-and a good time was had by all

The governor of Utah, who says gay people ought to rely on the majority to do the right thing when it comes to discrimination, met with some gay rights group leaders the other day. Nothing was accomplished, but the gay group leaders can backstop their claims to leadership with the face time and the guv can claim he's open-minded.

Just like when the President speaks at the HRC dinner this weekend.

As William Strunk used to lecture, "Avoid needless words!"

Joe.My.God:

Mary Cheney, spawn of Satan and sister of a birther, is pregnant with her second child.

Somewhere, F.A. Mignet is laughing

The Conservativist says the Girondists and the Jacobins are eyeing each other warily in the Upstate Lawn Jockey Party.

Is that dog native-born? And where are the other 42 campaign store items made?

Congressman Joe Wilson was working his heart out for his SC constituency on health care and wetbacks, and watching President Obama like a hawk, last Friday night in Jackson, Michigan, at a closed to the public fundraiser for Congressman Tim Walberg:

A private fundraiser for former U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg featuring South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson drew more than 100 supporters and more than a dozen rain-drenched protesters to downtown Jackson on Friday morning.

Wilson, who shouted ``You lie!'' at President Obama during the president's Sept. 9 address before Congress, has become a darling among Conservatives and has been asked to attend events for several Republican candidates across the country.

Wilson spoke privately to the crowd inside the Commonwealth Commerce Center, where supporters paid $20 apiece to attend, or $150 to receive two tickets and have their photo taken with Wilson. After his remarks, the crowd gave him a standing ovation.

The event was closed to media, and Wilson left before the event ended. He stopped briefly in front of a few reporters and answered two questions but was pulled away by a handler before he could finish his last response. When he walked outside, he was greeted by several protesters.

After the event, Walberg told reporters Wilson spoke to the crowd about health-care and defense policy.

Walberg said he and Wilson, whom he described as a ``Southern gentleman,'' were friends when they served together in Congress.

He said he was surprised when he had learned it was Wilson who had shouted at the president.

``But Joe Wilson is also a man of passion,'' Walberg said. ``He understands his district and he speaks the truth.''

Michigan Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Pete Hoekstra also was in the crowd.

``Joe made a mistake; it shouldn't have happened,'' Hoekstra said. ``He got caught in something he feels very badly about.''

Saturday night Wilson was working his heart out for his SC constituency on health care and wetbacks, and watching President Obama like a hawk at a fundraiser for Rep. Roy Blunt's gubernatorial campaign in Springfield, Missouri.

Congressman Wilson's also opened an online campaign store selling campaign wear. Of the 45 items offered for sale, only three are listed as being made in America.

Wilson's store is run by Cafe Press, which also peddles shwag for Boy Fogle and Anaconda.

Somehow it always comes back around to socialism

Most of the Lawn Jockeys on the House Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet. have written a letter to the chair of the FCC objecting to net neutrality- a letter, Scott Fulton notes at Betanews, "whose timing is curiously in sync with the publication of a position paper on net neutrality from leading service provider Verizon."

Fulton reports,

In their letter to the FCC, the House Republicans- joined by influential Energy and Commerce Committee member Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif)- went so far as to equate the concept of "net neutrality" with a single-flavor approach to broadband service that would border on socialism.

It seems impossible to find out who among the subcommittee's members signed the Stearns letter- or its full text- but these are the minority members:

Cliff Stearns (R-FL) [Ranking Member]
Fred Upton (R-MI)
John Shimkus (R-IL)
John Shadegg (R-AZ)
Roy Blunt (R-MO)
Steve Buyer (R-IN)
George Radanovich (R-CA)
Mary Bono Mack (R-CA)
Greg Walden (R-OR)
Lee Terry (R-NE)
Mike Rogers (R-MI)
Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)

At ZDNet News, Richard Koman posts this nugget:

Has the strategy of unfettered private investment in the Internet really worked so well? According to the Communications Workers of America, the U.S. ranks 28th in download speeds, fully four times slower that South Korea’s 20.4 megabits per second. Japan’s second at 15.8 mbps.

“The US has not made significant improvement in the speeds at which residents connect to the Internet,” the report said. “Our nation continues to fall far behind other countries. People in Japan can upload a high-definition video in 12 minutes, compared to a grueling 2.5 hours at the US average upload speed,” the report said.

