News From the Dahlia Farm in West Haven, Connecticut

As furthur proof that we are indeed all going to be all right, my friend, and pseudo-son Alex, aaaaa-way back East Coast (farther than I'll ever go) has delivered to me another pseudo grand baby, and budding Bad Hatter, I wager. And what a beautiful kid! Our love to all of you. (By the way Alex, you did learn how to change diapers, didn't you?)

Logan Song

April 9, 2010

7lbs 8oz

20 1/2 inches

Keep on truckin', folks. It's all good ...

Tuesday Update - April 6th

(And so the boy turns sixtyfiveyearsold. Good Lord. I find lately I've used the phrase "If I'da known I was gonna live this long I'da taken better care of myself" more than I ordinarily would [which would be never]. Tomorrow I sign up for Medicare part A, whatever that may be, under the direction of my advisor down at the salt mine. I wonder, is getting the sewer line in your back yard replaced part of the "aging process?" Removing fence portions, backhoe tracks over the rose bushes, patios ripped up piece by piece, and the lawn? I'm not actually doing any of the work, but I'm feeling pains previously unknown to my body. They say 65 is the new 50. Well who the hell are "they" and why don't they just leave us alone? Kill me now. But I digress ... )

• Remember that pesky little war in Iraq? The one we were assured would only last a few months and then we'd be greeted as liberators? Well, it's still going on, regardless of what you may have heard. And just when we'd like to forget about the whole shameful thing here comes this intense horrific little video. It's an 18-minute video, and it appears to be shot from the point of view of Apache helicopter pilots surveying a Baghdad neighborhood in 2007. It shows attacks that caused the deaths of 12 to 15 Iraqis, including two Reuters staff members, and the injury of two small children. Even more chilling than the video, is the audio. I offer it to you with the hope it makes you feel ill. WikiLeaks.Org


• Okay, maybe it's time to start using the "S" word. It's at least time to openly confront the fact that conservatives have spent the past 40 years systematically delegitimizing the very idea of US government. What's the word? Sedition - "The crime of creating a revolt, disturbance, or violence against lawful civil authority with the intent to cause its overthrow or destruction." Throw all the traitorous bastards in jail. Not enough room? Build more jails. Bygawd.


• The US Supreme Court recently voted to give giant US Corporations the same rights as average citizens. Then someone then please explain this to me: Most of struggle each year to compile enough money from our meager earnings to pay our fair share of income tax while huge American corporations like General Electric ($10.3 billion in pretax income), and Exon Mobil ($45.2 billion!) paid NO US taxes whatsoever. I figger rights is rights. I'm thinking of incorporating myself. (Is that possible?)


• "We know who you are and we know how you voted." The cretinous moron club, a group so low they don't even qualify for Bad Hat Idiot's of the Week, has sunken even lower than usual with their latest attacks: A rash of ugliness aimed at lawmakers who supported the sweeping federal health care legislation. Some lawmakers have been spit on and several have reported receiving threatening calls. Glenn Beck, et al, are doing their "job" well. Again I say, build more jails.


• You've got to give Sarah Palin this one, she's become an all-American brand name. This gritty little idiot, with all her down-home you-betcha folkyness has just absolutely won our hearts with her ... well, her grit? Pluck? Chutzpah? Golly, she's got her own TV show and everything. She's scheduled to show up in our dear old Eugene in a few days, and tickets to her speech are sold out. At $250 a pop. No, I will not be attending.


• In releasing the results of an in-depth nuclear strategy review, President Barack Obama said his administration would narrow the circumstances in which the U.S. might launch a nuclear strike, that it would forgo the development of new nuclear warheads and would seek even deeper reductions in American and Russian arsenals. Ohboy, this is gonna piss those conservative nuke lovers off. Remember Major Kong in the Movie "Dr. Stranglove?" "Oh hell, we aint come this far to drop this baby in the drink." Well, without their over abundance of nuclear weapons, just what are all those war mongers gonna do?


• And finally, Bad Hat's Idiot of the Week Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, a Florida urologist who considers the national health-care overhaul to be bad medicine for the country, posted a sign on his office door telling patients who voted for President Barack Obama to seek care "elsewhere." He said he got his information about the health care bill off the Internet, "like most Americans." If I lived in Florida, I would never let this man touch my peepee. (Settle down, I said he was a urologist.)

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!

Weekend Update - Eradication Edition

(Watching Tiger Woods on the telly the other day, my heart went out to him. Here he was apologizing to his sponsors and a small room full of people who didn't give a crap, and he even managed a little sniff at the end his pathetic little speech. Then I felt kinda dirty watching this spectacle. Like "douche-bag" was slowly becoming a verb and we were all at risk of catching it. But today the sun is shining in my back yard, got my tax return back yesterday, there's brandy in the booze cupboard, managed to arrange a 3-day weekend for myself, and all's right with the world. Therefore, I digress ...)

