I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States…

Why do I mention this? Because there’s a bunch of bigots out there who have forgotten this part of their oath as a federal employee or as holders of political offices.

The Constitution of the United States is very clear. People have the right to practice whatever religion they damn well please. Part of that right is to have houses of worship.

So why on earth is the proposal, by a religious group, to build a community center which will include an area used for worship in dispute at all?

If it meets the local building and land-use codes, it not only should be allowed, but it MUST be allowed.

If you believe in religious freedom; if you want to have the right to choose your own religion; if you want to be able to gather with others and worship or pray together; and if you take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, then you should not be fighting any such proposal.

In fact, you should be supporting it against anyone who is trying to stop it. You should be saying “look, it’s their right, and more importantly it’s what separates us from oppressive governments like those in Saudi Arabia or Iran.”

I’m discussing this, of course, because of the hubbub around the proposal by a Muslim group to build a community center- which will include a mosque- a few blocks away from Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center towers used to stand, in lower Manhattan.

Whether you like Muslims (or Islam as a religion) or not should not be at issue here.

Whether you blame all Muslims for 9/11 or not (though if you do, you’re a idiot) shouldn’t matter.

What matters is that they have a right, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, to build that community center.

Every American who believes in our Constitution should be defending this proposal.

And people who aren’t defending it are, put simply, un-American. Newt Gingrich, claiming that we should stop it from being built? Un-American. Republicans running for Congress, bitching about it? Un-America.

It is NOT an American habit to suppress religions. It goes against our very nature. Yes, we might feel discomfort with Muslims being near the WTC site, but we must fight that discomfort and stand up for the rights of everyone in America to worship as they see fit.

And that includes Muslims. Like it or not.

(Alonso posted this to his Facebook page today. I thought it was particularly good. So often, we want a perfect “other” to come and fix us, to make us happy… and that never works, because nobody is perfect.)

One of the things that the Republicans have bitched about lately is the moratorium on deepwater drilling that the Obama Administration has implemented (a bit too late for thousands of birds, sea turtles, and countless numbers of other creatures in the Gulf). They claim this drilling ban (even if temporary) is horrible for the economy of the Gulf Coast.

You know what’s horrible for the economy of the Gulf Coast? A oil well spewing a bajillion gallons of crude oil into the ocean. (It would appear that the Gulf Coast is, therefore, screwed either way.)

But put that aside. Even if the government opens up deepwater drilling again, it’s highly likely that… it won’t happen. Know why?

Well, the answer is in this article.

Insurance costs for deepwater drilling are poised to rise by as much as 50 percent after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and the increases are sharp enough that it could make some exploration and production projects too expensive no matter what happens with new regulations in Washington.

. . .

The impact is particularly potent in deepwater, meaning depths of greater than 1,000 feet, the areas of the Gulf of Mexico that hold the most remaining oil reserves.

Drilling in deepwater is more price-sensitive than other types of oil exploration, because it requires expensive state-of-the-art equipment, detailed analysis of hard-to-reach geology and long planning horizons for projects. Many deepwater exploration and production projects are viable only when oil prices are expected to remain high, so increases in the costs of drilling could render some projects unfeasible.

In other words, all this whining about how the Big Bad Evil Government is unConstitutionally intruding on the poor little oil companies’ ability to provide jobs and money to the common people doesn’t matter.

(And of course anyone who believe that the oil companies are in it for the People is an idiot; the oil companies don’t give a shit about people, turtles, fish, the environment, or anything but making as much money as possible at every moment.)

The reality is this: If you make the companies pay the true price of their drilling, which includes the costs associated with the inevitable accidents (and yeah, accidents do happen, even if they are the result of negligence or even outright recklessness of the drilling companies) then those companies might decide that they can’t afford to do it.

So don’t believe, not for a minute, the crocodile tears of the Republicans. They aren’t bitching because they are concerned about the little guy. They’re bitching because they want their corporate overlords to have the freedom to drill or not, but even knowing that deepwater drilling is likely to be pulled way back or even stopped, they’ll still pretend that it’s President Obama who’s responsible for bad news.

This is just another example of how dishonest politics has become, led primarily by the right wing noise machine of entities like Fox News and right wing talk radio.

