeks we will expose those media which pass along the vicious personal attacks. We’ve already listed some of them on BillOReilly.com and we hope you steer clear of those organizations.”

“If traditional America rises up and punishes mainstream media, which furthers the cause of Soros and the ACLU, they will lose. The defamation pipeline that has been cleverly devised. will collapse. If Christmas in America can be marginalized, ANY tradition can be, including marriage and the way you raise your kids. …”

Hm. Bill O’Reilly composes another list. Just like Santa Clause, that bastion of traditional Christmas. (And, yes, yesterday I saw somewhere the standard yard with the Jesus – themed nativity scene right next to Santa with his 9 reindeer.) He’s making several lists. One of companies that greet you with “Merry Christmas.” Another of companies that greet you with “Happy Holidays”. And another of his political enemies. Happy Holidays, Everybody!

(In other newts, Sean Hannity fights against the “Holiday Tree”… details found here.)

“Christmas is a time when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ.” — Bart Simpson.

So I had the radio turned on to the pre-game of the Lions — Falcons game on Thanksgiving. Within the same segment I heard these two sentences: “It doesn’t matter the record, the Lions always play tough and close on their Thanksgiving Day game.” and “Last year, the Indianapolis Colts beat the Lions 41 to 9.”

I did not watch any of this game. I did not hear any of this game. It was pretty obvious where this game was heading, even without the help of our supposed football experts — basically to a point where the post-game talk was about how after this most embarrassing of defeats, the Detroit Lions were going to fire their coach.

The line about “always playing tough” is a cliche, and quite obviously false.
…………………..

Good times for the Florida Marlins. This is that decade-old franchise that came up with an oddly effective strategy on how to win multiple World Series (that is two, which is two more than the vast majority of Major League baseball franchises) by — um — selling off their team right after they win the World Series (or a year after they win the World Series) and slowly building themselves back up in a morass or horrible seasons — thus going from being essentially a glorified Triple-A minor league ball game (such as teams like the Detroit Lions and the Milwaukee Brewers are) to a World Series Champion, and back again. They can’t get the Miami public to buy them a stadium. They play in the Miami Dolphins’ stadium, which isn’t good for a baseball team. They can’t sell tickets — perhaps partly due to their record of being a bad team for a few seaons, then sneaking their way to a World Series victory unexpectedly — to the point where nobody realizes until very late in the season that they have a World Series contender here, then selling off their ball-players and becoming a bad team again.) So… they’re likely to take off and move to either Los Vegas or Portland. Where, I imagine they’d perform about the same — without the occasional freakish World Series.
……………….

Weirdly enough, Ralph Nader stepped into the Terrell Owens fight and advocated in defense of Terrell Owens. Why, I do not know. I admire Ralph Nader for his battle against tax-payer funding of stadiums (most notably the battle in Hartford, Connecticut to stop the city from giving what would have been the most outlandish deal in history to lure the New England Patriots to that city), but what the heck was Nader doing with this story?
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Well, well, well. The Seattle Seahawks beat the New York Giants, thus taking a huge step toward home field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs. But they didn’t win the game. Essentially, the game went like this: the New York Giants said, “Hey, Seattle Seahawks. Go ahead and win this game.” The Seattle Seahawks responded, “Nah. You go ahead.” The New York Giants then reiterated, “No. I insist. You win this game.” The Seattle Seahawks then shrugged, and decided “Fine.” Which is how the team has been winning all season, really. It’s… their style.

The Swiss have the right idea:

Swiss Santa Clauses have been banned from sitting children on their laps because of the risk that they might be accused of paedophilia. The Society of St Nicholases issued the ruling to its 100 professional members after parents expressed concern about close contact between their children and the men.

“This measure is above all to protect our Nicholases,” he said, adding that the decision had provoked heated debate in the usually sedate world of Swiss Santa Clauses.

While we’re at it, we need to ban Catholic Priests and people who sit alone on park benches. They may be pedophiles as well.

Truly the spirit of the Anti-Clause is with us.

And since I’m a selfish secularist heathen who celebrates Holidays instead of Christmas, I now point to a disturbing story regarding the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade:

You know that accident involving the M&M float and the destruction and the whatnot? NBC choose not to run it, instead…

NBC did not tell viewers that a giant balloon had caught on a street lamp and injured two sisters.

Couric told the audience they were seeing old footage and bantered with Lauer and Roker, but there was no further mention of the accident.

Pre-packaged news that doesn’t change when actual (troubling) news happens? Imagine how that would work if you were covering a war or something…

In the back of the the Nixon library, a dusty tape falls out of a high placed cabinet. This is the first time anybody has ever been aware of this particular item, and the denziens of Nixon Central all huddle around, wondering what it reveals.

So, the two men in charge of operations set up the equipment, go to a secluded and locked room, and have a listen. The tape lasts 18 and a half minutes. At the conclusion, they take off their head-phones, staring at each other, jaws open.

“OH MY GOD! It’s the missing tape!”
“And… it completely exonerates Nixon!”
“Puts all those other tapes into a totally different perspective.”
“Yeah. Woodward and Bernstein were total assholes for bringing Nixon down like that! It was all a left-wing conspiracy that blew up a third rate burglary into nothing Just LISTEN TO THIS”
“Who woulda thunk?”
“Who could have imagined that those 18 and a half minutes of lost tape would so completely exonerate Richard Nixon like that?”

