“Members and pundits . . . fail to understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures.”
–Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia in a 20-page memo to House GOP leaders.

That Captain Obvious winner shows up in Peggy Noonan’s WSJ column “Pity Party.” This where the real spin begins, as she distances herself from the rest of the apologists and GOP cheerleaders for Dear Leader for the last seven years. She’s the one with 20/20 vision about the disastrous political bind the Republicans are in. The Democrats aren’t the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead.

For all their fractious fighting, they’re finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They’re busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They’re frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

…Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven years in the White House. But they’ve publicly supported it so long they think they . . . support it. They get confused. Late at night they toss and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what those thoughts imply.

And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have the country, the troops will rally in the fall.

“This was a real wakeup call for us,” someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. “We can’t let the Democrats take our issues.” And those issues would be? “We can’t let them pretend to be conservatives,” he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

While she’s angry at how the GOP has failed her, she underestimates the capacity of denial and blame-shifting of these clowns in an attempt to save their personal political fortunes.

I say watch the former Bush faithful. If there’s one thing the GOP is good at, it’s the taking the long view of how to make a comeback. Look at what else Davis says to Noonan — after the jump.
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I don’t care how hilarious rapist / murderer-releasing, Christian Reconstructionist- supported, Man-On-Dog wannabe, former Arkansas governor, and Baptist minister-without-a-theology-degree Mike Huckabee thinks he is, this isn’t funny. We’ve already seen the yahoo vote unapologetic about the fact that they’d never vote for a black man — and plenty of them have an NRA card.

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

After all, look at what a Freeper posted yesterday in response to the marriage equality ruling in California. These folks are sick.

38 posted on Thursday, May 15, 2008 1:37:53 PM by Lancey Howard

Related:
* Noose found at Secret Service training center
* Dallas: weapons screening halted at Obama rally
* Other posts on the security breach

I’m really starting to wonder whether this level of stupidity and batsh*ttery by the Right — as they watch their political fortunes swirl the bowl because of Bush’s legacy — has completely untethered them from reality. Take a look at this unbelievable nonsense by Bill O’Reilly, who went on a tirade about the fact that Markos Moulitsas (Kos of Daily Kos) has a Newsweek column, and that O’Reilly was embarrassed that Markos ran a clip of the Faux News blowhard going ape on camera during his old Inside Edition days.

What’s even more entertaining is the bile O’Reilly’s fans unleashed into Markos’ mailbox — out comes the violent schooyard faggotry taunts from the intellectual giants. A sampling is below the fold.
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Autumn and I have been passing on right-wing reaction yesterday’s historic Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality in California, but I wanted to reserve a post for this unique reaction from fundie Mike Heath of the Christian Civic League of Maine.

He’s basically cried uncle in terms of protecting the word “marriage,” and wants to get back to basics, which sounds a lot like extermination, if you ask me. Homos have been compared to all sorts of things, but I don’t think I’ve been referred to as a weed polluting a lawn. Via email from Blender Herb, who’s on the CCLM mailing list:

Some people are suggesting that California’s ridiculous Supreme Court decision on “marriage” yesterday is reason to renew Maine’s push for a constitutional amendment. Those people are dead wrong.

While I support any real efforts to amend the Federal Constitution to protect marriage, I don’t support a Maine constitutional amendment at this time. Anyone who has been paying attention to this issue in Maine for the past two decades knows that the entire Maine political establishment is in “love” with “gay” special interests.

The fight is over if we are going to protect the word marriage only. Most recommendations I hear for constitutional amendments will protect only the word marriage, and allow for civil unions and domestic partnerships. A cursory reading of the Massachusetts and California court decisions will reveal the folly of this approach.

We must attack this problem at its root. If you want to get rid of a weed you don’t pull off the leaves. You destroy the root. The root idea of so-called same sex marriage is special rights for citizens on the basis of sexual wrongdoing. That is where the fight must be engaged.

Our only hope in the short term is the people. If everyone will get behind the League’s referendum we can begin the process of righting the ship of state more quickly.

I call on all people of good will to support our referendum today. It is the loving thing to do. Let’s support marriage and equality. We can’t afford to wait.

And Mike’s apparently found yet another version of The Homosexual Agenda. See his discovery below the fold.
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They are getting a little punchy in bible-beating newsgathering land.

With films such as “Dark-Haired Sluts” and “Next Door Panties” on its movie menu, Marriott International is coming under heavy fire from family activists urging the hotel giant to banish such sexual fare from its bedrooms.

Focus on the Family met with hotel executives in Washington, D.C., yesterday and provided Marriott with a petition signed by 102,000 concerned citizens who want pornographic films purged from the list of movie offerings.

Daniel Weiss, media and sexuality analyst for the group, said Marriott has billed itself as a family-lodging establishment, and its decision to provide adult films to its customers is contrary to its reputation.

