Suspect Timing by Reynolds Staffer

Jessica McBride asks, rhetorically, if Tom Reynolds is too extreme. The reason she asks this is because of a letter she just became aware of written by Deborah Bowers, a legislative aide on Reynolds’ staff.

According to Ms. Bowers, she was never asked any of the personal questions by Reynolds that Spivak and Bice wrote of back in September 2005, nor did she ever feel questions were inappropriate. Plus, she is a woman, she says, and that fact refutes the idea Reynolds is extreme, because he would not have hired her otherwise.

Ms. Bowers' hire date, according to her letter, was January 31, 2005, approximately one month or so after Reynolds fired his entire staff because they were allegedly insufficiently loyal.

It was already known that Reynolds’ workers spoke with John Murray, chief of staff for Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz, to let him know of some of what was going on. According to Spivak and Bice, Murray says he fell short of criticizing Reynolds, saying only that it would be a good idea to get legal guidance before delving into highly personal issues.

Is it possible he did so after the Christmas Massacre? Is it possible that Reynolds was advised about the legalities of hiring staff, of what could be asked and of what could not and that women could not be excluded. No one has ever claimed Reynolds is stupid … misguided, wacky, other-worldly, weird … yes, but not stupid.

That first Spivak and Bice column on Reynolds’ alleged wackiness was run September 17, 2005. Ms. Bowers had 13 months to write her letter of refutation and attempt to have it printed by the JournalSentinal. Instead, she wrote it in October of 2006 and now she is upset because the paper will not print her letter. She says she was told it was received too close to the election.

She also claims she was prompted to write the letter because of a radio ad that says Reynolds won’t hire women. And yet, the question remains. She had 13 months to write a letter of refutation about the Spivak and Bice column. I’m assuming she can read. Instead she just now decides to do so.

Whose timing is suspect?

Raging Vortex of Weirdness

The raging vortex of weirdness descended today upon the place I work part-time for a little extra cash. First, a truck went through our carwash. Apparently the goof driving didn't expect the storm windows lying in the bed to fall out onto the carwash tracks and cause it to be out-of-order for two hours.

Then, the ATM went off-line.

Then, three gas pumps rejected credit cards simultaneously ... and refused to take them even though later inside they were found to be good.

Later, after the car wash had been fixed, a bolt snapped on a counter-weight bar and 400 pounds of weights landed on the car wash floor, leaving an indentation that my co-worker described thusly, "Like the depression in the ground where Superman lands after being pummeled by some huge space creature."

Then I actually won $15 in scratch-offs.

I'm home now. Fortunately for me and my wife, she's already seven months pregnant ... no longer any chance for twins.

It is Bullshit!

Tom Tomorrow is spot on.

The depravity of conservatives, and the willingness of the media to indulge it, never ceases to amaze me. In a rational society, when a drug-addled gasbag radio host mocks an actor with a debilitating disease, the ensuing discussion would revolve around said drug-addled gasbag’s many, many faults as a human being, not least of which being his ready willingness to mock the handicapped. Rather than treating his uninformed speculation as beneath contempt, however, people are actually discussing whether Michael J. Fox’s symptoms are as bad as they look in these campaign commercials. I know that the media are amoral predators, constantly alert for any hint of blood in the water, but I guess I’m still naive enough to wish that occasionally Keith Olbermann wouldn’t be the only person in the entire industry willing to call bullshit when the odor is rank enough to make you gag.

But I’m also naive enough to imagine that this will backfire as spectacularly as the Terry Schiavo circus did. Seriously, Republicans — you want to rally around the drug-addled gasbag hatemonger in his war against the beloved actor with the debilitating disease — please, by all means, go for it.

Dueling Sad Songs

Having just finished listening to The Dears at Pundit Nation, I offer this sad song for my listener. This YouTube effort includes some sappy pictures, but the music is pure Prine.

Conservatism: A Definition

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

-- John Kenneth Galbraith

Al-Republican

This is powerful ... by Keith Olberman. Any Republican or conservative who still supports this administration is just as culpable in the Bush administration's continuing effort to frighten and terrorize its fellow citizens.

It's Our Home

Listen to the wombat.

h/t Bob Harris

The Other Shoe

The Republican National Committee today announced a new series of ads with Rush Limbaugh as the centerpiece. The ads will feature Limbaugh speaking about the need to increase funding for rehab centers for wealthy Republican donors and politicians.

A pre-screening of one of the ads was shown to media representatives on the east and west coasts. Most shocking about the ads was the vision of Limbaugh drooling puddles on his lap. He also fell off his chair twice. The second time he fell while apparently trying to push away from, what was later determined to be, killer butterflys wearing Cubs hats. He also mumbled something about the where-a-bouts of his personal physician or physicians. It was hard to discern.

There was also a question whether the audio was a voice over, and not truly Limbaugh’s voice … considering his mouth was full of saliva and tiny round and white objects, there is some credence to that.

Republicans immediately attacked the media for distorting the ad and ignoring the important message that Limbaugh had to convey. When confronted with the fact the only possible message that could be garnered from the ad was “Don’t take drugs,” and “Rush Limbaugh is a drug-addled sot,” Republican objections soon faded away. However, Democratic candidates across the nation asked for permission to air the ads. As one high-profile candidate said, "We're all for exposing the need for rehab centers."

With Friends Like These ....

Want to know who Big Oil likes the most. Ask Jim Jubak.

Think it's a matter of chance that we don't have a meaningful national energy policy? Wondering why oil and gas companies don't pay higher royalties to the Treasury now that oil is over $55 a barrel? Amazed that Washington loves to talk about energy research with promise 15 years down the road, but won't put significant money into alternative technologies that could reduce energy consumption now?

For answers to all those questions and more, just follow the money. Nothing about U.S. energy policy should be a surprise if you know where the money's been going and which legislators have taken the biggest payouts from the energy industry. So don't miss your only chance in the next two years -- the Nov. 7 election -- to tell Congress what you think of its sellout to the energy companies.

And here's the list of Big Oil's 10 favorite Congress members:

1 - Hutchison, Kay Bailey, R-Texas - Senate - $258,361
2 - Burns, Conrad, R-Mont. - Senate - $188,775
3 - Santorum, Rick, R-Pa. - Senate - $188,120
4 - Bode, Denise, R-Okla. - House $153,650
5 - Allen, George, R-Va. - Senate - $148,600
6 - Talent, James M., R-Mo. - Senate - $147,470
7 - Cornyn, John, R-Texas - Senate - $142,750
8 - Barton, Joe, R-Texas - House - $138,450
9 - Hastert, Dennis, R-Ill. - House - $122,200
10 - Pombo, Richard, R-Calif. - House - $121,340

Data from the FEC as of Sept. 11, 2006. Compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

As Gomer Pyle was often heard to say: “Surprise, surprise, surprise.”

***

This about Jim Jubak:

Jim Jubak is senior markets editor for MSN Money. Previously, he served as senior financial editor at Worth magazine and as editor of Venture magazine. Jubak was a Bagehot Business Journalism Fellow at Columbia University and has written two books: "The Worth Guide to Electronic Investing" and "In the Image of the Brain: Breaking the Barrier Between the Human Mind and Intelligent Machines." As an investor, he says he believes the conventional wisdom is always wrong -- but that he will nonetheless go with the herd if he believes there's a profit to be made. His column Jubak's Journal appears on MSN Money every Tuesday and Friday. He lives in New York.

Gomer Pyle Does the White Album

A friend e-mailed this to me. I managed to make it half way through before the urge to chew off my arms began to overwhelm me. I offer this Jim Nabors and Leslie Uggams duet from her early 1970s replacement show, for those who are stronger.

No Friend of the Death Penalty

I have been contemplating a post regarding the referendum vote this Novemeber 7 on the death penalty and whether it should be reinstated in Wisconsin. My argument has always been twofold: We should not place ourselves in the role of god (or God, for those annoyed by the small "g") and what if an innocent is executed? There is no going back.

I asked a person I know (staunchly conservative) the question about innocence some time ago and his response was a cold-hearted, "So What. Accidents happen." The answer and its callousness astounded me. I guess I should not have been surprised. Like chickenhawk conservatives who support the fiasco in Iraq from afar, though they could serve, too many conservatives are ready to throw the switch ... damn the consequences.

James Wigderson, author of Wigderson Library & Pub, is different. He has written an excellent piece in the Waukesha Freeman on the demerits of reinstating the death penalty. I initially thought it odd that James would be on the con side of this debate, considering he is a staunch conservative. But thinking it over, his being against the death penalty is consistent with his views, and if there is one thing I know about James it's he is consistent.

How is James consistent? James is consistent in his views on abortion and the death penalty ... in both cases, his belief is to stand with life. Without getting into an abortion debate (we disagree about abortion, though I suspect we have more in common that we think) his consistency is admirable ... an area, in my opinion, in which far too many conservative fall short.

