Just so you know: Charmin credits are just as reliable as carbon credits, and can be purchased using my Paypal link at left. Credits are $1 per square (or $2 per square for extra-soft Charmin); I’m trusting you will use the honor system when you make your purchase. Now you can feel good when you flush your money down the toilet!

Not being a reader of the Commercial Appeal’s print edition, I’m not often subjected to the comic genius of embattled editorial cartoonist Bill Day. Finding one of his archived cartoons is a burdensome multiple-click scavenger hunt without even the promise of a comedic payoff. Therefore, I typically only see Day cartoons that happen to be referenced in a letter to the editor, several days after they run.

A Day strip the CA published on Friday the 13th lives up to the occasion. This is Bill Day’s reaction to the Don Imus thing, and it’s so wonderful that you must behold it with your own eyes.

In the first panel, Day introduces an obese, balding white man wearing an unbuttoned, red-and-white checkered flanel shirt (a subtle Lamar Alexander reference?), an undershirt with the word “BIGOTRY” written across the front, a belt buckle, and holding a crowbar.

Caption: My talk radio hero ain’t no apologizing wimp like Don Imus… NoOoOo… My hero once told a black listener to ‘take that bone outta his nose’! Ha! Ha!

Obese Bigotry Man (OBM) tells us that his “talk radio hero” would not apologize like Don Imus did, followed by what we are to presume is an example of something his “talk radio hero” said and didn’t apologize for.

Unfortunately for Day, this anecdote is neither recent nor exactly true. According to Snopes.com, Mr. “Talk Radio Hero” was quoted by Newsday in October 1990 as “admitting he felt guity” about the remark, which was made “back in the early 1970s” as a Top 40 disk jockey, long before his current talk radio program.

So apparently OBM’s “talk radio hero” actually is an “apologizing wimp like Don Imus.” But even if he weren’t, the incident took place prior to the talk radio hero’s talk radio program, meaning OBM wouldn’t have been exposed to the episode in the first place.

In the second panel, OBM presumably offers further examples of insensitive, Don Imus-like comments uttered by the “talk radio hero.”

Caption: My hero calls uppity women ‘feminazis’, he hates all tree-huggin’ liberal perverts, and he never gets in trouble for saying it! Ha! Ha! Ha!

If OBM’s “talk radio hero” really says he “hates” people, even perverts, that’s news to me.

But what’s all this about heroes and getting in trouble? What are we, third graders?

Meanwhile, our editorial cartoonist hero calls talk radio listeners ‘bigots,’ he hates all gas-guzzlin’ conservative puritans, and he never gets in trouble for saying it! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Panel three is rather incoherent and redundant.

Caption: In fact, it makes him even MORE popular. Why, the Vice-President was on his show! My hero ain’t Howard Stern or Don Imus… Lemme whisper it…

So the height of popularity is having the Vice-President on your show? That’s news to Wolf Blitzer.

I like how Day forgets that OBM had already established the fact that his “hero” was not Don Imus in the first panel and repeats it here.

The fourth panel offers the big, comedic reveal. We’re so excited we’re wetting ourselves, leaning on the edge of our seats waiting for the hilarious punchline.

Who, oh who, could OBM’s “talk radio hero” be? Oh, the suspense…

Caption: My hero is RUSH LIMBAUGH!

Lord, have mercy, we never saw that one coming.

Ah, ha.

Ah, ha ha ha ha.

Ha!

Ha! Ha ha ha!

Hah!

Hehhehh.

Oh, heh. Hem. Hm.

That is too, too funny.

The best part, though, is how Bill Day imagines Rush Limbaugh listeners as fat, white, balding, old, baby-talking, blue-collar, crowbar-wielding thugs, all while trying to make a point about… what, insensitivity? Hatred of stereotypes?

It’s not exactly the most effective presentation on the subject, you must admit.

But at least it’s a laugh riot, I’ll tell you that.

If you accidentally wet yourself while reading it, feel free to put down the crowbar for a minute and go change your 184” waist pants. And brush your tooth, you bald-headed hoser.

