Party of Swine [flu]

You simply must go read this post at The Political Carnival. We have an expanding swine flu epidemic that's going worldwide faster than Susan Boyle's video, and not only are the Republicans filibustering the President's HHS nominee, Kathleen Sibelius over abortion rights, but so-called "moderate" Susan Collins is still bragging about cutting pandemic flu preparations from the stimulus bill.

I know -- let's make sure that NO state whose GOP Senators voted against flu preparation gets any supplies of Tamiflu. Nothing like watching their loved ones die in front of them to make people wake up and realize that this is what happens when you decide that government shouldn't do anything for people.

Assholes. Every last one of them.

Any day now.....ANNNNY day....

Remember that ad for some online mortgage company that promised quick turnaround and contrasted itself with banks by showing a mortgage officer at a brick and mortar bank sitting at his desk saying "Your loan approval should be here day day now....[pause]....any day....."? It's kind of an unfortunate analogy these days, but that ad was what I thought of yesterday when I saw the "dramatic" unveiling of the Republicans' "alternate budget" (which apparently exists only in an "alternate universe"). Are they freakin' kidding?

This is the Great Republican Budget Plan (via John Cole and the Great Orange Satan):

On the other hand, what else would you expect from a political party whose base thinks scientific method consists of throwing up your hands and saying "I don't understand it....it must be MAGIC!"

MSNBC's Contesse Brewer was simply flabbergasted by what she saw, and it was left to her blond newsbot cohort to valiantly carry the GOP water all by herself by dismissing Brewer's expectation that we actually see NUMBERS coming out of the GOP's alternate universe -- I mean PLAN:

Later on, Robert Gibbs seemed to be having the time of his life over in the White House Press Room, seemingly amazed that the Republicans had just lobbed him a big fat hanging curve ball, waist-high, right down the center of the plate. Watch his face as he knocks it out of the park; it's priceless:

I would disagree that the budget indicates that the Republicans are the party of no new ideas. They are the party of no ideas, period.

But over in the alternate universe outside of consensus reality in which conservatives live, this was a firm, forceful parry of the President's challenge. In a post rife with male performance anxiety in the face of the Big Black Man, sniveling little rat-faced git Jeff Emanuel congratulates the Republican Clown Car for the very same ridiculous performance that the rest of us saw.

And now a parenthetical, just to put some rich gooey frosting on the cake: John Cole has some of the snarkiest commenters in the universe. Some choice quotes:

"Between these twits and Bush, how did they manage to avoid accidentally sending the Earth into a collision course with the Sun over the last 8 years?"

"I’m becoming convinced that Obama is Lord Vetinari from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. We’ll know for sure if he starts sending mimes and other street artists to the scorpion pits that Dick Cheney had installed under the White House."

"Not only am I making popcorn, but I’m putting truffle oil on it."

"This is so many layers of awesome covered in awesome sauce I can’t even begin to comprehend it."

OK, let's have a do-over of 2000 while we're at it, m'kay?

And here we thought George W. Bush was the Republican who always insisted on do-overs when he lost a game:

The Coleman team appears to be laying out a continued strategy of casting doubt on the legitimacy of the Minnesota election result by pointing to a fundamental underlying idea of this dispute: The margin of error is simply too big in a race this close.

"Is there some point at which the margin of error is just too wide compared to the difference in votes to determine who truly won?" Coleman lawyer John Rock asked Ramsey County (St. Paul) elections director Joe Mansky. Mansky replied that there is absolutely such a point, with accuracy topping out at over 99.99%.

"All of which is pretty good," Mansky said. "But remember that one in every thousand is not an issue when somebody wins by 200,000 votes. When they win by 200 votes, the margin of error in our computation is likely large enough to have an impact on our result, and I think that's the situation that we find ourselves in here."

Of course, this opens up the question of how Coleman could justify any finding of a win for himself, since even a mathematically possible Coleman victory margin would be too narrow for these purposes. At this point we're looking at Nate Silver's hypothesis, that Coleman might be aiming for a do-over election as a possible outcome.

Why don't they just come out and admit it: The only election result Norm Coleman will accept is one in which he wins.

All I'm Going To Say About Michael Steele.

I wish Steve Gilliard were here.

Let's just call them "The Confederate Party" from now on, shall we?

I never would have dreamed that the Republican Party would ever embrace its own racism this openly. Not even Lee Atwater, the architect of the Willie Horton ads who played blues guitar with B.B. King at George W.H. Bush's inaugural ball, would have advocated this:

It's now becoming clear that there is a good-sized contingent of Republicans who are openly defending Chip Saltsman, the former Tennessee GOP chairman and candidate for RNC chair who sent out a CD to committee members that includes a parody song called "Barack The Magic Negro."

• Mike Huckabee, for whom Saltsman served as campaign manager, has chimed in to defend Saltsman against the charge of racism, while at the same time acknowledging that "Chip should have been more careful" in picking the CD. "It shouldn't be the main factor in the RNC race," Huckabee wrote on his blog.

• Another person defending Saltsman has been Mark Ellis, the GOP state chairman in Maine -- not the sort of place you would automatically expect someone to stick up for this: "When I found out what this was about I had to ask, 'Boy, what's the big deal here?' because there wasn't any."

• "I don't think he intended it as any kind of racial slur. I think he intended it as a humor gift," said Oklahoma committeewoman Carolyn McClarty. "I think it was innocently done by Chip."