“In a sense, they’ve kind of put themselves out there,” he told WND. “We saw that offering pornographic content was incongruent with the image they were really going after.”

How’d you like that title on your fundie business card - media and sexuality analyst? It’s probably adjacent to the sign of the fish:

OK, well maybe not that one.

UPDATE 2: Happy Happy Joy Joy! Here is The Peter:

How Will California Homosexual Couples Consummate their Counterfeit ‘Marriages’?

JUDICIAL ACTIVISM AT ITS WORST: This will always be immoral. California’s highest court has created a “fundamental” marriage right out of behavior - homosexuality - that is fundamentally wrong and destructive. At left is a homosexual male kissing scene as it appeared on the CBS soap “As the World Turns.” Everywhere Americans turn - TV, media, schools, in corporations and the courts - this unhealthy and immoral behavior is being promoted

(UPDATE: Bam Bam Barber of Concerned Women weighs in below the fold.)

Ah, before we get to the Freepi, how about this delicious reaction from the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, who believes civil rights should be determined at the ballot box.

It’s outrageous that the court has overturned not only the historic definition of marriage, but the clear will of the people of California, as expressed in Proposition 22. said FRC President Tony Perkins. The California Supreme Court assumed the powers of a legislative body by imposing same-sex marriage. However, in 2000, the people of California spoke loudly and clearly on the value of marriage when 61 percent of voters approved Proposition 22.

The California Supreme Court has taken a jackhammer to the democratic process, and the right of the people to affect change in public policy. Four judges discarded the votes of 4,618,673 Californians who approved the states Defense of Marriage Act. Voters understand that children should not be deprived of a mother or a father, added Perkins.

I can’t wait for the flying spittle from Focus on the Anus, Bam Bam of Concerned Women for America and The Peter. Right now, take a look at the swamps of Freeperland as they wail, and in one case seems to be calling for violence (big surprise).

It’s below the fold.
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7PM tonight at MonkeyWrench Books , which is in one of my favorite parts of town, the North Loop area, which is like the hipster central shopping district. If you haven’t come out to a reading yet, try to make it to this one, because that might be the last for awhile.

(UPDATE 1:15 PM: Equality wins!)

(NOTE: There will be real-time coverage at my place.)

At 1PM ET, California’s Supreme Court will on whether same-sex couples may marry in the state. The official document announcing the pending ruling is here. The question:

Does California’s statutory ban on marriage between two persons of the same sex violate the California Constitution by denying equal protection of the laws on the basis of sexual orientation or sex, by infringing on the fundamental right to marry, or by denying the right to privacy and freedom of expression?

The Governator opposes the current constitutional amendment ballot initiative that will go to voters in November, and has said that he will abide by the court’s decision. An impact of this ruling, if it is in favor of equality, is how the presidential candidates will respond, since both Clinton and Obama have clung to a life raft of “marriage is between a man and a woman” for religious reasons and/or letting the states decide the civil matter, which naturally brings up the precedent of Loving v. Virginia. One can only hope that we don’t see the kind of punt we witnessed in New York in 2006, though the legislature in California has already shown its ability to pass marriage equality legislation.

Here is interesting info emailed to me by The Williams Institute, a research center at UCLA School of Law. It’s a national think tank dedicated to research on issues of sexual orientation law and public policy.

• As of 2006, there are an estimated 109,000 same-sex couples in California (2006 American Community Survey, US Census Bureau).
• More than 41,000 California couples have registered as domestic partners, approximately 38% of all same-sex couples (Williams Institute).
• California same-sex couples are raising an estimated 70,000 children (Amicus Brief, Badgett and Gates)
• Marriage equality would add approximately $123 million to the California budget in the first three years that marriage is open to same-sex couples (Badgett and Sears, Stanford Law and Policy Review)
• Demographic characteristics of same-sex registered partners in California (Carpenter and Gates, forthcoming in Demography):
• Male same-sex registered partners in California have been partnered for an average of 12 years.
• Female same-sex registered partners in California have been partnered for an average of 9 years.
• The average age of same-sex registered partners is 44.
• A third of female registered same-sex couples are raising children.

Links:

* Amicus Brief (Gates and Badgett)
* Badgett CA State Senate Testimony
* Putting a Price on Equality: The Impact of Same-sex Marriage on California’s Budget (Badgett and Sears, Stanford Law and Policy Review)
* The Effect of Marriage Equality and Domestic Partnership on Business and the Economy (Gates and Badgett)

Meanwhile, the wingnuts in the state of North Carolina have introduced another marriage amendment bill. More below the fold.
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Another edition of “What’s Cary Tennis been smoking?” He’s been a lot better lately, so there’s not been any reason to write posts wondering about the potency levels of his preferred smoking materials, but today’s column is a doozy. The guy who writes in has a Bible-thumping friend, and the letter writer is an atheist, and they have fun with their contentious differences. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt, right?* Now his friend, who teaches at a church school, is being pressured to teach young earth creationism to the kids, and the guy is fixing to do it, after going through a hefty process of convincing himself that he’s really considered the evidence, which is impossible, because honest engagement with the evidence in this case leads to one conclusion—evolution is the reality. I don’t say this lightly. We all have biases and prejudices that color our views and in many cases, the evidence is hazy enough that people can have real disagreements with no real conclusion. This isn’t true in the contentious debate between evolutionary theory and Adam and Eve. Objectively, one side has marshaled an irrefutable amount of evidence and the other is blowing smoke out their asses.