And, to be fair, some liberals.

Who Does He Think He Is? Gandalf?

This is weird. From Jonathan Schwarz at This Modern World.

A short letter to Pennsylvania

Dear Pennsylvania,

Please do not reelect this man to the Senate:

Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the “Eye of Mordor” has been drawn to Iraq instead.

Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1950s fantasy classic “Lord of the Rings,” to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.

“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.

“It’s being drawn to Iraq and it’s not being drawn to the U.S.,” Santorum continued. “You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the Eye to come back here to the United States.”

Thank you.

your friend,Jon

Twenty-five Years of Weird Al

Weird Al Yankovic is a god. I have been in awe of him since I was a kid. There is a great article over at Slate by Sam Johnson, celebrating 25 years of Weird Al-ness. Here is one of my favorites: Amish Paradise. Have a great weekend everyone and try not to shoot anyone.

In Support of Freedom of Speech

If State Sen. Tom Reynolds and the doufus twins, J.J. Blonien and Bob Dohnal think they can win by intimidation, they really don’t have a clue. Gretchen Schuldt, who is the author of the blog Milwaukee Rising, is being threatened with a lawsuit by the above-named trio. Her crime: Asking legitimate questions regarding Mr. Reynolds spending of campaign funds.

Since Reynolds has already shown that he shrinks from the glare of public scrutiny, threatening to sue a former journalist who knows the rules of slander and libel seems a funny thing to do.

Consequently, like Xoff has already done, lets add to the fun and support Gretchen, who seems unfazed by their Gestapo-like tactics . Below are the postings in question regarding Reynolds. He may have started something he did not intend.

Saturday, September 23, 2006
Questions about Tom Reynolds' utility bills

It's one thing to have your campaign headquarters in your house, as State Sen. Tom Reynolds (R- Loony Land) does.

It's another thing when you charge utility costs for your "campaign headquarters" to your campaign fund, as Tom Reynolds does. Even when there's not an election looming.

Let's go back to February, 2004, when Reynolds was very comfortably in the middle of his first term. Some people recognized him for the half-baked clown he is, but there was certainly no election threat on the immediate horizon. No reason to be burning the midnight light bulbs cooking up campaign strategies.

Yet Reynolds charged $57.79 for "gas and electric" for his "campaign headquarters" (his house) to his campaign fund. Hope none of that went to keep his kiddies warm at night. That would be a lot like converting campaign funds to personal use, which would be a distinct no-no.

State statute makes that clear:

No person, committee or group may make or authorize a disbursement or the incurrence of an obligation from moneys solicited for political purposes for a purpose which is other thanpolitical, except as specifically authorized by law.

Maybe Reynolds was in campaign mode in those election off years. In March, 2004, his campaign picked up two payments -- $58.43 on the 13th and $45.20 on the 29th; in May of that year, it was another two payments -- one for $29.44 and one for $35.81, both paid on May 28.

(In June he spent $197.28 at Half Nuts, which seems so appropriate, if somewhat understated.)

Reynolds, in fact, has been charging utility costs to his campaign fund since before he was elected in 2002. That year, a $40.17 electric bill was picked up by the campaign fund on Sept. 16, a week later, on Sept. 24, another $239.85 electric bill was paid by the same source, according to Reynolds' campaign finance report.

Reynolds' house /campaign headquarters isn't all that big -- 1,408 square feet, according to the West Allis city assessor's office. Utility costs should be relatively modest.

On and on it went, with utility costs sloughed off to the campaing fund more frequently:

November 2002, $140.98
November 2002, $76.18
March 2003, $79.91
Sept. 2003, $68.33
November 2003, $32.94
December 2003, $61.06
February 2004, $57.79
March 2004, $58.43
March , 2004, $45.20
May, 2004, $29.44
May, 2004, $35.81
July 2004, $25.94
July 2004, $23.42
September, 2004 $35.52
September, 2004 $26.32
November, 2004 $32.99
December, 2004 $33.83
December, 2004 $58.12
Feb. 2005, $103.98
March 2005, $64.12
April 2005, $75.63
April 2005, $28.55
June 2005, $29.14
July 2005, $28.59
July 2005, $27.95
September 2005, $30.26
October 2005, $26.42
November 2005, $29.47
December 2005, $28.78
December 2005, $101.26
February 2006, $95.02
March 2006, $85.95
April 2006, $97.30
May 2006, $74.77
June 2006, $50.94
June 2006, $69.84
August 2006, $200.30
August 2006, $113.83

It could very well be that Reynolds is not charging the full cost of his utilities to his campaign, but he needs to explain how he separates his family's utility bills from his campaign headquarters' utility bills. A guy who literally poses for holy pictures can't be keeping his family warm with campaign funds.

Oh, yeah. Not a dime from Reynolds' campaign fund went to JJ Blonien, Reynolds' campaign "consultant" who also is on Reynolds' senate payroll as a staffer. Wonder how they keep those two roles nicely separate.

Sunday, October 15, 2006
Reynolds camp can't get its story straight on utility charges

Tom Reynolds used his campaign funds to pay utility bills for the "campaign headquarters" in his home, according to Reynolds' own campaign finance filings.

Bob Dohnal, Reynolds disciple and publisher of The Conservative Digest, said the bills were for Reynolds' print shop, not for his home, despite what Reynolds said in his campaign filing (and I don't think you are supposed to fib on those).

The State Democratic Campaign Committee sent out letters to Reynolds' supporters telling them of Reynolds' creative use of their money to heat his home. Reynolds then issued a statement suggesting that the utility payments were for his home, but just for the campaign headquarters part of it:

The State Senate Democratic Campaign Committee comprised of: Chairperson, Judy Robson, Treasurer, Mark Miller and Executive Director, Matt Swentkowfske published the attached letter. The letter, with actual knowledge of the falsity of the statement, by the authors accuse me of violating state statute by using campaign funds for paying my private utility bills. The letter acknowledges that the authors know of my use of my residential property for my campaign headquarters. However, the authors go on to say that I pay my home utility bill from my campaign account which is a violation of State law. The letter also informs the Reynolds supporters that I am using the hard earned money of supporters and contributors to my campaign illegally to pad Tom Reynolds own pocket.

Reynolds demanded an immediate retraction and apology. You're going to be waiting a while for that one, Tom.

***

All bloggers should be dismayed and outraged by this attack upon their rights to free speech ... regardless of your side of the political spectrum.

Guns People Play II

It's really all about intimidation. At least he didn't pull the trigger. Those eight-year olds can be dangerous in their feral state.

The former Williamson County Commissioner accused of pointing a gun at a trick-or-treater won't spend any time in jail.

On Monday, 77-year-old Charles Eades pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon.

Eades pointed a rifle at an eight-year-old trick-or-treater last Halloween.

We Must Stop Those Aliens

I was visiting the Brawler’s site early this morning, just before driving off at light speed to take my kiddies to school, and I saw his finely scripted piece on Jessica McBride’s latest screed about illegal aliens, Republican bashing, pages every conservative likes to turn, etc. So, I bopped over to her place, courtesy of the link the Brawler provided. I began to read, though it was hard to keep from chuckling. I had to leave and was about to get out of the chair and dash off when I saw this:

Why not? Because it doesn't seem odd to them. See, the point is, THEY don't emphasize illegal immigration, unless it's to bash Republicans for their stand on it or humanize illegal aliens. Their editorial pages bash Republicans for supposedly magnifying the issue and being racists. In other words, they want the issue to go away. I am referring to the media in general here. (emphasis mine)

Those darn general media types. How dare they humanize illegal aliens!

You know, I wonder if Jessica has ever seen an alien. They’re everywhere according to her and we have a serious problem containing them, she muses (musing is what conservatives do, you know).

Or, maybe she is on to something. My gosh, the Bush administration might have been right all along. The aliens are communicating with each other and to terrorist cells across the ocean. Maybe even into outer space. They're after our satellites, you know.

Wait, reality check. Jessica wouldn't know an illegal alien if it stepped right in front of her (don't you just love the sub-conscious, though).

This might explain Jessica's issues with humanizing them ... even though they probably clean her house twice a week, do her landscaping, collect the garbage, and will put up the sheetrock when the Bucher’s decide to add that sunroom in the back. Why humanize that which cannot be seen .. which is not real?

Like Muslims and black people, illegal aliens don’t exist as people to Jessica except as reasons to slur liberals, or as excuses for Jessica to provide us with more examples of bad writing (the copy editors must have been very busy during her tenure as fearless crime reporter).

Well, I'm off now to go see some illegal alien dancing, because you know, aliens like to dance ... and they like watermelon and tacos. Right, Jessica?

