Somewhere, John Birch is laughing his ass off

Boy Fogle's verklempt over a planned alliance between the SC GOP and local Teabaggers. Odd, sconsidering how Scoopy's mocked Bagger Nation for being rude to Senator Lindsey Graham.Well, unless it was the Baggers booing Congressman Gresham Barrett: there his paymasters' interests trump consistency.

But when you stop and think about it, the  ideological motivations are a perfect match. The Baggers displayed this past weekend that they are racists, nativists, birthers and all-white middle aged well-off folks. SC GOP is the party of running against the government it fails to run when in office, anti-tax, anti-federal funding, praying for the poor rather than taking available monies to aid them, and, every two years, anti-gay.

It's a marriage made in National Review Online.

There's no consulting fees in being part of the solution

Gay rights activist Will Folks has a new imaginary friend: A. Citizen, whose posts read just like Folksy's. And just like Folksy's posts, it's all bitching and no solution.

Start with yourself

A thousand years ago, when Waldo was a congressional intern, he was sent to a  briefing by Charlie Schultz, then President Carter's budget director, on federal agencies whose funding was "off budget" but still substantial, like the Post Office.


Over a very nice breakfast, Schultz opined for an hour or so, then concluded, "It's a serious problem, and something has to be done about it."


Blogger Voting Under the Influence, considering problems in South Carolina state agencies, reaches a Charlie:


Something must be done.


The trouble is this: there is no incentive for the ruling elites to make- or allow- serious change. It will cut into their power. Things stay the way they are precisely so that directors of the transportation department can divert contracts to their sons. The farce that is judicial "elections" in this state ensures that courts remain supine before their legislative masters- and the legislators' funders. There is a reason people like financier Howard Rich pour so much money into legislative races here: a legislative majority is buyable, and if you can get the receipt, you control the state.


So we have a system in which Republicans run against government, and constantly run down government workers as mindless, liberal, greedy hacks.


That's certainly a prescription for attracting top-notch civil servants, eh? Just as the state's 1950s economic development model is still committed to attracting companies that will- with enough free land and tax breaks- hire a few people to bolt things together- fails to understand that social conditions are the deal-breaker for knowledge workers, the SC legislative majority also fails to understand that its roller coaster, binge agency funding is no way to recruit and keep the kind of world-class public servants the state needs to dig its way out of "Well, Mississippi's worse" land.


Once again, the Republican majority has no incentive for change or improvement: they run for the legislature to grab and cling to power over the very government they run against. If government improved, what would the Republican majority be for- or, against?


Voting Under the Influence is right: something must be done.


The question is, by whom?


And for that answer, all he has to do is look in the mirror. Until the Republican Party and its elected representatives in South Carolina are willing to undertake a serious, comprehensive reform of South Carolina's constitution, well, either do it or STFU.

Defining deviancy down

As a tribute to Mrs Palin's BaggerFest quest to integrate the Tea People into the GOP, one must salute The Delaware Libertarian, which since it's founder's withdrawal from blogging, has become a paint by numbers Republican spew.

Being the least they can be.

The Nerve, a blog by a conservative think thank, attacks another think tank's report.

It'd have been more persuasive if they offered some kind of alternative. If you want to just read negative, attack-ad conservatism, there's plenty of other blogs out there already who have reduced that to a science.

Stupid is as stupid does, as Forrest Gump used to say

Mrs. Palin's talking points.

Surf 'n Turf Populism

Bagger snapshots:


“After having a president who detests democracy and wants to destroy it, seeing someone who actually loves America is really refreshing," said Bettina Viviano, a tall blonde from Los Angeles who is making a documentary about ACORN voter fraud, to be released around the 2010 elections. “The people who are emerging from this, and Sarah Palin, are the only hope we have.”


..As we spoke, Taitz was flagged down by two passersby who recognized her on sight and whom she greeted warmly. Conventioneers had already been fully briefed on birtherism. Joseph Farah, editor of the extreme right-wing news site WorldNetDaily.com, had given a 20-minute disquisition the previous night before explaining the Biblical nature of his obsession with Obama’s citizenship papers: Could Jesus have gotten away with not having it all written down, when he came to rule the Kingdom of Heaven? Judson Phillips, the impresario of the whole event, praised WorldNetDaily onstage as an “amazing source of information” that he turns to every morning after reading his own site, teapartynation.com.