If you want to honestly talk about deepwater drilling, then do so. If you want to point out that hey, the reality is that we love our big-ass cars and we, jointly, are responsible for drilling all these wells because we can’t give up our SUVs and so forth, then do so.

But spare us the bullshit about how Obama is to blame for drilling slowing down. The market is speaking, and when insurance costs for oil companies skyrockets companies are going to be less likely to drill.

Oh, and you know what will happen then? The odds are the government is going to put on new regulations, requiring more safety equipment and better blowout valves and so forth, and you can bet that the Republicans will blame THAT for the oil companies deciding to not drill as much. But it’ll really be as much because of the market, and the higher insurance costs, as anything else.

The water main for my neighborhood broke today- in fact it’s right out in front of my building. The main through here is fairly old- up to 100 years old, in fact- and it just finally gave way.

There’s a big hole opened up in the street and of course we’ve got nothing in the building.

It’s not a huge deal- they’re out there working on it even at midnight, so it’ll probably be fixed relatively soon- but it’s inconvenient and fairly a hassle when you want to have a shower, or flush your toilet, or whatever. You don’t really think about it until it’s not working.

“It doesn’t matter how you try to sell it to us,” yipped the Prom King of new right, Glenn Beck. “It doesn’t matter how many celebrities you get, it doesn’t matter how many bars open early, it doesn’t matter how many beer commercials they run, we don’t want the World Cup, we don’t like the World Cup, we don’t like soccer, we want nothing to do with it.”

What a moron.

The author of the opinion piece thinks that Beck gets all hysterical about soccer because it threatens Beck’s vision of a fairly monochromatic, white, suburban America. The reality is that America is far more multicultural (and brown!) than it’s ever been, and it’s only going to continue no matter what happens with the whole immigration reform debate.

(And let’s face it, Glenn Beck gets hysterical over anything and everything. It’s absolutely amazing to me that anyone takes that clown seriously about anything at all.)

Glenn Beck is, really, an avatar. He’s the representation of a group of people who aren’t open-minded enough to accept reality. The reality is (as Dave Zirin, the author of the column points out) that soccer is the most popular sport played by children in America- some estimates have as many as 15 to 20 million kids playing soccer. And it’s also a quite popular recreational sport for adults, too.

That’s reality. The reality is that soccer continues to grow in popularity (MLS attendance is up 15% from last year) and the Glenn Becks of the world are just going to have to get used to it.

Or… we can just wait ‘em out, because they’re mostly old people. The younger generations of Americans get it and are increasingly loving soccer, no matter what Beck and his fellow right-wing loonies proclaim.

He had on a t-shirt supporting the idea of domestic oil exploration. At least that’s what I’m guessing it was for.

It had a big map of Alaska on it and a slogan.

“DRILL HERE, DRILL NOW!”

I was going to tell him that Seattle and San Francisco are two cities where that shirt just might be seen slightly differently… then I thought about this dude having some guys (with a sense of humor) hitting on him constantly and him not understanding why, and I laughed, and I didn’t say anything to him about it.

I hope he gets his wish and gets drilled.

Here’s an example. Recently, conservative bloggers and pundits have been heavily criticizing President Obama because he did not attend Memorial Day services at Arlington National Cemetery.

They have driven the media narrative to the point where the media is saying the President “is skipping the usual visit to Arlington”.

But is it really “traditional”? Of the past 4 Presidents, stretching back decades, let’s have a look.

• President George W Bush was in office 8 years. In that time, he went to Arlington 7 times. The one time he missed, he was at services at a military cemetery in Normandy, France.
• President Bill Clinton was in office 8 years. In that time, he went to Arlington all 8 years.
• President George HW Bush was in office 4 years. In that time, he never went to Memorial Day services at Arlington.
• President Ronald Reagan was in office 8 years. In that time, he went to Arlington 4 times. One of the 4 times he missed, he was recovering from the assassination attempt. The other three times he was otherwise engaged but did not go to a National or military cemetery.

So that’s 28 years worth of Presidents.

19 of those years (68% of the time) the President went to services at Arlington. (Interestingly enough, the one who came the closest to making it a true “tradition” was a Democratic President, Bill Clinton.)

Of the 9 years (32% of the time) that the President missed, 7 were complete skips, with no attendance at a military cemetery at all. 1 was fairly excusable (President Reagan recovering from being shot) and 1 was President George W Bush going to a cemetery elsewhere.

