Soon to be PBH’s first contribution to Urban Dictionary:

White Affirmative Action – Nepotism. Remember, it’s who you know, not what you know. See: George W. Bush.

When he gave interviews to foreign journalists, which he did rarely, Osama bin Laden had a way of looking down at his hands. This, and his soft, slightly raspy voice, and his gentle eyes—as well as the fact that he allowed no instantaneous translation—helped conceal what he was saying: that it was the duty of all Muslims to kill unbelievers, especially Americans, and that when he had seen the bodies of the infidels flying “like dust motes” on September 11th 2001, his heart had filled with joy.

His mien was that of the sage, not the killer. He seldom shed blood himself, though his treasured Kalashnikov, which he carried everywhere, was said to have been wrested in single combat from a Russian soldier in Afghanistan. As a rule he observed from afar as “his boys” blew up the American base at Khobar in Saudi Arabia, or the USS Cole in Yemen (he wrote a poem about that, the little dinghy bobbing on the waves) or the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, where in 1998 more than 200 died. Terrorism could be commendable or reprehensible, he smoothly agreed, but this was “blessed terror”, in defence of Islam. At first he denied any part in the 9/11 attacks, but at last pride got the better of him: yes, it was he who had guided his 19 brothers towards their “easy” targets.

How he really saw himself was as a construction engineer. Construction had made the bin Laden family fortune, $5 billion at least, from which he had inherited $25m-30m. (There had been much more, perhaps $250m, and a yearly stipend of $7m, until his native Saudi Arabia expelled him in 1991 and froze his assets; but Allah provided for his servant, and some of his several dozen half-brothers and sisters slipped him money.) In the 1980s he bought excavators, dump trucks and bulldozers, sometimes driving them himself, digging trenches for the mujahideen to fight along in Afghanistan against the Soviet invaders, blasting tunnels in the mountains for their arms dumps and field hospitals, until in 1989 the unbeliever-enemy withdrew in shame and disgrace.

He made roads in Sudan, too, when he was exiled there in the 1990s, including a new highway from Khartoum to Port Sudan. But he was mostly building his terror network, starting with the guesthouses and weapons he provided in Afghanistan through his maktab al-khidamat (“services office”), then creating al-Qaeda, “the base”. Much of this was done with Abdullah Azzam, his religious mentor; later, the terror-work was directed by Ayman al-Zawahiri and others; but it was he who first recorded, in hundreds of individual files, the details of each eager recruit, the date of arrival, what he had done for the cause. Keenly, he followed the media coverage of the atrocities he inspired, playing the world’s press like a violin when he chose. He built the brand and turned it into a global franchise; his face advertised it, even as he disappeared. If just two fighters held up a piece of cloth with “al-Qaeda” on it, he said proudly, American generals would run to the place in swarms.

His mind and approach were those of a businessman. The same caution that characterised his fugitive existence in Afghanistan and Pakistan—avoiding phones, the internet, even watches, anything that might be used to track him, slipping from cave to safe house to compound—featured in his investments, which were profitable and practical. No political ideology guided him, though he might lie for hours at night thinking, or read for most of the day. The polite, pious rich boy, who had left university without a degree, became neither an intellectual nor a visionary.

Pure rage was all he needed, roused especially by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the arrival of American troops in Saudi Arabia, on the holy ground of the two mosques in Mecca and Medina, in 1990. Hatred of America had tormented him for as long as he could remember. To drive out the infidels, to establish Palestine and destroy Israel, to eject the “heretics” who ruled in Saudi Arabia, to purify Islam itself with Wahhabist fundamentalism, were his ambitions. If they boiled down to a doctrine, it was a violent form of jihad, the holy duty of all Muslims, to make God’s word victorious; or just what he called “reciprocity”, an eye for an eye.

Facing the assassins

Somewhere, according to one of his five wives, was a man who loved sunflowers, and eating yogurt with honey; who took his children to the beach, and let them sleep under the stars; who enjoyed the BBC World Service and would go hunting with friends each Friday, sometimes mounted, like the Prophet, on a white horse. He liked the comparison. Yet the best thing in his life, he said, was that his jihads had destroyed the myth of all-conquering superpowers.