So what his friend is doing is that he already decided to bend over for the bullshit and is looking for a rationalization for it, so he doesn’t have to admit that he’s a wanker. Our letter-writer, however, is livid. He thinks teaching creationism is a form of child abuse, and while I think the term is overheated, I agree that using children in service of whack-a-doodle ideologies is cruel to children, especially in cases where your lies to them could have serious, long-term negative consequences on their job prospects. (The whole classroom, for instance, is automatically seeing any chance of going into sciences plummet through the floor because of this stuff.) Tennis, however, has one of his goofier answers, which is for this friend to dispassionately treat the misuse of these children as if he’s reading a book on anthropology.

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And I thought Bush’s lie that he gave up golf in solidarity out of respect for U.S. soldiers killed in the war was the winner of the dumbassery remark of the year. Boy was I wrong.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula points to an incredible statement by the movie critic, right-wing Clown Hall writer and radio show host. First, I love PZ’s opening.

Did someone declare this National Flaming Racist Idiot week, and I just didn’t notice until now? You have got to read Michael Medved’s latest foray into pseudoscience: he has declared American superiority to be genetic, encoded in our good old American DNA. Because our ancestors were immigrants, who were risk-takers, who were selected for their energy and aggressiveness. Oh, except for those who are descended from slaves.

Oh yes, Medved did, friends. I guess the best thing we can say about the following statement is that he probably wasn’t emitting the spittle Pat “A Brief for Whitey” Buchanan did yesterday when he was on Hardball. Medved even makes the gutsy move of explaining that the DNA shaped by our borders and risk-taking requires governing by Republican policies:

The idea of a distinctive, unifying, risk-taking American DNA might also help to explain our most persistent and painful racial divide - between the progeny of every immigrant nationality that chose to come here, and the one significant group that exercised no choice in making their journey to the U.S. Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.

…Senators Obama, Clinton and other leaders who seek to enlarge the scope of government face more formidable obstacles than they realize. Their desire to impose a European-style welfare state and a command-and-control economy not only contradicts our proudest political and economic traditions, but the new revelations about American DNA suggest that such ill-starred schemes may go against our very nature.

Wow. Talk about junk science — so now Americans are a “race”? Holy smoke, this is incredible. Actually, Medved’s working from the same playbook as Buchanan — slavery was a good thing for the darkies, after all, those bringing the slaves over as cargo didn’t have genocide on their minds, they needed that cargo alive because good hard money was paid for them.

Estimates remain inevitably imprecise, but range as high as one third of the slave “cargo” who perished from disease or overcrowding during transport from Africa. Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of these voyages involves the fact that no slave traders wanted to see this level of deadly suffering: they benefited only from delivering (and selling) live slaves, not from tossing corpses into the ocean. By definition, the crime of genocide requires the deliberate slaughter of a specific group of people; slavers invariably preferred oppressing and exploiting live Africans rather than murdering them en masse.

H/t, Oliver Willis.

Oh my. Just watch. This administration cannot end soon enough. Oh my. Just watch. This administration cannot end soon enough. Olbermann shows a pic of Dear Leader playing golf two months after he claimed he stopped playing “in solidarity” with grieving families who lost loved ones in his Iraq nightmare. That was bad enough, but his sacrifice wasn’t even his own idea, so his handlers even saw this as some sort of noble gesture to spin — it’s an administration of completely morally and ethically bankrupt people, and KO had enough.

Part 1:

A snippet:

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on two topics a lot of us had foolishly thought, had naively hoped, we would not again have to address… and a third topic nobody thought a president would ever seriously mention in public unless perhaps he’d just been hit in the head with something and was not in full possession of his faculties - how he expressed his “empathy” to the families of the dead in Iraq - by giving up golf.

The President has resorted anew to the sleaziest fear-mongering and mass manipulation of an administration - of a public life - dedicated to realizing the lowest of our expectations.

Part 2:

Full transcript is below the fold.
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You know, I wasn’t sure if my former senator was actually going to throw his hat into the endorsement ring.

(WaPo):

In the immediate aftermath of Edwards’ decision to drop from the race, both Clinton and Obama made a pilgrimage to North Carolina to huddle with the former candidate and make their pitch for his support.

