URGENT REQUEST

DEAR AMERICAN:

I NEED TO ASK YOU SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH
TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.

I AM MINISTRY OF TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS
HAD CRISIS THAT HAD CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800
BILLION DOLLARS USD. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THS TRANSFER, IT WOULD
BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.

I WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY
REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU
MAY KNOW HIM AS LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT
IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.

THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THIS
FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS
IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER
SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A
RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE
FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.

PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND
ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO
WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION
FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION, I WILL RESPOND
WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS THAT WILL BE USED TO
PROTECT THE FUNDS.

YOURS FAITHFULLY
MINISTER OF TREASURY PAULSON

From the Telegraph:

A Russian advertising executive who sued her boss for sexual harassment lost her case after a judge ruled that employers were obliged to make passes at female staff to ensure the survival of the human race.

She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.

"He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word," she earlier told the court. "I didn't realise at first that he wasn't speaking metaphorically."

The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.

"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children," the judge ruled.

Since Soviet times, sexual harassment in Russia has become an accepted part of life in the office, work place and university lecture room.

According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.

Eighty per cent of those who participated in the survey said they did not believe it possible to win promotion without engaging in sexual relations with their male superiors.

Women also report that it is common to be browbeaten into sex during job interviews, while female students regularly complain that university professors trade high marks for sexual favours.

Only two women have won sexual harassment cases since the collapse of the Soviet Union, one in 1993 and the other in 1997.

Human rights activists say that Russian women remain second-class citizens and are subjected to some of the highest levels of domestic abuse in the world.

From the Los Angeles Times:

When the iPhone first hit the market in June 2007, those who paid the $499 entry price -- and signed the two-year AT&T contract -- owned a status symbol. A year later, we have the iPhone 3G, Apple's speedier, sleeker and, most important, less expensive smart phone, which introduced a section for downloading third-party applications. Now that the phone is affordable enough for a wider audience, a new status symbol has emerged: a seemingly useless application called I Am Rich.

Its function is exactly what the name implies: to alert people that you have money in the bank. I Am Rich was available for purchase from the phone's App Store for, get this, $999.99 -- the highest amount a developer can charge through the digital retailer, said Armin Heinrich, the program's developer. Once downloaded, it doesn't do much -- a red icon sits on the iPhone home screen like any other application, with the subtext "I Am Rich." Once activated, it treats the user to a large, glowing gem (pictured above). That's about it. For a thousand dollars.

Eight people bought the application before Apple removed it from its online store.

According to the Associated Press, San Diego businessman Doug Manchester "gave $125,000 to a group backing a California ballot initiative to ban gay marriage". When threatened with a boycott, Manchester said "that he welcomes gay guests at his properties but as a Catholic believes marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman".

I applaud Manchester for living by his principles and expect him to soon initiate efforts to:

• ban marriage between Catholics and non-Catholics.
• ban remarriage by anyone whose divorced spouse is still living.

Doubters who accuse him of prejudice against homosexuals, instead of being a man of consistent religious beliefs, will then have to apologize for criticizing such a principled saintly man.

On a personal note, such an amendment would dissolve my ten-year marriage to my dear husband Keith (who, unlike me, was baptized), but it is vital in a democracy that couples' freedom and happiness be subordinated to others' religious beliefs.

In an earlier post, I reported how words like "clbuttic" were created by censors using search-and-replace to change "ass" to "butt". According to Right Wing Watch, the American Family Association's OneNewsNow site automatically replaces the word "gay" with "homosexual", leading to the above story about athlete Tyson Gay.

The July 21 New Yorker features the above cover, satirizing the racist coverage of the Obamas mentioned in my previous post. According to the BBC, the Obama campaign called the cartoon "tasteless and offensive", and the McCain campaign also criticized the cartoon.

In a statement, The New Yorker magazine said the cartoon "combines a number of fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are."

The New Yorker said the cover, called "The Politics of Fear", was a critique of unfounded allegations that have tried to portray Mr Obama, a Christian, as a closet radical Muslim.

"The burning flag, the nationalist-radical and Islamic outfits, the fist-bump, the portrait on the wall? All of them echo one attack or another. Satire is part of what we do, and it is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that's the spirit of this cover," the statement said....

The New Yorker said that this week's edition carried two "very serious" articles about Mr Obama.

But Obama spokesman Bill Burton dismissed the cartoon, saying: "The New Yorker may think... that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create, but most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

Fox News has earned a place in Beyond Satire's Hall of Fame with its coverage of Barack and Michelle Obama, including:

• Displaying a graphic referring to Michelle Obama as "Obama's baby mama". (For those of you who don't know the term, it indicates a lower-class unwed mother.)
• Calling the couple's fist bump a "terrorist fist jab".
• Fox pundit laughingly wishing for Obama's assassination (after mixing his name up with Osama).

See also the below compilation video from Fox Attacks.

The July 9 Onion has an Infographic entitled "Fox News Racism: Intentional?", listing satirical incidents, such as:

• Estimated the amount of time Obama has spent on front porches during the course of his life
• Repeatedly called Obama by one of his middle names, "Hussein," while omitting the other, "Christopher Horowitz"
• Scored footage of Obama visiting a Russian mobile launch missile dismantling facility with the theme from Shaft
• Generally biased news reporting

Even The Onion seems to have realized that Fox News is beyond satire.

Rather than spoil the jokes or violate copyright, I'll just link to my favorite single cartoons on racism:

• Tom the Dancing Bug
• The K Chronicles

If you have favorites, add links in the comment section.

Via Consumerist, a very bad idea for candy:

There are some great comments on various blogs, such as:

Accordian Guy:

• Don’t eat too many, you’ll have to get your stomach pumped.
• Oh man that’s a riot! So if you handle them too much does it turn into a Jolly Rancher?
• I understand those gummi Georgia O’Keefe miniatures didn’t go over too well, either.

Dvorak Uncensored

• Is this hard or soft candy? Does it depend how hard you rub it before you put it in your mouth?

Does anyone know if this is a hoax? It seems a little hard to swallow.