Oh ... Pat Nixon was a very good person. What's your excuse?

Wednesday Thoughts

The second floor addition to the house is nearly completed (approx. two months ahead of time). The mother and baby saga continues ... now into week 30 with a due date of January 9, 2007. Doctor visit today revealed that baby Quin is active and growing just fine. Mom is feeling a little burdened.

No opinions on anything else. I can hear two distinct responses to that:

Thank god ... and, well ... finally, some peace and quiet.

Guns People Play I

Bad judgment indeed!

INDUS, Minn. - A school principal has resigned and could face felony firearm charges after he shot and killed two orphaned kittens on school property last month.

Wade Pilloud, who resigned as principal of the K-12 Indus school, 40 miles west of International Falls, said he shot the kittens to spare them from starving to death after their mother was killed in an animal trap.

Guns on school property is such a great idea ... not! And who's to say that someone else won't use bad judgment in another, more close to home way, such as in the heat of an argument. The Other Side of my Mouth will document these incidents as they occur, because there are certain people, like those who drink beer while wielding firearms (you know who you are), who should just not be allowed to carry.

Gerry Studds Dies

This is sad.

BOSTON - Former U.S. Rep. Gerry Studds, the first openly gay person elected to Congress, died early Saturday at Boston Medical Center, several days after he collapsed while walking his dog, his husband said.

Studds fell unconscious Oct. 3 because of what doctors later determined was a blood clot in his lung, Dean Hara said.

Studds regained consciousness, remained in the hospital, and seemed to be improving. He was scheduled to be transferred to a rehabilitation center, but his condition deteriorated Friday and he died at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday, Hara said.

Studds was censured for sexual misconduct in 1983. Republicans have attempted to paint Democrat response to the Studds affair as hypocrisy, because of their efforts in the Mark Foley scandal. The difference in his case is the 17-year old page Studds was involved with agreed their relationship was consensual … quite a big difference from Foley, of whom pages have stated their being made uncomfortable by his communications.

It's just another Republican attempt to deflect criticism of their hypocrisy and failed initiatives.

Job Description: U.S. President

John Stewart helps the White House Human Resources Department, and George Bush, describe the job description for President of the United States.

Jesus Would be Proud

The Real Meaning of Being Christian.

The Amish have said they’d like some of the money to go to the family of the killer. There was one bank account set up specifically for his family. In addition to that, the accountability committee, on behalf of the church leadership, has said that if there are needs beyond that fund, they want to make sure that some of the money that comes in designated for Nickel Mines victims [goes to the killer's family]. Nickel Mines victims include [that] family, in their definition. There are conversations about what the family's needs are, such as scholarship funds for the children. The committee will contribute as it becomes clear what the needs are.

Not being a believer, this is how I have always imagined what being a Christian was all about ... not those who use the word "christian" as a conspicuous modifier meant to improve their standing (such as: Christian Taxpayer), or those who wear it on their lapel, saying “See, I’m a Christian.” More often than not, their actions prove them liars.

Beaning Leads to Jailtime

This is pathetic.

UNIONTOWN, Pa. (AP) - A youth baseball coach accused of offering an 8-year-old money to bean an autistic teammate so he couldn't play was sentenced Thursday to one to six years in prison.

Fayette County Judge Ralph Warman sentenced 29-year-old Mark R. Downs Jr. of Dunbar, Pa. to consecutive six-to-36-month sentences for corruption of minors and criminal solicitation to commit simple assault. A jury convicted Downs in September.

Warman revoked Downs' bond and sent him to prison.

Downs didn't speak at the sentencing but told reporters "I didn't do nothing" as he was led out of the courtroom.

The win-at-all-costs mentality of the Bushies is no different than what this butthead did. In fact, the behavior exhibited by this clown is a direct result of the conservative culture war, in my opinion.

More Post-Plane Crash Thoughts

This is eerie.

You read about these things, you watch some hair-netted nitwit peer into Geraldo's camera and declare, "By golly, I was gonna go in that car with him" ... and you roll your eyes, numb to the tale's banality. Someone was always gonna go in that car with him. Or eat that burger. Or take that plane flight.

Been there ... late one night at a bar I was asked if I wanted to go on a run, middle 1970s parlance meaning "Do you want to get high?" Since I had to work early the next morning I declined.

The next day I heard that car had been driven off the road. The driver and a passenger were killed, former girlfriend and another passenger were in intensive care (both survived).

Those little decisions can make all the difference.

Being a Politician is Good for the Pocketbook

I wish I could do this.

Baghdad is Just Thrilling in the Summer

Wouldn't it be fun to visit Baghdad ... it must be nice, right? The conservative press says so. Or, just ask Bob. Maybe not.

Another Building Hit by Plane

Apparently, New York Yankees pitcher, Cory Lidle, flew his plane into a Manhattan high rise today. I did not know Lidle, except that he was a pitcher and that I had acquired him last year in my fantasy league, then traded him to another team before the beginning of this winter season.

From all accounts he was a well-liked guy who had relatively recently gotten hooked on flying. Tragically, that new-found hobby was the cause of his demise.

I can't help but think of John Kennedy, Jr. and his unhappy flight to oblivion. And I have to wonder if there is something lacking in the training of these part-time pilots ... should standards be a little tougher to acquire a pilots license?

Nevertheless, it is sad news.

They're So Naughty

Been too busy painting the new addition to the home to blog much. However found this oldie. For my gay friends and for daddio29 and godlike Rick Esenberg (stolen from whomever referred to him as "coming down from his Olympian heights ...), presenting more of the Daily Show and the "Homometer."

Good Night

For blue collar conservative, those voting for the marriage amendment and my friend James, just to annoy him a little because I know this is his favorite song.

Parents, We're in this Together

Parenthood has a way of uniting us. This from E.J. Dionne, Jr. at Working for Change:

And, by the way, isn't it strange that politicians who expressed moral objections to the desire of adult gays and lesbians to marry seemed to take the Foley matter so lightly when it first came to their attention? Where is the morality here?

I would ask my friends who are Christian conservatives to think about this. But I'd also ask my liberal friends to be more willing to come out as family-oriented people. Gay marriage is not the greatest threat to the heterosexual family. Misbehavior and irresponsibility by married heterosexuals do far more damage to families and children. Liberals should be unafraid to embrace the language of personal responsibility. In my experience, there's not a dime's worth of difference between my morally conservative friends and neighbors and me in our attitudes toward the obligations of parenthood.

This is Madness

h/t Jay Bullock at folkbum rambles and rants

We have a few tragic, but isolated, incidents of crazies entering and shooting up schools and suddenly the United States has become Thailand and Israel … the answer … let’s arm the teachers, Representative Frank Lasee (R-Bellevue), says. Heck, why not the National Guard. It's not like they're being overused.

The clown prince of darkness, Chris, of spottedhorse 2 fame, says: “Hell I am not saying you have to meet them in a hall way like Gary Cooper in High Noon it isn’t that hard to shoot someone in that back or even force the gunman to flee.” Me thinks Chris needs to grow out of the Cowboys and Indians phase of his adolescence, and stop watching so much TV (which accounts for his lack of social skills).

That Owen Robinson would call this a “good idea” doesn’t surprise Jay Bullock (who probably has had more experience with Owen) but it does surprise me. I thought him saner than that. Maybe his recent trip to see the Aggies play with Jed was still heavy on his mind … or his stomach, that burrito was huge.

And I read the piece that Jay alluded to at dad29’s site. I don’t agree that daddio was befouling Principal Klang’s memory, but come on, you gotta know that daddio is going to agree with Lasee. Hell, he’s probably in favor of providing guns to babies at birth. Now, thanks to daddio, I’ve got this weird image of diaper-wearing toddlers packing heat … that bulge in the diapee ain’t what it used to mean.

All fun aside for something that really isn’t that funny … introducing weaponry into schools is not the answer, nor is it a reason for conceal and carry. One wonders whether these incidents haven’t been staged just to promote that crazy idea?

No, I don’t believe that so don’t go nuts! Listen, I like Clint Eastwood as much as the next guy, but Republicans have got to get this romantic view of the American West out of their collective minds. Packing heat is not the way to go. I know how to handle a weapon and I still wouldn’t feel right holding one in public.

The amount of times a person will be required to protect oneself or family from harm is so miniscule as to be inconsequential. I’m more fearful of unbalanced people, such as a couple of bloggers who masquerade as being sane adults, being allowed to carry. Considering their responses to posts and/or comments in the blogosphere, if conceal and carry were to become law … Be afraid. Be very afraid.

It's a Brave New World

So much for our freedoms.

h/t This Modern World

Republican Ancestor Found

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Researchers on Thursday announced the discovery of the remains of a short-necked repuglosaur, a prehistoric marine reptile the size of a bus, that they believe is the first complete skeleton of a Republican ever found.