By all accounts, those meetings left Edwards genuinely undecided. Obama’s message of change and his call to end the influence peddling in Washington were clearly an obvious fit for Edwards’ sympathies, but he retained some lingering concerns about Obama’s depth of experience. Clinton, on the other hand, had considerable experience but struggled to represent the sort of change that Edwards believed was necessary to win the nomination.

Rumors flew for months about Edwards’s leaning although of late it had been expected that if he endorsed a candidate, it would be Obama.

Matt Bennett, a former Clinton Administration official, described Edwards as the “troubadour of the working class” and said the North Carolina senator’s endorsement of Obama makes it “tougher for Clinton to make the case that working class Democrats can’t [or] won’t support Obama.”

During his 2004 bid for president, Edwards focused his campaign message almost exclusively on middle-class and lower middle-class people — insisting that his southern roots, his father’s experience as a mill worker and his own up from the bootstraps success story uniquely positioned him to represent their interests in the White House.

The timing of this is quite interesting, given the proximity of the West Virginia primary, where the Two Americas message that Edwards ran on is highly relevant, as is the racial divide that was in stark relief in that primary. However, a slice of this demographic, as we’ve seen, has no qualms declaring that they will not vote for a black man under any circumstances — even if voting for a Republican is against their basic economic interests. You have to think those folks are unlikely to be moved by an endorsement by Edwards.

So what, if anything, do you think this endorsement means in the greater scheme of things?

(UPDATE: The GOP is in a panic over the legacy of this administration and its effect on November elections. See below the fold.)

We all know Dear Leader has no shame, but here’s yet another example of his terror alert leash jerking and fearmongering, intimating that electing a Democrat will lead to disaster if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq.

President Bush warned in an interview Tuesday that the Democratic presidential candidates’ plans to withdraw abruptly from Iraq could “eventually lead to another attack on the United States” and would “embolden” terrorists.

In a White House interview with Politico and Yahoo News — a president’s first for an online audience — Bush said his doomsday scenario for a premature withdrawal “of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States.”

I hate to break it to his highness, but he f*cked up the whole region with his Big Military Adventure. It’s hard to imagine anyone screwing over both this country and Iraq any more than he has.

In the interview, he also shows how he prays away any guilt at sending young Americans to perish fighting military battles based on his bad judgment and Darth’s dark hand. God’s comfort is all these families need, not an apology from the man sitting in the Oval Office.

His Christian faith has increased in office, since “part of the faith walk is to understand your weaknesses and is to constantly try to embetter yourself and get closer to the Lord, and that’s a daily occurrence.”

“Obviously, there’s been some tough moments in here,” he said. “When you know that somebody lost their loved one as a result of a decision that I made, that’s a tough moment. If you’re a faithful person, you try to empathize with the suffering that that person is going through. On the other hand, there is a knowledge that the good Lord can comfort during these moments of grief. And that’s what I ask for in my prayer.”

And what can only be described as the public ramblings of a sociopath, our president said he shows his solidarity with families who have lost loved ones in his military misadventure by...not going out on the links anymore. I’m not sh*tting you.

See the video below the fold.
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Via. Most of these that get passed around the internet strike me as hoaxes, but sabotabby got this one from an APA publication that seems to have vetted it for authenticity. Unfortunately, this only seems to be one page, so it’s hard to really get a good idea of your score. I don’t wear red nail polish and my seams are never crooked, but I think that’s probably not going to help me much because of the issues regarding church and children.

The rapist/murderer-releasing, Christian Reconstructionist-supported, Man-On-Dog wannabe, former Arkansas governor, and Baptist minister-without-a-theology-degree Mike Huckabee is back in the news — at least at U.S. News & World Report, in its Capital Commerce column.

A top McCain fundraiser with access to McCain’s inner circle, as well as one of those infamous “top GOP strategists” are saying that the Arizona senator has Pastor Huck at the top of his VP pick list. U.S. News’s James Pethokoukis on the purported logic of picking Huckabee.

1) He is a great campaigner and communicator who could both shore up support in the South among social conservatives (Huckabee is a former Baptist minister) and appeal to working-class voters in the critical “Big 10″ states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio.

2) As any pollster knows, voters search for candidates who “care about people like me,” and Huckabee would probably score a lot higher on that quality than millionaire investor Mitt Romney. Plus, given all the turmoil on Wall Street, 2008 would seem to be a bad year to pick a former investment banker for veep.

3) Economic conservatives and supply-siders may balk, but the threat of four years of Obamanomics and higher investment, income, and corporate taxes might be enough to keep them on board.

More below the fold.
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As we’ve seen this election cycle, there’s a desperation seen in the MSM talking heads and newpaper columnists, even some blogs, to declare Barack Obama’s success a post-racial triumph in this country — that racism is rapidly becoming a distant memory.

First, take a look at this lovely T-shirt being sold at Mulligan’s Bar and Grill in Marietta/Cobb County, Georgia (h/t Jeremy from Cobb).

