Random: December 2004 Archives

Somehow I knew her writings would annoy the living sh*t out of me.

U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims Thursday â  December€ â €  30, â €  2004 By: David Holcberg

Our money is not the government's to give.

As the death toll mounts in the areas hit by Sunday's tsunami in southern
Asia, private organizations and individuals are scrambling to send out
money and goods to help the victims. Such help may be entirely proper,
especially considering that most of those affected by this tragedy are
suffering through no fault of their own.

The United States government, however, should not give any money to help
the tsunami victims. Why? Because the money is not the government's to
give.

Every cent the government spends comes from taxation. Every dollar the
government hands out as foreign aid has to be extorted from an American
taxpayer first. Year after year, for decades, the government has forced
American taxpayers to provide foreign aid to every type of natural or
man-made disaster on the face of the earth: from the Marshall Plan to
reconstruct a war-ravaged Europe to the $15 billion recently promised to
fight AIDS in Africa to the countless amounts spent to help the victims of
earthquakes, fires and floods--from South America to Asia. Even the
enemies of the United States were given money extorted from American
taxpayers: from the billions given away by Clinton to help the starving
North Koreans to the billions given away by Bush to help the blood-thirsty
Palestinians under Arafat's murderous regime.

The question no one asks about our politicians' "generosity" towards the
world's needy is: By what right? By what right do they take our
hard-earned money and give it away?

The reason politicians can get away with doling out money that they have
no right to and that does not belong to them is that they have the
morality of altruism on their side. According to altruism--the morality
that most Americans accept and that politicians exploit for all it's
worth--those who have more have the moral obligation to help those who
have less. This is why Americans--the wealthiest people on earth--are
expected to sacrifice (voluntarily or by force) the wealth they have
earned to provide for the needs of those who did not earn it. It is
Americans' acceptance of altruism that renders them morally impotent to
protest against the confiscation and distribution of their wealth. It is
past time to question--and to reject--such a vicious morality that demands
that we sacrifice our values instead of holding on to them.

Next time a politician gives away money taken from you to show what a
good, compassionate altruist he is, ask yourself: By what right?

David Holcberg is a research associate at the Ayn Rand Institute in
Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author
of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Yes, I think I object to objectivism.

Not that I want to make a major point about the differences between href="http://www.apple.com">Apple and href="http://www.microsoft.com">Microsoft, but looky here...

The difference is striking, no?

In times like these, it's interesting to see different groups' priorities.

I've gotten end-of-year fundraising pleas from the usual suspects (HRC, Alameda County Food Bank)). I got a message from Brit Tzedek v'Shalom urging everyone to seize the latest opportunity to make peace in the Middle East. So far, two groups (Working Assets and American Jewish World Service) have sent emails about the tsunami disaster (80,000 dead and counting at this point!)

Then we have this beautiful piece of work from the American Family Association, who seem to think I'm their little pen-pal now.

Please forward this to your family and friends!
 
HELP THE PRESIDENT DECIDE THE KIND OF JUDGES TO APPOINT
Tell the President the kind of Supreme Court and Federal judges he should appoint

Your email will go straight to the White House.


Dear XXXX,
Very soon President Bush will be appointing several Federal judges, including the possibility of appointing one or more Supreme Court judges.

The most important decision the President will make during the next four years will be the kind of judges he appoints.

 We encourage you to send the President an email encouraging him to appoint the kind of judges you want on the Federal courts.

 The time to make your voice heard is now, before nominations are made!

 If you think the President should appoint "strict constructionist" judges--that is, judges who interpret the constitution to seek the original intent of the document--click here.

 If you think the President should appoint "progressive" judges who believe they should change the Constitution to make laws they feel are needed but that Congress refuses to make, click here.

 To see the number of individuals who have sent letters encouraging the President for each category, click here.

 The more people who participate, the better feel the President will have of public opinion. Please forward this to your friends and family.

 Sincerely,

Don

Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman
 American Family Association

P.S. Please forward this email to family and friends.

