Awww, the poor widdle pope's minions are pulling out all the stops to protect the leader of their cult from all those mean and vicious victims of child abuse. It's downright biblical, apparently:

The leader of the nation’s second-largest diocese urged his congregation to pray for the pope, saying he was suffering some of the same unjust accusations once faced by Jesus.

Totally true, and definitely worth the standing ovation New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan apparently got recently for making that statement in a sermon.

Now, I'm not much of a Christian scholar, but I clearly remember that section in Luke where Jesus is correctly accused of covering up child rape and repeated child abuse, and then Peter and the rest of his posse try to cover his ass. Righteous. This is just the same. Well, okay, maybe not, but it's totally like that time when the Nazis were after the Catholics:

Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller came under fire for a sermon on Saturday that appeared to compare critical media coverage of the abuse scandal in Germany to Nazi propaganda campaigns against the church.

Right. Media coverage of rampant, continued and deliberately concealed child abuse within the church = Nazis. Boy, how could it possible backfire and end as bad PR, having a German arch bishop compare the quest for justice by innocent victims of pedophilic priests with the Nazis? I mean, it's not like the Catholic church has a whole lot of goodwill left to lose, so why not slander those ungrateful little bastards while the going is good? One look at the opulent arrogance of the church, and you'd know they have no shame, but really -- this is not just shameless and tasteless, it's pretty embarrassing.

To paraphrase Robin Williams: at this point, the Vatican's best bet may be to wrap it up and go condo. Then the pope can retire somewhere with his some select pictures of his favorite altar boys and leave the rest of us alone.

Real patriots love God. Only those who love God are patriots.

Really, this should come as no surprise at all, but it's almost perversely refreshing to see a US Circuit Court display enough hubris and disdain for the Constitution (word & spirit) to actually put it in writing. Specifically:

The San Francisco Appeals court has ruled that "Under God" is not a prayer when used in the Pledge of Allegiance. In 2002, the court declared that the phrase was unconstitutional. The new 2-1 ruling from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals states it is a "recognition of our founders' political philosophy that a power greater than the government gives the people their inalienable rights [...] Thus, the pledge is an endorsement of our form of government, not of religion or any particular sect."

Because what it really tells us is that the whole separation of state & church schpiel is an illusion. God is politics, our politics are divine. If "One Nation, Under God" is "merely" an endorsement of our form of government, then doesn't that make us a de facto theocracy? And doesn't that then put us on the same page as the insane Wahabbi's in Saudi Arabia or the Taliban in Afghanistan, where absolute devotion to your cult & your fantasy deity trumps any responsibility to your nation and your people?

Basically, those who refute the existence of a Supreme Being and refuse to let their kids pledge allegiance to the Great Sky Being are un-patriotic. Somehow, refusal to buy into -- and pledge allegiance to -- the fairy tale of God as puppetmaster of us all renders you less desirable as a citizen. Once the refreshing taste of the novelty of having this in writing is gone, you're back to realizing how painfully grotesque it is to think that in the 21st century, religious belief is still a lithmus test for, well, anything. 

I'm sorry, Judge Bea, the "power greater than government" is not automatically your glorified tooth fairy/poltergeist just because you say so.

(Photo of real little patriots in their patriot-ware from lies.com)

Well, someone is pissed that he's now so mainstream that he's largely irrelevant... Markos Moulitsas, supposed grand poo-bah of the online left, gets his hate on for Dennis Kucinich here. Oh, and apparently decided to spend one of his prime time moments on national TV encouraging a challenger to Kucinich in a primary if he carries thru on his threat to vote against the lame health-insurance bail-out plan.

According to Allmighty Markos, standing firm on core democratic principles and wanting the one shot we have at health care reform to actually make a real difference makes you "a purity troll." Nice. With that level of suckiness, Markos may at long last be ready to get his very own talk show where he can continue to lecture those of us left on the left about how stupid and ignorant we are for staying out there when it's so warm and toasty in the comfort & company of sellouts like the rest of the mainstream Ds.

Oh, and while we're at it: Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes, sometimes pretend progressive Democratic representatives from New Hampshire, when you're up for re-election next year, your votes against a resolution to end the Afghanistan war will be one reason why I won't give a shit what happens to the two of you. Very happy to see my local Rep, Peter Welch, muster the courage to vote for this resolution -- that cannot have been easy to do, but it was the right thing to do. Read the background for the resolution introduced by Kucinich here. Apparently, most of Congress is extremedly worried about our deficit and shit, but they have no qualms about handing the Pentagon a cool $33Bn for the next short phase of that pointless exercise -- they don't even want to discuss it.

This is very nice to have: Google Maps with bike-friendly directions. Up until now, I've used their walking directions for lengthy bike rides, and carefully evaulated and revised the provided route for potential pit falls. When you're doing, say, the 115 mile ride from Salem, MA to Norwich, VT, that's a pretty tedious and time consuming challenge.