..If you’re wearing a tricorn hat, you’ve got the worst of it. But any tea partier at the Opryland hotel could be forgiven for feeling a bit hunted—there are now 200 credentialed media on the premises, or one for every three registered attendees. The lobby is filled with documentary filmmakers, television reporters, and print journalists, standing out in their pressed pants and blocky glasses, buttonholing anyone who looks vaguely tea partyish. 

“It’s a bit intimidating,” admitted Beth Stoltzfus, a veterinarian from rural Pennsylvania.

The media themselves could be forgiven a little surprise—three weeks ago, the event was to be completely closed to press, except for five conservative news organizations, ranging in legitimacy from World Net Daily to the Wall Street Journal.  It was a “working convention,” organizer Judson Phillips explained, where participants could learn unmolested. And it came with a weird kind of paranoia: When I identified myself as a reporter to an organizer through the Tea Party Nation social network, my membership was immediately revoked. 

At the Teabaggers' conclave, words have completely lost their meaning

Palin, described by former Colorado congressman and convention speaker Tom Tancredo as a "really, really pretty Margaret Thatcher," is definitely a celebrity here.

SC residents not following the GOP talking points as they should

Politics Daily's roundup of polls shows a divided SC: 49% disapprove of the President's performance; 46% approve. In North Carolina it's 52-48. Georgia- home of the nation's second-most insane congressional delegation- 55%-34%.

Pity the people of New York

Maureen Dowd exposes the latest comedy stylings of Harold Ford Jr, the wannabe senator from New York:

“I’m not comparing myself to Bobby Kennedy by any stretch, but he was opposed by the liberal establishment, too,” Ford said. “Eleanor Roosevelt was the biggest opponent to him running.”

Trouble is, Kennedy ran for the Senate in 1964.


Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962.

Teabaggers claim media victimhood even as they try to "earn" media

Having originally banned all but five media outlets, the Teabaggers are now claiming transparency cred for allowing a hundred or so sources, including C-SPAN, which Mrs. Palin mocked during her speech. Curiously, the Baggers allowed a reporter from Brazil but not one from the local newspaper, The Tennessean:

“Unlike the promises of this administration, we actually have C-SPAN covering our convention,” convention spokesman Mark A. Skoda said.

“We desire transparency at this convention and have worked with media that are friendly to the Tea Party movement as well as those that have not been seen to be supportive of our efforts.”

Skoda said of the 120 media organizations that asked to cover the convention, the group credentialed 111 members of the press. A notable exception was the host city’s own paper, the Tennessean.

During a interview Thursday with reporters on the convention’s hallways, a reporter from the Nashville paper pressed Skoda on why the Tennessean was not allowed to cover the event. Skoda did not budge. Mark Silverman, editor of the Tennessean, did not return a request for comment.

DeMint coulda smacked one out of the park on this issue

NYT columnist Frank Rich notes the eerie silence on the right over repealing DADT (Armed Services Committee member and JAG lawyer Lindsey Graham didn't even show up):

The more bigotry pushed out of the closet for all voters to see, the more likely it is that Americans will be moved to grant overdue full citizenship to gay Americans. It won’t happen overnight, any more than full civil rights for African-Americans immediately followed Truman’s desegregation of the armed forces. But there can be no doubt that Mike Mullen’s powerful act of conscience last week, just as we marked the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro, N.C., lunch counter sit-in, pushed history forward. The revealing silence that followed from so many of the usual suspects was pretty golden too.

Here in SC, it's telling that the only big swinging blogger talking about gay rights this past week was gay rights activist Will Folks, who insists he's for what he's against.

But then here in SC, the legislature is still debating crap John C. Calhoun peddled 175 y ears ago.

But he's moved an ad for coffee up to the lead headline

"Christianist" hate blogger Daniel J. Cassidy turns out to be just another "get along, go along" type:

We have been reluctant to post this story about corruption well-known to us for decades.

North Charleston's just Boeing's yard boy

Waldo wishes it was otherwise, but The Post & Courier has underscored how out of the big picture South Carolina is in the Boeing deal. If you're not in on the important stuff, you're just bolting stuff together on instructions from Everett. And all the important stuff is happening in Everett, not here.

Waldo wonders how long it will be before a politician of any party will 'fess up to this garish, glaring, 1950s FAIL in the state's economic development policy.

