After 22 years of rocket fuel production, my sweet, faithful friend is gone. Let us all have a moment of silence...

(moment of silence)

Okay, you shouldn't talk ill of the dead, but let's chat... What fell off was a screw holding a little screen the grounds sit directly below while brewing. And what fell out when it came off is the stuff of nightmares. The thought that the steam for my coffee has been percolating through the mineral deposit chunks that were packed in that small space gives me the heebee jeebies... And even grosser, there appeared to be a tiny amount of insect silk in there. No, I'm serious. We have periodic problems with flour moths, but what would they be doing in there? Eeewwww....

So the Krups is going to the recycle bin in the sky, and I'm going shopping tonight for a new Krups. Hey, that was a 22 year old machine -- that's freakin' quality. But I have to tell you something, I am promising myself that I will never again keep a cappucino maker over five years. Goodwill can have it after that.

And when discussing the accusation that somehow the Obama administration is "socialist", even Rod Blagojevich threw Tantaros to the mat explaining that, if anything, Obama is only slightly left of center and, against the expectations of his electorate, he hasn't been nearly "radical" enough.

By the time it was over, Mrs. Tantaros was flushed, strident, yammering, and clearly overwhelmed. It was cool!

This boy don't mess around.

The reason I bring this up is because of the coffee I was using for the last month. It was called Palao, and it was the best coffee I've ever used. It comes from Brazil and was given to me a gentleman I had the pleasure to work with for a short time to develop a fiscal printer interface. Roberto, you opened my eyes to how good my coffee could be, and now that it's gone and I'm back to Peet's Coffee (which is not bad in its own right), I miss it.

He said the following: "Fox, like Limbaugh, has an interest in pushing the Republicans to the margins, making people angry. When people are angry and alienated, they don’t vote. They succumb to feelings of helplessness. What people need right now are feelings of power, that they can make a difference by participating in politics."

So in other words, Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck, Savage, etc., these morons are in fact tearing the Republican Party apart by supporting the teabagger movement and inciting violence against Democrat officials. Which, if you're outside the walls of the GOP, falls into the "Duh" column for completely obvious statements.

Frum is the same guy that said, "The Republicans thought that 'Fox works for us', and now we're discovering we work for Fox." It sounds like Frum can no longer tolerate that sour taste he gets in his mouth when he's toeing the party line, lying to the easily confused, and ginning up the ignorant.

On the other hand, let's give Caribou Barbie a break -- you know she reads "all of it, all the things that have been in front of [her] over the years", but she apparently doesn't absorb much of that reading.

I wish this was just an April Fool's joke, but it's not.

This is what happens when religion rules a country. This is why our forefathers separated church and state. This is why the United States Congress declared that this was not a Christian nation back around 1810. Because they knew that if they allowed this to become a nation founded on a religion that people like those at the Westboro Baptist Church would be conducting witchhunts of one kind or another under the authority of the state.

The people of Saudi Arabia need to join the 21st century instead of living in the 12th century. What a bunch of backwards idiots. They are going to deprive a man of his life, a wife of her husband, children of their father, in the name of superstition. SORCERY?! For crying out loud, you have GOT to be kidding.

And because I want the people of that country to know what kind of morons I think they are, here's the text above run through Google's translation services.

أتمنى لهذا كان الأمر مجرد نكتة كذبة نيسان (أبريل ، ولكنه ليس كذلك.

هذا هو ما يحدث قواعد الدين عند بلد. وهذا هو السبب لدينا الأجداد فصل الكنيسة عن الدولة. هذا هو السبب في أن الولايات المتحدة أعلنت أن الكونغرس وهذا ليس وطنا مسيحيا عودة 1810. لأنه يعلم انهم اذا كانوا يسمح هذا لتصبح دولة تقوم على دين ان امثال هؤلاء في فإن الكنيسة المعمدانية Westboro ستجري مطاردات من نوع أو آخر تحت سلطة الدولة.

وشعب المملكة العربية السعودية تحتاج للانضمام الى القرن 21 بدلا من الذين يعيشون في 12 القرن. ما حفنة من الاغبياء الى الوراء. وهم في طريقهم لحرمان رجل من حياته ، وهي زوجة لزوجها ، والأطفال من والدهم ، واسم الخرافات. السحر؟! لتبكي بصوت عال ، لديك يجب أن يكون تمزح.