Branson, Missouri, Worldview Weekend conference - Michael Youssef, Kirk Cameron, Erwin Lutzer, Ray Comfort, Tim Wildmon and others will be at this event April 29, 30 and May 1.

It's Not Gay: This 28-minute video presents a story that few have heard, allowing former homosexuals the opportunity to tell their own story in their own words. Along with medical and mental health experts, these individuals express a clear warning that the sanitized version of homosexuality being presented to students is not the whole truth.

Spiritual Heritage Tours - Tours of Washington, D.C. and Mount Vernon with an emphasis on America's Christian heritage, led by AFA president Tim Wildmon and AFR general manager Marvin Sanders.
 You are receiving this mailing because you took action on an AFA-sponsored poll, petition, or action alert. You are subscribed to afapetition as xxxxxxxxxt.

In keeping with our privacy policy, AFA may periodically contact you regarding issues of concern to the family. Rest assured that your subscription e-mail address will be kept in the strictest confidence. We do not divulge, nor make available to any third party, our subscription list. Your privacy is paramount to us! If you do not wish to receive further communications from us, click here to unsubscribe.

 Questions or comments about AFA? Contact us via email, phone, fax, or postal mail.


www.afa.net
 Copyright 2002-2004
 American Family Association
 107 Parkgate Dr.
 Tupelo, MS 38801
 1-662-844-5036
 All Rights Reserved

I have half a mind to take them up on their offer and contact them to tell them what I think. Which is: What the hell is a "Christian" "Family" organization doing, in a week when thousands of families have been destroyed, sending out this garbage? Why aren't they doing the "Christian" thing and encouraging their members to get their heads out of their asses and do something GOOD for a change?

I shouldn't even bother being outraged, but really, timing IS everything.
 
 

First, the pitch (from my work):

The American Jewish World Service is working to help provide emergency relief to victims of the massive tidal waves in Asia, which have killed tens of thousands and caused massive devastation. Click here to donate to the relief effort. The American Joint Distribution Committee (which receives funding from our annual campaign) has also set up an open mailbox for contributions (more information).  Click here to donate online, or make checks payable to the JDC Southeast Asia Tsunami Relief fund and send to: JDC Southeast Asia Tsunami Relief, Box 321, 847A Second Avenue, New York, NY 10017. 95% of funds raised will go directly to relief efforts.

And of course, there's the Red Cross's International Response Fund.

Meanwhile, it appears that our illustrious leader is carefully trying to convey the impression that he is a heartless bastard who only cares about the victims of natural disasters when 1) they happen to be Americans, 2) strike during a campaign year when he's running for reelection (before the election, of course), 3) occur in a swing state run by his brother.

Earlier yesterday, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the president was confident he could monitor events effectively without returning to Washington or making public statements in Crawford, where he spent part of the day clearing brush and bicycling. Explaining the about-face, a White House official said: "The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.' "

Many Bush aides believe Clinton was too quick to head for the cameras to hold forth on tragedies with his trademark empathy. "Actions speak louder than words," a top Bush aide said, describing the president's view of his appropriate role.

It's a true thing...

This post inspired me to finally write about Christmas, though I've been thinking about this for a while.

It's now the 26th, and although the shops are still filled with Christmas merchandise (now heavily discounted) and all the houses still have their lights up, the holiday is over and we're moving towards the new year.

Although I am Jewish, Christmas was always a pretty big deal in my extremely assimilated-to-the-point-of-nonexistence Jewish family. (I tried to get us to light Chanukah candles at one point when I was a kid, but it just didn't catch on.) My maternal grandmother had a little flashing pin shaped like a Christmas light, which she'd wear every December. My parents always got a tree and we decorated it. We'd have presents, Christmas dinner, the works. To this day, my mother still fills Christmas stockings for my sister and me, though, now that we're in our thirties, toys have been replaced by packages of stockings and small kitchen gadgets.

However, my relationship to the holiday has definitely changed over the years. Relatives have become less mobile with advancing age, some have died, and others have just moved further away and it's become harder to organize a single family get-together. Thanksgiving has become the biggie — it's just somehow less emotionally fraught, and consequently more fun. (It's all about the food.)

