Insert foot here

Was Hitler gay? Say it ain’t so, Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy! The San Berdoo Republican had this, ahem, interesting reflection on Senate Bill 1437, Democratic colleague Sheila Kuehl’s recently passed bill prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in public schools. “Thank goodness Adolph Hitler wasn’t gay, or we couldn’t discuss him in a way that ‘reflects adversely’ upon his lifestyle,” Mountjoy ranted during the floor debate. Dang. Just when Bites was about to raise its hand in class and say, “Dude, that Hitler dude was so gay!”

Why we fight: Still trying to figure out why we’re in Iraq—and threatening to invade Iran next? Follow the money. The Sacramento Business Journal reports that local defense contractors, from Aerojet to Health Net, amassed some $2.4 billion in federal contracts last year. They’re paying us over here so we don’t have to fight them over there. That’s someone else’s job, according to John Murphy, a Sacramento defense business consultant quoted in the story. “The Department of Defense,” Murphy says, “is trying very hard to get out of the business of things that do not relate to what they call their ‘core competencies’—killing people and breaking things.”

You don’t say: Dr. Dolittle talked to the animals, but according to the Daily Kos Web site, Representative John Doolittle is pretty much speechless when it comes to conversing with the troops he enthusiastically ships off to die in Iraq.

Last February, Doolittle joined a congressional delegation on a visit to Baghdad’s Green Zone—headquarters for the U.S. high command and perhaps the only safe area in the war-ravaged country. On the flight out, Doolittle asked the C-130 flight crew if he could ride in the more spacious cockpit, rather than in the cramped seating for troops in the rear of the plane.

The members of the flight crew graciously conceded, yet the congressman was unable to find the words to thank them. In fact, he uttered not a sentence during the hour-long flight. When the plane landed, the pilot handed Randy “Duke” Cunningham and Jack Abramoff’s good friend a note: “Congressman Doolittle: Charlie Brown and his son hope you had a nice flight.”

That’s right, the pilot was none other than U.S. Air Force Capt. Jeff Brown, son of retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Charlie Brown, who just happens to be challenging Doolittle’s 4th Congressional District seat in November.

Mailbag: Bites would, of course, be nothing without its readers, and you’ve been a remarkably responsive lot of late. Special thanks goes out to the anonymous female caller who gifts fans of the downtown arena with a new verb: Maloof. Apparently, it’s a synonym for “screwed,” as in, “You just got Maloofed, kind of like the city and county of Sacramento.”

Then there’s Bro.ali.5x, who points out that you can substitute words such as Native American, Negro, Irish, Jew, Chinese, Japanese and Italian for the word “gay” in just about any phrase to reveal the insipid nature of all prejudice, as in “Dude, that Hitler dude sure was a Negro!”

Bites reserves its most honorable mention for one Mr. X, a prolific e-mailer to Bites’ mailbag. Mr. X offered some kindly advice for this space’s attempts to make funny: “Hey Jew Boy, get a sense of fucking humor, moron!”

It’s probably futile to point out that Bites is neither Jew nor gentile, neither male nor female, but a phantasmagorical it-thing entirely capable of putting a foot in its own metaphorical mouth and, when called upon, a boot up the reader’s proverbial behind. In Mr. X’s case, think of it as a community service.