The 150 million year old remains of the 33-foot ocean going predator were found in August on the remote Svalbard Islands of the Arctic, the University of Oslo announced.

Fragments of repuglosaur have been found elsewhere, including in England, Russia, and the House of Representatives, but researchers say the partially fossilized find appears to be the first whole example, though other researchers say that Bob Dohnal may be a true descendant.

The voracious repuglosaur was like the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the oceans, except its head was much bigger. Big head reptiles, curiously, had smaller cranial capacity, hence smaller brains.

The University's Natural History Museum said the reptile was as long as a bus, with teeth larger than cucumbers ... in a head that could swallow an adult human whole, separate the minorities from the northern European humans, and send them to the back for quicker digestion.

Comments Not Working

My wife and I purchased software to block access to certain sites, ensuring that our children will not accidently roam there. After finishing the post "Convolusion," a comment was received from Chris, the center of the story. His reply was so vulgar and pornographic that the software will not let me access comments for that post to make a reply.

So, in reply ... his reply says it all.

Dad29: I have nothing against guns. But I am also not a fan of the NRA and their tactics. btw: My grandpa was a sharpshooter in WWI. He taught me how to shoot. Let's say I had a good teacher.

Another Moral Conservative

I always think of this when I hear Newt Gingrich speaking about Bill Clinton.

Newt Gingrich, married three times. Gingrich campaign worker Anne Manning admitted that she gave Newt oral sex while he was still married to his first wife. Informed one wife he was filing for divorce while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer treatments.

Just the Facts

Media hype over Clinton v Wallace. As usual, the Daily Show hits it on the head.

Pat is a Good Conservative

Testing to see how YouTube works.

Convolusion

I’ve known Mike Mathias for a number of years. Mike and his wife, Anne, have a very good blog titled Pundit Nation. Theirs is an insightful and often irreverent view of the world. They also have a regular segment about guns titled "Guns Protecting America." In their words: Guns Protecting America is an occasional feature of Pundit Nation highlighting how guns and the Second Amendment make all of us safer.

A recent post in this series caused that paragon of profundity, Chris at Spotted Horse 2 to respond. One wonders if Jessica McBride, on her high horse about lib bloggers and how nasty they can be, will direct the same measure of fire toward this goof. Here is his response:

ok guns are evil that gun loaded it self and told the deputy to ignore what ever saftey training he had been given and then told the deputy to shoot himself.

fools like you will never get it you never blame the person it is always the guns fault.

it must be hard to write post on guns when you have your head so far up your ass

are you going to ban the Mississippi River Mike since La Cross college kids keep getting drunk and falling into it. Makes about as much sense as what you are saying with this post

You are such an Fucking Ass you know that Mike.

Keep in mind that the post never mentioned Chris, wasn't directed at Chris, entirely ignored Chris. The response was truly unwarranted. However, unlike Ms. McBride, no one here is suggesting censorship of any kind. It's better that Chris be given all the space he needs to alert the world to his one-of-a-kind genius and Joyce-like stream of consciousness burping.

The blogosphere can be a tough place. You have to have a thick skin to survive. Mine wasn’t when I first started, but it soon became calloused and tough. The point is, if you are going to engage in blogging, look out. Someone is going to make fun of you, take offense and retaliate … it will happen.

Heck, I’ve had fun with McBride. I have a little series titled "Mindless Automaton" in which I place a picture of McBride into “This Modern World” cartoons (apologies to Tom Tomorrow) … obviously she plays the role of the previously mentioned automaton.

Truth be told, I think her commentary sophomoric and she leaves herself open to irony when she makes silly statements about others being less than civil, or less than utterly complimentary and adoring of anything she writes.

Fact is I don't want to see any form of censorship. I say let the goofs of the world have their day in the sun. That way we can see them better for what they really are. That's what the marketplace of ideas is all about.

And if you really don't like a comment someone has made, just delete it. You are god of your blog.

To Everything ... Spin, Spin, Spin

New from Rosco.

You are House Speaker Dennis Hastert and inquiring minds want to know why you did a "Catholic Church" regarding overly friendly e-mails sent by a colleague of yours to an underage page ... what is a House Speaker to do?

Press down and spin. Distract the public and confuse your listeners. Just press down and spin. Now only $10.95 plus tax. Comes with life- like Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh and Jessica McBride rubber heads. Remove the red top, and squeeze the rubber head over the little bear torso for a realistic spin.

Come to think of it. Do Rush or Matt have children? Me thinks they protest too much. Who's got e-mails? Call Paul Bucher. Oh, that's right. Better not. He'll be out of a job soon.

(disclaimer: author born and raised catholic, though somewhat lapsed)

It's Not Us ...

Guess what. It's the Democrat's fault that Mark Foley has been running wild ... so Rush Limbaugh, Michele Malkin, and evn our own Ann Althouse suggest. And Republican bigwigs are picking up the thrust. Click here to read the Salon article.

h/t This Modern World

Happy Belated Birthday

I was inspired to do this post by one over at Wigderson Library & Pub. Anyway, James celebrates the birthday of President Jimmy Carter with a picture of a Time magazine cover, featuring Carter and Ayatollah Khomeini. The obvious thought is this is James' way of reminding everyone of Carter's failure to bring the hostages home. Could be wrong. Maybe these are two of James' favorite people?

I personally think that Carter was overwhelmed by the events that occurred ... nothing similar had ever happened to the United States before. And, overall, I would agree that the Carter presidency was not an effective one. However, Jimmy Carter, the man, stands tall over the current resident of the White House, with his work for Habitat for Humanity and his other post-presidency pursuits.

So, in the spirit of that post, I decided to find out what George W. Bush's birthdate was ... I almost gagged ... it's the same as my ex-wife's ... July 6th. It figures.

Here are some pictures to remember George's birthday by.

Mission Accomplished















Hmmm. Still Shooting off Rockets











2,500+ and Counting















Aren't We Admired?
















I could spend hours talking about the this. How many of you remember any hint of corruption during the Carter presidency? Ineffective, yes. Corrupt? No!

And so it goes.

Can't Blame This on Clinton

Is the world going insane? This news just posted ... trucker kills six, including himself, at a private school in Pennsylvania.

It's Tylenol Time

Damn, I hate head colds. I would like to thank my darling wife and the 238,456,983 people who helped to pass this bug my way. Achoo.

A Horse of a Different Color

This from an article regarding the teenager who shot his school principal to death earlier today:

“He always used to kid around about bringing things to school and hurting kids,” she said at a gas station nearby where students and townspeople gathered.

A couple of conservative bloggers have thought it funny in the past to mock threaten a few with weapons. I'll not mention names. If you are regular cheddarsphere bloggers, you know who I am talking about.

This shooting is another reason why it is not funny.

Hamsters Are Woosies

Hamsters are such woosies. My son's gerbils would have hijacked the plane and forced it to the Mongolian Desert where they originally came from.

We Don't Need No Thought Control

More propaganda from the friends of Mark Green and Mr. Comic Relief (yeah, it's a gratuitous shot). If you didn't think the press was sidling over to the right, this should convince you.

h/t Robola

(click picture to enlarge)




















Nah. There's no such thing as right-wing press (though "right-wing" and "press" are really contradictory).

Road Less Traveled

August 20, 2004
Speech at Robert Frost's Farm in Derry, New Hampshire
by Granny "D"

Thank you.

Robert Frost is connected to that strong spiritual and ethical river that flows through Whitman and Hawthorne, Melville, Cather, Dickinson, Clemens, Wilder, Muir, Douglas, Foster, Gershwin, Joplin, Sousa, and the almost countless others who were charmed and inspired by the musical words of our Founding Fathers and of our great and eloquent Native American leaders.

And from these voices onward, up to our own time and through the eloquence of Bernstein, Cohen, Copland, Ellington, Martin Luther King, Jr., Capra, Ginsburg, Pete Seeger, Ansel Adams and so many others of the modern era's great minds and writers, an idea for who we are and who we want to be as Americans has been shaped in our hearts.

We want to be a just and honorable people, trustees of a beautiful land and gardeners of a great democracy. We want to be a fiercely free people--good providers to each other and good neighbors to our townsmen and to the other people of the world.

This American spirit is an ideal that defines not only who we are to ourselves, but to the rest of the world in how they want to think of us. It is what they love about us, and they do.
And despite all our hard times, our wars, our depressions, our genocides, our suppressions and oppressions, our experience with slavery itself, we still stand at the edge of woods dark and deep with our future ahead of us and this dream still in our hearts. We still are perched at Half Dome Rock and along the grasses of the Hudson and the forests of the misty Olympic Peninsula and in the mud of the Mississippi at Hannibul. It is still a most beautiful country filled with most wonderful people. And we are still young.