The price set on his head for more than a decade never bothered him, for Allah determined every breath in his body, and could ensure that the bombs dropped on his hideout at Tora Bora, or on his convoy through the mountains, never touched him. His martyr’s time would come when it came. The difference between pure Muslims and Americans, he said, was that Americans loved life, whereas Muslims loved death. Whether or not he resisted when the Crusaders’ special forces arrived, their bullets could only exalt him.

Made by me, King of the Internet.

1. Once you have their money … never give it back.
2. Never pay more for an acquisition than you have to.
3. Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity.
4. A man is only worth the sum of his possessions.
5. Keep your ears open.
6. Small print leads to large risk.
7. Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.
8. Greed is eternal.
9. Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.
10. A deal is a deal … until a better one comes along.
11. A contract is a contract is a contract (but only between conservatives).
12. A conservative without profit is no conservative at all.
13. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
14. Never place friendship above profit (or morals, the law, or the public interest).
15. A wise man can hear profit in the wind.
16. Nothing is more important than your health–except for your money.
17. There’s nothing more dangerous than an honest businessman.
18. Never make fun of a conservatives mother … insult something he cares about instead.
19. It never hurts to suck up to the boss.
20. Peace is good for business.
21. War is good for business.
22. She can touch your penis but never your gold.
23. Profit is its own reward.
24. Never confuse wisdom with luck.
25. Expand, or die.
26. Don’t trust a man wearing a better suit than your own.
27. The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.
28. Never ask when you can take.
29. Good customers are as rare as gold — treasure them.
30. There is no substitute for success.
31. Free advice is seldom cheap.
32. Keep your lies consistent.
33. The riskier the road, the greater the profit.
34. Win or lose, there’s always whiskey.
35. Home is where the heart is … but the stars are made of gold.
36. Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.
37. Beware of the rationalists greed for knowledge.
38. The flimsier the product, the higher the price.
39. Never let the competition know what you’re thinking.
40. Ask not what your profits can do for you, but what you can do for your profits.
41. Females and finances don’t mix.
42. Enough … is never enough.
43. Trust is the biggest liability of all.
44. Nature decays, but gold lasts forever.
45. Sleep can interfere with profit.
46. Faith moves mountains … of inventory.
47. There is no honor in poverty.
48. Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack.
49. Treat people in your debt like family … exploit them.
50. Never have sex with the boss’s sister.
51. Always have sex with the boss.
52. You can’t free a fish from water.
53. Everything is for sale, even friendship.
54. Even a blind man can recognize the glow of gold.
55. Wives serve, brothers inherit.
56. Only fools pay retail.
57. There’s nothing wrong with charity … as long as it winds up in your pocket.
58. Even in the worst of times someone turns a profit.
59. Know your enemies … but do business with them always.
60. Not even dishonesty can tarnish the shine of profit.
61. Let others keep their reputation. You keep their money.
62. Never cheat a warrior … unless you’re sure you can get away with it.
63. It’s always good business to know about new customers before they walk in the door.
64. The justification for profit is profit.
65. Employees are rungs on the ladder of success. Don’t hesitate to step on them.
66. Never begin a negotiation on an empty stomach.
67. Always know what you’re buying.
68. Beware the man who doesn’t make time for sexual favors.
69. Gold lasts longer than lust.
70. You can’t buy fate.
71. Never be afraid to mislabel a product.
72. More is good … all is better.
74. A wife is a luxury … a smart accountant is a necessity.
75. A wealthy man can afford anything except a conscience.
76. Never allow doubt to tarnish your love of gold.
77. When in doubt, lie.
78. Deep down everyone’s a greedy conservative.
79. No good deed ever goes unpunished.

This is a guest post by Ole Ole Olson. He is the Senior News Editor and Chief New Media Strategist for News Junkie Post.

And yes, it truly exists — and there is competition as well.

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Technorati Tags: world trade center, september 11th, consumerism, commemorative coin, commemorative collection, picture, consumer culture, wtf, advertisement, profiting from 9/11, 9/11, 9-11

Malarkey is an important word, handed down by our forefathers to express our disgust with the phoniness of life. I want this word preserved, so when I am a crotchety 50 year old man and one of those damned blacks steals my lawn ornaments, I’ll say ‘what a bunch of malarkey’.