Me, me, me ,me

Sober as a judge

His tip line's gone dry, so Boy Fogle's reduced to recycling what he considers his golden oldies endlessly.

So far, it's a rotation of two- his "so gay" story from 2008 and his Gresham Barrett Greenville tea party tale from last April. Little wonder he dropped the "Transforming South Carolina Politics" tag.

In the latter case, Scoopy can't even congratulate his cartoonist for winning two awards without turning the story back around to Boyo himself:

I personally think he should have won an award for his April 27 toon “Not all press is good press” about Congressman Gresham Barrett “love fest” at a Greenville Tea Party.

Of course, it helps that his paymasters are shilling for another candidate for governor than Barrett.

What America needs is a president who dresses like a hooker.

Other than that, it's just the same old same old

Gay rights activist Will Folks reveals what FITS News stands for. It's based on a song by George Michael, a gay singer. No wonder Folksy's such an activist!

Not a Subaru wagon?

Gay rights activist Will Folks is in Consumer Reports mode when it comes to buying cars.

In Teabag World, old, white people rule, and it's always 1971

Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative Website WorldNetDaily, opened his speech at the Tea Party convention in Nashville with jokes and questions about President Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship. To loud approval from the crowd, Farah said his dream is that if Obama seeks re-election in 2012, he won't be able to go to any city in America without seeing signs that ask, "Where's the birth certificate?


..A funny thing about the break-out session "How to Involve the Youth in the Conservative Movement" – not too many young people showed up..Jordan Marks, executive director of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom, suggested that activists use Facebook, volunteer to speak at high schools ("bastions of liberalism") and simply do fun stuff that hooks high school and college-age kids. Marks described a bowling party he organized – "Knock Down the Pinheads of Communism." A strike equaled Mao, a spare, Pol Pot. Perkins said she supplements her children's education with books by Tea Party authors, but right now it's hard to get them too interested.


..Remarks that Tom Tancredo made on Thursday were just fine with convention organizer Judson Phillips, who praised the former Colorado congressman. Tancredo had said voters who "could not spell the word vote or say it in English" were responsible for putting a "committed Socialist ideologue" in the White House. Phillips agreed that those particular Americans "didn't understand what they were voting for."


...The Friday luncheon speaker wants to be the next Governor of Alabama. That state's judicial ethics panel removed Roy Moore from office in 2003 for refusing a federal judge's order to move a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Supreme Court building.Ovations greeted his Scriptural references and Patrick Henry quotations. America's "borders are open to criminals and terrorists who now roam among us," Moore said. President Obama "has ignored our history and our heritage by denying we are a Christian nation," Moore continued. "An appeal to the God of hosts is all that is left."


..Phillips encouraged cooperation, though in practically every workshop and interview the MSM, or mainstream media, are named as complicit in the downfall of American society. A side effect of the wall-to-wall coverage: I've been stopped by several journalists anxious for reaction from a black Tea Party member. The guy from CNN looked so disappointed when I told him I was a working journalist, too.

The Prophet, by Kellogg All-bran

SCGOP says Senator John Cornyn is coming to South Carolina to raise money.

The prophet Fogle says it means Cornyn wants to run for president. His goat entrails say that any Republican who crosses the state's boundaries wants to run for President:

The Texas Senator isn’t the first rumored GOP presidential candidate to visit South Carolina. Fellow Republicans Mike Huckabee, Mike Pence, and Rick Santorum have all recently stopped here.

Of course, The Prophet has also predicted a stop by President Bush meant he wanted to live here; that a stop by Governor Sanford in Washington meant he was going to run for Congress; and that Virginia state officials were in a panic because nobody could figure out who would become governor after Governor Tim Kaine wasn't selected to run for vice president.

Saturday grab

Politico's J-Mart says  the Teabaggers are just GOP teens acting out. They'll come home come November.

Tom Brokaw is 70 today.

Andrew Bacevich argues "Contra Kristol, force is an “instrument” in the same sense that a slot machine or a roulette wheel qualifies as an instrument."

Nobelist Gary Becker is, as usual, provocative on the effects of a jobs bill.

Jonathan Chait, using student loans as an example, demonstrates how lobbyists have no souls.

Pandagon critiques Bill Buckley-nephew Brent Bozell's argument that sappy movies are morally improving, in a conservative, Christianist sort of way.

