Rowdy's Roundup - Straight Rudolph, Gay Hizzoner, Madoff, et al.

Prowling the Blogosphere...

Ed Brayton on ScienceBlogs deconstructs Christianist Matthew Stucky's assertion that Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer was picked on by the all the other reindeer cuz he was straight and the other reindeer were gay.  (Of course I almost broke a finger clicking on the link Brayton provides, thinking that surely this must be some sort of, I dunno, fantastical parody.  But nope, the comments left on Stucky's blog indicate that there are Bible Thumpers who actually believe that Santa is Satan and Rudolf is a victimized hetero-deer.) 

Think Progress delivers the goods on another of those last-minute anti-environment rules Dubya and his minions have enacted.  Matt Corley reports that thanks to our Dear Leader, over a million acres of mountain forests could be hacked down to make room for housing subdivisions.

In the Wonk Room, Igor Volsky slams The Wall Street Journal over its lame attempt to scare readers into believing health care reform is a bad thing.  (WSJ, the same right-wing republication that in December declared Global Warming Is Officially Over.)  

David Swanson has details about a March of the Dead being planned for January 6, on the day Congress reconvenes.  It won't be a festive gathering - but it's important to send lawmakers a message.  Swanson writes:  "Long-distance genocide rarely results in so much as a shoe thrown in someone's face, and the dead are by definition unheard from, and by the U.S. corporate media unheard of. We have killed over 1.2 million people in Iraq alone in the past six years, and their presence is almost never felt on Capitol Hill."  (It is, perhaps, being felt by conscience-wracked Army recruiters.  Since 2001, seventeen recruiters have committed suicide, five of them in Houston.)

Portland Monthly provides a fascinating in-depth look Hizzoner Sam Adams, the country's first out gay man to be elected mayor of a major U.S. city.  (And Sam has a blog!)  News Hounds reveals more about Fox's "Magic Negro" faux pas.  (They're not apologizing.  Big surprise.)  David Neiwart at Crooks and Liars is tired of listening to Conservative Crybabies.  (Aren't we all.)  And Pam's House Blend has posted a bizarre fundie-produced video calling - yet again - for Christians to pull their children out of public schools.  (I feel sorry for kids who must depend on their evangelical parents for knowledge of the world.)

In Slate, Daniel Gross tells the story of how Bernard Madoff siphoned filthy lucre from the filthy rich denizens of Palm Beach - and how his name has now become a dirty word with the Botox set:  "Madoff's biggest offense, aside from destroying people's life savings, was the way he did it—by fleecing members of the club. Since the scandal broke, I've found that his name is pronounced—in New York and Florida, and probably in financial capitals around the world—with a quasi-ritualistic spit, the way Nixon's once was in many households."  (Oh.  We're not supposed to do that anymore?)