And hey, guess what? Those Asian countries have very active government support for and investment in Internet infrastructure. Sure wouldn’t want any government interference with the great job our telecom industry is doing here in the U.S.

As Waldo noted recently, SC's own Senator "Drop Dead" DeMint (R-Corporations) is a co-sponsor of legislation to prevent the FCC from even considering net neutrality. In a 2007 speech on his office website, discussing net neutrality, DeMint confessed:

I always shudder when I hear somebody say that the federal government should act on behalf of consumers and the “public interest."

A Tale of Two Parties

Andrew Sullivan:

The Tory "Conference Pride" Event

This truly is a tale of two conservatisms. In America, a core plank of the Republican party is fear and loathing of homosexuals, banning any civil rights for gay couples, persecuting gay servicemembers, and reiterating claims that children need to be protected from the gay menace. Republican intellectuals are intent on Biblical proscriptions of the alleged gay threat to the family, resurrecting the idea that psychotherapy can "cure" gays, and reviving natural law to ensure that gay couples are rendered second class citizens in their own constitution. In Britain this week, at the Conservative Party Conference, there will be a big event to celebrate gay inclusion:

The official Conservative event will be hosted by high-profile LGBT Conservatives Iain Dale, political blogger and shortlisted Parliamentary candidate for the safe Conservative seat of Bracknell and openly-Lesbian Vice Chair of the Party Margot James. It will include a live performance by singer Angie Brown and addresses by senior shadow cabinet members, Nick Herbert and Theresa May, as well as Stonewall’s Ben Summerskill.

There's a protest - by the left. Labour is terrified that the Tories have left previous bigotry behind and can now appeal to gay voters on the basis of their core ideas and arguments. And look at who's scheduled: Two openly gay future cabinet members and the openly gay vice-chair of the party. That's better than the Democrats.

Reading around

Crooked Timber on dealing with climate change among the English-speaking democracies:

There’s a bit of a puzzle to me here. In the US and UK, as in Australia, the conservative commentariat is solidly delusionist. In the US, Republican politicians, activists and voters are similarly deluded, so there is no coherence problem. But in the UK, it seems as if Conservative politicians ought to be facing a difficult choice between going with the majority of their supporters (sane, on this issue at least) and the commentariat (delusional). But as far as I can see, the Conservatives are at least as good as Labor on this issue, yet they don’t seem to cop any flak from the Telegraph, Spectator, Times etc, all of which push a solidly delusionist line.

Life on the Down Low: a North Carolina Pentecostal minister is charged with killing the girlfriend of a college student he lusted after. An Alabama judge is accused of trading sex with male defendants for leniency.

The Savior is white, too: Jesus likes the Constitution, surrounded by a panoply of America historical figures and right-wing politicians. Way back on the left side of this interesting multimedia presentation are the only two African-Americans who count in this Christianist fantasy: Harriet Tubman (died 1913) and Frederick Douglas (died 1895).

Timed-release vengeance: God punished Chicago for the Gay Games in 2006 by denying them the 2012 Olympics.

South Carolina: The Advocate's trying to fluff the failed Andre Bauer outing. Anaconda's imaginary friend says Mitt Romney will lead the Lawn Jockey Party to defeat in 2012 because he, too, is a socialist.

The Big Tent Party: After the Lawn Jockey Party's congressional leaders put the first

African-American chair of their party "on a short leash," its congressional

campaign committee calls for putting the first Woman Speaker of the House

"in her place." Andrew Sullivan contemplates the awful moment of realization, in the mind of an anti-gay Utah Republican congressman, "what it's like to be a minority with

no rights or power at all..."

Somewhere, Oprah is laughing: Drudge is fluffing Limbaugh with a really old photo:

This image seems more recent:

His economic development strategy working, the Luv Guv opens a drug store

Governor Sanford's Public Schedule - Oct. 5 - Oct. 9

Columbia, S.C. - October 2, 2009 - Gov. Sanford's schedule next week includes among other items the following:

Tuesday - Economic Development Announcement (10:00 a.m., Cherokee County).
- Easley Rotary (12:30 p.m., West End Hall, 201 South 5th Street, Easley).

Wednesday - Grand Opening of Family Pharmacy (11:00 a.m., 2760 Celanese Road, Suite 102, Rock Hill).

Thursday - Open Door After Four meetings (4:00 p.m., Governor's Office).

