XPost: alt.politics.socialism, alt.politics.economics, alt.politics.media   
   From: efreem2@alumni.umbc.edu   
      
   A healthy male adult bore, consumes each year,   
   one and a half times his weight, in other people's patience.   
      
      
   Whenever buying a gift for a couple celebrating their 60th anniversary,   
      
   buy them something they will use right away.   
      
      
   I told my teenage son to enjoy this part of his life,   
   that he would never again feel so secure in his ignorance.   
      
      
   Forbes has come out with its annual list   
   of the 400 richest Americans,   
   or as it's also called, the Bush cabinet.   
      
   *.*   
      
   Oneliners   
      
   I know that you're nobody's fool, but maybe someone will adopt you.   
      
   All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to   
   criticism.   
      
   You are making progress . . . if each mistake is a new one   
      
   Don't marry a tennis player . . . 'cause "love" means nothing to them.   
      
   Line dancing: what happens when cousins breed   
      
   *.*   
      
   I was furious at my husband for calling me from a topless bar   
   until I realized that he had said tapas bar   
      
      
   I remember when the ultimate celebrity accessory was a small dog;   
   now it is a child from a Third World country.   
      
      
   Those who think that the competitive spirit is dead   
   ought to watch the customers in a   
   supermarket when a cashier opens a new checkout lane.   
      
      
   The biggest problem with the world today is that   
   everybody is fixing the blame   
   and nobody is fixing the trouble.   
      
   *.*   
      
   Economists report that a college education   
   adds many thousands of dollars   
   to a man's lifetime income,   
   which he then spends sending his son to college.   
      
      
   On a first date, usually guys take you to a movie   
   where you sit in the dark   
   staring at a screen, not speaking to each other.   
      
   Makes perfect sense, it prepares you for marriage.   
      
      
   Iraq's minister of planning and development says   
   they are in a phasemarked by   
   unprecedented chaos and government corruption.   
   Sounds like they have the same kind of democracy we have.   
      
   *.*   
      
   Subject: Hair remover   
      
   A distinguished young woman on a flight from Switzerland asked the   
   priest beside her, "Father, may I ask a favor?"   
      
   "Of course. What may I do for you?"   
      
   "Well, I bought an expensive electronic hair remover that is well over   
   the Customs limits and I'm afraid they'll confiscate it. Is there any   
   way you could carry it through Customs for me? Under your robes   
   perhaps?"   
      
   "I would love to help you, dear, but I must warn you: I will not lie."   
      
   "With your honest face, Father, no one will question you."   
      
   When they got to Customs, she let the priest go ahead of her.   
      
   The official asked, "Father, do you have anything to declare?"   
      
   "From the top of my head down to my waist, I have nothing to declare."   
      
   The official thought this answer strange, so asked, "And what do you   
   have to declare from your waist to the floor?"   
      
   "I have a marvelous little instrument designed to be used on a woman,   
   but which is, to date, unused."   
      
   Roaring with laughter, the official said, "Go ahead, Father." Next!   
      
   Issue of the Times;   
   When the Devil Creates a Devil by Becky Akers   
      
   A US district judge sentenced notorious terrorist, Shahawar Matin Siraj,   
   to   
   30 years in prison this past Monday for agreeing to blow up the 34th   
   Street   
   subway station in Manhattan. The next day, by amazing coincidence, his   
   family was arrested on immigration charges.   
      
   No doubt you're scratching your head, trying to recall who Shahawar Matin   
   Siraj is. If he's dangerous enough to merit 30 years in the slammer and a   
   deported family, why haven't you heard of him? Likely because his case   
   doesn't   
   pass the laugh test. The usual suspects are bragging that their jihad   
   against him has saved civilization, but it's shamefaced bragging of the   
   kind   
   you hear when a 10th-grader beats up a kindergartner. They dare not   
   ballyhoo   
   their triumph lest the serfs finally rouse themselves and yell, "Are you   
   serious? You're reading our mail and tapping our phones and groping us at   
   airports because of guys like him?"   
      
   Siraj was a 22-year-old Pakistani working in Brooklyn, NY at an Islamic   
   bookstore - located, ominously enough, next to a mosque. Both Siraj's   
   family   
   and his attorneys have described him as "witless and impressionable." His   
   uncle admitted, "He's my nephew, but he's not too bright.... He's not   
   dangerous, he just talks."   
      
   Siraj's hours in the bookstore and the mosque, where he prayed, as well as   
   his lack of sophistication recommended him to 50-year-old Osama Eldawoody.   
   An Egyptian immigrant who became a US citizen, Eldawoody is also a "paid   
   police informant." For several years after 9/11, he and an undercover cop   
   prowled both bookstore and mosque. Eldawoody collected $100,000 of our   
   taxes   
   for chatting up "radical young Moslem men," a.k.a. customers at the   
   bookstore, and for reporting the license-plate numbers of cars parked at   
   the   
   mosque. Wouldn't it be easier if we simply required Moslems to wear yellow   
   crescents on their sleeves?   
      
   The snitch and his undercover sidekick honed in on Siraj, "not the   
   brightest   
   bulb in the chandelier," and another dim wit as well. James Elshafay is   
   just   
   21; his short life has been nasty and brutish. His Irish mother and   
   Egyptian   
   father separated when he was a toddler. He suffers from schizophrenia and   
   depression, as do other members of his family, and takes drugs of which   
   Leviathan approves to counter these ills. He took drugs Leviathan doesn't   
   approve as a teen, perhaps because a "male relative" molested him. He   
   drank   
   to excess, sniffed glue, and dropped out of the ninth grade in his school   
   on   
   Staten Island. He volunteered for the Army, but he was so damaged even   
   those   
   body-snatchers wouldn't have him.   
      
   In short, Elshafay and his friend Siraj sound more like threats to   
   themselves than to the American Way of Life. We've all known folks like   
   them: there's a glazed look in their eyes as they work to decipher such   
   sentences as "You want fries with that?" and "The red light means STOP."   
   Often they're eager to please and readily agree to just about anything;   
   you   
   could suggest a blind date with Hillary Clinton, and you'd get a goofy   
   grin   
   and a "Sure!" Some of us, to our shame, may have mocked or even bullied   
   children like them when we were kids. Then we grew up. We learned that   
   wounded souls and minds are still worthy of respect, that their slow wits   
   don't exempt us from the Golden Rule, and that only the truly vicious take   
   advantage of them.   
      
   Enter Eldawoody, the NYPD, the FBI, and the whole apparatus of   
   prosecutors,   
   judges, and other criminals fighting a largely invented but highly useful   
   "War on Terror."   
      
   Eldawoody showed Siraj and Elshafay pictures of their fellow Moslems'   
   torture at Abu Ghraib and told them US soldiers were raping Iraqi girls.   
   He   
   claimed he belonged to a terrorist organization - well, OK, he does   
   collaborate with the Feds - and could supply explosives. According to   
   Siraj,   
   Eldawoody suggested "blowing up the buildings and blowing up the Wall   
   Street   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)