A worldview I don't understand: "There must be violence against women."

Just when you think the world can't make you feel any more ill, you find an article like Maged Thabet al-Kholidy's great turd of logic, The must be violence against women.

The article is basically a rehash of the Quranic tradition; women are allowed to refuse their husbands' sex, but men are allowed to beat women for their disobedience. He rails against "human rights groups" that don't understand that "there are instances when violence against women is a must." He says that fathers and brothers sometimes "must" (and he doesn't even say this with regret!) "use violence against daughters or sisters via any means that suits the mistake."

According to human rights organizations, women should complain to the courts about any type of violence against them. Likewise, should fathers and brothers complain to police if their daughters or sisters violate moral, Islamic or social norms?

Fathers should handle their daughters via any means that suits their mistake; thus, is it better to use violence to a certain limit or complain to the police? Shall such women then complain to the police against their fathers or brothers? It's really amazing to hear this.

How about, asswipe, not insisting that the women in your life be little breeding robots who must conform to your whim and obey you without question. If you wanted that, why don't you just build them yourself?

I'll tell you why: because people with this mindset can't. This primitive, vicious, hideous twisted parody of human concern has no capability to create a civilization concerned with human well-being. Beat your wives into submission and Allah is supposed to take care of all those complicated things like health care and industrial policy and foreign investment concerns.

Frack. Y'know what I really hope about 2009? I hope that our next president comes to understand that Islamicism is unimportant. Really, it is. They might do damage, they might hurt a few people (even a lot of people), but they're doing nothing more than fantasy ideology. While the United States stays in a hideously expensive pissing match with a culture that more deserves to collapse into the dust of history, China, India, and the rest of the world have gotten one with the grown-up activities of becoming economic powerhouses and even cultural centers.

Politics: Iowa yesterday, and silly stuff.

If I had all the time in the world, I'd write about:

The Revealer explains why evangelicals don't like the NYT:

Noting that Huck drew a third more evangelicals to the polls -- 60% of the Republican turnout -- than in years past, Michael Luo and David D. Kirkpatrick fail to quote any of them. Instead, they echo establishment G.O.P. talking points by pointing out that Huck's "natural allies among Christian conservative leaders" don't like him. By this, they mean Paul Weyrich, Jim Dobson, and Pat Robertson -- precisely the people so many evangelicals have been saying don't represent them anymore.

Frankly, Huckabee scares my socks off precisely because he's one of these "culture warriors" who benefits from the anger of the O'Reilly zombie crowd, but who talks a kinder, softer line-- one that could put him into the White House, complete with the power to nominate Supreme Court justices. But Sharlett's also right: the NYT didn't bother to quote anyone from Huck's supporters about why they support him. The NYT doesn't know how to talk to agents of change, and so misrepresents Huckabee the same way they sadly don't know how to talk about Linus Torvalds.

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Speaking of the NYT: Michael Tomasky writes about Republican structural problems:

The party is still in the hands of three main interests: neoconservatives; theo-conservatives, i.e., the groups of the religious right; and radical anti-taxers, clustered around such organizations as the Club for Growth and Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. Each of these groups dominates party policy in its area of interes-- the neocons in foreign policy, the theocons in social policy, and the anti-taxers on fiscal and regulatory issues. Each has led the Bush administration to undertake a high-profile failure: the theocons orchestrated the disastrous Terri Schiavo crusade, which put off many moderate Americans; the radical anti-taxers pushed for the failed Social Security privatization initiative; and the neocons, of course, wanted to invade Iraq.

I have to say that he's right, and anyone unwilling to play along with all three is going to be in trouble. I can't say that Two-Buck Huck (is that too liberal a joke?) isn't willing, but he seems too earnest about his theocracy to be chained down by the others.

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Brad DeLong quotes Hilzoy approvingly (okay, I'm just being an echo chamber here, now) and adds:

Every serious Republican policy person I know would give at least one organ of generation and one eye and one toe to have in their current mix a candidate half as qualified as the least qualified of Obama, Edwards, Clinton, Richardson, or Dodd.

This is what the Republicans face: Huckabee, Romney, and Guiliani simply aren't qualified, not in character, experience, or moral worth, to lead this country.

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On a lighter note, if you're willing to cough up the cash, WorldNetDaily warns us that witchcraft is alive and well in America:

Wicca is an official, legal religion in the U.S., and a fast-growing one at that. Judges have ruled that witches must be allowed to lead prayers at local government meetings, and that Wiccan convicts must be provided with requested "sacred objects" so they can perform spells in their cells. Witches in the armed services have even formed covens and routinely "worship" on U.S. military bases.

How did this happen - and why?

My favorite spam euphemism

As much as I loathe spam, just like the rest of you, from time to time I have to admire their creativity. The number of different ways they've come to euphemise the penis, for example, just has to rank up there the Sokal Hoax or the world-spanning gnomes for entertainment. All the usual ones are there, of course: "rod," "shaft," even "dick" (nowadays mispelled "dik") but there is one that always makes me laugh.

"Dignity."

I mean, come on, isn't that just the best euphemism for penis you've ever read. I can just imagine writing it in a Mad-Lib-like porn story: ( Winging it! )