• "Poll after poll, study after study says the human animal is a fragile, troubled creature. Our bodies are a million ways amazing, but they are no match for the ruthless machinations of time and industry, freeway crashes and health care collapse. We are held together by rubber bands and duct tape, shot through with 10,000 prescription meds, therapies and surgeries, as we offer a thousand nervous prayers for that unsettling chronic pain to please, please, please subside, just a little." Sounds like Mark Morford is in a great mood, no?


• To Bad Hat Idiot of the Week Glenn Beck, the concept of "community" is a "cancer" that "is not our founders' idea of America," or so he oinked and ranted at the latest embarrassing CPAC Convention. As we all know, ignorance, no matter how embarrassing, doesn't get in Beck's way. To wild applause, he labeled this alleged tumor of "community" the supposedly evil "progressivism" -- and he told disciples to "eradicate it" from the nation. So, fellow Progressives, stand by for eradication.


• If you're living in Hawaii and you're reading this right now, you might want to get to higher ground, there might be a tsoon...ah tuswam ... oh, never mind. Earthquake in Chile, high water to hit the islands about now (11:00 am). Remember, you heard it here first.


• In his latest book, “Courting Disaster: How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack,” Marc A. Thiessen, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. and a practicing Roman Catholic, says that waterboarding suspected terrorists was not only useful and desirable, but permitted by the teachings of the Catholic Church. And the Catholic Church goes "Whaaaaa?"


• I'm purposely avoiding mentioning much about the ongoing health care debate, mainly because I get so darn angry lately when I discuss it. But here's something fun: Rush Limbaugh thinks the reason they make applesauce is for people with no teeth. And Tub-o-Crap's advice for someone with a broken wrist and no insurance? "Shouldn'ta broke yer wrist." C'mon, let's all get pissed off.


• Most Republicans don't like John McCain much, and, well, (blush) Democrats certainly aren't too fond of him, so will someone please tell me why he's on Meet The Press AGAIN this Sunday? Someone? Anyone?


• Now this is something we've been trying to tell you for months: More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds. Click here for the details. So there you go.

Weekend Update - Spring Is Coming Edition

(Got the taxes done and E-filed, actually going to get a tidy little sum back this year. I probably made some sort of criminally insane mistake, but I'm not afraid of them finding out. The government is too busy keeping us from getting health care reform. But wait, what's this? Something's going on here. The "single payer" option is back? Well blow me ...ahem ...down. It's all insane. Our Conservative Friend says that a recent CNN poll shows that 52% of Americans think Obama will be a one-term president. Meanwhile, while the rest of the country is being battered with horrible weather, Oregon is all sunshine and overgrown grass. Gotta love that El Nino. As soon as we finish this we're going out to scrape the mold off the moss on the deck. Ugly job, but it's got to be done. We digress ...)

• Are all politicians freaks? You know what I mean, circus-type weird oddities? Mark Morford thinks so. They are freaks not merely because they must be so in order to be drawn to such a heartless, ruthless, bizarre, meat-sucking, powermad soul-death of a slime-laden profession in the first place, but because -- no, wait, that's about it. That's the reason. He's got a point.


• And yet another embarrassing CPAC convention goes down. Good Lord, do these people have any shame? (Answer: No.) A good friend of mine asked me the other day what it was about Sarah Palin that irritated me so much. It was a good question, because it made me think instead of just respond. First of all I said it was because she represented what was ugly about right-wing racist red-neck America, and in a cute little cheer-leader way. (How's that hopey-changey thing workin' out for yah?) But after thinking about it for a bit, I dislike Sarah Palin for the same basic reason I dislike George W. Bush. She, like he, brings down the collective human intelligence factor. If dumbshits like the both of them can be in positions of power and influence in this, our United States of America, then we are all dumber shits because of them. Gawd save our country from people such as these.


• Let's go back for a moment to 1981. President Ronald Reagan was shot hours ago and was hanging precariously to life. Vice-President George H.W. Bush was out of the country on a field trip or something, but hey! not to worry, Alexander Haig was polishing the oval office desk. His infamous quote: "As of now, I am in control here in the White House, pending the return of the vice president," Haig said. The country cringed and lit another doobie. Gawd I miss those days.


• Brace yourself for this one. This is a very disturbing article, and it starts like this: A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that - under orders from the chief of the Gestapo - he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland. Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson. And ends with this: Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. Click Here.


• Okay, so when your normally compliant serfs in Utah, of all places, turn on you, you know something's wrong in the Republican Party. Now, don't get me wrong, I love Utah and all my relatives who live there, but Holy Smith, attacking Orrin Hatch?


• Don't know who Frank Luntz is? He's one of those right-wing "Republican Message Gurus" who common-sense challenged politicians rely upon to supply them with "talking points." One of his latest statements is "Ordinarily, calling for a new government program 'to protect consumers' would be extraordinary popular. But these are not ordinary times. The American people are not just saying 'no.' They are saying 'hell no' to more government agencies, more bureaucrats, and more legislation crafted by special interests." I love it when idiots speak for "The American People."


• A new survey of 2,000 self-identified Republicans found that significant numbers believe President Obama was not born in the United States, is a socialist, is a racist and should be impeached and that their home state should secede from the union. We're hoping for a Cheney-Palin ticket in 2012. It just keeps getting better and better.