One party systems tend to turn out this way

Just another day in the Upstate: indictments flying like dandelion seeds against the men who gained office railing against drugs and going wobbly on crime. Union County, it seems, was their sandbox.

Starved for entertainment

Wolfe Reports sums it up:

A moonshine festival without moonshine

Only in South Carolina.

In Campobello last weekend, the locals held the 17th annual Moonshiner’s Reunion and Mountain Music Festival. What pops to your mind? We think of relatively poor, white mountain men with a healthy distrust of authority, the same types that legendarily gave birth to NASCAR by flying around the hills in souped-up cars to get away from “the Revenuers.” Also, booze that may make you go blind if you’re stupid enough to strain the booze through a car radiator that still has fluid in it.

So what did the festival have? Lots of music, camping and mountain wares. But — ha! — no moonshine. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there was a moonshine festival without the classic illegal hooch. Just seems wrong.

Somewhere, George Orwell is laughing

It's a sign of the apocalypse when the likes of Congressman Thaddeus McCotter says Senator Jim DeMint is off the reservation:

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter: Ideologues like Sen. Jim DeMint are ‘nuts.’

On Saturday, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) discussed the direction of the GOP in an address to the Republican Northeast Conference in Newport, RI. McCotter, who serves as the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee in the House, chided conservative “ideologues” for controlling the party. McCotter explained that these individuals want to “purge” opponents “all the time…because they’re nuts.” He then clarified that his remarks were directed at radical conservatives like Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC):

MCCOTTER: If the Republican Party wants to become its own antithesis, which is an ideological party, we’re going to continue to have these problems. Remember, ideologues, there’s a reason why they purge all the time — it’s because they’re nuts. Hope the ideologues weren’t listening. If, however, as I said before, we understand that we represent constituencies and America is a vast country full of a variety of opinions and peoples, way of life, then we will get where we need to go. As for the attitude of the Senator from South Carolina that it is better to have fewer friends than more, that’s easier to say in South Carolina than Detroit.

McCotter is the Michigan Republican who introduced a resolution calling on the President to apologize to the cop who arrested Henry Louis Gates in his own house, and whose contribution to Republican health care reform ideas is to seek a deduction for pet care three times greater than that for humans.

For his part, DeMint is back from Honduras, huzzahing the government installed in a military coup as a protector of democracy and constitutional freedoms.

Where's Joe Wilson?

Waldo's been wondering where Joe Wilson's been lately.

The answer? Playing Bubba in Missouri:

In Missouri, Joe Wilson admits outburst was out of line

Congressman Roy Blunt (left) with colleague Joe WilsonCongressman Joe Wilson -- yes, that Congressman Joe Wilson -- told a Springfield audience Saturdaythat he was "brought up civil."

On that score, he admitted his "You lie" shout atPresident Obama during his recent congressional address was inappropriate.

"It was brought up possibly the wrong way," Wilson said, drawing laughter from the crowd. Wilson was introduced by Congressman Roy Blunt, the U.S. Senate candidate.

"But the issue has been brought up," he said. "We need to watch them like a hawk."

Lindsey Graham goes rogue again, and the Lawn Jockey leaders yank the chain again

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

But the GOP jumps the shark EVERY day

Joe Scarborough wonders why conservatives are cheering America's loss of the Olympics. It's worth a watch:

The day in mauling

Drudge:

Pack of raccoons mauls 74-year-old Florida woman... Woman Mauled To Death By Pet Bear...

A fleeting moment in the life of a girl

The Internet's vast capacity- and the ingenuity of men and women to employ it in new and inventive ways- is a daily marvel, multiplied tens of thousands of times over every day.

Here, thanks to the archivists at the Anne Frank Museum, is the only film footage known to have captured the girl who became a literary genius, in an time when the travails of her life were unimaginable:

The Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam, which preserves the memory of the young diarist who died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, posted the only known film footage of Anne Frank on a new YouTube channel launched last week. According to the museum, the film was shot on July 22, 1941, to record the wedding of a woman who lived next door to the Franks. About nine seconds in to the silent film embedded above, the camera tilts up from the bride and groom to show young Anne leaning out of the window of her house to see them.

The folks who run Conservapedia (are the site's fans "conservapediphiles"?) have announced a new and ambitious undertaking: The Conservative Bible Project.