Silence.

“You realize the ramnifications of this? What it would do to America’s understanding of history?”
” … The total shock and jolting to the already fragile American psyche?”

Silence. Both men shake their head, and look down forlornly.

“Better burn the thing then.”
“I’ll hide it in my jacket. Throw it in the fireplace tonight. That will be the end of it.”

Bill O’Reilly has thrown the first shot in the ring. He will try to bring down this (hee hee hee hee) HOLIDAY Season.

O’REILLY: “Back of the Book” segment tonight: We continue our reporting on which American stores are using “Christmas” in advertising this Christmas season and which are not. So far, here’s the list. Again, our litmus test is which operations are using the greeting “Merry Christmas” in their advertising and which are not. OK, using — you can see JCPenney’s, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Dillard’s. Not using, there they are. Now, Kohl’s, still giving us a hard time, but their advertising has been all “Happy Holidays” so I don’t know what they want. The company says the clerks are free to say “Merry Christmas.” Yeah, OK, that’s nice. Again, this investigation is designed to spotlight retailers who have knocked the word “Christmas” out of the Christmas season. We’re not too interested with the word “merry.” Don’t really care about “merry.” On the toy store front, here’s what we found out. Toys “R” Us simply is not going to answer our questions, so we assume that means they’re not using “Merry Christmas.” Not using for sure, KB Toys and FAO Schwarz. But FAO Schwarz says that their people in the store can shout “Merry Christmas” as loud as they want.

[…]

O’REILLY: Yeah, but surely they understand, because they do understand. We called Toys “R” Us. They knew right away — […] OK, that they’re in waters they don’t want to be in. So surely, they understand the anger that’s going to be engendered by millions of Americans who believe that their cherished holiday is being denigrated, disrespected.

………………

I commend Toys R Us for destroying Christmas, and what America thinks of as the Christmas Season. We shall see how Bill O’Reilly’s list-making of stores that use the phrase “Merry Christmas” verses stores that use the phrase “Happy Holidays” measure up. Hopefully, Toys R Us can sustain Bill O’Reilly’s and his cretins’ frontal attacks against this washed up holiday.

Worse than you thought? They’re onto us, by Golly! They know about this blog and its sort of beneath the radar screen attack on Holy Christmas!! Well, then… I guess I’ll just have to stop using the pawns and move on to the knights. (Those are the horsey pieces, right?)

[Note: It appears that Toys R Us the corporation was bought by some big corporation a year or two ago, which makes it useless to stick up a graphic of how the stock is doing. Ah well.]

Some historians take on Thanksgiving here. Or you could go with this. Doesn’t matter much.

If Thanksgiving be a fake holiday, why don’t we hand out cards, like on the fake holiday Valentine’s Day? (Thanksgiving: not q conspiracy from Hallmark. Is it a conspiracy by Butterball?)

Okay. Here’s the theme song for your Thanksgiving. Just to annoy you. If you know the song, or even the artist, the bombasticity and pomposity of it will inflict you. Yes. Iron Maiden. But in my mind it goes more like: “WHITE MAN CAME! Took our LAND!”:

White man came across the sea
He brought us pain and misery
He killed our tribes, he killed our creed
He took our game for his own need
We fought him hard we fought him well
Out on the plains we gave him hell
But many came too much for Cree
Oh will we ever be set free?

Run to the hills run for your lives
Soldier blue on the barren wastes
Hunting and killing their game
Raping the women and wasting the men
The only good Indians are tame
Selling them whisky and taking their gold
Enslaving the young and destroying the old
Run to the hills run for your lives
(repeat to end)

What else could you go with? Would you rather go with Alice’s Restaurant? (You can get anything you want at… Alic… let’s stick with the Iron Maiden absurdity.)

Holy Cow! Eason Jordan was right!
Nay. Like the Bush administration says “We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response.”
Why is the British government suing under the Official Secrets Act, then?
Bush was joking. It’s like Reagan with “the bombing begins in five minutes” clip. Hilarious!
Can we get Jerry Harrison to do a song about it, then?
Wait. What are you talking about? Who’s Jerry Harrison? Who’s Eason Jordan?
Eason Jordan was drummed out of CNN for suggesting to an international audience the insane conspiracy theory that the US military was targetting journalists.
Yeah. That’s insane.
Then how is it that al Jazeera has been bombed on more than one occasion? Seems statistically unlikey.
Say it is so. They deserve it. They’re terrorist sympathizers.
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Reaching out to the Sunni Arab community, Iraqi leaders called for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces and said Iraq’s opposition had a “legitimate right” of resistance. Meaning what? The Iraqi government’s official position is that America needs to leave, and that it is okay if people kill the troops.
That’s just the Sunnis
The Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds all agreed to it.
…To placate the Sunnis
And yet… the Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds all agreed to it.
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Hey! I just googled Jerry Harrison and Ronald Reagan. He can’t do a Bushian “Let’s bomb al Jazeera” because Bush was never taped saying that. DUH, IDIOT!