Weekend Update - Speeding Up Edition

(And so we continue. We're having sewer problems now, toilet backing up, strange muddyings of the bathtub drain, and occasional odd gurgling sounds coming from the bowels of the house. Had to call Roto-Freaking-Rooter on a freaking Sunday for freak's sake, and wrote a check to a very nice young man for almost 3 times what I make in a day. Took him 20 minutes to snake out the line. Seems there might be some root ball from the hedge mucking up the works. Our good friend Robin has been over digging, looking. Gonna have to rip up part of the deck. The beautiful brick worked B-B-Q patio might have to go. Half the hedge is already gone. Might have to take the fence out to get a back hoe in. It's Spring in Oregon. Tra-la, tra-la. But I digress.....)

• With the passage of the health care bill, or what's left of it, even the watered down version of it has a volatile segment of our society acting like insane idiots. I want to ask, Who ARE these people? but I think I know. I think we all know them. They're people we know, work with, or are even related to. They're not very bright, they're easily influenced by the likes of Beck and Limbaugh, and they consistently vote against their own self interests. One of our conservative friends points out that the polls show that a majority of Americans are opposed to health care reform. I'm at a loss to explain this, actually. Perhaps poor people who have no insurance don't participate in polls? But this latest stuff is just sickening.


• Even Mark Morford is amazed that most of our friendly Democrats finally decided to do the right thing and pass this bill. "Behold, with the astonishing passage of flawed-but-incredible health care reform, we have the concomitant, frightening realization that this remains one of the most acidic, bitter, hopelessly divisive times to live in America and care a whit for national politics while maintaining a shred of morality, hope, a progressive soul." The black commie Nazi did it!


• It's been called a conservative Woodstock, and takes place just days after the historic health care vote that ushered in near-universal medical coverage and divided Congress and the nation. About 7,000 people streamed into tiny Searchlight, Nevada, a former mining town 60 miles south of Las Vegas, bringing American flags, "Don't Tread on Me" signs and outspoken anger toward Nevada Senator Harry Reid, President Barack Obama and the health care overhaul. Even Sara Palin was there, telling the assembled that the big-government, big-debt spending spree of the Senate majority leader, Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over. "You're fired!" Palin said. For the record, Woodstock was attended by over 400,000.


• And now we're to this: I'm voting for John McCain. Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) primary challenger, former Arizona congressman J.D. Hayworth, warned this past weekend that the same-sex marriage decision handed down by the Massachusetts Supreme Court is so loose in its logic and wording that it could lead to a man marrying his horse.


• They told other priests. They told three archbishops of Milwaukee. They told two police departments and the district attorney. They used sign language, written affidavits and graphic gestures to show what exactly Father Murphy had done to them. But their reports fell on the deaf ears of hearing people. Deaf Catholic boys tried to alert authorities about the abuse they were suffering under the hands of a Catholic priest. This week, they learned that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, received letters about Father Murphy in 1996 from Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, who said that the deaf community needed “a healing response from the Church.” The Vatican sat on the case, then equivocated, and when Father Murphy died in 1998, he died a priest. Something is definitely wrong with the Catholic Church, wouldn't you say? I'm SO pleased to be an Agnostic.


• Retired U.S. General John Sheehan said the former chief of staff of the Dutch army had told him that the presence of openly gay soldiers in the Dutch peacekeeping force were seen as "part of the problem" which contributed to the fall of Srebrenica. Arthur writes: In the battle over DADT (don't ask, don't tell) there inevitably had to be a codger posterboy and this retired General seems to have chosen to take a stand in defense of the status quo. Considering that the numbers of those who attacked Srebenica were obviously enormous, since they went on to kill 8,000 in the attack, one presumes that the Dutch were simply overrun. Poor planning, perhaps, but not very likely that it was just the gays.


• The Bad Hat office has recently upgraded to the best speed Comcast can provide. If things look a bit blurry to you this week, it's because we're all moving way too fast. Lean back, take care, and for gawd's sake hang on to the bar!

Weekend Update - March 14th

• Watched some of the Oscars the other night and I saw that yet another manly war movie got "best picture." Listen to what Robert Scheer has to say about "The Hurt Locker." It is imperial hubris turned into an art form in which the Iraqi people appear as numbed bystanders when they are not deranged extras. It is a perverse tribute to the film's accuracy in portraying the insanity of the U.S. invasion -- while ignoring its root causes -- that the Iraqis are at no point treated as though they are important. Can't say I disagree with him.