The Memphis Flyer’s “sister publication” Memphis Magazine is hosting a short fiction contest. If you’re reading this, John Branston, I think you should rewrite your deported terrorist column once again and submit that; it’s easily the most compelling fiction I’ve read all year.

I don’t know why people are getting so worked up about embattled singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow’s anal-retentive cure for Goreal Warming. Clearly, this is just a great opportunity for some enterprising entrepreneur to create cloth mesh toilet paper. For our bungholes.

UPDATE: While we’re still on the topic, I thought I’d go ahead and slip you one more idea I’ve been thinking about. Instead of substituting illegal plastic shopping bags with cloth mesh bags (now featuring store logos!!!), there ought to be a law requiring San Francisco residents to carry everything around in large baskets on their heads. This method seems to work in parts of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Mexico. And since San Francisco has now rededicated itself as a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants, the trend will be increasingly easy to adopt.

Also, that would free up our strategic mesh reserve for production of recyclable cloth condoms that could be used in place of the disposable plastic ones.

For those of you following the story of a Palestinian terrorist whose deportation earlier this month evoked three tearful Memphis Flyer columns, you may be interested in some additional information I’ve tracked down that appears to invalidate a few of the writer’s central points.

The Flyer’s John Branston’s columns appear here, here and here; reactions were posted to this blog here, here and here.

Branston initially reported that the man would be deported “and cannot return to the United States as part of the agreement under which two other charges were dropped.” And in his second and third columns, Branston wrote it this way: “in exchange for his plea, two other counts on his indictment were dropped and he will be immediately deported, never to return legally to the United States.”

On April 3, ABC24’s Adrienne Phillips filed a report that contradicts the Flyer claim that the terrorist could never return to the U.S.

[The man] will not be allowed back into the United States for a period of three years. After that, he will need approval from the U.S Attorney General’s Office.

When asked for evidence of this version of the plea deal, ABC24 referenced the DOJ’s press release, which states the following (emphasis mine):

The preparation of a presentence report was waived under the terms of the plea agreement and the court sentenced the defendant, who has been detained since his arrest, to a time served sentence followed by three years of supervised release. Special conditions of his supervised release are that he cooperate with his deportation from the United States and that he not be present in the U.S. during the time of his supervised release. Darwishahmad, who was required by the plea agreement to stay in custody until removed, signed a stipulated order of removal after his sentencing.

So it would appear that Branston got it wrong about the man being forever barred from reentry, at least in terms of this specific case; the next question, of course, is if this result makes the man ineligible to return to the U.S. under any circumstances further down the road.

I’m not an immigration attorney, but that would not seem to be the case based upon some cursory research. It would appear that the defendant could even reapply as a legal permanent resident. Crimes involving moral turpitude (CIMT) cause green card applicants to be “inadmissible,” but the applicant can apply for a waiver of inadmissibility:

A person awaiting adjustment of status who has been convicted of a CIMT may apply for a waiver of inadmissibility under INA § 212(h) if: 1) he is the spouse, parent, or child (of any age) of a US citizen or LPR and can prove that his removal from the United States would result in extreme hardship to the U.S. citizen or LPR relative;

And we know that the defendant could meet this waiver application criteria since the Flyer was so diligent in letting us know about his sobbing wife and their son.

So unless there was an omission in the DOJ’s press release, and unless we’ve missed something along with ABC24, it’s possible that the man could return to the U.S. in 2010 and eventually even obtain a green card.

Of course, that would mean filling out the dreaded I-485 form again. The horror!

The DOJ press release also reveals the other two counts of the indictment, which the Flyer had laboriously obscured.

Pursuant to the plea agreement, count one of the indictment, which charged that he had lied on the same I 485 by not disclosing his affiliation with Fattah and the PLO, and the fact that he had had been a Palestinian Authority military intelligence officer for approximately five years, will be dismissed. Likewise, Count three of the indictment, which alleged that he made a false statement to a Immigration and Naturalization officer (now Citizenship and Immigration Services) by lying about the nature of his Israeli conviction relating to the above described events will also be dismissed.

