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Barack Obama is 1,000 kinds of awesome. And so is this:

This morning I was listening to NPR and heard a detailed story on the continuing investigation into illegal hiring practices at the Justice Department under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Specifically, the enfant terrible who seemed to be at the center of the hiring fiasco was one Monica Goodling.

Monica Goodling. What a stupid, naive, misinformed, ignorant little troll she was (and is, for all I know). Ms. Goodling received her law degree from Regent University (Pat Robertson’s college), where the law school’s mission is to “use the legal profession to enact the will of God” or some such tripe. The Washington Post has a pretty thorough summary of all the asinine, bone-headed things she did on the behalf of her radical right-wing mentors. A few highlights:

Thirty-four candidates told investigators that Goodling or one of her deputies raised the topic of abortion in job interviews and 21 said they discussed same-sex marriage, the report said. Another job applicant said he admired Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, only to watch Goodling “frown” and respond, “But she’s pro-choice.”

She and her aides regularly gave candidates for career civil service jobs a form designed for political appointees that sought information on party affiliation and financial contributions. When job seekers sometimes raised objections, Goodling replied that the form was a mistake, showing that she was “aware that it was improper,” the report said.

…

Leslie Hagen, an assistant U.S. attorney who according to yesterday’s report was denied at least two positions at the Justice Department because Goodling suspected she was a lesbian, is petitioning current leaders for a “mutually agreeable permanent position,” according to Lisa J. Banks, Hagen’s employment attorney.

In another instance that investigators called “particularly damaging,” Goodling refused to hire an award-winning career prosecutor with nearly two decades of experience for a temporary counterterrorism job in Washington because his wife served as vice chairman of the local Democratic Party and ran local congressional campaigns.

Get all that? I think my favorite is the part where Goodling prevented another woman from getting a promotion because she suspected she was a lesbian.

Are you angry yet? Because these are the kind of people that the Bush administration put into positions of power from top to bottom. People who put politics before country, and duty, and morality. People who feel they are above the law, and entitled to ignore it when it suits them.

So just to balance out the portrait of a woman in a position of power that she doesn’t deserve, and abuses horribly once she’s in it, here’s the complete opposite. Nancy Pelosi is a woman who is accomplished, intelligent, and articulate. She definitely deserves her position as Speaker of the House (I’d argue she deserves better). People like Monica Goodling and her ilk throw around the term “San Francisco values” as some kind of nudging, winking reference to, let’s be honest, gays. Because to them, gays (or lesbians, or bisexual people, or transgendered people) aren’t humans, and the fact that places exist (like San Francisco) where they are afforded all the same human and civil rights as everyone else just really messes up their parochial world view.

In this piece on Huffington Post, Nancy gives another interesting explanation of the use of the term “San Francisco values.” First she talks about what those values really are - things like social and economic justice, equality, environmentalism. Then she talks about why the right-wing hate machine really uses the term “San Francisco values,” and how it helps their true agenda. Please watch the video - Nancy is awesome. Somehow even when she’s talking about the way that right-wing thugs use her name or image in a hateful way, she manages to remain even-tempered and pragmatic.

She puts an empty-headed idiot like Goodling to shame.

This morning I was listening to NPR while I got ready for work, as usual, and there was a short piece on John McCain. The reporter claimed, “McCain was once the frontrunner in this race,” “this race” meaning the way-too-long primary race to see who will be next year’s presidential nominee, in this case for the Republicans. When I heard that I had to pause, and said so myself, “Seriously? The frontrunner?” I mean, come on! When was McCain ever the frontrunner for the Republican nomination - 1999? Certainly not at any time this primary season that I was aware of. I think, for a while, he was the only well-known name who it was clear was going to enter the race, but even then people seemed to be waiting around for “something better.” The story on NPR went on to blame his subsequent “slide” in public opinion on some unpopular positions on immigration and a supposed “meltdown” in his campaign last summer, when a bunch of staffers were let go.

Meltdown, right. It’s called “we’re not raising any money and I can’t afford to pay all you lackeys!”