Marietta tavern owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he’s peddling, featuring cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with “Obama in ‘08″ scrolled underneath, are “cute.” But to a coalition of critics, the shirts are an insulting exploitation of racial stereotypes from generations past.

“It’s time to put an end to this,” said Rich Pellegrino, a Mableton resident and director of the Cobb-Cherokee Immigrant Alliance. It was among the organizations planning to gather outside Mulligan’s Bar and Grill Tuesday afternoon to protest the “racist and highly offensive” shirts.

Just down the street from Marietta’s famous Big Chicken, Mulligan’s has carved a provocative niche in an increasingly multicultural area, thanks to its owner’s ultra-conservative political views. If you live in Marietta, it’s impossible not to know what’s on Norman’s mind, as he posts his views on signs in front of Mulligan’s. Among his recent musings: “I wish Hillary had married OJ,” “No habla espanol — and never will” and the standard “I.N.S. Agents eat free.”

“I’m saying out loud what everyone in this town whispers,” Norman said.

…Norman said those offended are “hunting for a reason to be mad” and insisted he is “not a racist.” Why picture Obama as Curious George? “Look at him . . . the hairline, the ears, he looks just like Curious George,” Norman said.

Not a racist. I guess he doesn’t do Klan night riding on the weekends, so in his mind he’s free and clear of that label. Even sadder, he’s donating the proceeds to the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I wonder what the MDA thinks of this?

More below the fold.
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It doesn’t seem like it’s been a whole year since the last International Mr. Leather. See The Peter’s report last year, “Photos Reveal Twisted Perversions at Chicago’s Palmer House Hilton Hotel.”

Since we know Peter LaBarbera reads my blog, I’ll just post the ticket information link for him (also, here’s the contest application form, Peter). The fetish event, which draws hets and homos, a fact that Peter tries to minimize, is celebrating its 30th year. It will be at the Hyatt Regency Chicago May 22 - May 26. If Peter plays his cards right, he might meet special guest Andy Bell of Erasure, who will perform on Sunday night at the International Mr. Leather Contest.

***

While we’re on the topic of the Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (in my basement) honcho, Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin has a couple of items on Peter. One is on a Christian web site’s embarrassment at the obsessive bleatings at AFTAH:

And why is it just homosexuality. They act as if that is the BIG sin in the scriptures, dismissing all other destructive behaviors and choices. So, I will faithfully be waiting for the following websites to emerge, if these people are really trying to get biblical truth out there

Americans for Truth about Lying
Americans for Truth about Gossip
Americans for Truth about Bitterness
Americans for Truth about Slander
Americans for Truth about Poverty
Americans for Truth about Widows

Jim’s other post concerns The Peter’s new interest in outing Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who has been rumored to be gay for quite some time. Since Crist’s stock has risen as a possible VP selection for McCain, LaBarbera apparently wants to ensure that homosexuals and/or homosexualists are crossed off the potential Veep list early on.

I say to McSame — please consider the recently heterosexually paired governor!

Bob Barr has jumped into the race as a Libertarian candidate. Will this siphon off some of the disaffected Republicans voters who cannot stand McSame, or is this just a blip.

Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr launched a Libertarian Party presidential bid Monday, saying voters are hungry for an alternative to the status quo who would dramatically cut the federal government.

His candidacy throws a wild card into the White House race that many believe could peel away votes from Republican Sen. John McCain given the candidates’ similar positions on fiscal policy.

…Barr first must win the Libertarian nomination at the party’s national convention that begins May 22. Party officials consider him a front-runner thanks to the national profile he developed as a Georgia congressman from 1995 to 2003.

Barr, 59, quit the Republican Party two years ago, saying he had grown disillusioned with its failure to shrink government and its willingness to scale back civil liberties in fighting terrorism.

The Freepi are alternately seeing this as a good thing or a disaster spoiler situation.

And look at this fun — McCain is going to have a pain in the posterior as Ron Paul’s revolutionaries are plotting a “convention revolt.” The GOP convention may be more interesting than expected. (LAT)

[L]argely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in Minnesota at the beginning of September.

…But what’s been largely overlooked is Paul’s candidacy as a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party’s most conservative conservatives. As anticipated in late March in The Ticket, that situation could be exacerbated by today’s expected announcement from former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nod, a slot held by Paul in 1988.

…They hope to demonstrate their disagreements with McCain vocally at the convention through platform fights and an attempt to get Paul a prominent speaking slot. Paul, who’s running unopposed in his home Texas district for an 11th House term, still has some $5 million in war funds and has instructed his followers that their struggle is not about a single election, but a long-term revolution for control of the Republican Party.

So eager are they to follow their leader’s words, that Paul’s supporters have driven his new book, “The Revolution: A Manifesto,” to the top of several bestseller lists.