Joe.My.God's following the Teabagger convention: "World Net Daily founder Joseph Farah and his Just For Men Olympics gold medal winning mustache spoke at the Tea Party Convention last night. Farah's speech was devoted almost entirely to the birther movement. And Jeebus. Who did have a birth certificate, apparently. Or something. Incidentally, this is the first I've heard Farah's voice, which for somebody who runs the most widely-read anti-gay site in the country is pretty damn gay sounding. He tries mightily to suppress his lisp, but it roars out in phrases like "thuthpiciouth thircumthantheth." I'm just saying."

Tucker Carlson, who once reminisced about beating up a gay guy in a public toilet, now has a website where his minions think it's funny calling MSNBC's Rachel Maddow a man. Carlson is still fond of wearing bow ties, and you know what that means.

Said with a straight face: "The irony of a convicted felon who lied about diverting proceeds from arms sales to a rebel group in Nicaragua supporting a policy that forces gay and lesbian servicemen to lie about their sexual orientation was lost on both Hannity and North."

Good luck to blogpal Iain Dale, on the shortlist for a Conservative seat in east Surrey.

NYT notices a new breed of public person invented by Mrs Palin: "Whether she ever runs for anything else, Ms. Palin has already achieved a status that has become an end in itself: access to an electronic bully pulpit, a staff to guide her, an enormous income and none of the bother or accountability of having to govern or campaign for office."

Chief GOP Toby plays Jim Cramer: ""Trust me, after taxes, a million dollars is not a lot of money," Steele said, according to the Associated Press.

Now you can see who Senator Richard Shelby's whoring for.

Wolfe Reports is gobsmacked by SC GOP Gubercandidate Nikki Haley: "Haley has one-upped that, by being — by her statements and actions — for and against something at the same time."

Original Teabaggers protested the high price of tea. Modern ones pay $8 a bag, then take courses on how to turn on a computer.

The Teabaggers gather: first they cheer on the racist rants of Tancredo, then learn how to turn on a computer:

Many of the sessions emphasized the importance of new technologies. If Tea Party activists have little admiration for Barack Obama, they do often cite his campaign as their model – for how it built a fortune from small donations, and in its use of social networking.

But the crowd here was largely middle aged and upward, and technology may not come as easily as it did to the children, by comparison, who powered Mr. Obama’s campaign. A session on “collaboration in the cloud-applied technology” got hung up on basics like how to do an effective Google search, buy a web domain, or send mass e-mail.

Contracting in the guise of expanding

The Teabaggers have decided to double down where they are already strong:

Organizers of the convention announced on Friday that they were forming a political action committee to raise money and provide political consulting and campaign management for Tea Party-approved candidates. The PAC, an offshoot of a newly incorporated 501c4 called Ensuring Liberty, will seek to raise $10 million this year to spend in races in the 2010 Congressional elections.

To start, it will back conservative challengers in five races in the South. In the most highly visible, organizers want to run a candidate against Senator Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat who has been under fire for her votes on health care legislation. In the coming weeks, organizers said they would identify another 15 or so races for Tea Party-backed challengers.

I'm shocked, shocked, to find drinking going on here

Boy Fogle- who frequents those very watering holes- sniffily notes that Columbia SC has been rated the nation's 13th drunkest city.

Teabagger populism

The convention has been dogged by controversy even before it opened with some denouncing its $549 (£350) ticket price and criticising it as an attempt to hijack a bottom-up phenomenon for commercial gain. There was evidence of money-making activities. For $89.99, delegates could buy pendants of tea bags made from semi-precious stones and silver, and there were plenty of T-shirts on sale with slogans such as "I'll keep my freedom, my guns and my money" and "Annoy a liberal – use facts and logic".

All is now clear- he thinks it's still 1875

"Christianist" hate blogger Sunlit Uplands:

Patients in 'Vegetative' State Can Think and Communicate

God help us, what's the world coming to?

The chairman of Goldman Sachs only got a $9m bonus for last year.

She coulda been your fag hag, Folksy

Legendary gay rights advocate William R. Folks III is peeved Jenny Sanford didn't mention him by name in her book.

Bring Trent Lott back from exile! Elect another Thurmond! The Teabaggers don their white hoods

Senator Jim DeMint has said he wants to bring the Teabaggers into the Republican Party. One of his flacks is celebrating an article annunciating him as "Senator Tea Party."

As the Teabagger convention unfolds it's more and more evident what Senator DeMint's vision of the future- and the GOP- is: a return to racism.

