Do you know how I would kill a voter ID bill?

karate chop to the adam's apple.

I have an announcement

I think the "Santorum" joke is all played out.

I mean, if someone can come up with a new twist, good on ya. But where it's just repeating "surging" and "running" and "coming from behind" allusions to that substance that metaphorically resembles the former Senator, I just don't find it funny anymore. All the jokes about "Romney plans to smear Santorum with a Superpac," are graphic, but just not clever anymore. Again, my overwrought opinion only.

Perhaps it's just my refined upper class upbringing among the social elites of Gotham City, but in the short time that I had with my late parents (don't get me started!) they taught me there's a difference between good natured teasing among friends and the relentless taunting of others. As a child I often played with the children of the hired help when their parents brought them out to our stately family manor; and Mother always insisted that I treat them just as if they were as good as us. Good breeding and good character are best shown by one's generosity, she'd tell me during my alloted play-time.

And so I see a parallel with the constant state of personalized scorn directed toward Rick Santorum. I mean, it's not like Rick Santorum or his children read DU--their loss--but there's more victims that just the beset-upon when one devotes so much time and effort toward scorning others. It cultivates a smallness of temperament in us if we acculturate ourselves to always spewing potty-languages invectives at our political opponents. I don't argue that Republicans deserve better; culturally, they are a wellspring of ill-mannered hatreds and unpatriotic divisiveness. Rather, I argue that we owe it to ourselves not to sacrifice our liberality of character, that is, not to sink into the self-degrading hatreds that mar the moral characters of far too many conservatives.

Let me offer a flawed analogy, yet a comparison worthy of your consideration. As a concerned limosine liberal, I may believe in "getting tough" on al-Qaeda, but I do not condone the use of torture or the use of other tactics that betray the core values of egalitarian Americanism. We ought not sacrifice the moral high ground when fighting malreligious reprobates who dwell in moral gutters. We may remain unsullied when we adhere to our values throughout the fight, because the fight itself is a test of those values. Likewise, though not all Republican reprobates are of the malreligious stripe, when we conduct political fights against the incivility of Tea Partyism and neoconservatism and the tribal anti-progressivism of the political Right, we should strive to retain our liberality and generosity, no matter how tough we have to get with them.

We should bet angry, but not hateful, at the injustice they champion. We should hammer them with facts and truthtelling, but not cross the line into divisiveness or sectional chauvinism. We should fight their grotesque ideologies with reason and philsophy, but not erect counter-ideologes that prize a tribal conformity over fact and social cohesion. These are the social goals that most conservatives oppose--tolerance, unity, and compassion. We shouldn't sacrifice these values in the causee of defeating those who oppose them.

Don't get me wrong: there's nothing wrong an occasional snicker at a naughty joke told at an opponent's expense. But the liberal spirit, I think, requires a social sense of moderation wherever we razz the other team. Conservatives I think of as wayward children of our shared national family--we seek to best them, but not destroy them. It's a fine line. I guess, I'm saying it's a little tougher being liberal. I think it's worth the effort. I think the glacial progress of building a more civil society requires us to leave room at the table, that after we trounce them in the next election, we make it easier for them to reclaim the civility they seem to scorn whenever a Democrat wins the White House.

As my old sensei Kirigi told me, "Choose your enemies wisely, for you may become them." If our group identity as Democrats is best defined by loathing our opponents, what will we have won when we win? What, my old chums, will we have lost in our victory?

Last night I dreamed that Mitt Romney adopted me as his 17th son

He renamed me "Squib Romney," which he apologized for, but said that that was the last remaining nonsensible monosyllabic grunt left in the English language that he could use for a boy's name and that it was not his fault that his terribly handsome nards could only issue forth the seeds of man-childs. But I kept complaining and so he said he'd check with the Osmonds and ask whether they had any unused male names left over that he could borrow, but all they had left were "Berubael" and "Jimmy". And then I started to float and I was on a city bus and it was being driven by Clint Eastwood and I asked him if he had the time. But he said, no, it was only half-time. And then I woke up.

Six years later they're still together

I had a German shepherd named "Ace" for a long time.

He was one damned smart best friend. No one word can capture his resilient personality. The closest I can come to it would be laconic. This was one damned efficient dog.

Here's a picture of us together.

I swore on my parents' grave to spend my life bringing justice to the world.

But ya know, a fella gets busy... and we all have to move on sometimes.

Lately I've been refurbishing this sweet vintage Alfa Romeo I bought from my friend, Lex. Once I get 'er humming again, I'll try and get back to that whole justice bringing thing. Or I might pick up gardening.

Don't like LA. They built the buildings too far apart.

And all that sunshine... fuhgeddaboudit! We all need a few lurkable shadows in our lives.

As a 1%er, it's high time I joined in with George Soros, Warren Buffett, Lex Luthor, and Bill Gates.

and call for a hike in taxes on those of us who have prospered. I call on all the other patriotic millionaires of DU to join me. It's time to stop talking about the annual deficit and the national debt and time to start doing something about it.