2 Years Ago, Kit on PBH:

We believe in Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, unless Steve can hit the 3 and Adam can run the motion offense.

This week on the Onion:

A two-handed slam dunk by an openly homosexual man set off a chain of events this week that culminated in the legalization of gay marriage in nine states, including Mississippi and Alabama. “When I saw that dunk, I was like, ‘Whoa!’” said Alabama state Sen. Hinton Mitchem, adding that his office was flooded with calls and e-mails from constituents demanding legal recognition of same-sex marriages following the slam. “A guy with nasty moves like that should be entitled to the same fundamental rights as the rest of us.” On Thursday, the New York State Senate passed a resolution declaring that it would take a pretty sweet roundhouse kick from a gay mixed martial arts champion before it would allow homosexuals to marry.

We slander, you decide.

Everyone’s favorite idiot columnist at the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, is out with a real intellectual whopper today, entitled www.jihad.com. In it, he patiently describes that what Islam needs is a civil war. Yes, that Islam, the one with over 1 billion adherents across the globe, needs to have a civil war:

We had a civil war in America in the mid-19th century because we had a lot of people who believed bad things — namely that you could enslave people because of the color of their skin. We defeated those ideas and the individuals, leaders and institutions that propagated them, and we did it with such ferocity that five generations later some of their offspring still have not forgiven the North.

When I read this, I feel like I’m getting yelled at by Bill Cosby with down syndrome. “You see kids, the Islam today is full of bad people… now back in the 1800′s, America was divided into two worlds: slaves and Abraham Lincoln. And with the mighty advent of Kodak film and jello pudding, Democracy won. To summarize my points, Jihad is bad.” And it only gets better:

A corrosive mind-set has taken hold since 9/11. It says that Arabs and Muslims are only objects, never responsible for anything in their world, and we are the only subjects, responsible for everything that happens in their world. We infantilize them.

What the fuck does this even mean? Does Thomas Friedman not understand what the word “subjects” means? Yes, since 9/11, America has invaded and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, hoisted billions of dollars onto Saudi Arabia, Israel, Pakistan, and Egypt, and threatened to blow up Iran, and THE ISLAMS is responsible.

Fuck! Why is Thomas Friedman so fucking stupid!

See Also: No, This Time You Suck On This, See If You Can Spot What Tom Friedman Misses, and Internet Proves To Be Fertile Ground For Jihadist Recruitment.

Technorati Tags: thomas friedman, thomas friedman is a fucking idiot, what a tool, how does he write for the new york times, i want to lock tom friedman and joe Lieberman in gitmo and feed them dog shit for the rest of their worthless lives, fuck thomas friedman, idiot, moron, new york times

How long do I have to wait for the next 9/11? I could really use a good clearance sale.

If the Wall Street overlords are ever to make it out of this recession with their vacation homes, I must take on more crippling debt.

The true meaning of Christmas is overwrought consumerism to placate our strained familial and social ties that have entirely degraded into pecuniary relationships.

Who needs health care when there is high definition television to be watched?

I’m only participating in Black Friday if there are no actual black people involved.

Give me liberty or give me extra fries with that.

God only gives gifts to white people who worship the Constitution or the Pope.

Holiday Miracle: Turn water into savings!

Listen kids, if the elf at the mall looks as queer as he did last year, we’re not going. You’ll just have to send Santa letters at the North Pole.

Christmas is when a mythical flying man bestows upon the rich children the gifts they so rightfully deserve, and charitably gives out coal to the poor children, so they can enjoy their putrid squalor in warmth.

The successful advancement of gender equality can only be attained by the purchase of revealing underwear with risque messages for my 10 year old daughter.

Once again, the collusion of Jews and Mexicans has destroyed the sanctity Christmas.

Buying things I can’t afford makes me forget that my existence is but a means to someone else’s profit.

I don’t care how many people had to live impoverished lives to provide me with cheap electronics and low-quality trinkets. Gimme gimme gimme!

The Lord Jesus rose from his grave into the iPod accessories aisle of Best Buy, and said to his apostles “Oh yey faithful, won’t you consider an extended warranty?”

Singing done by dear friend Kit, while creative vision, direction, and background yelling provided by Alec.