They believe there's a good deal of error that has crept into the Bible that they are well-positioned to correct:

Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning:

• lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts of Christianity
• lack of precision in modern language
• translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.

Of these three sources of errors, the last introduces the largest error, and the biggest component of that error is liberal bias. Large reductions in this error can be attained simply by retranslating the KJV into modern English.^[1]

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:^[2]

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level^[3]
4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;^[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";^[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."

Thus, a project has begun among members of Conservapedia to translate the Bible in accordance with these principles. The translated Bible can be found here.

Benefits include:

• mastery of the Bible, which is priceless
• mastery of the English language, which is valuable
• thorough understanding of the differences in Bible translations, particularly the historically important King James Version
• benefiting from activity that no public school would ever allow; a Conservative Bible could become a text for public school courses
• liberals will oppose this effort, but they will have to read the Bible to criticize this, and that will open their minds

How long would this project take? There are about 8000 verses in the New Testament. At a careful rate of translating about four verses an hour, it would take one person 2000 hours, or about one year working full time on the project.

He put the "'mo" in "modem"

Savonarola, Chance the Gardener, Boy Fogle and Anaconda need to start mailing out postcards daily, lest they continue to be complicit in the great plot (h/t Snead):

As the Governor says, it's just business as usual in Texas.

Yesterday, the Republican governor of Texas, Rick Perry, abruptly dismissed the chairman and two members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission investigating the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, which I wrote about last month in The New Yorker. The move came two days before the commission was scheduled to hear crucial evidence that Willingham was put to death, in 2004, based on arson theories that have since been disproven by modern science. The new chairman appointed by Perry promptly postponed Friday’s hearing, when the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler was supposed to testify regarding his findings.

You can't tee up a can you're busy kicking down the road

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will focus "at the right time" on how to overturn the "don't ask, don't tell" ban on gays serving openly in the military, his national security adviser said Sunday.

"I don't think it's going to be — it's not years, but I think it will be teed up appropriately," James Jones said.

Somewhere, Dr. Neil Clarke Warren is raving, "ANOTHER public f------g public option?"

h/t Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!- the federal government has a relationships-advice website, Don't bother typing "gay" in the search box, though:

10 Things you Can Do To Romance Your Partner on A Budget

During the courtship process, romantic feelings are usually very strong and partners go out of their way to reveal them to each other. With time though, these romantic feelings can fade. This tip sheet is designed to offer a few practical ideas for couples wishing to “fight the fade” and reignite the romance.

Not to mention it's pretty much the most powerless elected job on the planet

God bless Earl Capps, who faithfully reports that at least one of the Lawn Jockey Party candidates for lieutenant governor admits sense enough to come in out of the dark when it comes to knowing nothing about economic development in South Carolina.

Jim DeMint's recovering economy

An unlikely solution finally pulled me out of my metaphorical shoebox wallpapered with résumés.

“I’d love to work for a literary agent, reading the slush pile,” a friend told me one day. She was unhappy in her job and had been considering a career change. “I’m just going to call around,” she continued. “And see if I can.”

“It’s not as easy as that,” I said. (I had just been turned down for a part-time job supervising naptime at a day-care center. Apparently other applicants were more qualified.) But my friend found a local literary agent. She e-mailed him, called him and pursued him until he agreed to let her work for him free. Now she reads, edits, writes — and avoids the dreaded résumé gap.

This was a revelation for me. People will hire you to work for free. Whether you are overqualified or underqualified matters a lot less if you aren’t being paid.

Who knew? Mahmoud's a Jew

Turns out Iran's president's been overcompensating a bit slagging Israel and denying the Holocaust on alternate weeks.

Which begs the question: why's he so hung up on queers, too? There aren't any in Iran, and the ones they find, they execute.

Today in Gay

Gay people, as we all know, are pervs. Pandagon tries to understand a right-winger's blogger's conclusion that from the way Kentucky Census worker was murdered, he must have been a gay pedophile. It didn't go well.

Cue former Senator Trent Lott:

WASHINGTON (June 16) - An official of the nation's largest gay political group says Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott is showing the right wing's influence by saying homosexuals should be helped ''just like alcohol ... or sex addiction ... or kleptomaniacs.''

