Skip to main content

Bat-crap Crazy!

Sometimes finding the right words eludes us.  

Consider, for instance, how to describe the people who want to run against Barack Obama for the Presidency:  Newt the Serial Gingrich, Tiny Tim Pawlenty, Our Belle Michele Bachmann, the Former Half-Governor of Alaska, or Mike Mau-Mau Huckabee.  Something there is that eludes an accurate and appropriate description of all of them. 

Not Brian Schweitzer, the Governor of Montana.  He has a knack for precision when it comes to common-sense description.

In Montana, the Republican legislature has proposed a number of things.   Some Montana legislators think it might be a fine thing to secede from the Union; you know, kind of go it alone up there in Montana.  The Montana Nation.  Other legislators have suggested that allowing silencers on hunting guns might be kind of fun.  As you might expect, others Montanans believe that hunting with a spear is more their style.  And it is!  

It's not all about hunting and seceding, of course.  Some of the Republican legislators, who hate government intervention, you understand, as a matter of deep principle, have proposed that people who want a divorce should be required to spend six weeks in counseling, and then get a divorce.  And while they are in counseling, the legislature proposes create an armed paramilitary militia, and to put into law a stern denial of climate change.  That should take care of flooding!

Then, too, they want an 11-person commission with the power to veto any Federal laws they do not like.   Maybe fight the Civil War over again, I suppose.  Oh, yes!  They want a birther bill, too!  Send Obama out of the country, back to Hawaii!

"Bat-crap crazy!"  That's what Brian Schweitzer call it.  

I wonder if Schweitzer has time to moderate the Republican debates coming up in Iowa.  



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w