Two exemplars-

1) Tea Party vet Dale Robertson, whose views are summed up in this photo:



2) The opening speech at the $549 a head convention, Tom Tancredo:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Or, as Keith Olbermann noted this evening, Ex-Congressman Combover would have banned his own grandparents from entering the United States.

No, we wouldn't think, nor expect. They were acting roles.

Boy Fogle's having trouble telling the difference between real life and movies:

You would think that the man who has played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and Professor Charles Xavier in the “X-Men” films would be an early adapter of new technology.

But apparently, 69-year-old actor Patrick Stewart isn’t as much of a techie as you might expect.

Stewart told PBS’s “Digital Nation” that he doesn’t get the microblogging website Twitter.

“To reduce life to–how many [characters]? 140? Just seems to me to be a little bit simplistic,” Stewart said. “Maybe I like complexity and abstraction too much.”

Blasphemy!

Fogle adds,

Personally, I find the art of saying a lot in only 140 characters to be far more challenging than saying nothing in 140,000 characters.

Alas, that doesn't explain the existence of The Palmetto Scoop.

Small government at work

SC's overwhelmingly Republican legislature is working to pass a bill to expand cops' ability to search people without warrants.

The Freudian Homophobe

The 58-year-old DeMint grew up in Greenville, S.C., with a single mother who operated the DeMint Academy of Dance and Decorum in their house. When one of her students lacked a partner, his mother would ring a bell. This was to summon DeMint, who would have to fill in, even if it meant dancing with a man. “Scarred me for life,” he jokes.

It was a legacy-burnishing trip

Gov. Mark Sanford flew to Washington on Thursday to tell the Obama administration that South Carolina wants $300 million in federal stimulus money.

Sanford, who spent much of last year fighting parts of the Obama administration's stimulus plan, now wants S.C. to have a piece of $4 billion in "Race to the Top" education money.

Sanford also checked in with The Brotherhood's National Prayer Breakfast, overnighting at the C Street Adultery Club. Curiously, his trip was not on his official schedule, like his business development trip the day after his State of the State address, which prompted Boy Fogle ("Tim Kaine to be picked for VP") to predict Sanford was gearing up to run for his old congressional seat.

Will Folks- Gay Rights Activist (spit take to follow)

A Waldo reader has dredged up the blog posts Will Folks relies on to claim he opposed the 2006 South Carolina  marriage equality amendment.


Recall his claim:

From a political standpoint, though, we are very much in favor of gay rights. In fact, we have been in favor of gay rights for years, dating back to our opposition to the SCGOP’s Get Out The Vote … err, Defense of Marriage referendum four years ago, which sought to exploit Republican distaste for homosexuals into electoral gold.

That was pretty progressive of us, right?

Turns out he's not in favor of any form of gay rights. He's against marriage equality. He's just against government regulating who can marry. Like many "libertarian" positions, it's so removed from reality as to be risible, but at the same time has a purely theoretical coherence.


(Sometimes Waldo likes to try writing like Will's imaginary friend Mande.)


Here's Folksy's resounding embrace of The Gays:

Q: Do we support gay marriages? A: No, we do not.

Q: Do we believe the Holy Scriptures specifically forbid gay marriages? A: Yes, we do.

But finally ...

Q: Do we believe a government based on individual liberty has any business telling people who they can and cannot marry? A: HELL no.

Look people, we've been to the Florida Keys. We've seen flamboyantly homosexual couples walking around together in rhinestone-studded "I'm With Him" T-Shirts and purple assless chaps.

Did we like it? No. Did we almost lose our lunches? Absolutely.

But it simply isn't our place - and it certainly isn't the government's place - to judge people because they're different or because they don't look, think or act like we do.

The great thing about America is that a neo-Nazi skinhead, a militant Black Panther, a Free Will Baptist preacher, a long-haired hippie communist, a seer-sucker suit-wearing lobbyist and a Confederate-cladGlenn McConnell can all walk down Main Street together singing "We Shall Overcome" if they want to.

We're a free country - and thousands upon thousands of Americans who subscribed to vastly divergent and often-contradictory beliefs died to keep it that way.

That's why we can wear our Swastikas, our dreadlocks, our nipple rings and our Rebel flags in public if we want to. It's why we can read what actually happened in the morning paper and not what a handful of government censors want us to believe happened. It's why we can receive a fair and speedy trial, bear arms to protect ourselves, own property free from the threat of unlawful seizure, peaceably gather to petition our government for a redress of grievances and do pretty much as we damn well please within the confines of our homes provided we are not infringing on the inalienable rights of our neighbors to get a decent night's sleep.

