Tonight begins the Jewish holiday of Purim, the merriest holiday of the year. Satire is encouraged, so I put together this retelling of the Purim story in the form of 4 videos. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and other political figures get a workout here, although you'll also see a lot of scenes from "Star Wars." After the jump, click on the thumbnails to see the 4 videos in order.

I've asked you several times to take me off your e-mail distribution list, but you still subject me to your forwarded messages with wacko right-wing talking points. A long time ago I stopped sending rebuttals because they only made you more eager to bombard me with this garbage. But the sheer volume of right-wing idiocy has finally made me snap. Let me summarize the way I perceive your ideology.... (jump)

The other day I received a letter from my HMO, informing me that they may have disclosed my Social Security number. Here's my open letter to those bozos.

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Believe it or not, the New York Times just announced that William Kristol will now be a regular op-ed writer for the paper. More after the jump.

My alter ego, Billy Ray Sheet, created the video you can see when you make the jump.

A new high school textbook about American government features a profile of our founder, Markos Moulitsas. I guess that's an indication of how mainstream DailyKos is getting.

More after the jump.

The Iraq occupation often gets compared to the Vietnam War, but I recently noticed one major difference. In all that’s been written and said about the growing popular sentiment against the Iraq occupation, one never seems to hear the word “peace.” During the Vietnam War, the word “peace” was everywhere. More after the jump.

Yes, "Jewish Kossacks" does sound funny, considering how much our ancestors were terrorized by Cossacks. Anyway, Friday night, September 22, is the beginning of the Jewish New Year, so I wanted to wish everyone all the best by means of the animated musical video that I created and posted on YouTube.

I'll explain a little about the video below the fold.

Every now and then someone posts a diary that says something like "My right-wing father-in-law finally admits that Bush is an idiot." Something similar happened with my Republican brother-in-law. But I'm starting to notice a pattern. These people become disillusioned with Republican leaders, but come Election Day they go crawling back to the Republicans.

My research finds that the bomb-sniffing dogs being trained by the Department of Homeland security are going to cost 10 times as much per dog as the graduates of a similar program going on in Israel. More after the jump.

It's a sobering sight to see the photos at the National Security Archive site. These are photos that Bush doesn't want us to see because he doesn't like looking at them either. It might remind him of the human costs of his folly.

The transcript of the video testimony of Rory Mayberry is now available at http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/hearings/hearing22/mayberry.pdf. Read it and get angry at these war profiteers! A few excerpts after the jump....

This is hard to believe, but soon there will be a Web site where you can shoot animals from the comfort of your home. The gun is computer-controlled!

More after the jump.

Al-Ahram Weekly has published an interesting commentary by Geneive Abdo and Steven Simon called "The Muslim Ghetto"--about how American Muslims are being pushed into a virtual ghetto by the attitudes of their non-Muslim neighbors.

For example, a poll conducted by Cornell last year showed that 27 per cent of 1,000 respondents supported requiring all Muslim Americans to register their home addresses with the federal government, and nearly half believed the US government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans.

More after the fold.

I've got to think it's no coincidence that recently there has been a notable increase in the amount of torture used by government agents on Fox's drama "24." It seems that the Gonzales torture memos have been read and taken to heart at the Los Angeles C.T.U. (Central Terrorism Unit).

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