And now I am married to a Jewish man who thinks it's very odd that a Jewish family would make such a big deal of this Christmas thing. Christmas, to him, means going out for Chinese food and catching a movie.

I'm also working at a Jewish organization which has made me acutely aware of the Jewish holiday calendar. I amuse my mother by explaining Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.

Slowly, over the years, my holiday center of gravity has shifted.

Still, none of this makes me feel bad about Christmas, and I still get a little thrill from seeing the Christmas lights, the ice skating rink set up in Justin Herman Plaza, the singers dressed in costume in the grocery store the other day, and I'm as materialistic as anyone else and enjoy receiving gifts, and even giving gifts... I can even tolerate the Christmas music up to a point. (Though I think my favorite songs are the ones by the Kinks and the Waitresses).

This year, though, I'm feeling more uncomfortable. Is it the rampant commercialism? Yeah, that doesn't help, but that has long been a part of the holiday here. (I avoided the shops the day after Thanksgiving like the plague!) You don't have to give in to the madness. Sometimes, I even pretend that I live in a foreign country. Would I be annoyed if everyone had their Eid decorations up? (Er... do people put up decorations for Eid?)

But really, it all comes down to the tempest in a teapot that was the "controversy" over stores that — gasp! — say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" to their customers. Hell, I've said "Happy Holidays" for years! Why not? It covers Chanukah, Christmas, New Year's, Kwanzaa, the Solstice... you name it.

These are the people behind it. We have Bill O'Reilly, saying "You have a predominantly Christian nation. You have a federal holiday based on the philosopher Jesus. And you don't wanna hear about it? Come on, [caller] — if you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel then." We have some guy from the Catholic League saying, "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular." It is deeply, deeply creepy.

And I wonder what's going on here. It's their holiday. Most of the country celebrates it. We have a strongly Christian president. The tide is seemingly turning in favor of those who want their religion to feature prominently in public life. They should be happy. While celebrating the birth of their Savior, they could also be taking the time to reflect on the man he'd grow up to become, reread his teachings, and really take them to heart. It's supposed to be a holiday of "comfort and joy." Yet all they can do is point fingers, play on fears and hatred of "the other", and keep tabs on who is publicly observing the holiday the way they think it should be. Why are they trying to out-Taliban the Taliban?

This column by Roger Ebert really says it all for me:

This is really an argument between two kinds of prayer--vertical and horizontal. I don't have the slightest problem with vertical prayer. It is horizontal prayer that frightens me. Vertical prayer is private, directed upward toward heaven. It need not be spoken aloud, because God is a spirit and has no ears. Horizontal prayer must always be audible, because its purpose is not to be heard by God, but to be heard by fellow men standing within earshot.

To choose an example from football, when my team needs a field goal to win and I think, ''Please, dear God, let them make it!''--that is vertical prayer. When, before the game, a group of fans joins hands and ''voluntarily'' recites the Lord's Prayer--that is horizontal prayer. It serves one of two purposes: to encourage me to join them, or to make me feel excluded.

Although some of the horizontal devout are sincere, others use this prayer as a device of recruitment or intimidation. If you are conspicuous in your refusal to go along, they may even turn and pray while holding you directly in their sights.

This simple insight about two kinds of prayer, which is beyond theological question, should bring a dead halt to the obsession with prayer in public places. It doesn't, because the purpose of its supporters is political, not spiritual. Their faith is like Dial soap: Now that they use it, they wish everyone would. I grew up in an America where people of good breeding did not impose their religious convictions upon those they did not know very well. Now those manners have been discarded.

You can't enforce holiday spirit, but you can do a great deal to destroy it. Someone is destroying it, but it's not the atheists and it's not the Jews. What would Jesus really do? I wish these hypocrites would ask themselves that.

For everyone else, I hope you had good holidays, whichever they were for you.

You must read this.

I can't make head or tail out of what happened at this Jewish community center on the East Coast, but the implications seem troubling...