The Weekly Standard's John Bowman says gay men aren't "robust":

We know that soldiering--I mean not training or support or peacekeeping or any of the myriad other things soldiers do, but facing enemy bullets--is inextricably bound up with ideas of masculinity. We also know that most heterosexual males' ideas of masculinity are inextricably bound up with what we now call sexual orientation. In other words, "being a man" typically does mean for soldiers both being brave, stoic, etc.--and being heterosexual. Another way to put this is to say that honor, which is by the testimony of soldiers throughout the ages of the essence of military service, includes the honor of being known for heterosexuality, and that, for most heterosexual males, shame attends a reputation as much for homosexuality as for weakness or cowardice.

This is not, of course, to say that homosexuals are weak or cowardly--only that the reputation of manliness, which we know to be an important component of military honor, is in practice incompatible with the imputation either of homosexuality or of weakness and cowardice. Now presumably an argument for the armed forces' being required to accept gay recruits is that it doesn't have to mean this, and that this simple reality is merely the product of custom and convention and no essential part of the moral and emotional equipment of men capable of nerving themselves to face combat. Possibly they are right. But what if they are wrong? Is there any way to find out without taking a real risk with national security? Are the advocates of gays in the military prepared to say, fiat justitia, ruat caelum*?

..Nor is the notion of brotherhood merely metaphorical. There is a kind of brotherhood of comrades in arms that should be seen, because it is so often seen by the men themselves, as a species of brotherhood of the blood. Certainly it involves a form of love--in Greek philia--whose strength is essential to the purposes which evoke it. It is striking how seldom this love between men in battle is mentioned by the advocates of lifting the ban on open homosexuals' serving in the armed forces. Characteristically, they argue on the basis of professionalism and the supposed irrelevance of "sexual orientation" to the job of soldiering. But is it irrelevant?

Perhaps even critics of "Don't ask, don't tell" have an uneasy sense that they cannot simultaneously say--as much of the commentary about the film Brokeback Mountain seemed to suggest--that the homosexual relationship is simply friendship carried to a higher power and, as the advocates for gay marriage imply, that it is exactly the same as the erotic love between men and women. Those who are not homosexuals have always resisted any simple equivalence between sexual love and friendship, not out of bigotry but at least partly because to grant it would be an abdication of their own right to love. Characteristically, the robust heterosexual, if told that close friendship with another man is only a degree away from homosexual relations with him, will back off the friendship. He knows, or believes, what it seems the homosexual cannot know or believe, or doesn't want to know or believe, namely that the two sorts of love are different in kind and not just in degree.

Of course the argument is as silly as arguing that Southern men wearing mullets are racists

or homophobes who commit hate crimes because of outdated, unfounded perceptions of their hairstyles.

Andrew Sullivan adds a little more context:

And, of course, part of the reason for forcing gay soldiers into the closet and holding persecution over their heads is precisely to conceal the plain truth that these stereotypes are false. I remind Bowman that the first solider to lose a limb in the Iraq war was a gay man. That he risked all for his country, that he showed immense valor, should make him a hero to his country and to his commander-in-chief.

And what did they do to him? They fired him.

The New York Times reports its detailed modeling of the costs of being in a same sex relationship not recognized by federal law- in extra expense and denied benefits enjoyed by opposite marriages- is perhaps the most retrogressive "marriage penalty" of them all:

Our goal was to create a hypothetical gay couple whose situation would be similar to a heterosexual couple’s. So we gave the couple two children and assumed that one partner would stay home for five years to take care of them. We also considered the taxes in the three states that have the highest estimated gay populations — New York, California and Florida. We gave our couple an income of $140,000, which is about the average income in those three states for unmarried same-sex partners who are college-educated, 30 to 40 years old and raising children under the age of 18.

Here is what we came up with. In our worst case, the couple’s lifetime cost of being gay was $467,562. But the number fell to $41,196 in the best case for a couple with significantly better health insurance, plus lower taxes and other costs.

Even after conclusive proof Education Department official Kevin Jennings is not a pedophile facilitating statutory rape- and more- and more- and more-, the Fox Noise Machine continues shrieking that he is, and a "radical homosexual druggie," to boot.

The ghost writer who turned Sarah Palin's meanderings into a 400-page doorstop to "come out" in November is a major-league hater.

Christianists supporting Maggie Gallagher and her anti-marriage National Organization for Marriage are finding it expedient to ignore the facts she's been married to a Hindu- man- for 17 years. The Baptist Press explains how Hindus are left unsatisfied by their little clay god.

___________________

*"Do justice, let the sky fall."