Branston attempts to diffuse these charges by putting a Palestinian Authority military intelligence officer in scare quotes, as a means of subtly casting suspicion on the government’s case.

Branston also interjects that “the time frame is not specified in court papers and was not stated during the court hearing,” and again, “the time frame is unclear,” which allows the Flyer to avoid acknowledging that the defendant’s terrorist activity is more recent than they let on, and that the defendant more than likely continued to engage in terrorist activity and/or affiliate himself with the terrorist group into his adult years, not just as an “impressionable Palestinian teenager.”

Sure, if we are to understand that the defendant was “recruited by members of Fattah” in 1990, and that he is 34 at present, that would make him only 17 when he “he tossed a grenade-like bomb at a bus of Israelis and threw a Molotov cocktail at Israeli soldiers.”

But it would also mean that in 1994 he was a 21-year-old Palestinian Authority military intelligence officer, which is a little harder for his apologists to swallow.

I must hand it to Branston for writing a very crafty series of human interest columns. As sly as he is in smearing this BS, though, we ain’t buying it.

If the upcoming PBS / Bill Moyers broadcast “Buying the War” is anywhere near as “devastating” as the preview he gave in Memphis in January, the journalistic reputation that suffers the most will be his own. Bill Moyers has made himself a critic of pundits and columnists who “sell” their ideas (i.e. “editorialize,” or “do what they’re paid to do”), but he is among the worst when it comes to peddling flawed information and advancing a (not-so) stealth ideology under the guise of journalism. Four of those fingers are pointing back at ya, Bill.

Depending on how you count the fingers, of course.

Freedonian is happy to agree with the majority in this CNN poll, saying they picked the “right” answer, and he questions whether those choosing other options had even read the Bible.

I was stunned, but not at the fact that the overwhelmingly most popular answer was the right one, “poverty”, but at the fact that nearly 2,000 of the 12,683 responses were homosexuality and abortion.

Have these people even read the Bible??? Surely, they can point to a place where Jesus even mentioned those things, can they not?

The poll is worthless. For one thing, as Christians believe, Jesus is alive, and his purpose is clear. None of these options are Jesus’ top priority.

Jesus is most interested in the salvation of mankind, and that was and remains his top priority in the world.

Second, Jesus mentioning or not mentioning certain words is a total cop out; for just a few reasons why, see points 1-4 in a post I wrote about a year ago.

Of course, I would agree that Jesus is interested in the poor and diseased, in our stewardship of the earth, in our compassion for the lives of others and especially children, and in the righteousness of our sexual conduct. But Jesus did not come to Earth for any of these things, nor would he return today for any of these reasons alone.

The New Dutch Treat Luncheon
When: Saturday, April 21, 11:30 (sharp) - 12:45 (sharp)
Where: The Butcher Shop, Cordova
Theme: The Future of Politics in Greater Memphis

The oldest and most influential political gathering in Memphis for over 50 years. Come be a part of the dialogue that is shaping Greater Memphis. One-hour-and-fifteen minutes long. Great lunch for ten bucks.

April Panel: State Senator Paul Stanley, Commissioner Steve Mulroy, Commissioner James Harvey, Commissioner Mike Ritz, UM Democrats President John Marek, UM Republicans President John McManus, VP Shelby County GOP Paula Sedgwick, and you!

April Press Panel: Jackson Baker, Memphis Flyer, Darrell Phillips, WMC-TV, Mike Hollihan, Main Street Journal

Sponsored by: The Main Street Journal, Memphis

The Flyer writes the deported terrorist sob story for the third time in one week.

My latest MSJ article is up: On the Campaign Trail: The Permanent Campaign, a snapshot of what Rep. Steve Cohen is doing to keep his seat in the 9th District. The idea springs in part from this post.

Cohen’s strategy seems to be working for Thaddeus Matthews.

UPDATE: CNN Headline: “For House freshmen, the campaign never stops”

• Campaign season has already ramped up for many House seats
• House freshmen discovering they must campaign almost constantly
• No White House incumbent, issues like Iraq accelerate political activity