For officially deciding that GOProud can’t take part in an “official” capacity at CPAC, I would like to say to you the following:

Go fuck yourself.

A shame. I was actually hoping to attend this year.

God knows that the intersection of Olympic and Bundy in West LA is a nightmare for drivers during the evening commute.  There are lots of reasons to think that maybe a major new hospital complex at that location is not a good idea.  Since I drive past that point every day, I can understand the opposition. 

But there is no excuse for the enormous lie that graces the cover of the mass mailer that went out today:

Anyone looking at this flyer would think that this huge campus was being dropped into the middle of a residential district, surrounded by a sea of houses with swimming pools and, no doubt, small children and pets who would all be at risk.

In fact it is a run-down commercial/light industrial area with a number of vacant and/or foreclosed properties, and no houses for quite some ways.

Shame on the “Fight Bundy Village” folks. As Congressman Weiner demonstrated, lies never help, especially when the truth will serve as well.

From ESPN.com comes the story of Kansas City Chiefs tight end Leonard Pope, who saved a 6-year-old boy from drowning in a swimming pool. The Chiefs’ backup tight end on Saturday saved the son of a longtime friend from drowning in his hometown of Americus, Ga.  According to the boy’s mother, Pope was the only person at the party who knew how to swim. Pope jumped into the pool — wearing all of his clothes, “cell phone, wallet and everything” — and pulled her son, Bryson, from the water.  The tight end would have been at camp but for the NFL lockout.

In January 2010 Palm Desert High School announced a fundraiser for parents of graduates and other parents and community members.  For a donation of $100 or more, donors could purchase a brick or bench, engraved with a message, that would become a permanent part of the campus.  The order form did not specify restrictions on the messages.

Two community members paid for bricks to be enscribed with Bible verses.  Later the financially-strapped school district notified the two Christian women that their bricks were rejected, citing “separation of church and state.”  In response the Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit on the women’s behalf.  In the lawsuit the plaintiffs noted that other religious messages had been accepted, including a Bible verse in Spanish and a Hindu quote from Mahatma Ghandi.

Last week the parties reached a settlement in which the school district refunded all of the money and destroyed the bricks and benches.   Although their goal was to participate in the fundraiser — not to stop it — the plaintiffs are being blamed as selfish and un-Christian by many in the community for the loss of the $45,000 that the school district returned to the donors.

The ADF attorney said regarding the settlement, “Christians should be allowed to express themselves on public school campuses just like everyone else. It is cowardly to shut down everyone’s participation in this program simply out of animosity toward Christian speech. There is absolutely nothing unconstitutional about a Bible verse on a brick when a school opens up a program for anyone to express a personal message. The school could simply have allowed the Bible verses, but instead, it chose to punish everyone.”

Just this morning, via Popehat, I learned of the passing of Joel Rosenberg.

I first got to know Joel – as much as anyone can be said to know someone via internet interaction – back in 2007.  While we certainly disagreed in that instance, I knew right then that I liked the guy.

Flash forward a number of years, and lo do we learn of Joel standing up for his rights again the jack-booted thugs of the Minneapolis Police Department.

An impressive man in all senses of the word.

I’ll be picking up his books soon, as I feel some certain amount of shame for never having read them before.

Farewell, Joel.

I did not watch it, but here are things I wish it had contained (I am informed none of them actually did, more’s the pity)

- “I, William, take you, Kate to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward; for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, or until I find some other whore to start banging…  Oh, sorry, looks like these were Dad’s…

- “Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam…”

- Instead of traditional wedding march, they use either Yackety Sax or Liberty Bells.

I’m a “Rule of Law” kinda guy…  I don’t like drug laws, but I abide by them. I don’t like the Supreme Court’s ruling in Snyder v Phelps, but I recognize it as being the right decision. I dislike it when celebrities get virtually no punishment at all for crimes that would see one of us plebeians thrown into jail.

So I’m actually sort of upset by this verdict.

The jury in Charleston Municipal Court found Billy Spade of Hico not-guilty of the charge.  Spade was arrested when he spit tobacco juice on a member of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Look…  I hate the WBC and all it’s members.  I wouldn’t life a finger to assist them in any way regardless of what was happening.  Hell, I’d probably not help them even if it caused me to suffer the same fate. Seriously, my hate and loathing of those completely worthless fuckwits is a real and tangible thing.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the guy did commit battery.  He spit on her, for crying out loud. If I spit on – or even at – a cop, my ass would be soundly beaten and tossed in jail, and I would almost certainly lose my court battle. The man’s claim at trial that he was spitting on her sign, which she was holding over her head, is pretty damned weak. In my mind it doesn’t even pass “reasonable doubt”.

What happened here was the jury didn’t like the victim, and so the wrong-doer got a walk, and frankly that should scare the shit out of you.

What if the jury just plain didn’t like black people? Or gays? What if they don’t like Republicans? Or Jews?