From my perspective, John McCain was once a very viable candidate. But, again, that was back in 1999. He used to stand for something - for independent thinking, for straight talk, for not kowtowing to the Republican machine. The way Karl Rove engineered his smearing in that primary was sickening (it started with “rumors” that McCain’s adopted daughter was actually his biological, illegitimate daughter from an affair, and went downhill from there). If there’s any Republican in the world who should hate George W. Bush as much as I do, it’s John McCain.

Instead, McCain has become a Bush loyalist.

His biggest line now, the whole principal he seems to be running on is, “We’re actually winning in Iraq, and we can’t give up now!” That’s a pretty unpopular position on all ends of the political spectrum, but McCain doggedly pursues it. It’s his “signature” stand. What a waste.

One of the voters interviewed during the NPR story said something like, “You kind of have to admire him for sticking to his convictions.” Um…OK. Like, all those people who thought the Earth was flat, even though there was overwhelming evidence that it was not, we should admire them, because they “stuck to their convictions” no matter how ill-informed, ignorant, and wrong they were. (Insert your own obvious fallacy and group of stubborn, ignorant individuals who still believe it here, there are hundreds to choose from.)

Anyway, obviously I’m not going to be voting for John McCain any time soon. I don’t vote in the Republican primary anyway, but even if he somehow came from way behind and was the nominee in the general election, I wouldn’t vote for him. Sadly, there was a time when I would have, but I honestly believe he was a different candidate, and a different person, back then. Now he’s just another shill for the administration, and has lost all credibility. He’s a stubborn old man who has sold out to a bunch of corrupt chickenhawks.

And even though I’m not a Republican, and as a rule, I dislike Republicans intensely, that makes me sad.

(Warning: this video is very disturbing at the end.)

WTF is going on at the University of Florida? Yesterday, John Kerry was speaking (I don’t know why) and taking questions from the audience at some forum. A student got up to ask a question at the microphone. Admittedly, he was kind of loud and rambling, but I’m guessing he was pretty nervous and also he obviously has passion for his topic (the fact that there was enormous fraud in the 2004 election, especially in Florida).

I suppose if I had wanted to ask Senator Kerry the question, I would given him a chance to answer, but being rude or slightly obnoxious is not grounds for arrest, the last time I checked. It certainly isn’t grounds for what happened next. The student, Andrew Meyer, was forced to the ground by no less than five University police officers. And then, most shockingly (no pun intended), while he was already subdued but still shouting to demand an explanation, he was violently tasered in the chest for at least five seconds. It is, quite simply, the most shocking, terrifying, sickening thing I have seen in a long time. The innate violence of it, and the obvious pain and terror in the young man’s cries are bad enough, but even worse is the realization that this is happening the U.S., “land of the free.” What about free speech? What about civil rights? Note that the officers never inform him he is being arrested, they never attempt to read him his rights. They tackle him, and taser him, and haul him away.

What. The. Fuck.

I heard the dumbest segment on NPR this morning. They were interviewing teenagers about paying taxes. Many of these kids didn’t realize that they were required to file taxes if they earned income, whether through work or savings/investments, even though they’re just “kids.” Most of them said things like, “I don’t think people under 18 should have to pay taxes” and “It’s not fair.”

Jeez.

Guess what, you dim bulbs? I don’t think people between the ages of 30 and 40 whose last names end with “Y” should have to pay taxes! How ya like that?

Are the teenagers of this nation really so stupid? If some twatwaffle like Britney Spears makes a gajillion dollars when she’s 17, you don’t think she should pay some income tax on that? I can see it now…adoption becomes the new, hip tax shelter. Suddenly teenagers everywhere are making billions of dollars tax-free for their parents and guardians! Don’t get me wrong…when I worked at McDonald’s and had taxes taken out of every paycheck, I was bitter. Luckily the tax code is based on amount of income earned, and when I filed I always got a refund (this continued, sadly, long after I was a teenager and was basically living at the poverty level as a 25-year-old).

Something about the story just rubbed me the wrong way. I thought the teens interviewed were incredibly stupid and Morning Edition was kind of lame to even run the story. It was pointless and frustrating and just…stupid.

Happy tax day.