A far greater danger.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling paranoid, I think the rumors that voting machines are rigged are floated to distract progressives from old-fashioned voter suppression tactics. I mention this, because there seems to be a trend lately of pushing for voter ID bills that are directly aimed at diverting legal voters from the polls, and now there’s one up in Missouri. I saw a presentation on this at the Texas ACLU conference, and the speaker Nina Perales from MALDEF really impressed upon me how many voters can be purged from a roll using these kinds of tactics. Often the types of ID required to prove citizenship are things that people don’t carry on them, or documents that native born citizens might easily acquire but naturalized citizens don’t have. I’m sure the document requirements vary from law to law, but the general rule of thumb is that it’s about putting obstacles between predominantly Democratic voting blocs and casting a ballot. A lot of people in targeted groups have reasons to want to minimize their contact with officials, so they will be rebuffed easily by the first person who turns them away at the polls, because they’re afraid to fight for their rights.

The voter ID bills are based on a faulty premise, which is that there’s widespread problems of people imitating others to vote. It’s a flimsy excuse, as Shark-Fu notes.

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Kudos to Catholics for Choice for putting together a report exposing that Bill Donohue is not who he says he is. He claims to be a defender of Catholics against bigotry, but instead, he’s a right wing shill who mainly focuses on partisan political attacks. Scott Swenson has the story. Here’s a taste.

In a 43-page report released Monday, The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights: Neither Religious, Nor Civil, Catholics for Choice documents a pattern of media and political manipulation by Donahue, his organization, and his supporters. His base of support comes from the most politicized leaders of the Catholic hierarchy, including Cardinal Egan, and a board that reads like a Who’s Who of partisan Republican politics (L. Brent Bozell III, Alan Keyes, Kate O’Beirne, Linda Chavez, Kenneth Whitehead, Lawrence Kudlow, Thomas Monaghan, William Simon, Jr.). Far from protecting Catholics from bigotry, Donahue plays the victim card to advance a narrow, socially conservative, hierarchical and patriarchal political view.

Read the whole thing.

It’s been an interesting and enlightening last few days over at BlueNC since the state primary on the 6th. As you know, Dem U.S. Senate candidate Jim Neal was defeated by Kay Hagan, and the latter will face off against Liddy Dole in the fall. Incidentally, post-primary polls have Hagan at 48%, Dole at 47%. Do-Nothing Dole has a war chest that dwarfs Hagan’s, so Liddy will be able to carpet-bomb the airwaves with ads.

Anyway, the post-mortems over at BlueNC have included “thank you” posts by nearly every candidate who has participated in liveblog sessions over there during this cycle, and the one for Kay Hagan took a bizarre, contentious turn when the subject of those now-infamous questions I asked of the state senator during her liveblog came up.

More below the fold, including important Qs of the day for you all that I hope generates a lot of discussion and feedback I can take back to the folks at BlueNC.
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I just returned from a wonderful trip up to Delaware to see my nephew, who was born on Dec. 31. Mr. E is now babbling up a storm; he was just a tiny little one when I first met him back in February. He looks a lot like my brother when he was a baby (Tim’s 5 years younger — he turns the big 4-0 this year). The weekend was spent getting a lot of quality face time with E, since I’ll likely not see him again until July — he may be crawling by then at this rate. He is already trying to turn himself over and itching to move around. Of course my brother and sister-in-law haven’t baby-proofed the house yet, so that’s the next project to take on before E is mobile.

I can’t believe all the baby-raising gadgets and safety restraints they have today. When I was a little one (back in the 60s, friends, the dark ages), my mom had none of these handy things. Tim and I learned about stairs by falling down them. We learned about the hot stove by, well, hands got sizzled.

My favorite toddler environmental encounter milestone was when I took a stray bobby pin, pulled it open and inserted each end into an electrical wall socket. ZAAAPPPP! I liked the fry so much, according to my mom, that I actually did it again not too many days thereafter. Hmmmm…that may explain some of my idiosyncrasies.

My brother’s infamous childhood incident was crawling into the dryer and almost shutting the door. We were looking all over for him and I found him laughing inside it.

Share time: tell your own self-endangerment toddler story.

Hat tip.

Help me understand this batsh*ttery, please. From the great Sunshine State town of Land O’ Lakes…

Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.

But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land O’ Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.

“I get a call the middle of the day from the supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, ‘Jim, we have a huge issue. You can’t take any more assignments. You need to come in right away,’” he said.

When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell that went much farther than he’d hoped.

“I said, ‘Well Pat, can you explain this to me?’ ‘You’ve been accused of wizardry,’ [he said]. Wizardry?” he asked.

Tampa Bay’s 10 talked to the assistant superintendent with the Pasco County School District who said it wasn’t just the wizardry and that Piculas had other performance issues, including “not following lesson plans” and allowing students to play on unapproved computers.

Piculas said he knew nothing about the accusations.

“That… I think was embellished after the fact to try to cover what initially what they were saying to me,” he said.

Hat tip to reader Beth, who said “I assume this is the result of some fundies and their anti-harry-potter obsession?”