Simply put, we are heirs to the legacy of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Reagan - not Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Mussolini.

But in a world of Kelo, primary seat belt enforcement, knee-jerk anti-Second Amendment laws, domestic wiretapping and yes, anti-gay marriage amendments, in which direction are we really headed as a state and as a nation?

South Carolina has one of the most aggressive anti-gay ballot initiatives in the nation. It would, in effect, deny thousands of South Carolinians certain civil rights based exclusively on their sexual orientation, which we think is wrong. Never mind the fact that there's already a law on the books in South Carolina outlawing gay marriage.

But guess what, the referendum's going to pass.

There's nothing we could write on this blog that's going to change that, and right-wing sycophants like Mitt Romney - obsessed with exploiting ignorance for their own short-term political gain - will continue issuing statements and stroking checks to the Palmetto Family Council in exchange for a stamp of approval from the so-called "moral majority."

We're just curious as to what Mr. Romney will say when the next amendments prohibit Catholic, Jewish or yes, even Mormon marriages in South Carolina?

Now some people would say we've got a bit of a libertarian streak to us. Maybe so. We believe what we believe, but you can damn sure bet that we'll defend to the death your right to keep believing whatever it is that you believe.

To us, limited government is as much about prosperity and putting more money into the economy as it is about individual liberties, but we strongly suspect that without liberty, prosperity inches ever closer to a "here today, gone tomorrow" proposition.

But that's just us crazy libertarian FITS gals for ya. When we asked Sic Willie to give us his thoughts on the subject, all he said was that he'd fight to the death for his right to watch Madonna and Britney Spears kiss each other ... again and again and again ...

Just before the 2006 election, Will Folks elaborated on his flaming support of The Gays:

........

In case anyone missed it this morning, The State newspaper "endorsed" the gay marriage ban that appears on next Tuesday's statewide ballot.


After dismissing the amendment's moral and Constitutional legitimacy, the paper's argument boiled down to the fact that it wants the issue to "go away" and that voting "Yes" on the Amendment would accomplish that objective.


Oddly enough, so would voting "No."


Unlike The State, FITS took a clear and unambiguous position on this amendment months ago, and didn't hide behind Pringles-thin logic in an attempt to sidestep what we believed in the name of popular expediency.


You can read our column on the subject here.


Our argument then - and now - is that while we believe homosexuality to be a sin, we do not believe it falls under the purview of government to regulate that sin.


You can call us libertarian if you'd like, but on this issue - like eminent domain, flag burning, primary seat belt enforcement and other issues - we'll take that label gladly.


Incidentally, Ernst Rohm, the socialist head of Hitler's brown-shirted SA death squads, was a homosexual. Also a notorious murderer, Rohm was killed by Hitler during the "Night of the Long Knives" on June 30, 1934. Like his boss, it's our belief that if anyone deserves to perpetually roast for their sins, it's Rohm.


But that's not for us to judge. The holder of that responsibility has already exercised it in Rohm's case (and in Hitler's, for that matter, eleven years later), just as one day He will exercise it with respect to each one of our lives.


Our nation justifies itself to the world as a protector of freedom. And whatever our colleagues in conservative circles may think of us, we believe this amendment to be an unlawful infringement of those freedoms.


That position may not be popular - and it will likely not be the one that prevails Tuesday - but at least we're not afraid to say it.

The real gay agenda is to rain on your outdoor wedding

Right-wing lamprey James Hartline says gays caused the big snowstorm in DC and an offshore earthquake in California.

For those keeping track, here's a link to Waldo's compilations of gay weather control.

Senator Squeegee

Josh Marshall:

In this case, we're not dealing with a stand on partisanship or ideology or simple political shiv play which I guess can each be respected in their own place. This is more like just a stick up. Gimme my money and I'll give you your Senate back! Worse than a squeegee man and not much better than a bank robber, Shelby is shutting down the president's ability to appoint anyone to anything until he gets his way. In a sense Shelby's gambit is little different from what countless other senators of both parties have done in the past, using the senate rules to get the White House's attention to pry some money free from the federal government. But the scale is unheard and the moment is different. The only mystery about this one is which is more outrageous -- Shelby's hold or the fact that the rest of the senators of both parties allow it.

