The Alton Weekly Inquirer! 03-21-08

From the top floor of the Alton Weekly Inquirer Action EyeWitness NewsCenter On Your Side, in the true-blue state of Illinois....

Our Top Story Today: Swedish town celebrates Church Cock victory!

This isn't about what it sounds like.  No, really:

"It’s a lovely cock," said Anna-Maria Larsson, the parish vicar, who plans to mention the award during Easter services on Sunday.

"We’re fortunate to have such a nice symbol on top of our old church."

Finally, we found a new church for Ted Haggard to preach in!  Let's go to press!

The Alton Weekly Inquirer!  News from around the nation, around the world, and up your alley!  ("Up my alley?"  Up YOURS!)

Brock Olivo: Pure. Comedy. Gold:  Our favorite social studies class graduate and MO-9 Republican candidate has managed to file his FEC paperwork under two last names, Olivo and Olivio.  Apparently he made an original filing with the misspelled last name (!) and didn't realize one could simply edit the paperwork to get the spelling right.  How did this man pass his SAT's to get into the University of Missouri?  Wait, he was a recruited football player.  Never mind.

Your Republican Party at work--Chain Gang Charlie division:  Florida Gov. Charlie Crist appointed the non-lawyer 34-year old spouse of his general counsel to a position on the Public Employees Relations Commission.  As back-scratchy as that looks, it gets even better:

Sara Gonzalez, 34, was an assistant for a dermatologist when chosen for her position as chairwoman of the Public Employees Relations Commission, effective April 7.

That's right, Charlie appointed essentially a tanning bed attendant to oversee handling of complaints by state employees.  Florida Politics has done some great work on this story, and it is starting to get legs with the Florida media.    

You kids be sure to study and do your homework--if it fits in with your dogma: Lost amidst the justifiable uproar over Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern's homophobic speech recently was this bill filed by our favorite minimeister of wingnuttia, the Religious Viewpoints Anti-Discrimination Act.  Okie Funk blogmeister Kurt Hochenauer has been all over it; the short version is that, if it becomes law, students can actually opt out of lectures or exams covering subjects such as, say evolution, that do not conform to their beliefs.  

(BTW, I was an Oklahoma City resident for 12 years.   Out of curiosity I checked the district map for the Oklahoma House and found to my surprise that when I lived in OKC, I lived within 1 block of this woman's house district.  I actually had a job in her house district, which also includes the very conservative Southern Nazarene University.  I wasn't as involved in politics then, but I don't recall our state Rep. as being as big an idiot as Rep. Kern.)

Thanks for nothing, Daily Disappointment: Oklahoma's largest fishwrap newspaper didn't exactly burn Sally Kern over her remarks on their editorial page.  While starting out promisingly enough, calling Kern's views "callous and wrong" the editorial veered back towards the direction of wingnuttia:

Kern has been bombarded with e-mails and phone messages, many of them hateful and ugly. But she's offered no apology, saying she was talking about gay activists who target conservative Republicans. (Those activists, it should be noted, often resort to similarly extreme and incendiary arguments, usually without recrimination.)

Shorter Oklahoman: the gays get away with it, why can't an upstanding Christian like we really support?

Pithy comparisons:  The Beachwood Reporter's McRib Affairs Desk offered these comparisons between John McCain and the McDonald's sandwich in the March 18th edition:

McCain: Claims to oppose pork
McRib: Claims to be pork

McCain: Stages barbecue for gullible reporters
McRib: Poses as barbecue for gullible diners

McRib: Limited time only
McCain: Limited time left

Once again, a sportswriter gets it right:  CNN-Sports Illustrated's Peter King, whom I've approvingly linked to before, discusses John Grisham's latest book, The Appeal--and in doing so, makes a salient point about the current Obama-Jeremiah Wright controversy:

Some of the dirty tricks in his [Grisham's fictional] Mississippi election, with strings pulled from hundreds of miles away, reminds me of what can happen in elections today. It's got to be pretty frustrating to be, say, Barack Obama, and get blamed for the views of a fire-and-brimstone preacher you've listened to over the years.

Oh yes, and we are feeling the frustration also, especially with the mouth-breathers who accept every bit of pablum Fox News, et al, feeds them.  Maybe Peter King needs his own CNN show--Lord knows he'd be light-years ahead of Glenn Beck.

This week's Floyd R. Turbo award (Confederate Yankee division):  My local paper, The Alton Telegraph, has a section entitled Sound-Off where people can call in short opinions.  This turd gem was published yesterday:

Here's an excellent example of "the victors write the history." Post-bellum propaganda and decades of government schooling have turned Lincoln into a revered saint. The Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure and effectively freed no slaves at all. Slavery ended peacefully elsewhere in the hemisphere, was becoming economically non-viable, and a war was not necessary. Up until Lincoln, secession was widely thought to be a normal privilege allowed to the states; he supported warring against civilians, jailed those who disagreed with his war, shut down newspapers and suspended the right of habeas corpus. Why is this man idolized? He was a big-government tyrant and a white supremacist of the worst kind. This Lincoln worshipping needs to stop.

You'll notice the author of the above called this in, rather than write it as an LTE where he or she would have to sign their name.  Anyone want to place bets that this person who thought the Civil War was unnecessary most likely supported the Iraq invasion enthusiastically?

(Historical irony alert:  Assuming this caller is from Alton, he would be calling from the same town where, in 1837, an abolisionist publisher had his printing presses thrown into the Mississippi River.  Heh.)

Your moment of Inky:

Here she is on one of her periodic trips to survey her realm.

What's the news in your world this week?