42. BROWNSHIRTS

From the Archives

(March 22, 2005) So maybefolks already knows this, but April 1st is the second national I Love My Country and I’m Still Embarrassed by My President Day and Democracy Means You is calling on progressive people to wear brown.

Here's their spiel:

Are you still embarrassed by the arrogance, greed, shortsightedness, fraud, and outright lies told by the administration of GWB? Join tens of thousands of others across the country by wearing a brown ribbon, brown clothes, brown armbands, official buttons, or anything brown to protest all the BS coming out of the White house—and to remind everyone of the brownshirt antidemocratic tactics of the Busholinis and their followers.

In honor of all the brown material flowing so freely from the White House and stinking up the nation ... because we know who’s the real April Fool!

7. LIVING LA VIDA JIHAD

From the Archives

(March 2005) Well, it’s happened. I just noticed that one day this month is so chock full of meetings that the only time I can even pee or eat will be between 1 and 1:30 or between 2:45 and 3! Durn!!

Am practically slackjawed over news from Islamabad that a village council just overturned the convictions of five men who were found guilty of gang-raping a woman back in 2002. The council also commuted the death sentence of the sixth man to life in prison (and found the other eight men the victim accused of raping her innocent back in 2002).

Of course, the prosecution asserted that the council ordered the crime as punishment for the victim’s brother’s alleged love affair in the first place, which is especially ironic given the reality that, in the course of the trial, it came out that the men who had accused him of the affair had actually sexually molested him and were trying to conceal this fact with their current accusations and demands for revenge.
Unf*ckingbbelievable.

Meanwhile, the latest polls show that only 39 percent of Americans think that this war has been worth the lives lost fighting it. Monday's attack—the single bloodiest one yet with, what, over 120 people killed?—must have dropped that number even lower.

There’s something happening here. And what it is is exactly clear.