Finding Title VII's exemption for religious institutions "is not limited to facilities where prayer takes place," a magistrate judge has dismissed a suit against a Jewish community center brought by an evangelical Christian who claims she was fired because she attended a "Jews for Jesus" concert.

In his 15-page opinion in LeBoon v. Lancaster Jewish Community Center, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacob P. Hart rejected the plaintiff's argument that the LJCC is not entitled to the exemption because its purpose is "essentially secular," and it is not affiliated with any synagogue.

Instead, Hart found that courts have taken a broader view of the exemption, extending it to any institution that includes religion among its primary purposes.

Plaintiff's attorney J. Michael Considine Jr. of West Chester, Pa. argued in court papers that LJCC's mission statement showed that it focuses on developing a Jewish community in Lancaster through "identity, education and cooperation."

As a result, Considine argued, LJCC's mission "is not spiritual."

Hart disagreed, saying "this fails to take account of the fact that LJCC seeks to sustain a specifically Jewish community."

I can't stand the Jews for Jesus, and what the hell is an Evangelical Christian doing working at a JCC?  However, if I'm reading this right, it sets a dangerous precedent. If they fired her for performance reasons, that sounds fair (and she sounds like a pain.) However, the judge went beyond that to say that the JCC is basically entitled to act like a religious institution, and remove staff for religious reasons.

Our local JCCs are not synagogues. They are community centers. Many people who go to them are not Jewish, and I suspect that the staff is also quite mixed. So this ruling puzzles me. I am troubled by the priority given to institutional rights over individual rights.

Next time, it won't be a JCC. It will be one of Bush's faith-based  — read Christian — agencies, which he's hell-bent on substituting for public programs, and who will lose their job then? A Buddhist? A Jew?

I really hope I'm just overreacting, but I suspect not...

Updated to add: nope, I wasn't overreacting. Christianity Today has the same interpretation of this ruling that I did.

Remember March's California Supreme Court ruling against Catholic Charities, which argued just the opposite: Employing and offering social services to non-Catholics makes the ministry non-religious. Remember also the U.S. government's revoking Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen's "special immigrant religious worker" visa because Fuller Seminary isn't tied to a denomination.

Where this may probably be the best news is in any expansion of the faith-based initiative. Some pundits and politicians have been adamant that publicly funded religious organizations be forbidden from making staffing decisions on religious grounds. Hart's decision may help to shore up the rights of faith-based groups to stay rooted in their faith. Religious organizations must have the right to fire employees whose actions and religious beliefs are diametrically opposed to that organization's mission.

In other words, they want to be able to discriminate on the basis of religion in their hiring practices, but they want to be able to use my tax dollars to do it.

Edited to add again:

Look who else is happy about this: Stormfront, the white supremicist group! (I'm not linking to them because they scare me)

This sets a precedent for the right to start white Communities, and solicit ONLY white membership. Or are they going to tell us now that only jews have that right?

Like I keep saying, these losers are going to defeat themselves. Them calling us racist is definately the Tea Pot calling the Kettle black.

Greeatttttt...

It's the annual Barney video from the White House!

Perhaps only Scottish Terrier devotees are aware of this, but some of your tax dollars go to produce videos of the Bush family's dog every year.

It's cool. He's so darn cute! Plus he was born in New Jersey, which is, I believe, a "Blue State."

This year's video creeped me out more than a little, however...

I got this press release at work from Rabbi Learner, the editor of Tikkun Magazine. Normally I find his writing too wordy, but this gets right to the point. I had heard about Bill O'Reilly's comments to  Jewish caller that if he didn't like all the Christmassy stuff, he should move to Israel, but I hadn't realized quite how widespread this poison was. Also, it's interesting how there are all these ads on television for violent computer games... the perfect Christmas present? (I suppose that group who has been sending all those complaints to the FCC about a little titty might take the time to say something about that? Nah.)