Perhaps, like so many other times, this will be today's outrage that is the new normal by tomorrow. But this are volatile times. And I wonder if this isn't the live wire in the gasoline.

With all that help Mrs Palin still only lasted two years

The co-governor emerges:

The still-secret e-mails between Todd Palin and senior officials reach into countless areas of state government and politics: potential board appointees, constituent complaints, use of the state jet, oil and gas production, marine regulation, gas pipeline bids, postsecondary education, wildfires, native Alaskan issues, the state effort to save the Matanuska Maid dairy, budget planning, potential budget vetoes, oil shale leasing, "strategy for responding to media allegations," staffing at the mansion, pier diem payments to the governor for travel, "strategy for responding to questions about pregnancy," potential cuts to the governor's staff, "confidentiality issues," Bureau of Land Management land transfers and trespass issues and requests to the U.S. transportation secretary.

The company they keep

One of the alleged "telephone repair men" in Senator Landrieu's office is at the Teabagger Convention- on a press pass.

Literacy tests worked really well- before the Civil Rights Act

Now you can begin to see why the Teabaggers wanted to keep most of their conclave secret:

The opening-night speaker at first ever National Tea Party Convention ripped into President Obama, Sen. John McCain and "the cult of multiculturalism," asserting that Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country."

The speaker, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., told about 600 delegates in a Nashville, Tenn., ballroom that in the 2008 election, America "put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House ... Barack Hussein Obama."

Tancredo did not stop at the Democratic president -- ripping McCain, R-Ariz., the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, for shaping up to be a repeat of "Bush 1 and Bush 2."

"Thank God John McCain lost the election," he said, voicing his belief that McCain would have presided over big budgets and lacked a tough stand against immigration.

Tancredo served 10 years in the House of Representatives and made a name for himself with his ardent opposition to immigration. He believes the 2008 election served to galvanize the right.

"This is our country," he told the crowd. "Let's take it back."

..The convention plans to feature a lecture called, "Correlations Between the Current Administration and Marxist dictators in Latin America."

..Ahead of Palin's speech, several breakout sessions are planned for Friday, under titles such as "Technology in the Tea Party Movement," "Defeating Liberalism Via the Primary Process" and "Why Christians Must Engage."

..Dale Robertson, for instance, said he's been leading the Tea Party effort "longer than anybody else," having created the Web site teaparty.org a year before the first anti-stimulus Tea Parties began in 2009.

Still, he doesn't begrudge the Phillipses for claiming that his Nashville event is a national affair.

"I mean, a name is just a name. It's just a marketing thing," Robertson said Wednesday from his home in East Texas.

The out-of-work engineer won't be attending the convention this weekend. He said he simply can't make the trip, but he will be there in spirit.

 
Dale Robertson

Robertson does, however, have a major problem with the keynote speaker.

"She hasn't been a part of this movement at all and she doesn't seem to be suffering at all," he said, "as [have] many of these patriots who've been donating their time, their money and their resources."

..While the political make-up of the convention is nearly universally conservative, there was some ire for both parties.

Delegate William Temple from Georgia, who was dressed in a kilt, said he wanted to work against "Republicans, Democrats and Independents who have been in Congress too many terms."

"We're sick of everyone," he said.

However, when pressed, Temple said he could not ever remember voting for a Democrat.

Richard Shelby says he's an Eliot Spitzer-class whore. Let's see if any Republicans speak up against him.

Alabama Senator Richard Shelby has decided to show up SC Senator Jim DeMint was a wussy girly-man when it comes to keeping the executive branch departments and courts devoid of leadership:

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, is blocking Senate action on executive branch nominations, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said this afternoon in an e-mail.

In response to a question from the Press-Register, Reid spokeswoman Regan Lachapelle confirmed that Shelby has placed a "blanket hold" on most pending nominations.

TPM reports it's because Shelby wants to hold up the American people for some especially fatty hunks of pork:

According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama's nominees hostage until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer dollars to his home state get back on track. The two programs Shelby wants to move forward or else:

- A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: "Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals." Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.

- An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: "[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won't build" the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based "at the Army's Redstone Arsenal."

Though a Shelby spokesperson would not confirm that these programs were behind the blanket hold, the Senator expressed his frustration about the progress on both through a spokesperson to both CongressDailyand the Federal Times.