Driving the GOP Crazy

(Had to change the look of Bad Hat, but finally got Bad Hat Chief Political Correspondent Arthur in Marin County to break out his famous pen for us. Welcome back Arthur!)

by Arthur in Marin County

I am writing this in part to celebrate the stunning move of Bad Hat to unexpected heights of graphic stylishness. Who knew it could aim that high? Daily Kos and Huffington Post, eat your tacky hearts out!

In case you've forgotten, this is just a quick reminder that the Republican Party has been driving most of the American people crazy for a couple of decades now. Okay, longer. And while I am a live and let-live kinda guy, I'm just a notch away from dismissing them as political toadies and suckers-up to corrupt financial market manipulators and chiselers. But it would be wrong for me to do so and I have decided that I will not do it, no matter how true everyone knows it to be. See, it's time for a kindlier, gentler American public, one ready to forgive, but never, ever forget. Does John Boehner seem to have fallen asleep with his ManTan Rinse (TM) on and gotten a bit yellowed in the process, like an antique book? Does Senator (cough) Mitch McConnell look like his face is a fruit that was left out too long in the sun? Do both of those guys seem to be reading from a list of talking points drawn up for them by conservative Frank Luntz, to whom the truth is but a minor impediment, to be leaped in a single bound of slander and dishonesty? To call these folks out for the obvious jerks they are... would not be nice. So I, for one, will not do so.

But what we could do is this. We could support a guy called Kendrick Meek, currently serving in relative obscurity in the House of Representatives, for US Senator. From Florida. Who else is running? Governor Charlie Crist, a moderate Republican who is about to get swamped in the primary by Mario Rubio, who some might describe as a rightwing jerk and psycho. I would not. It wouldn't be right. But in the GOP primary this Rubio guy looks like he might whup on Charlie Crist. So Crist is thinking about running as an "independent". Good on him if he does, but that could easily split the vote like this: wingnut - moderate GOP - Democrat. Now since Florida is pretty well split between Democrats and Republicans (remember 2000?) it would stand to reason that Crist and Rubio might well split their base into a moderate/wingnut pissing match.

And there is one thing more; Kendrick Meek is African-American. I am not sure whether that is a plus or a minus for him, given that Obama did okay in Florida, but some of the Republicans would choke on their own spit if Meek won. I don't know much about Meek. He seems a decent and intelligent guy, he played football, was for a period of time a Florida Highway Patrolman. How many candidates for the US Senate could say that? You want "Law and Order"? How about electing a guy who really, really knows what it is like out there on the streets. Florida? There is no way I would want to try to keep the peace in Florida. Too much drug money, too many crazy people.

And there is one other thing about Meek that I like. If he wins, not only does it look like he'd do a quite capable job as a Democratic Senator, he'd do something else, too. He would probably do a very, very good job of outing all of the closet racists in the GOP who are winking and nodding at the crypto-racist "tea party activists". I am not saying that Mitch McConnell's head would explode, nor that John Boehner's would. But it would not make them happy. And for them to be unhappy would make me and many other Americans very, very, very happy right about now, because I am sick to death of those weasels. Ooops... I mean, "those gentlemen".

There is not much we can do to convince Charlie Crist to bolt from the GOP and run as an "independent". I don't think we need to. I think his ambition will do it for us. Crist loooves to be on TV. If he loses this election he will not be on TV as often. My money is on Crist jumping ship. And the rest will be history... anyhow, that's my bet as to what will happen.

Arthur

Weekend Update - April 17th

(Okay, in all honesty, the backyard project has been put on hold because of high water tables. Or table. Or something. It all boils down to this: We've had too much rain lately to do any serious digging. The ground is saturated. When the wind blows hard and you look out your window and see waves on your lawn ... well, you get my general drift here. But the good news is that the toilet is dutifully doing its duty for the time being. We await the great drying. But I digress ...)

• We'll give them a little break, at least. The Catholic Church has done some good, somewhere, I suppose. Those orphanages maybe. The ones where they didn't beat or sexually molest the children. There are some, aren't there? But c'mon. Isn't it time for this criminal organization to end? Verily, is the Catholic Church and its dank, nefarious heart, the Vatican, with its attendant red-robed apologists, unreformed child rapists and a leader who is, as Richard Dawkins rightly declares, "a leering old villain in a frock, who spent decades conspiring behind closed doors for the position he now holds ... a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence," is it safe to say this archaic and vile institution is finally nearing its end? Mark Morford reports.
• Okay, this one gets a little complicated for us average boomer slackers, but you may have noticed something happened to the economy lately. Well, the government has brought charges against a firm called Goldman Sachs. Basically Goldman was pushing investors to invest in stuff that they (Goldman and others) were betting against. Here is a cheerful story of how badly things can go wrong, when bad people have no oversight. Click HERE.
• What?! "Favoring the constitutional right to bear arms over others' concerns about gun safety, Gov. Jan Brewer on Friday signed into law a bill making Arizona the third state allowing people to carry a concealed weapon without requiring a permit." Good Gosh Almighty.
• Paul Krugman writes: On Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, called for the abolition of municipal fire departments. Firefighters, he declared, “won’t solve the problems that led to recent fires. They will make them worse.” The existence of fire departments, he went on, “not only allows for taxpayer-funded bailouts of burning buildings; it institutionalizes them.” He concluded, “The way to solve this problem is to let the people who make the mistakes that lead to fires pay for them. We won’t solve this problem until the biggest buildings are allowed to burn.” Okay, so he's fibbing a bit. But it's a good point.
• There's really no substitute for hanging out at the New Orleans' Riverside Hilton bar during the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. Only there can you relax in comfort and enjoy a Caesar salad while being lectured to by the president of the Louisiana Women's Republican Club on why the idea of a secular American republic is "a lie sent directly from the flaming pits of Hell," and why secular Jews must accept the Word of God before the coming Final Battle, after which it will be too late. This may be the creepiest Republican story I've ever posted on Bad Hat. Read it at your own risk.

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!