News Release:

CHRISTMAS WARS: The Jews and Secularists Did NOT Steal Christmas, But It WAS STOLEN!
by Rabbi Michael Lerner

 The Christmas Wars  a News Release by Rabbi Michael Lerner  Monday, Dec. 20, 2004  Flush from their electoral victories in November, some leaders of the Christian Right have decided to make an issue of the secularization of Christmas. Objecting to the move by Macy's and some other retailers to wish their shoppers "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings" instead of the traditional Merry Christmas, they have begun to accuse secularists in general, and, on some of the right-wing talk shows, Jews in particular, of undermining Christmas.

 It's easy to dismiss these Right-wingers as sore winners. They are well on their way to packing the judiciary with judges who may erode the division between church and state, make abortion more difficult or illegal, and support the pro-torture position of Bush's choice for Attorney General. Yet the 25% of Jews who voted for Bush in this past election may not have imagined that along with his vigorous support for Sharon and for the war in Iraq, Bush's electoral victory could spur a public assault on the legitimacy of Jewish identity in the U.S.

 The assault has been led by Bill O'Reilly, the most popular cable newscaster, who told millions of viewers that there was a systematic assault on Christmas by secularists. When challenged by a Jewish caller who said he felt uncomfortable being subject to frequent attempts to convert him by Christians at his college, O'Reilly responded: "All right. Well, what I'm tellin' you, is I think you're takin' it too seriously. You have a predominantly Christian nation. You have a federal holiday based on the philosopher Jesus. And you don't wanna hear about it? Come on -- if you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel then. I mean because we live in a country founded on Judeo -- and that's your guys' -- Christian, that's my guys' philosophy. But overwhelmingly, America is Christian. And the holiday is a federal holiday honoring the philosopher Jesus. So, you don't wanna hear about it? Impossible. And that is an affront to the majority. You know, the majority can be insulted, too. And that's what this anti-Christmas thing is all about."

 Meanwhile, Richard Viguerie, the master of Right-wing direct mail campaigns, interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air on Dec. 13, repeated the charge that Christians were the victims of a systematic secularists assault against Christmas. On MSNBC last week William Donahue of the Catholic League insisted, "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, OK? They like to see the public square without nativity scenes."

 Liberals and civil libertarians would be making a huge mistake to see this as merely the rantings of a few overt anti- Semites and anti-civil-liberties extremists. They articulate a legitimate concern that many Christians say privately: their children have learned that Christmas is about buying-and the person with the most expensive gifts wins!

 There is a beautiful spiritual message underlying Christmas that has universal appeal: the hope that gets reborn in moments of despair, the light that gets re-lit in the darkest moments of the year, is beautifully symbolized by the story of a child born of a teenage homeless mother who had to give birth in a manger because no one would give her shelter, and escaping the cruelty of Roman imperial rule and its local surrogate Herod who already knew that such a child would grow up to challenge the entire imperialist system. To celebrate that vulnerable child as a symbol of hope that eventually the weak would triumph over the rule of the arrogant and powerful is a spiritual celebration with strong analogies to our Jewish Chanukah celebration which also celebrates the victory of the weak over the powerful. And many other spiritual traditions around the world have similar celebrations at this time of year.

 The loss of this message, its subversion into a frenetic orgy of consumption, rightly disturbs Christians and other people of faith.

 Yet this transformation is not a result of Jewish parents wanting to protect their children from being forced to sing Christmas carols in public school, or secularists sending Seasons Greeting cards. It derives, instead, from the power of the capitalist marketplace, operating through television, movies and marketers, to drum into everyone's mind the notion that the only way to be a decent human being at this time of year is to buy and buy more. Thus the altruistic instinct to give, which could take the form of giving of our time, our skills, and our loving energies to people we care about, gets transformed and subverted into a competitve frenzy of consumption.