4/1/2010   I actually read about this a couple of days ago, but I had to take a while to cool off before writing about it.

Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder was killed in action in Iraq in 2006. He was serving his country and lost his life. Regardless of what you think of war or Iraq or Bush and Cheney, et al, Lance Cpl. Snyder was one of this nation's heroes and deserved to be honored and respected at his funeral. But the vile, evil members of the Westboro Baptist Church picketed his funeral, carrying signs that said things like "You're going to hell," "God hates you," and "Thank God For dead soldiers."

Snyder's father sued the Westboro Baptist Church for privacy invasion, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy. I'm not clear, as I write this, what "civil conspiracy" is, and I'm not sure that a funeral, which is typically held in a public cemetery, has an expectation of privacy, but this would seem to be a slam-dunk on the issue of "intentional infliction of emotional distress". "Thank God for dead soldiers" signs at a funeral for a soldier killed in combat? Yeah, that's intentional infliction of emotional distress. That's intentional infliction of the desire to beat the mortal crap out of the demonstrators.

And Mr. Snyder won the case, but when the WBC appealed, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals saw it differently. It not only overturned the case, it ruled that Mr. Snyder had to pay WBC over $16,000 in legal fees.

(desolate pause)

I just don't know what to say. This makes me so angry and so frustrated. I understand and revere the First Amendment, but there is some speech that is not deemed to be protected. You can't say something that leads directly to someone else being physically harmed. You can't slander or libel. So why is it such a stretch to include speech that goes well beyond intentional infliction of emotional distress, beyond decency, beyond respect to one of this nation's institutions, and institution that could be argued is older than the nation itself, that of reverence to its fallen soldiers?

I'm probably on shaky legal ground. I know that what I'm asking for has no basis anywhere else in our legal code. And the WBC can argue that it is their religious mandate to picket these funerals.

The matter goes before the Supreme Court next. They will be asked to consider the overlap of laws design to protect the sanctity of funerals and free speech, and the rights of cemeteries to prevent demonstrations from affecting funerals.

As for WBC, their attorney and Fred Phelps daughter, religious whackjob Margie Phelps stated to the press that the Bible always described the removal of the Lord's prophets from the land as foreshadowing epic events. She and her family believe that they will be removed, and the ill-will they're gladly accruing is hastening that removal.

I hope they reach the finish line real soon now...

4/1/2010:   The GOP managed to force into the healthcare bill a renewal of $50 million a year for sex education programs that focus on abstinence, in spite of the fact that EVERY abstinence-only program had resulted in an INCREASE in teen pregnancies and STDs because the kids have JUST AS MUCH SEX as kids who go through normal sex education classes but don't know, or feel icky about, using condoms and other forms of birth control.

Thanks, Republicans. Thanks for continuing to screw our country into the ground. Heaven forbid that we, the educated and informed, should EVER drag the rest of the country into the present. You backwards idiots need to get your moronic heads around the idea that pregnancy shouldn't be a punishment. So your moral code requires that a young adult refuse to have sex until they are married. Okay, fine, but can't you at least balance that with the realization that, human nature being what it is, if the teenager is going to have sex they should know how to protect themselves?

This isn't rocket science people.

One of my all-time favorite videos on YouTube. The Westboro Baptist Church freaks chased out of town.

Love this one, too. The college students decided to counter-picket, and as things heated up the WBC made a hasty, police-protected retreat.

Strength in numbers. Counter-protestors completely overwhelm the WBC zombies with their brainwashed kids. The part where it gets good is around 3:40.

Patriots harass the WBC into calling it a day.

Maryland knows how to counter-protest religious whackjobs.

3/22/2010:   The following Democrats could not be convinced to do the right thing where healthcare reform was concerned. As such, they must be replaced:

These elected officials are either ignorant or they've sold their souls to the Republican Party. Either way, it's time that the Democrats built a party that could be relied upon to do the right thing. These people need to be replaced at the next election.

Full transcript of the bill, "debate", and vote can be found at: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?position=all&page=H5733&dbname=2008_record. You'll need to flip to about page 11 using the irritating little links at the bottom because apparently no one has notified Congress that PDFs can be more than one page long...