I wanted to recommend this entry:
Kung Fu Monkey: I Still Miss Republicans

Mr. Monkey muses about another one of my favorite bloggers, principled conservative, John Cole, and concludes that he still misses Republicans. Back in December 2004, Kung Fu Monkey took a look at the Republican Party and wondered where all the Republicans went:

Remember Republicans? Sober men in suits, pipes, who’d nod thoughtfully over their latest tract on market-driven fiscal conservatism while grinding out the numbers on rocket science. Remember those serious-looking 1950’s-1960’s science guys in the movies — Republican to a one.

They were the grown-ups. They were the realists. Sure they were a bummer, maaaaan, but on the way to La Revolution
you need somebody to remember where you parked the car. I was never one (nor a Democrat, really, more an agnostic libertarian big on the social contract, but we don’t have a party …), but I genuinely liked them.

How did they become the party of fairy dust and make believe? How did they become the anti-science guys? The anti-fact guys? The anti-logic guys?

I’m not talking McCain, Hagel, Snowe, or Lugar, here, the cool hard-ass Republicans who still operate in the real world. I’m talking specifically about the guys running the party right now.

The anti-science stuff started bugging Mr. Cole to the point where he shook off the groupthink, looked around and saw there was a bunch of corruption and incompetence as well. So, anyway, Kung Fu Monkey reviewed the past couple of years and concludes that he still misses Republicans. He concludes that he is no more progressive than he ever was and that Mr. Cole is no less conservative than he ever was, and that “in a country where John Cole and I find ourselves on the same side of the “What the Fuck?” line has gone seriously, seriously off the rails.” (This was written the Saturday before the most recent election, btw.)

Listen, we’ve all had the questionable hook-up. We get it. Bush didn’t seem at all crazy when you met him at the club. And sure you dabbled in faith-based stuff, and maybe his foreign policy was a little naive, but come on — sexy, sexy tax cuts.

But then things got out of control, and kinkier and kinkier and next thing you know you’re in a war with no occupation planning and no exit strategy and being told that’s okay and back off; and people are being tortured, and then not allowed to talk to their lawyers because they might reveal the secrets of their torture; and the one dude who had oversight on the corruption in the war is fired in secret; and you have record deficits and record spending and Congress meeting
over Terry Schiavo and warrantless wiretaps and faith-based anti-science and the end of separation of Church and State and troop families in food banks  and the most venal Congress in history and Abramoff and K Street and
Young Republican college students in charge of Iraqi reconstruction and fucking HORSE LAWYERS IN CHARGE OF FEMA and bing bang boom you got a whole American city, just lying there dead, no explanations, no excuses, just stunned at how the hell you got here. Exactly like our questionable hook-ups, just substitute “waitress in Provost”
for “New Orleans” and “all that vodka and blow” for “Hurricane Katrina” —

But let’s not get distracted. Point is — questionable hook-ups. We, as ordinary citizens, all know how we get out of this: you stop returning the crazy person’s calls. We
promise never to bring it up when drinking. Several years from now, when everything’s scabbed over the two of us can joke about our mutual lapses in judgment while sharing a fine Rolling Rock beverage.

So, anyway, a fine rant. Go check it out.

I seemed to have screwed up the comments somehow. I’ll try to fix it when time permits.

O.k., I think I’ve fixed the comments and improved it a it. I added a comment preview function. Let me know how it works/whether you like it.

Dulce Et Decorum Est:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Here is an inspired rant against Mark Souder by Andrew Kaduk. The short version is that Souder is no conservative. Other than that I won’t try to summarize it and will simply recommend that folks go read it.

I migrated to a new host for my blog, so a few of my later posts were lost. If you made any comments to those posts, I apologize. Hopefully the move will have fixed some of the glitches I’ve been experiencing lately.

Just a pic with me and the kids:

The kids had a great time. I know, I know, stop the presses: “LITTLE KIDS ENJOY HALLOWEEN!”