 Not surprisingly, the Christian Right is unwilling to challenge the capitalist marketplace-because their uncritical support for corporate power is precisely what they had to offer the Right to become part of the conservative coalition. Their loyalty to conservative capitalist economics trumps for them their commitment to serving God. But for those of us who want to prevent a new surge of anti-Semitism and assaults on the first amendment, our most effective path is to acknowledge what is legitimate in the Christians' concern- and lead it into a powerful spiritual critique of the ethos of selfishness and materialism fostered by our economic arrangements. It's time for our liberal and progressive Christian leaders and neighbors to stand up against on behalf of Jews and on behalf of their own highest spiritual vision--and challenge the real Christmas thieves!

 Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine www.Tikkun.org, and author of Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul.www.tikkun.org

Costco Chief Executive Officer Jim Sinegal, 68, is a Democrat who says President Bush's $1.7 trillion in tax cuts unfairly benefit the wealthy. He opposed the Iraq war and supports Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts for president. And he's the only chief executive of a company in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to donate money to independent political groups formed to oust Bush, Internal Revenue Service records show.

And...

[Costco] pays hot-dog vendors as much as $16 an hour, and the lowest wage it pays is $10 an hour.

OK, I still believe in shopping at my local stores, and Costco stores make me a little nuts when I'm there (why do so many people seem hellbent on running each other over with their shopping carts?) But it's nice to know at least one big box store out there has a conscience.

The good news is that a certain annoying radio ad is no longer being played ad nauseum on Air America Radio. ("For dignity!")

The bad news is that it seems to have been replaced by ads for Ready.gov, in which a voice solemnly intones warnings to come up with a safety plan for your business, your family, and your dear, small, fuzzy, every-so-vulnerable doggies, before terrorists come and destroy everything. (I guess it's supposed to distract us from the fact that the Department of Homeland Security is in underfunded, un-headed shambles.)

From The Australian...

A recipe for long life

PARIS: A diet rich in fish, fruit, vegetables and a daily glass of red wine could help people in wealthy countries extend their life span by five years or more, according to a new study.

Doctors projected the potential impact of the so-called Polymeal, inspired by the famous Mediterranean diet, on US health.

Using a computer model of the American adult population, they calculated the risk of heart disease would fall by 76 per cent, women would live five years longer on average and the life expectancy for men would rise by 6.6 years compared to those who did not follow the diet.

Their projections are based on previous research which identifies the success of specific foods in lowering blood pressure.

The Polymeal diet proposed in the study comprises fish, eaten four times a week; wine, amounting to 15 centilitres a day; dark chocolate (100g a day); fruit and vegetables (400g a day); garlic (2.7g a day) and almonds (68g a day).

 

So... fish? Fruit? Veggies and garlic? Chocolate and almonds? A glass of red wine? Every day? Oh, twist my arm, why don't you!

I believe they have a "space" they'd like to "fill".

The Chronicle has gone and done it again. "It" being messing up the comics page.

Phil Frank, the creator of the longtime Chronicle strip Farley, has teamed up with writer Joe Troise to create a new syndicated comic that taps into something we all have in common: We're all getting older and, as the saying goes, it beats the alternative.

Set in a retirement home, the Elderberries is about five friends who deal with the inevitability of their own aging process with a combination of wit and wordplay.

The new strip, which appears daily and Sunday, will replace Clear Blue Water, which never really caught on with readers. We hope that Elderberries will.

Elderberries is not really doing it for me so far, but I'm willing to give it time, because I like Phil Frank, and the title comes from a Monty Python movie. Sometimes strips just need time.

However, Clear Blue Water is also one of those strips that needs time to grow on you. My initial reaction was that the drawing style was very weak. However, as time has gone on, I've become fond of the characters, amused by the exchanges between the married couple at the heart of the strip, and caught up in the storylines (does their son really have autism? will the twins be born OK? Will Eve make it through her pregnancy without throwing something heavy at Manny? Is Fluff Boy really down with the fluff?

I will be reading Clear Blue Water online from now on, I guess. I also need to write to the Chronicle and express my ire (and my strong desire that they deep-six the puzzlingly unfunny Pearls Into Swine) rather than just bitch about it on my blog..

Via BoingBoing, a permit dispute in my hometown, with several twists. The homeowner who wants to build an addition on her house is the mother of the founding editor of Wired. The neighbors (and others) are opposed, saying the plans would ruin a historical treasure. More here and here and here.