Just can't catch a break in the Second City

Maybe it wasn't the President's fault that Chicago lost the Olympic bid.

Maybe it just wasn't their time yet.

Or maybe they've just got bad karma and it's never gonna happen.

Thanks to the remarkable website aldaver.com, Waldo indulged his curiosity over how many other American cities and international regions have failed to reach Olympic glory entirely, or just took a while- which in Olympic years, can be a while.

See, Chicago's 2016 bid was its third try. They tried, and failed, in 1952 and 1956.

After Athens won the 1896 first games, it took a century and two more bids to get it again; Rome won for 1964 only after failing in 1944 (that war business), 1924 and 1908. Berlin got the infamous 1936 games after an asterisked home run (1916, another war) and a miss (1908). Mexico City got 1968's show after failed attempts in 1956 and 1960.

Other cities get addicted and keep coming back to the well. LA failed in 1924 but won in 1932; they then failed in 1952, 1956, 1976 and 1980 before getting a second bite in 1984. That Baron de Coubertin was a Parisian and founder of the modern Olympic movement helped Paris win its first two bids- 1900 and 1924: they whiffed 1992, 2008 and 2012 (the last after President Chirac said the UK has the second-worst food in Europe and that alone was enough to give it to Paris).

London was the bridesmaid twice and the jilted bride (lost to Tokyo for 1940, then won after the IOC pulled it back from the warlords (Japan attacked China); then 1940 was cancelled (war again), 1944 they lost. So 1948 was therefore a foregone conclusion.

So under the "It's not your time, Chitown" theory, the IOC is like the GOP presidential nomination: you have to make a few tries and wait your turn.

But then there's also the "Bad karma, dude," theory: it just isn't meant to be. Turns out Chicago actually won the rights to the 1904 Olympics, but when President Roosevelt complained the Games would compete with the World's Fair in St. Louis that same summer, the IOC reversed itself (the 1900 Games were held with the World's Fair in Paris) and gave the Olympics to St Louis. So maybe it's just not part of Chicago's destiny.

And: When Chicago hosted the Gay Games in 2006, Mayor Richard Daley publicly hoped it “could let Chicago show that it deserves to host the 2016 Olympics.” Talk about striking a discordant note At the IOC, "gay" and "games" just don't mesh. Of the thousands of athletes in Beijing last year, ten were openly gay.

New York has tried three times with no luck, as has Madrid. Amsterdam struck out four times.

But the worst Olympic karma ever- and this should console Chicagoans- belongs to Detroit, the Harold Stassen of Olympic Games seekers. They sought the sacred flame for 1944, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972.

The city was never chosen.

-but everyone knows they have more money. They can afford it.

In the absence of federal marriage equality, NYT reports, a same-sex couple can expect life as a couple to cost up to $467,000 more than an "opposite-marriage" couple:

As for the emotional costs of living with these added complexities, they can’t be quantified. Frederick Hertz, a lawyer in Oakland, Calif., who works with same-sex couples, likens heterosexual marriage to being in the car pool lane. “Being part of a same-sex couple, it’s always stop. Wait. Pay a toll,” he said.

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, District of Potemkin Village

Inside the last US presidential administration, they seem to have been consulting the entrails of slaughtered goats:

h/t Bruce Bartlett, via Wall Street Pit:

On p. 201 we learn of the extreme partisanship and pettiness of Bush’s staff. When, after he was diagnosed with brain cancer, it was suggested that Senator Edward Kennedy be awarded the presidential Medal of Freedom, the idea was rejected out of hand on the grounds that Kennedy was a liberal.

h/t Daniel Finkelstein:

Why Bush wouldn't honour J.K. Rowling Honours for Hogwarts? Not in the Bush White House. Sasha Obama may have been given a birthday tour of the Harry Potter set but the former occupant of the White House was not such a fan of the boy wizard. In news that you really couldn't make up, it has emerged that J.K. Rowling's name came up in discussions regarding recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. And she was rejected. Not because of her nationality or Bush's aversion to Professor Snape's hair. But because various members of the White House staff were worried about associating with witchcraft. Matt Latimer, ex Bush speechwriter, reveals the news in his new book Speech-less, This was the same sort of narrow thinking that led people in the White House to actually object to giving the author J.K. Rowling a presidential medal because the Harry Potter books encouraged witchcraft.