Yet we have come to a new time. We and our natural world are poised now at a parting of the road. One path leads where powerful nations have gone before. It is the road of silver and blood--the short, noisy road of empire. The other is a path no great nation has taken before. The only way we can take this less traveled road it to blow the ashes off the still living fire of our American Revolution--where the people naturally rise against great and oppressive forces and reassert the human heart, human freedom and our highest values as a people.

Click here for rest of speech

Please, Don't Pass the Syrup

Patrick McIlheran is at it again. In a column appearing in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sept. 24 entitled “Check here to opt out of another social revolution,” McIlheran argues for voting to ensure that “…marriage remain what everyone thought it was until about 10 minutes ago.” Leaving aside the fact not everyone thinks in the same way as McIlheran claims, his snide comments throughout the piece reveal that the old saying, “If the shoe fits …,” is an apt description for his bigotry.

It’s not really about the wording of the amendment. And, it’s not really about an issue being forced upon the populace as he would claim. Don’t let him kid you. It is all about McIlheran saying that a man/man, or woman/woman relationship should not be legal because marriage … (wait for it) …

… is the public's grant of a privileged position for relationships that often involve love but have mainly to do with producing the next generation.

Ah, now we get to the nub. The heck with the previous ten or so paragraphs in which McIlheran couches his bigotry in unassuming words and dips them in syrup to make the result sound sweet to the ears. No, what he is really saying is that marriage is reserved only for those who can impregnate and those who receive their seed.

I could add he should say that to the faces of the thousands of children abandoned as a result of illicit heterosexual unions, and who were lovingly adopted and raised by homosexual couples.

Or, I could add that he should speak to the children many did not wish to be burdened with; those with birth defects and other abnormalities, who were also adopted and raised by homosexual couples.

And, I could joust with him and tell him to say it to the faces of interracial couples living in today’s society.

What? What does being a part of an interracial couple have to do with this?

Well, it wasn’t too long ago that interracial marriage was against the law, too (1999 in Alabama). Back then, as is now woofed about homosexual unions, interracial marriage was said to be “contrary to God’s will.” Interracial marriage was “unnatural.” Interracial relationships were seen merely as illicit sex … even those that were committed and longstanding. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it.

You see, McIlheran and his cohorts oppose the cause of marriage for homosexuals not because of any real legal reason to oppose it, not even a religious one. They oppose homosexual marriage because they are afraid. The thought of a man sleeping with another man is loathsome to them. It’s unnatural … a perversion.

This fear has often coalesced into anger and the result has often been violent. While it is probably true that today’s modern conservative scribes would never resort to violence (nor to fighting in a war they prop up with patriotic gargles), I do believe it is true that their current fears are no different that the ancient fears of black sexuality. Fears of black sexuality have been responsible for some of the most notorious incidents of anti-black violence and persecution, from the Scottsboro Boys to Emmett Till.

In the same vein, fears of homosexuality have been responsible for notorious incidents such as the murder of Matthew Shepard, left to die hanging on a fence after being beaten by Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney.

It was in Massachusetts (in a weird twist of history repeating itself) that a group of “radical abolitionists” argued that the law against interracial marriage went against the American ideal of equality and succeeded in having that law repealed in 1843.

One hundred and sixty three years later, Wisconsin citizens have a chance to tell the rest of the country that bigots and conservatives be damned … Wisconsin IS a Progressive state and its citizens do not discriminate. It’s a straight-forward choice.

No gimmicks.

No syrup!

Just vote NO.

Temperature Rising

Just to keep busy and to earn a little extra spending cash, I work for a local gas merchant. He's a fairly well-known fellow in the Brookfield community. A church-going guy (who's apt to ask everyone who enters his establishment if they went to church on Sunday), he believes the world was created in 6,000 years and the stars in the sky are purely decoration ... there is no other life in the universe.

He is also a Mark Green fan, which is his absolute right. I enjoy working for him. He is funny, is a font of oral history, and he is generous to his employees, providing free health care to two of them, a college student and the other a woman who supports her father.

Anyway, it isn't clear who did this, but someone placed one of those large Mark Green signs on the lawn next to the intersection that this establishment is located. No one is sure if the land is city property or his, either. I could care less. What Mark Green stands for is revolting to me, but that my boss agrees with his beliefs is no concern of mine. We've discussed it briefly in passing and have come to an understanding that we'll agree to disagree.

Back to the sign: Today, a man came into the place and asked if I was the owner. I said "No," but pointed to the woman on my right and said she was his wife. He proceeded to tell her that he had been patronizing this establishment for years, but could no longer do so because of the Mark Green sign outside the place. I almost started laughing. She said she was unsure who had placed it there, and anyway, wasn't it city property? He didn't think so. I shrugged my shoulders when he looked at me.

Finally, he said he could not in good conscience patronize any place that supported Mark Green. The owner's wife shrugged her shoulders and said that she was sorry he felt that way. He turned and left.

After he left, I thought: "What a pompous ass." I mean, I'm as liberal as they come and will likely be voting for Jim Doyle this election. I agree that Mark Green is a slime bag and does not deserve election. However, to say that you will not patronize this place because of a sign is absolutely ridiculous.

The fact is, after this election is over and passions have cooled, we still have to live with another. I'll bet even that old, crusty barnacle, dad29, would agree with me.

Global Warming Dangerous

Who are you going to believe. Evangelical nutjobs whose mission in life is to tell you they've read the Bible and determined that the world is 6,000 years old ... please send us money to spread that message.

Or scientists, with no possible agenda, who tell you that global warming has reached a dangerous level?

Believing in Togetherness Itself

November 16, 2004
by Granny "D"

Thank You.

My recent campaign for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire was a great adventure, and its eventual outcome was fairly well-known even before we began--though we worked hard to win. Would I have decided to run had I known in advance that I would not win? The answer is yes, I would have still done it, for life itself has a predictable outcome, and it is not in our final day that meaning comes to our lives, but in the days spent along our way.

As to the politics of my effort, I will tell you that I am an old Progressive-Populist, and that tradition has crossed both the Republican and Democratic lines, and now the Reform and Green lines, too, but it is considered more of the left, now, than the right.

I understand that many of you hold far different political beliefs, and, rather than bend my remarks to the agreement of all, let me instead help you see inside the thinking of a particular kind of belief system that has been important in America since just after the Civil War, when farmers banded together to fight the railroad, banking and meat packing monopolies by forming their own political party.

That party, the Populist Party, which was largely based in rural America, joined forces with the more urban-based Progressive Party at turn of the 20th Century. The leaders of this powerful new movement, which sprang for the most part out of the town of Madison, Wisconsin, included Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette, whose seat in the U.S. Senate is now held appropriately by Russ Feingold, a solid reformer whose campaign finance reform bill I walked across America to support. When La Follette raised the Progressive movement to great power in America, leaders like Theodore Roosevelt were quick to see the future and danced quickly in front of that parade.

Out of that movement we got the monopoly-busting anti-trust laws, which largely came undone in the Reagan Administration, the labor laws which gave America the strongest and most prosperous middle class the world had ever seen—also which came undone in the Reagan Administration, with later help in the Clinton Administration. And from the Progressive-Populist Movement we got environmental clean-up laws, worker safety laws, and the Social Security System, which ended the long era of elder destitution that had been increasingly a fact as industrialization overran the family agrarian roots of our nation.

My father and mother were solid Republicans, and they celebrated and participated in many of these reforms. Most Americans, through most of my lifetime, have seen the federal government as a necessary tool for working Americans to provide for justice and its prosperity.

All those beliefs and accomplishments are now coming undone or are under attack. Social Security will be the next to fall, perhaps, and we see it coming, as America becomes again what it was in the first days of industrialization: a nation of the very rich and the very poor--the exploiters, who own the politicians, and, on the other side, the exploited, whose great power to move history smolders silently, waiting for the oxygen of leadership and political opportunity.

It is interesting to those of us on the left that the American vote no longer breaks down as a division of the exploiter and the exploited. People seem happy to vote for those who do everything possible to export their jobs, give their common wealth to the already too-wealthy, and undermine their social safety net programs, their right to organize, right to privacy, and on and on.

The division in the electorate is now between those who see government as a place where practical solutions are forged among people of different interests, and those who see government as an enforcer of their own private belief systems, regardless of the costs to themselves.
Both groups are willing to make a sacrifice. The first group is willing to not impose their personal belief systems when they are operating on the common ground of civic life, as when John Kennedy declared that the Constitution, not the Catholic Church, would be his guide in the civil matters of the presidency. The second group is not willing to lay down their private beliefs to find common ground in civil affairs, but they are willing to sacrifice their jobs, their health care, and the good name of their country in the world, and, more significantly, they are willing for all other people to suffer as well, in order that the government might be an enforcer of their personal spiritual beliefs.