• The Idiot Glenn Beck, as one wag puts it, "has certainly discovered the dangers of publicly practicing theology without a license." Question: Why Does Glenn Beck Hate Jesus?



• Gotta love this one: One the very day that gay marriage became legal in Washington, D.C., the Washington Post ran a front page picture of two guys smooching. You can guess what happened next. The tiny-brained homophobes of D.C. came out in force, threatening everything from canceled subscriptions (oh no!) to the death of every human soul for all eternity. Confused macho lugnuts and little old ladies alike began accusing the paper of promoting "the faggot lifestyle" and destroying all morality by, you know, showing two people in love. The horror. Mark Morford reports.



• The New York Times David Brooks has always been a calm voice of reason, and in his latest column he attempts to explain President Obama. Liberals are wrong to call him weak and indecisive. He’s just not always pursuing their aims. Conservatives are wrong to call him a big-government liberal. That’s just not a fair reading of his agenda. Click here for more.



• Theodore C. Olbermann, beloved father of Keith, passed away yesterday. Click here to read a very touching eulogy on Keith's blog.



• The Bad Hat Idiot of the Week Award goes to the Texas Board of Education. After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday voted to approve a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the role of Christianity in American history and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light. Mommy, did people really used to ride dinosaurs to church?



• The revisionist floodgates have opened with the simultaneous arrival of Karl Rove’s memoir and Keep America Safe, a new right-wing noise machine invented by Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz and the inevitable William Kristol. This gang’s rewriting of history knows few bounds. To hear them tell it, 9/11 was so completely Bill Clinton’s fault that it retroactively happened while he was still in office. The Bush White House is equally blameless for the post-9/11 resurgence of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Iran. Instead it’s President Obama who is endangering America by coddling terrorists and stopping torture. A great column from Frank Rich.

Weekend Update - Up Late Edition

• There's been a lot of them in our short American history. "Patriot groups" they're sometimes called. The Ku Klux Klan was one of them. The American Militia Movement is another. And now there's these Tea Partiers. There are scores of patriot groups, but what makes Oath Keepers unique is that its core membership consists of men and women in uniform, including soldiers, police, and veterans. At regular ceremonies in every state, members reaffirm their official oaths of service, pledging to protect the Constitution—but then they go a step further, vowing to disobey "unconstitutional" orders from what they view as an increasingly tyrannical government. These are scary people. And dangerous.


• Here's a good reason to take the day off and get drunk: Graphic details of perverted sex practices are being taught to high school children, and parents are being locked out of assemblies lead by radical homosexual activists. How long will it be before sex between adults and children is just the next barrier to be torn down? How long will it take before radical homosexual activists achieve their next evil objective? Not just lying silly nonsense, but a whole new outlandish kind of ignorance presented by Mark Morford in "Radical Homosexuals Ate My Baby!"


• If President Obama is thinking about replacing white house Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Michael Moore would be happy to take the job. All he has to do is ask.


• Apparently, if you're conservative, you believe attorneys should only represent the "good guys." Fox News host and Bad Hat Idiot of the Week Sean Hannity led the charge on the conservative network, doing his best impersonation of Sen. Joe McCarthy, saying, "If you're going to work in our Justice Department ... and you represented Al Qaeda, I want to know who you are." He later stated, "Obama is weak. He's an appeaser. Obama is making this country and every citizen vulnerable to attack." It's yet another case of "Bush-nesia," because Bush's DOJ team hired lawyers to represent terrorist suspects too.


• From Arthur in Marin County (w/ tongue firmly in cheek): It had to happen. Someone had to come up with an anti-tea-party-party. I mean, is TEA really all that American? Nooo. Our founding street thugs threw it in the harbor for a good reason. It was a foreign and suspect beverage. Now who could feel that way about coffee? Is there anything more quintessentially American than a cup of java? Okay, barbequed ribs and hamburgers, but still, coffee is pretty patriotic. Okay, beer, but really coffee is way mainstream. Nobody has large tea containers with a spigot on the side, do they? and hasn't "tea" always been kind of effete and "English"? We KNOW that all the English are gay, right? I mean, the way they talk and all that? I've made my case. March 13th is National Coffee Party Day!