Ya know, I was all excited when I read the headlines this morning "Gore and U.N. Panel Win Peace Prize for Climate Work" in the New York Times, I was waiting around for the phone call and everything, thinking that my share of the prize money would come in handy to fix the crack in my windshield and all... but then I read that it was AL Gore. (sigh)

As they are apt to say around Wrigleyville, "wait 'till next year!"

— Mitch Gore

Over at BlueOregon in the comments to a piece that DPO Chairwoman Meredith Wood Smith posted about Democrats "Living Our Values", a Fright-Wing™ nutter using the handle "county" posted within a torrent of misguided B.S. this little gem:

Oregon voters voted one man one woman, and again, the values of the legislature was to overturn the will of the peoples vote.

Which is utter crap. The overwhelming majority of Oregonians in poll after poll (even conservative skewed polls like Riley Reasearch's one from two years) favor civil unions (CUs) which extend equal rights for same-gender couples (and not just Oregon either, but nationally as well I might add). That ignorant folks like "county" buy into scare tactic B.S. about the word "marriage" is why bigoted measures like 36 passed. And while CUs are still separate and unequal (because they do nothing on the Federal level) the overwhelming majority of voters support them. So his/hers conflation of measure 36 and the passage of CU legislation is sophistry writ large.

All that aside, majority rules is not an expression of values. If we used that as the basis alone for what constitutes "values" then we would still "value" and have Jim Crow and anti-miscegenation laws on the books and being enforced. Just because people like "county" hold values which are predicated on discrimination and bigotry does not make it values that Democrats, nor the majority of Oregonians as a whole ascribe too.

Tonight there are fireworks scheduled on the floor of the United States Senate as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid-D (NV) is calling the Republicans bluff on their threats of a filibuster. CNN even showed video of some service employee rolling mattresses into an side-room for Senators to nap on for the marathon debate session which is expected.

There has been a flurry of commentary in the wake of the R.M.S. Titanic Bush press conference today. And many have also commented about an exchange where Bush goes even further in stating that Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11 than he ever has (when will that ever sink into the craniums of the Bush-bot base who still believe that Iraq was involved in the WTC attacks?)... but I feel I must share my reaction, if for no other reason than a cathartic release so as to not shred the remains of relaxation I managed to stitch together in my vacation trip to San Francisco this past weekend to catch the Gary Numan concert at The Fillmore (which was a phenomenal show).

And without further adieu, my running talk-back to the Idiot-in-Chief.