Berkeley is a notoriously difficult place to do building-related things in... on the other hand, there's definitely more to this story than meets the eye, and the remodel seems to be more the son's idea than the mother's, full-page ad in the paper to the contrary. (O.K. Michael, you win!)

Spotted this window dressing at a very cool store on College Avenue called LOOT...

Chrismukkah cards! Yes, it's the merger of two holidays. Perhaps a hostile takeover? Were several hundred of Santa's elves sacked? Did they get latkes for severance pay? 

Anyway, at this site, you can kill two holidays with one stone and order cards with images of "Kosher Fruitcake", rabbis dressed like Santa, snowmen with yarmulkes, snowmen floating in bowls of matzoh ball soup, a menorah stuffed with candy canes instead of candles, and the obligatory "Chrismukkah Bush".

I fear that this is the beginning of a bad trend. It can only end with misguided attempts to mash together Easter and Passover (watch Jesus jump out of an egg wearing bunny ears!) or... Good Friday and Ramadan? The mind boggles. As well it should.

Meanwhile, an old-fashioned "Happy Holidays" to anyone reading this!

Via Jewschool, some different recipes for latkes. Cauliflower? Hot peppers? Don't worry, the potatoes are still in there. Atkins hasn't taken over that completely. Yet. (I fully expect to see "meat latkes" written up next year.)

Another letter from the American Family Association. Annotated with snarky goodness (in brackets and italics).

Help The Passion of the Christ win the best movie of the year award!

Vote today and then forward this on to your family and friends so they can vote! Voting ends Dec. 13.

Dear Katherine,
 Please help The Passion Of The Christ win the best movie of the year in CBS’s People’s Choice Awards! Cast your vote and then forward this to your friends and family and ask them to vote for The Passion Of The Christ. [and I shouldn't forget my coworkers at the Jewish organization where I work!]

PLEASE SAVE THIS EMAIL. AFTER YOU CAST YOUR BALLOT, PLEASE COME BACK TO THIS EMAIL AND FORWARD IT. BECAUSE OF THE WAY THE CBS WEBSITE IS SET UP [what? You mean it's not controlled by the American Family Association? Godless heathens!], IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FORWARD THIS INFORMATION FROM THE VOTING SITE. AFTER CASTING YOUR VOTE, IT WILL BE NECESSARY TO RETURN TO THIS EMAIL IN ORDER TO FORWARD IT TO YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS. [thanks for the highly technical explanation. In all caps, yet.]

 We are asking you to register so that we can keep an accurate tally of the number of votes AFA Online produces for the movie. As you know, Mel Gibson is not the favorite person in Hollywood because of his making this movie.

PLEASE, AFTER YOU HAVE VOTED, COME BACK TO THIS EMAIL AND FORWARD IT TO ALL YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS. WE NEED AS MANY PEOPLE TO VOTE AS POSSIBLE. THIS MOVIE DESERVES TO BE THE MOVIE (DRAMA CATEGORY) OF THE YEAR! WITH YOUR HELP IT WILL BE! [What did you want me to do again after I vote? Like, I forgot already. And how do I do it? What?]

 Help us make sure The Passion Of The Christ gets more votes than any other movie in history! [In HISTORY?] Voting ends December 13. Please take action now.

Click here to register your vote!

Sincerely,

Don

Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman
American Family Association

Do you get the impression that the AFA thinks its members are a little... how you say... simple? If you click, you have to fill out your name and address and phone number and email address before they'll give you the super-secret link to the CBS People's Choice voting site. And you don't want to do that, because that's how I ended up on their list. (Though I think in the end, they'll regret it more than i will!) So, I'm NOT encouraging you to go to http://www.pcavote.com and vote for movies other than The Passion of the Christ (I hear The Bourne Supremacy was pretty good). Really, I'm not. I'm also not encouraging you to tell everyone you know to go to the site and do the same thing. What you do with this information is totally up to you.