Washington University students and faculty are in an uproar over the decision to award anti-gay, anti-feminist Eagle Forum fossil Phyllis Schlafly an honorary doctorate at its May 16 commencement ceremony. A Facebook group created to protest the move has over a thousand members.

Mary Ann Dzuback, the director of the women and gender studies department at Washington University agreed, said it was “grossly inappropriate” for the university to honor Schlafly with a degree.

“She’s spent her entire career speaking against women in the workforce and for them remaining in the home,” Dzuback said of Schlafly, who rose to prominence during the successful campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s.

…The university issued a statement Sunday defending its decision, saying it — like many other universities — chooses to honor those “who have become a part of the broad public discourse on vital issues of the times.” The statement cited other controversial figures, such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whom the school has honored.

Steve Ralls of PFLAG National:

PFLAG and our St. Louis chapter are proud to join those on the ground in Missouri and call on school officials to do the right thing and, as executive director Jody Huckaby said today, “find a more suitable person to applaud.”

Steve also points out some of Mother Schlafly’s winning cultural touchstones:

On California’s SB-77, to protect GLBT students: The legislation “represent[s] a repudiation of 2,000 years of Christian moral teaching on human sexuality, marriage, and the family. The result is that California’s schools are now promoting behaviors and lifestyles that are physically and spiritually dangerous for children.”

On the idea of any protections for GLBT youth: “The bottom line is, don’t count on the courts to protect public school students from being subjected to the promotion of homosexuality.”

On sexual harassment laws: “Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women.”

Yeah. I think they could locate someone who isn’t terminally frozen in the dark ages.

Whoops. We haven’t had a good one like this in, oh, a few weeks. This NY pol was not only fornicating outside the marital bond, he was procreating with a sex partner other than his wife. He receives bonus points for being charged with driving while intoxicated! (NYT):

Representative Vito J. Fossella, a Staten Island Republican who was arrested on May 1 in Alexandria, Va., and charged with drunken driving, issued a statement on Thursday acknowledging that he had had an extramarital affair with Laura Fay, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel, and that the two of them have a 3-year-old daughter together.

The prospect that Mr. Fossella could face a mandatory jail sentence if convicted had already threatened to bring to an end his decade-long career in the House, where Mr. Fossella is the only Republican representing New York City.

…Mr. Fossella, 43, was driving with a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit when he was pulled over. He faces a mandatory five days in jail if convicted.

…In the Democratic stronghold of St. George, the neighborhood nearest the ferry to Manhattan, patrons at the Cargo Cafe weighed in on the scandal.

“Vito Fossella’s behavior is a disgrace to himself, his family and to Staten Island,” said an anesthesiologist, Dr. John Ferguson, 44. “Given the fact that he votes along the Bush-Cheney line 90 percent of the time, which means he sees himself as a moral values candidate, I find his behavior completely, but not surprisingly, hypocritical. He should resign immediately.”

You have to read Howie Klein’s take on this one.

Hat tip, Linda.

Out. Of. Control. Dateline Kamloops, British Columbia - Three Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers apparently couldn’t subdue an elderly patient. The sadistic sickness continues. BTW, you can see pics of the man’s stun gun burns at the CBC site.

Frank Lasser, 82, appeared fragile Thursday when he showed the stun gun marks on his body and talked about the ordeal he went through Saturday.

“They [police] should have known I had bypass surgery,” Lasser told CBC News.

Lasser has had heart surgery and needs to carry an apparatus to supply oxygen at all times. He was in the Royal Inland Hospital Saturday due to pneumonia but has since been released.

RCMP said nurses called police after Lasser became delirious and pulled a knife out of his pocket.

Lasser told CBC News that he sometimes become delusional when he can’t breathe properly. He said he couldn’t explain why he refused to let go of the knife even after the Mounties arrived.

“I was laying on the bed by then and the corporal came in, or the sergeant, I forget which it was, and said to the guys, ‘OK, get him because we got more important work to do on the street tonight,’” Lasser said.

The article also refers to the Taser as “the conducted energy weapon.”

Hat tip, Shane.

The Blend Taser files.

Last night in another thread, I commented again about how poorly Hillary Clinton has been served by her hired campaign guns. Of course, the senator has stuck her foot in her mouth on her own as well, but nothing compares to this. From a new USA Today interview, she manages to top any dog-whistle race-baiting that her husband put out on the campaign trail with this naked appeal.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

Wow. Just. Wow. That didn’t blow by without comment, even in the article.

Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Clinton’s comment was a “poorly worded” variation on the way analysts have been “slicing and dicing the vote in racial terms.”

Is that another variation on “misspoke”?

You see the problem and beauty of Senator Clinton’s statement is that it boldly embraces the undiscussed fear in this Reagan Democrat demographic, the people who do consider race a major factor — concern that white privilege is being threatened, that somehow Barack Obama as president would exact retribution against “hard working white Americans” for past or present institutionalized racism. You know, like this candid Kentucky voter:

I’ve talked to people-a woman who was chair of county elections last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for a black man.” Patrick said he wouldn’t vote for Obama either.

