I've been down.

Sorry about not posting for over a week, but my computer turned up dead Thursday before last and I've only just recently recovered. What happened was that Windows Xp just simply wouldn't carry on despite multiple re-boots. I knew we were past the recovery stage, but a Geek Squad guy was called in all the same to help us be sure the time was right to get a new machine. He pronounced the demise last Saturday. Proper arrangements are being made for my former best friend (we're harvesting fans and RAM, etc. for modding other machines,--I'm sure "HP Pavillion a810n" would've wanted it that way).

Yet this coincided with the roll-out of Windows 7, so we actually had to wait for a machine pre-loaded with the new hotness. I like it. It took me the weekend though to get caught back up with the Internet (egads, was I jonesing!) and to get my setting and favorite sites and everything straightened out.

Anyway, if anyone missed me, I was offline at possibly the grumpiest week to be offline. Let's see what happened:

Cheney was irrelevant regarding Afghanistan (like, no surprise). "Dithering" could be called "deliberating" when grown-ups do it, Dick. If a "surge" was on the Bush/Cheney plate--why didn't they do instead of leaving it to Obama? But then again, why didn't they actually go after the senior Al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan hard when they could've, instead of side-tracking off to Iraq with they didn't even have to? (In other words--um, "F-U, Cheney." And wasn't it really "dithering" when some dude in the West Wing dropped the ball on creating a counter-terrorism task force in 2001 in the first damn place? Who was that?)

Also, Pat Buchanan was once again quaintly racist, in his quaint little racist way. I will disclaimer my comment by explaining that I am "white". And I actually have not lost anything in re: being American. To wit: I'm still considered 5/5ths of a person. Still can vote. Still able to be taught literacy, still able to access my congressperson and bitch about things. These are not things I take lightly. I have Native American ancestors who could not admit to the first claim when this country began. As a woman, I wouldn't have been able to vote a hundred years ago. It was illegal to teach slaves to even read in parts of the south once--because actually, knowledge is power. Buchanan seems to mistake "sharing privilege" (or actually, to be more exact, "sharing in the enjoyment of rights") with actually losing some part of those privileges or rights. But sharing in rights isn't like sharing a cookie, where if I share a cookie with someone, I get less than if I had it all to myself. Sharing in rights just means we acknowledge other people are equals--and that's what Buchanan seems to have a problem with, and projects it on a whole bunch of white folks. Buchanan totally flunks kindergarten.

And of course, I'm sure I had some total bloggability about the passage of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. Actually, I still do. There are some detractors of the bill who simply oppose the notion of any kind of hate crimes legislation, on the grounds that any violent crime is an act of hate. I guess I can see where they are coming from, even if I don't agree.

But there is something specific, targeted, and malicious about a crime that can be identified as hate crime. And the detractors that particularly concern me are the shit-eating fuckwits that want to claim that it's a "Thought-crime" or that this somehow militates against certain religious groups. (And there are a number of Republicans among these.)

Honestly--if there is a sacrament regarding hate speech in your church and a great part of your personal church's mission statement centers on hating, maybe you need a better church. I'm not sure you should be proud about experiencing a certain "moral uplift" about hating the right people. If you are listening to some narrow-minded toad who is happy to equate gays with pedos and has no idea what he's talking about, maybe you should be aware that the rest of the country thinks this notion is wrong and you shouldn't judge people. And you should know you don't jump people and hurt people "just because".

Laws are used sometimes to show just what a nation is prepared to address. Sometimes the law can be wrong. But sometimes it addresses a present need, and presently, there is certain violent bigotry worked against GLBT people. And it isn't right, and it needs to be selectively recognized as wrong, so that everyone can get on the same page about it.

So that was my missing week, anyway.