Now, if this strikes you as a less than objective analysis of the situation, I told you going in that I am not bending my language to suit the audience, but only to express how the Progressives feel about things today.

If you look at the red state – blue state map of the recent election, it doesn’t tell you much. If you look at the red county – blue county map of the United States, you see a more useful picture. You see that urban areas voted Democratic and rural and suburban areas voted Republican, on average. It is meaningful to some degree, because where one lives is more a matter of personal choice today than ever before, and one might generalize that antisocial people tend not to live in dense communities, and social people do. The word anti-social well describes the dismantling of social systems, environmental protections, job protections and all the rest that has been going on with a vengeance during the Bush years. You might agree with what has been done, but I would bet that you also believe that government is too big, that it is the problem, not the solution, that minorities have too much given to them, that women should not have too much power, especially over their own bodies, and so on and so on. You tend to favor systems of authority over systems of shared power, and so the word Democrat doesn’t appear anywhere in your wallet.

If this is a useful observation, then Progressives like myself must wonder what it will take for us ever again to have a common ground where we work out our common needs in a civil--meaning non-religious and non-ideological--manner. How do you do that when half the population does not believe that government is our venue of cooperative action?

Well, I may be overstating my case in order to make my point come into focus, but let me look around at the human situation, not just the deadly abstractions.

The fact is, we are, each of us, both kinds of people: we believe in individualism and we believe in cooperation. When I pay my taxes, ask me if the government is too big or too small. When my Social Security check is late, ask me again. We all have our belief systems that inform our words and actions, but the real world is a beautiful negotiation between our needs and our beliefs, and that is also the case at the larger scale, where we act as the American people.

The Republicans have a great duty to do in this nation, and that is to guard the rights of individual action. The Democrats have a great duty to do in this nation, and that is to guard the necessity of cooperative action. If the pendulum of power can but swing freely, we do all right on both fronts. But it must operate in a civic atmosphere of mutual respect, or the swings will become wildly erratic and the machine may fly apart. I sense that rumbling now and pray that we can reason together as one people.

What happens when it swings too hard and too long to the right? We have seen that in the world, and we sent our young men and women off to die to end it several times in the last century. I have felt those sacrifices in my lifetime.

What happens when it swings too hard and too long to the left? Cruelty and oppression thrive at the extremes; we have seen that you can go around to the dark side of life from either the right or the left.

Both swings crush the freedoms of individuals and destroy the diversity of culture and human life that define higher civilization.

The right wing of American politics is now moving toward such a crushing of diversity, and it is doing so in the name of religion. If you cannot see the danger in that, you have either not lived though as much world history as I have, or you have not read your history, or you have no imagination. The danger is perfectly real and anything can happen here that happened in other places, and it has already begun.

But the saving grace for us, I think, is the fact that Americans are richly complex, and we are for something one minute and against it the next. We have an abiding, deep-set love of justice, even when we allow it to be unevenly applied to others. There is no opinion that we do not all share at least a little bit, and there are enough facts in the world to justify about any opinion.

We will move through this time, neighbor-to-neighbor, and friend-to-friend. We have seen the divisions in our own families, and it isn’t because one side of the dinner table is out in farmland and the other is in the city. Our divisions of opinion are more personal than that.

Are we all trying to have a democracy? I am not sure of that, but I hope it is so.

Are we willing to let our religious beliefs guide our private and family lives, but leave them aside when we work with people of other religions in the problem-solving civic arena? Your answer to that question answers whether or not you are trying to have a democracy, and the answer, given my millions of people, will tell us if we will still have a democracy to leave to the next generation, or not.

As for me, the future is one day at a time, and the joy of democracy is in that old democracy road, not in any shining destination. Being with people who care, who love each other and their country--that is such a blessing! It is why I ran for office, to meet more people and to share more adventures on that great road.

We Americans have to walk it together, or we shall only remember the great nation we once had, and the greater nation we could have built together, had we indeed believed in togetherness itself.

Thank you very much.

The Disease of Moral Intolerance

October 23, 2004
by Granny "D"

The light and soul of America is respect .

Given on the steps of the Peterborough Town Hall, after a walk to town with her townspeople. Peterborough was the town where Thornton Wilder wrote "Our Town."

Thank you.

I would like to share two thoughts with you today. The first regards the special character of the American community that makes us strong and, indeed, very special in the world. The second idea regards the special moment in time where we find ourselves right now.

The special character of the American people isn’t the fact that we have a Constitution and its Bill of Rights, although we are blessed by that document and blessed by the way it has been improved by wisdom and humanity over the centuries.

The words of our Constitution and its Bill of Rights, while special indeed, only reflect something that was already deep in the emerging world dream that America is.

Here is a hint of that special aspect: Let me ask you a question—why is it that the first ten amendments to the Constitution are the Bill of Rights? Why didn’t they just put the Ten Commandments in there from the Bible?

Why, indeed, did they go to so much trouble writing this new Constitution when they already had a guide book to living--their Bible? For they were, most of them, religious people.

Why did they create a strong and well-stated separation between their religious lives and their civic lives?

The word that gets to the answer is the word Respect.

They understood that different people have different belief systems, and that the civic square is where we come together to make our lives work well together in spite of our different beliefs.

That respect for our differences is the key to understanding the genius of America. They certainly had not perfected a notion of the brotherhood of all people, as it took us, as a people, another century to eliminate human slavery on our shores, and generations more to accept the equality of all people. But the seed was there, and it remains—though it is now under attack as if by a serious disease.

If we look around the world at the most frightening and dangerous places, we see, first of all, the failure of respect for differences. The Taliban perhaps represent that in the American mind. But we do not have to look that far to see the disease of moral intolerance infecting cultures and governments. It is all around us now. It has sprung from our own soil, as it has elsewhere.

In its most fatal form, the disease of moral intolerance somehow bestows the power of heaven on our humble human institutions of government. And so, where in a previous generation we might have been willing to let some great moral issues be decided between a person and his or her God or conscience, we now demand that institutions of government represent themselves as God’s attorneys. The problem with that, of course, is that government institutions are what we share across the entire community, and religious beliefs are not. So the only way that government can speak for God is if large parts of our community have a religion not of their choosing forced upon them, not as beliefs, but as oppressions.

This is easy for the women of Afghanistan to understand precisely. But it is not far away from us now, as an immoral element of our society, cloaked in false morality, move hard on us to destroy that word that underpins our Constitution and its Bill of Rights and that is the bright little light that shines in the American soul and can be found in the torch of the Statue of Liberty. It is the flame of freedom, yes, but its truer name is the flame of respect for others and their beliefs, for that is where our freedom comes from, and that is where our nation comes from.

If there is one idea we must not tolerate, it is intolerance. If there is one position we must not respect, it is disrespectfulness itself. It is, in short, not acceptable for people to push their own religious beliefs onto our civic institutions, and they must please look in the mirror and see if they do not see some image more from an Afghan desert staring back at them. We do not tolerate intolerance here. We do not respect disrespect on these shores, where the world is still having a dream of a better life for itself.

Now, you fight fear and intolerance with courage and love, but it is not always a matter of sticking flowers in the muzzles of their guns. Sometimes we must act with strength and force, as we do with laws against hate crimes, and so we should. Sometimes love means you lock somebody up, or take them outside for a little discussion. But it should never be a battle between two different belief systems, it is a struggle to preserve the civic square as a place where all people and beliefs cooperate in a better kind of world, and where bullies to the contrary are dealt with.

It is my personal opinion that bullies to the contrary are what this political season is all about. It is my view that a wildly unamerican intolerance has infected the far right wing of American politics and, as with any tumor in a body, it endangers the entire American system. The coming election is an opportunity to escort the bullies outside.

Just as a disease will attack the weakest part of the body, the moral bullies come in through the issues we are least comfortable defending. But if we do not defend even these areas, we will soon find the entire body infected.

So lend your support to those who do that defending. They are people like the ACLU, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and the organizations that protect the individual freedoms of women, gays, ethnic and racial minorities, and others on the first line of defense against moral bullies.

Do not be afraid to be intolerant of intolerance; show no respect for disrespect; be the bouncer at the door of the better world we are dreaming and working for, and do not be afraid to do what bouncers do. But whatever you do, do it in love and for love, not in hatred for hate, and do it in defense of our mutual respect, the beautiful light of the American soul.