Why not?

“Race. I really don’t want an African-American as President. Race.”

What about race?

“I thought about it. I think he would put too many minorities in positions over the white race. That’s my opinion.”

The frame is specific — that’s why Clinton referred to hard working white Americans. What happened to “blue collar Americans?” Oh wait, there are a lot of hard working black and brown blue collar/working class Americans, and many of them they voted for Obama, so she had to slice that demo down to the bottom line. Dog whistles no more.

I want to believe that it wasn’t a purposeful slip of the tongue because it’s too painful to contemplate that the black vote is now perceived as a “problem” because it skews to Obama, and because there are more white voters who have a problem with him based on his race, we have to nail that demo.

Remember, the black vote has been the most reliable Democratic vote, not the Reagan Democrats. Black voters don’t turn out for Obama solely because he is black. I’ve blogged before about this bizarre train of thought — if the affinity vote is so powerful we would have seen a bum rush for Alan Keyes. What Clinton is saying is not inaccurate (polls slice and dice this way), but its use here is inappropriate and inflammatory. It’s because the last core demo left for her to appeal to is resistant to Obama for reasons that have little to do with policy differences, or 3 AM readiness. She’s brought the microtarget out into the light and it’s one many of us don’t want to face talking about, with a different name — scared white people.

She is naming her remaining trump card, and considering our country’s pitiful history of not frankly dealing with or discussing race — aside from painful, fumbling defensive fits and starts — we’re left to deal with the fallout of a “poorly worded” statement, lacking a sufficiently stocked toolbox to deal with the ramifications of courting a vote with implicit and explicit biases.

The question never explored is why are these people scared more about a black president (regardless of political viewpoint) than the prospect of a McCain presidency and four more years of failed economic policies that have left this very demographic high and dry? What do we want to do about this as Americans? Apparently nothing, that’s a third rail topic and there’s an election to win.

Naming it means acknowledging problems we haven’t dealt with, and exploding the myth of a post-racial America. Barack Obama may be the first post-racial candidate because of his personal heritage, but the United States of America is nowhere near “post-racial” when it comes to politics.

From the Golden State, a bizarre and ridiculous firing of a teacher for not signing a loyalty oath.

When Wendy Gonaver was offered a job teaching American studies at Cal State Fullerton this academic year, she was pleased to be headed back to the classroom to talk about one of her favorite themes: protecting constitutional freedoms.

But the day before class was scheduled to begin, her appointment as a lecturer abruptly ended over just the kind of issue that might have figured in her course. She lost the job because she did not sign a loyalty oath swearing to “defend” the U.S. and California constitutions “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

The loyalty oath was added to the state Constitution by voters in 1952 to root out communists in public jobs. Now, 16 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main effect is to weed out religious believers, particularly Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

This arcane requirement offended Gonaver, who is a Quaker. She in fact offered to sign the oath if she could also submit a statement explaining her objection, something commonly offered in other states under circumstances like this. That didn’t fly either.

Cal State Fullerton rejected her statement and insisted that she sign the oath if she wanted the job. “I wanted it on record that I am a pacifist,” said Gonaver, 38. “I was really upset. I didn’t expect to be fired. I was so shocked that I had to do this.”

California State University officials say they were simply following the law and did not discriminate against Gonaver because all employees are required to sign the oath. Clara Potes-Fellow, a Cal State spokeswoman, said the university does not permit employees to submit personal statements with the oath.

“The position of the university is that her entire added material was against the law,” Potes-Fellow said.

Are we going to hear from all the religious freedom “experts” on this, you know, the fundies who are quick to declare that they are being victimized by the state for their anti-gay, allegedly bible-based beliefs?

Just a programming note…

Pam’s House Blend is teaming up with the great folks of the state blog BlueNC to cover primary results. We will provide real-time coverage with commentary, polls, videos and more using CoverItLive. You’ll be able to get in-depth perspectives on the presidential primary — and important downticket races — from the folks on the front lines here in the Tar Heel state. I will be stationed at the Jim Neal election hub at Southern Rail in Carrboro, NC (for non-Tar Heels, Carrboro’s a couple of blocks from Chapel Hill).

 

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Voting this AM

Although we have early voting here in NC, I chose to wait until today to see how turnout would be at my precinct (#54, in southern Durham).

At 7:00 AM it was starting to get packed, with the line was out the door. There were plenty of yard signs out in front — I personally put out a Jim Neal sign. I got in just in time, because around the time I left (7:40), there was literally a traffic jam waiting to get into the complex.

Demographically the precinct is pretty diverse — there were white soccer mom/dad types, young black voters, senior black voters, people of all colors on their way to work.

UPDATE: We are already receiving reports of voting problems — in Granville County.BlueNC has the scoop.
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