Leo Berman, Klucker

I grew up around good ol' boys like him, so I have a pretty good idea just what sort he is.

He's making a public ass of himself again.

Somebody needs to take him to the wood shed, and until either the leadership of the Texas House, or the voters in his district do, it's left to us little old bloggers.

Post-Oscar Wrangle

Vince Leibowitz (who wrangles the best of the Texas left-o-sphere each week) notes: "The round-up got drunk at an Oscar party, and I had to chase it up and down the street before one of the dogs finally caught it. Evidently it was upset that the lady from My Cousin Vinny did not win another Academy Award. "

"You commie, homo-loving sons of guns."

-- Sean Penn, accepting the Academy award for best actor

It was a theme Oscar voters embraced through the evening with other key awards honoring films fostering broader understanding and compassion.

Sean Penn won his second best-actor Oscar, this one for playing slain gay-rights pioneer Harvey Milk in "Milk," while Kate Winslet took best actress for "The Reader," in which she plays a former concentration camp guard coming to terms with the ignorance that let her heedlessly participate in Nazi atrocities. ...

(Eight-Oscars-winner "Slumdog Millionaire") was a merger of India's brisk Bollywood movie industry, which provided most of the cast and crew, and the global marketing reach of Hollywood, which turned the film into a commercial smash, said British director Boyle.

"We're Brits, really, trapped in the middle, but it's a lovely trapped thing," Boyle said backstage. "You can see it's going to happen more and more. There's all sorts of people going to work there. The world's shrinking a little bit."

Meh; there were those conservative protestors outside. Penn again, with the smackdown:

"I'd tell them to turn in their hate card and find their better self," Penn said. "I think that these are largely taught limitations and ignorances, this kind of thing. It's really sad in a way, because it's a demonstration of such cowardice, emotional cowardice, to be so afraid of extending the same rights to your fellow man as you'd want for yourself."

There's just something about the complete repudiation of the hatred and fear and greed of the past several years that I relish lately.

Sunday Funnies (ideology recall edition)

(Click for a larger view. Last panel dedicated to my friend Kris.)