Now, it's not immediately clear to me if I'd always want to go the route suggested -- as a road biker, it'd be a real bummer to suddenly find myself on 10 miles of rail trail w/ coarse gravel. But fundamentally, it's great to see Google acknowledge the fact that bikers are a unique category of travelers with some particular needs and vulnerabilities.

(Photo frrom here)

From the department of "they write slightly miffed letters":

I had decided to just let this slide, but every time I mention my experience at the Green Granite Inn to friends, they're outraged (okay, they're also pet owners, so consider them biased), and I thought I'd just drop you a note to follow up.

In late February, I unexpectedly needed to book a room for my family in the Conway area for two nights. As the program head for the Ford Sayre BKL Nordic Racing program based in Hanover, NH, I was also scrambling to arrange race schedules, book hotels for our coaches, and troubleshoot for 40 families attending a big race in Fryeburg, ME, and I had very little time to deal with my own hotel requirements. My only two criteria were that the hotel have an indoor pool and be pet friendly. A quick search online gave me one obvious choice: the Green Granite Inn – it offered what I wanted, the price was right, the location was good, and the place looked fine. I took the number off the web, and called and booked with one of your friendly front desk staffers, and we were all set. Or so I thought.

After a long day and a tiring drive, we arrived late Friday night, and I proceeded to check us in. Casually mentioned along with the breakfast hours and checkout time was, "no pets allowed." Come again? I explained that I had specifically chosen your hotel because it was listed online as pet friendly. "No," explained your front desk staffer. "We used to be. We're now pet unfriendly." Well, at least she was being honest about it. I explained that this was a bit of a problem, since we had our dog with us. It was curtly re-emphasized that dogs were not allowed, and pointed out that there was a $250 charge if dogs were found to be in the room anyway, and would I perhaps like to try to find a room somewhere else? Much care was taken to demonstratively click thru your own website while pointing out to me that there was no mention of this "pet friendly thing."

I wasn't about to go hunting for a new place to stay at 10PM with two tired kids and a race early to attend the next morning. And even though your staff felt compelled to tell me it couldn't be done, my dog was perfectly fine – if slightly confused – staying in our car both nights.

When I came down the following morning and inquired about the room number of friends who were in town, I was a little taken aback when I was immediately grilled by your receptionist about whether I had allowed a dog into my room last night. A concerned inquiry whether everything had worked out for us would have been nice, but instead the assumption seemed to be that I'd obviously elected to violate your rules.

Now, here's the thing. While I'm not sure I understand it, I fully respect your choice to change from being a pet friendly to a pet unfriendly establishment -- for all I know, you've made a strategic decision that there is more money to be made from families with allergies than families with pets. Or maybe you just don't like pets. Whatever -- it's your hotel. I also appreciate that it was careless of me not to doublecheck your pet policy when I called to book. Clearly my bad, it just never occured to me that a hotel would regress to a "no pet" policy. And I do appreciate that once you've set your new rule in place, it's incumbent upon your staff to enforce it.

But it's rather disingenuous of your staff to feign disbelief and revert to blame mode when someone inadvertently shows up at your establishment with a pet. Because The Green Granite Inn continues to be listed on countless web sites as a pet friendly establishment (tripadvisor.com, travelpost.com/kayak.com, hotpads.com, settlersgreen.com just to mention the first few that show up in a Google search). And even closer to home, you're still prominently listed as pet friendly on the free area maps distributed in the Conway region. It's not like I simply came up with the bizarre idea that pets were welcome, even though the skeptical and disapproving looks from your staff would indicate they thought as much. Or maybe they're just tired of dealing with the fallout from this mixed message?

If you're so keen on changing your status to "pet unfriendly", then it would behoove you to do the necessary legwork and get your message straightened out. At the very least, you should perhaps post a rather prominent notice on your own website along the lines of: "Pet owners, please take notice: The Green Granite Inn used to be pet friendly, but now is NOT."

Either way, we'll keep our pets – and, alas, our business – well away in the future. In the meantime, I should note that I've posted this letter on my blog: I hope to soon be able to update it with a note on the efforts taken by the Green Granite Inn to clear up the online confusion about their pet policy.

Sincerely,

Update: Green Granite Inn writes back:

Just returned from vacation and read your e-mail. Thank you for taking the time to write me. We did have to change to "no pet policy" due to several bad experiences. I put much thought into this before we changed at the first of the year. I’m a new general manager as of the end of October 2009. I have had my front desk research all sights [sic] to remove that we are pet friendly. We are also in the middle of creating a new web page that will clear up this confusion also. I'm sorry that your experience here was not enjoyable. My intent is that everyone that comes to the Green Granite has a pleasant time. Once again, thank you for bring this to my attention.