So first of all, let’s face it; it’s not really a “tradition”. It’s common, about two-thirds of the time the President does it, but it’s not absolute; I don’t think anyone could accuse President George HW Bush of not liking the military (being ex-military and a vet of a foreign war himself) but he never went to Arlington.

So right there we see how the right-wing hate machine has skewed the viewpoint of the media.

What’s more, they are pushing this and the media is so cowed that they don’t report the actual facts. They suggest that somehow there’s shame in not going to Arlington, as if the fallen members of our military who are in the over 100 other National Cemeteries don’t deserve our respect and honor.

Why?

Because they hate President Obama, so much that they’re willing to disrespect the fallen military members buried (for example) in Lincoln National Cemetery. They’re willing to ignore the fact that one of their own, conservative President George HW Bush, never did a Memorial Day ceremony.

They’re so desperate to get everyone hating President Obama that they’ll go for ANY reason to do so, ignoring his speech, ignoring his history of honoring the military, ignoring the truth, and generating all kinds of noise and lies to get us to believe that Obama is some kind of horrible scumbag.

Whether you like Obama’s policies or not, don’t buy into the hype and hate. Object, if you must, to political decisions, but don’t use the sacred memory of our fallen soldiers to try and score cheap points.

Those who do are disrespecting our nation’s dead.

But did you hear anything about the right-wing Christian terrorists who set out to wage war on America, wounding two cops and killing two other cops (which is four more people than were hurt or killed by the Times Square wannabe bomber)?

Nope, you probably didn’t.

The reality, though, is that there ARE right-wing terrorists out there. They’re whipped up into a fury by the election of a black Democrat as President, and they’re waging war on the United States.

These nitwits fortunately wound up unable to harm anyone else. The Memphis cops took them down.

But remember- the media doesn’t talk about the right-wing, Christian, white guy terrorists that ARE out there and who ARE killing people and who ARE trying to harm the United States.

Brown Muslim terrorists? All kinds of media attention paid to them. White guys? Nope, not so much, because that kind of hype doesn’t sell newspapers or get people watching TV news programs.

Today, that is Magnuson Park, in the Sand Point neighborhood of Seattle.

There is a decent size off-leash area here, and it has a path that goes right to a little beachfront area on Lake Washington.

The assortment of humans here- white, black, brown, yellow, red, and every shade in between, straight, gay, male, female, and at least a couple of people of indeterminate gender- is surpassed by the assortment of dogs!

Big, little, huge, tiny. Every breed you have ever seen and a few you probably haven’t. Purebreds, mutts, mutts that look purebred and vice versa.

But of course for Indy, who I probably should have trained to retrieve waterfowl, the best part is the swimming.

Indy loves the water. He sprints ahead on the path to get to the lake. He jams himself through the gates, even though they have signs telling people to only let their own dogs through; he is an expert at sneaking in when they think they have kept him out.

And once he is in, it is hard to get him out!

He is a fast swimmer and frequently beats other dogs to the balls that their owners have tossed.

Only problem is that he doesn’t bring them all the way back, preferring to drop them about 5 feet offshore, then waiting for someone to throw another one.

This, for an hour or so, makes this spot (on a gorgeous Pacific Northwest spring day, snowy mountains gleaming on the horizon, the smell of barbecues being lit, and my pasty white skin sizzling in the sun) the Happiest Place on Earth for Indy.

It’s working pretty well for me, too.

They might remake Lady Gaga videos, which are about as queer as a three dollar bill! It would be a horrible breakdown of military discipline…

Wait… what?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haHXgFU7qNI

LOL And these are the STRAIGHT guys?

I very much look forward to when we wake up and have a fair policy for anyone to serve in the military. Let’s face it, when gay culture (and believe me- Lady Gaga is 100 bajillion percent “gay culture”) has penetrated that far into the military, actually allowing gay folks to openly serve in the military isn’t going to make a damn bit of difference. Thousands of gay people serve with pride and honor right now, and it’s ridiculous that they are told by their nation that they can’t openly say “yeah, I’m gay”.

Meanwhile, kudos to the brave men (and women) serving in our military, and huge props to them for finding creative uses for their spare time. Great video.

Here’s the original, if you’re curious what the military guys are spoofing/remaking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ95z6ywcBY