What I have just said could have been said at any time in our national history. But it has greater meaning to say such things at this moment, for we are assembled here as people who are bracing for battle on the eve of great changes in our history. For many of us, the coming election means much. But the struggle for America’s soul and for our shared dream is just beginning, as it always is, and you all are the warriors in this struggle, which is the greatest struggle on the planet. So many lives are at stake, so much happiness is in the balance. If you like to think of yourself as the hero of a book or movie, I tell you that no book or movie is a dramatic or as meaningful as the story you now find yourself living. This life is perhaps a moral stage for the acting out of great struggles between the forces of light and the forces of fear. There are no sidelines, only those who fight for love and those who fight for fear. Only those who stand up for tolerance and respect and love, and those whose sad fate is to stand on the other side.

If you look around this gathering, you cannot see where we all are going. To demonstrations? To Congress? To courtrooms where we will fight for respect and justice? To prison camps? The young to great universities where they will help keep ideas advancing to serve our people? We go from this place and this moment onward to great lives in a great time. But let us always know who we are—remember who we are. We are Americans, and we are for freedom, and for respect, and for love.

Thank you.

Taking a Break

Going to take a break for a while. Family, pregnancy of wife, personal health (need to lose weight and get into shape after hospital visit) and guiding second floor addition to a satisfactory conclusion preclude continued regular blogging. I recommend the following blogs:

Good Reading Regardless of Political Affiliation

Pundit Nation
Xoff Files
Wigderson Library and Pub
Brew City Brawler
folkbum
Shark and Shepherd
Dad29

Charming

Texas Hold 'em Blogger
Milwaukee ID10T

Idiotic

Spotted Horse 2

Friendly

View From the Cheap Seats
Mixter's Mix

Gooey

Patrick McIlheran

Annoying and Not Very Bright

Jessica McBride


I'll come back here and there and eventually full-time again. Ta ta.

Not Really

Saying that he hadn’t eaten in 20 minutes, a man who Milwaukee police identified as F. James Sensenbrenner was arrested and later released for taking five pizzas from a pizza delivery man.

According to the police report, the pizza man pulled up to a house in the 2400 block of Fiebrantz Avenue. He said this large man called him over as he got out of his delivery car, a Toyota, and then demanded he hand over the pizzas. When the pizza man demured, police say, Sensenbrenner pulled a toy gun from his suit pocket and waved it under the delivery person's nose. The man gave the pizzas to Sensenbrenner, who turned and tried to run off.

The pizza delivery man immediately contacted police. Even though it took the police approximately 20 minutes to get to the scene, Sensenbrenner was still in sight approximately 20 yards away, struggling to lumber down the sidewalk.

When police apprehended him, they found no pizzas. They had apparently been devoured, along with the containers.

A National Rifle Association lawyer arrived later and arranged for Sensenbrenner's release. There was insufficient evidence to hold him.

Asked for a comment, Sensenbrenner could only say, “Urp.”

Auf Weidersehen Herr und Frau Bucher

What a pathetic performance from Paul Bucher. I saw his concession speech and came away with the feeling that he doesn't get it. The voters said no to his vile message of division. The author of the despicable "Catch and Release Kate" website had the audacity to say shame to those he stated had said mean things. He should look at himself and his wife, Jessica McBride. The two took shameless and mean-spirited self promotion to new heights.

Thankfully, the voters get it. It wasn't his opponent's money that did Bucher in, it was his poorly run campaign and it was the man ... a little man ... that did the trick.

Good riddance.

Imagine

Imagine if George W. Bush had actually led this country, instead of dividing it. Imagine if George W. Bush had been all the things he claimed he was ... what a wonderful world it could have been.

Click here for an alternate post 9-11 vision by Jonathon Alter. It boggles the mind, the missed opportunities that we as a nation might have embraced if only George had shown some real leadership. He could have been our greatest president.

Of course, none of this happened and this is just fiction ... still ... .

No More Health Care for Card-Carrying Republicans

A Plan To Save The Country, By Garrison Keillor

It's the best part of summer, the long, lovely passage into fall. Aprocession of lazy, golden days that my sandy-haired, gap-toothed little girl has been painting, small abstract masterpieces in tempera and crayonand glitter, reminiscent of Franz Kline or Willem de Kooning (his earlyglitter period). She put a sign out front, "Art for Sale," and charged 25 cents per painting. Cheap at the price.

A teacher gave her this freedom to sit un-self-consciously and put paint onpaper. A gentle, 6-foot-8 guy named Matt who taught art at her preschool.Her swimming teachers gave her freedom from fear of water. So much that has made this summer a pleasure for her I trace to specific teachers, and soit's painful to hear about public education sinking all around us.

A high school math class of 42! Everybody knows you can't teach math to 42 kids at once. The classroom smells bad because the custodial staff has beencut back. The teacher must whip his pupils into shape to pass the federalNo Child Left Untested program. This is insanity, the legacy of Republicans and their tax-cutting and their hostility to secular institutions.

Last spring, I taught a college writing course and had the privilege ofhanging out with people in their early 20s, an inspirational experience in return for which I tried to harass them about spelling and grammar andstructure. My interest in being 21 again is less than my interest in havinga frontal lobotomy, but the wit and passion and good-heartedness of these kids, which they try to conceal under their exquisite cool, are the hope ofthis country. You have to advocate for young people, or else what are we here for?

I keep running into retirees in their mid-50s, free to collect seashells and write bad poetry and shoot video of the Grand Canyon, and goody forthem, but they're not the future. My college kids are graduating with a20-pound ball of debt chained to their ankles. That's not right, and you know it.

This country is squashing its young. We're sending them to die in a war wed on't believe in anymore. We're cheating them so we can offer tax reliefto the rich. And we're stealing from them so that old gaffers like me, who want to live forever, can go in for an MRI if we have a headache.

A society that pays for MRIs for headaches and can't pay teachers a decent wage has made a dreadful choice. But health care costs are ballooning, eating away at the economy. The boomers are getting to an age where theirknees need replacing and their hearts need a quadruple bypass -- which theyfeel entitled to -- but our children aren't entitled to a damn thing. Any goombah with a Ph.D. in education can strip away French and German, music and art, dumb down the social sciences, offer Britney Spears instead ofShakespeare, and there is nothing the kid can do except hang out in the library, which is being cut back too.

This week, we mark the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the Current Occupant's line, "You're doing a heckuva job," which already is in common usage, a joke, a euphemism for utter ineptitude. It's sure to wind up in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, a summation of his occupancy.

Annual interest on the national debt now exceeds all government welfareprograms combined. We'll be in Iraq for years to come. Hard choices need to be made, and given the situation we're in, I think we must bite the bulletand say no more health care for card-carrying Republicans. It just doesn'tmake sense to invest in longevity for people who don't believe in the future. Let them try faith-based medicine, let them pray for their arteriesto be reamed and their hips to be restored, and leave science to the rest of us.

Cutting out health care to one-third of the population -- the folks with Bush-Cheney bumper stickers, who still believe the man is doing a heckuvajob -- will save enough money to pay off the national debt, not a badlegacy for Republicans. As Scrooge said, let them die and reduce the surplus population. In return, we can offer them a reduction in the estatetax. All in favor, blow your nose.

More Grass for the Sheep

(click to enlarge)

-- Working for Change

Couple of Links to Good Reading

Two amazing posts by Xoff and folkbum (who does ramble and rant, but he can be forgiven considering the topic) about the deceit of Patrick McIlheran. Shame on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for continuing to provide space for this bald-faced liar.

Meanwhile, kudos to Rick Esenberg for a well written piece about 9-11 and five years later. One thing: Rick does go on about radical Islam and its rage somewhat. This is somewhat simplistic. I believe and history supports: Western civilization must take a huge portion of the blame for Islamic rage. Our deceit was instrumental in arousing Arab anger to a fever pitch.

And let us please not call all of the peoples of the Middle East radical Islamics. Just as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and the rest of their ilk do not represent true Christianity in America, nor does al-Qaeda and the other radical groups represent true Islam.

The Arrogance of the Right

The arrogance of some conservatives is breath-taking. Regarding the detention of innocent people (Arabs in this case), one conservative blogger recently said it’s a risk he’s willing to take. Some risk, sitting in his nice, warm home while some poor shlup languishes in a detention camp, thousands of miles away from home. He is willing to take this risk, he adds, because:

"... we are not killing any of these folks. We’re just making them uncomfortable for a while. I have some faith in the human decency of the American character that if we do sweep up an innocent, that they will be released as soon as we are comfortable that they are innocent."

Ah, the human decency of the American character. So, according to this blogger it’s perfectly legitimate for our armed forces to go merrily marching here and there sweeping up innocents as long as we let them go eventually, after, of course, ascertaining they truly are innocent. How does our blogger propose innocence is determined? He doesn't say. Perhaps a little torture of the innocent to make sure … you know … the innocence of the innocent.

How far does this slippery-slope risk-taking go ... American minorities, liberals ... them?