Would you be OK with the a jury giving a pass to someone who just walked up and spit on a gay man holding a sign saying he wants the right to marry?  Would you be OK with a gay man getting a pass for spitting on a girl saying marriage should only be between a man and a woman?

If not, why would you find it OK to spit on a member of the WBC?

Either the law applies to everyone, or it should apply to no one.

Now, to start with I would like to say that I dislike the idea of electing judges (or more specifically having to re-elect them). If anything might give an example as to why, we only need to look at Wisconsin.

The Kloppenburg/Prosser election is, you just know it, going to become a huge pile of fraud and litigation.  Kloppenburg currently leads with 204 votes, with supposedly 500 ballots being found in a precinct that went 73% for Prosser.

Look, the Franken election went the exact same way – boxes and boxes of ballots were found in fucking car trunks, for fuck’s sake.

There are reports of ballots being shredded, students voting multiple times, and then there’s the fun WI law where you can register to vote the day of the election and you’re eligible to vote after a mere 10 days’ residence.  Let that one sink in – stay there for ten days and show a couple of bills (I would suggest an VoIP phone bill and cell phone bill, personally), and you’re good to go.

Thankfully, the Wisconsin Attorney General is a Republican, so people who commit voter fraud might actually get prosecuted (though the SoS is a Dem, so no telling how much cooperation there will be).

Every person who voted twice needs to be prosecuted, every report of destroyed ballots need to be investigated like it was an attempt on the life of a US President, and any attempt at stone-walling or impeding efforts to prevent the stealing of an election needs to find the person sitting the fuck in jail.

No mistake, this is going to be long and dirty.

And don’t even think about what happens if litigation ends up in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court…

Update: With some votes still being counted, the totals have swung so Prosser has a very, very slim lead (double digits).

If you care to watch a man slowly go mad with rage and desperation, I highly recommend the twitter feed of one Michael Moore.

Kloppenburg has already declared victory! Repubs in WI r behaving like sore losers. Now they’ve hired Bush lawyer from FL 2000 recount.

I think I have a Shadenboner…

Either I am the most out-of-shape person on the entire planet, or Ubisoft’s “Your Shape – Fitness Evolved” for the Xbox 360 (Kinect required) is brutal.

Also, backwards lunges can fuck right off.

I’ll give a real, almost completely profanity-free review if folks would like…

Apparently – so I have been told – there has been a bit of a too-do in Wisconsin, what with every single State Senator with a “D” after their name fleeing for part unknown for over 3 week because they don’t want their biggest contributors to lose any amount of power.

We will, for the moment, continue to ignore how it is possible that the news stories haven’t carried titles like “Worthless Elected Officials Run Like Bitches” and “Why Won’t Those Shits Come Do Their Fucking Job?”.  Instead, we will focus on more current events.  Events like the State Senate deciding ‘eh, fuck it‘ and deciding that, since the only time they require a quorum to vote on a bill is when it is fiscal in nature (which I am told has a very specific meaning in Wisconsin), they would simply separate from the bill all the stuff dealing with the unions, make it it’s own bill, and vote on that.

So they did a little conference with the State Assembly, and then in a floor session lasting mere minutes, voted on and passed it.

Without a single damned Democrat in the room, and if there were Democrat State Senators in the state, it was only on the highways as they sped back to Madison.

Or maybe there decided that they would hang out a little bit longer and take further advantage of that “Stay 10 days, get a free night’s stay” deal.  I say that because, with the State Assembly set to vote Thursday morning on the measure, they still won’t say when they plan on coming back.

Senate Democratic leader Mark Miller of Monona says Democrats will “join the people of Wisconsin in taking back their government,” but he refused to say when.

Here’s a little bit for friendly advice for State Senator Miller: When you flee the state to prevent a vote on something – and thus flying in the face of everything the word “democracy” stands for – you don’t get to pledge to “come take back the government”.  You pretty much proved that you are unfit for any sort of office, and probably shouldn’t even be allowed to vote in elections in the first place.

LA Times headline today:

Gov. Jerry Brown tells legislators he will push for a $25-billion cut in California’s budget unless voters OK tax extension

Jerry Brown, testifying before the Legislature, says without more taxes he will insist on a budget that is balanced through spending cuts. He has said he does not want to borrow to close the gap.

“I want to make one thing clear,” Brown said. “… If we don’t get the tax extensions, I am not going to sign a budget [unless it is] an all-cuts budget.”

So, is this supposed to be a reason to vote FOR the tax increases?  And does anyone really believe that the legislature will go along?  The prospect of an all-Democrat government shutdown has my irony meter working overtime.

Not even in the slightest…

This, as they say, really is the money quote:

A TSA spokeswoman confirmed that Diego Gonzalez was a TSA behavior detection officer

These people are in charge of finding people in the crowd who will receive added scrutiny.

These are the people we are told to trust, people who are highly trained and complete professionals.

We. Are. Fucked.