I heard this from another conservative some years ago while debating the death penalty:

“I’m sure there have been a few (my emphasis added) people executed who should not have been … who were actually innocent of the crime they were accused of committing. But I’m okay with that as long as the most serious, dangerous offenders are put away.”

My god, I thought. What an incredible display of the shallowness and emptiness of conservative thought. To actually think it's perfectly acceptable for a few innocent people to lose their lives so others benefit, to provide satisfaction for conservative blood lust.

This sort of thought is prevalent in the conservative movement today. Mark Green provides a fine example with his disinterest of the rights of women. He cares not a whit about a woman raped, because the result of that violent ripping away of a woman's rights may become a child. It is not that child's fault, he says. Like our conservative blogger, Green is ready to take that risk, though he is safe from actually having to suffer the consequences.

This base neglect of the most basic of human rights … life … is also evident these days in the spoken views of conservatives. Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter, etc. are some of the more egregious examples of the emptiness of conservative rhetoric. Selling books, making money, disenfranchising and imprisoning innocent people ... anyone who disagrees ... has become the new patriotism for conservatives.

This coming election is an important one. I believe it will determine whether the American ideal still has a real chance. It will determine whether we, as a people, can survive this onslaught on our freedoms, reclaim our heritage and again become that shining light that the innocents of the world look to for hope. We cannot let conservative extremism rule us. We cannot become disinterested in the welfare of others, even while we battle those who would seek our destruction.

It is the height of arrogance to assume that we will be met with open arms by forcing our standards, our culture, our idea of democracy on other lands. When we are asked for help, we must be sure not to try to turn other peoples into clones of ourselves, to turn their lands into petri dishes for corporate greed. We must remember the reason why we offer to export democracy. We do this for purely altruistic reasons. We do this because it is the American ideal. We export democracy because freedom is something that should be shared.

Blogging Takes a Back Seat

Blogging took a back seat to health, family and my 8th grade science teacher the other day. And it may do so for a while into the future, which I’m sure will make some very happy on the right side of the cheddarsphere. I only mention the incident to provide some thoughts about mortality and making the most of the time we have here.

About 1:30 am Wednesday morning I woke up with what I thought at first was a sore throat. I felt pressure on the sides of my neck, precisely where those big arteries are (hey, I’m not a doctor) and my felt pressure in my head as well. In general, I felt uncomfortable.

Kelly woke up and asked if I was all right. I checked my pulse (as one gets older, checking the pulse becomes something regularly done). It did not feel regular, not the usual lub dub, lub dub. Instead, it felt choppy and fast.

Not knowing what was going on and not willing to raise an alarm yet, I went to the bathroom and retrieved the portable blood pressure unit a neighbor had loaned us a couple weeks earlier. I finally figured how to make it work and it returned a blood pressure reading of 128 over 115, with a heart rate of 57. The heart rate did not seem right, though mine is normally that low. And, I thought, the blood pressure reading had to be incorrect because I have never had blood pressure issues.

I couldn’t get the unit to work properly after that, so I went back to bed and tried to fall to sleep again. I couldn't, though, because now I could feel my heart pounding in my chest … I rolled over to the other side … this didn’t help.

At this point I asked Kelly to check my heart rate for me. She couldn’t find a pulse. This would have been cause for some fun jokes about being dead, but I wasn’t feeling funny. I was becoming worried. I checked it again and still found it to be jumpy and fast. I went out to the living room and tried to pull the recliner out from the corner. My intent was to sit up for a while and perhaps I’d fall asleep. The effort of pulling the recliner out almost made me swoon. At that moment I decided that perhaps I should go to the hospital.

I went back to the bedroom and informed Kelly of my intentions. We debated calling 911, but I thought I was feeling okay to drive and I didn’t want to alarm the kids, so I drove over to Froedtert, about 5 – 10 miles away. I almost turned back on the way because I thought I was feeling better. However, I continued on to the ER and went inside.

A nurse came over and asked what the problem was. I said I was sure it was nothing, but my heart felt strange. She checked my pulse and immediately had me sit down. She said my heart rate was very fast and called for someone to bring a wheelchair.

Next thing I know, I’m in an emergency room, with two doctors and three or four nurses, two IVs puncturing my skin and with electrodes connecting me to a heart and blood pressure monitor.

I’m somewhat in a daze, not from feeling ill, but from how swift I was moved from ER entryway to being totally plugged in. One of the doctors is talking to me. The initial tests are confusing and so they’ve decided to try a drug that would essentially slow my heart almost to the point of stopping. This does not sound like fun. I am told the procedure will be unpleasant, but it is safe. I’m told this a number of times. By now the population in the small room has swelled to about fifteen. Why do I feel they are witnesses to something unpleasant?

The nurse on my left has a plunger that he will push in to insert the drug. The nurse on the right has a similar instrument filled with a saline solution that is supposed to usher the drug through the heart quickly. I’m about to find out why.

“On three,” the nurse on the right says. He counts and injects the drug. She counts and injects the saline solution. I ready myself by watching the faces of the two doctors who are intently avoiding my hopeful gaze and are instead watching the heart and blood pressure monitor.

One of the doctors says, “Hmm. It didn’t work.”

Relief.

Then, a moment later, “Oh, there it goes.”

He’s referring to my heart which has finally been introduced to the drug. All of a sudden, both arms become to feel very, very heavy. Then my legs, and finally my chest. Later, I was asked to describe the feeling. The only word I could think of was “BLACK.” I asked later if this is what it felt to have a heart attack. I was told it was worse. I wonder how that person knew.

Anyway, this procedure did not work. My heart continued beating erratically away at 180+ per minute. For the next few hours I was introduced to a few other drugs. None made quite the impression of the first, though. One finally worked about 7:30 am while I had dosed off.

My wife arrived about 9:00 am after dropping the kids off to school. In response to their questions of where daddy was, she simply said I had gone to the hospital because I wasn’t feeling well. They ingested this with their cereal and went off to school none the worse and not worrying.

I was very glad to see Kelly. We had a few teary moments. Later she confessed to being a bit mad at me. With a baby on the way and two youngsters, she would have been left in an unenviable position if I had … you know … left the scene. I didn’t mention that I would not have been very happy either.

Numerous EKG tests, an ultrasound of my heart and a stress test determined that my heart was in fact very strong. The issue had to do with a disruption of the normal functioning of the electrical system of the heart.

Normally the atria and ventricles work well together. Electrical impulses are sent from the sinoatrial node to the atrioventrical node … these impulses induce the valves to contract and pump in unison.

In atrial fibrillation and flutter, which I was experiencing, the atria are stimulated to contract very quickly and differently from normal activity. This results in an uncoordinated contraction of the atria. The condition can be caused by impulses which are transmitted to the ventricles in an irregular fashion or by some impulses failing to be transmitted. This makes the ventricles beat irregularly, which leads to an irregular (and usually fast) pulse.

Fun stuff.

I was finally okayed to depart about 7:00 pm. Before I left I noticed that a newcomer had been added to the cardiac intensive care unit. He had suffered a heart attack. I looked at the name posted next to the room and wondered if it was just a coincidence. I got a nurse to talk to the man’s wife and discovered that indeed he was my 8th grade science teacher from 37 years ago (for the sake of family privacy, I will not mention his name).

Before I left I asked if I could speak to him. He was conscious, but obviously dazed and in some pain. I told him who I was and that he surely did not remember me, since 37 years had passed. I remembered him, though, I said, and told him that he had been a good teacher and he had made a difference to me. He smiled.

It was a good ending to a day that had begun with much uncertainty and fear.

The Essential McIlheran

New York Times book reviewer, Orville Prescott, in “ A Literary Personality,” said of Faulkner’s style:

The famous Faulkner style was more than many could put up with. Its marathon sentences, its peculiar words used peculiarly, its turgid incoherence and its thick viscosity repelled.

He could just as easily been describing the dense, gooey discourse of a Patrick McIlheran column.

We at the Other Side appreciate the difficulty inherent in perusing the screwed up word play of a McIlheran piece. So, the authors of Mindless Automaton (a simplification of that which is named McBride), in the spirit of providing healing to those who have been caught in the sticky, oily web of McIlheran profundity offer the Essential McIlheran.

-- Working for Change

McNamara-McGraw Comments Wrong

At the risk of being called a groupie of Xoff, which is where I first happened to see this, let me say: Larraine McNamara-McGraw’s (a Democratic candidate for Milwaukee Count district attorney) speculation that police might have been involved in the murder of 13-year old Candace Moss is absolutely, unequivocally wrong!

Milwaukee police may have been involved in many disturbing incidents over the past two years, but her comments are extreme pandering for which there is no excuse. I for one cannot vote for someone who misuses the public pulpit in this manner. I will not vote for her because if this is how she acts on the campaign trail, I must question how she would act if given prosecutorial powers.