"A humor gift." Can you believe it? Next thing they're going to say that because Richard Pryor used the word "n----r", it means that a bunch of Southern White Men who believe in flying the Confederate flag can do it too.

I say let them stop even this amount of nicety and say what they really think of the President-elect. Because after a fall campaign in which "terrorist" and "terrorist sympathizer" and "exotic" and "that one" were all used as euphemisms for "n----r", why are they even trying to be genteel anymore? Let 'em put on their fucking hoods and burn crosses and be done with it already. It's not as if they're fooling us as to what they really are.

The Bush family will not go away quietly

I've been saying since 1988 that the Bush family regards this entire country as a private fiefdom that's theirs to plunder as they wish for their family and friends. We've seen over the last eight years that it isn't just the country they see as their fiefdom, it's the entire world. Did anyone really think they would go away quietly? Greedy people don't take kindly to having land they think is theirs taken away from them, certainly not by black people they no doubt think ought to be their domestic servants.

And so they, with the help of the Greed Wing of the Republican Party, which has been seeking a candidate to represent their interests in 2012 to go up against the Christofascist Zombie Brigade's Chosen One, Sarah Palin, are already positioning the Bush Family Restoration to the Throne of the United States:

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — the son of one president and the brother of another — has been working the phones since Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) announced earlier this month that he won’t seek reelection in 2010. Sources say Bush hasn’t made up his mind about running for Martinez’ seat, but that he’s getting green lights from would-be contributors and blessings from Republican Party leaders.

Strategists and political observers take it as a sign that Bush will run.

"Everything indicates that he's in," said David Johnson, a Republican strategist and the CEO of Strategic Vision. "You're not making calls and laying the ground work for fundraising unless you're clearing the field for your candidacy."

Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida and an expert on Florida politics, said Bush's phone calls around the state are "a good sign" that he could be jumping in the race, something that she says is "music to the ears of Florida Republicans."

"Nothing could have come at a better time," MacManus said. "Republicans here in Florida were so down after the election. The mere mention of Jeb's potential Senate run has put Republicans in a much more festive holiday mood."

If you think this is just about Jeb Bush wanting to be a Senator, then you don't know the Bush family very well.

But there's plenty of money to investigate ACORN

The priorities of the Bush Administration: no probes of the financial meltdown, but plenty of the vast resources of the United States Justice Department to turn loose on ACORN because some of its $8/hour workers falsified voter registrations, which ACORN then flagged as dubious before sending them along AS REQUIRED BY LAW:

The FBI, after years spent focusing on national security, is struggling to find agents and resources to investigate wrongdoing tied to the country's economic crisis, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.

Citing current and former FBI officials, the Times said cutbacks in its criminal investigative workforce following the September 11 attacks left the FBI weaker in areas like white collar crime.

The cutbacks were the result of a shift in focus to terrorism and intelligence matters. More than 1,800 agents, or nearly one-third of all those in criminal programs, moved into those areas, the Times said.

"Clearly, we have felt the effects of moving resources from criminal investigations to national security," the newspaper quoted FBI Assistant Director John Miller as saying. "In white collar crime, while we initiated fewer cases over all, we targeted the areas where we could have the biggest impact. We focused on multimillion-dollar corporate fraud, where we could make arrests but also recover money for the fraud victims."

While the FBI plans to double the number of agents working on financial crimes, people within and outside the Justice Department question where the agents will come from and whether that will suffice, the Times said.

Records and interviews show that FBI officials have warned of a looming mortgage threat since 2004, and asked the Bush administration to fund such nonterrorism investigations, but the requests were denied and no new agents were approved for financial criminal investigation work, the newspaper said.

Internal FBI data shows the cutbacks were especially sharp in areas of white collar crime like mortgage fraud, with more than 600 agents lost, or more than one-third of 2001 levels.

According to Justice Department data, fraud prosecutions directed at financial institutions dropped by nearly one-half from 2000 to 2007, insurance fraud cases fell 75 percent and securities fraud decreased by 17 percent, the Times said.

ACORN is the new illegal immigrants

Just the way illegal immigrants were the new Muslim terrorists and Muslim terrorists were the new Scary Negroes™. ACORN's voter registration drive plays right into the Republican "voter fraud" meme that Republicans are already using to try to justify their mass vote caging schemes in as many states as they can get away with it and the fact that the voting machines in many states are still not counting votes, and in some cases, switching votes from that which the voter intended. Funny, too, how the states with the biggest potential problems are also potential toss-up states.

But in a move that smacks of the continuing partisanship of the Bush Justice Department, the FBI has been sent to investigate ACORN's voter registration drives, even though not one registrant named "Mickey Mouse" has dared show up at the polls. Of course it's not about preventing "Mickey Mouse" from showing up at the polls, it's about preventing "Tyrone Jackson" and "Goldie Berkowitz" and "Juan Hernandez" and others who might commit the crime of voting for a Black Democrat for president from exercising their right to vote.

David Iglesias, one of the U.S. Attorneys fired by this very same Bush Justice Department for refusing to falsely prosecute Democrats for voter fraud, has seen this before, and calls it "a disgrace":

"I'm astounded that this issue is being trotted out again. Based on what I saw in 2004 and 2006, it's a scare tactic."

Who's that speaking? And what's he talking about?

That's fired US Attorney David Iglesias talking about the news leaked today that the DOJ and FBI are opening a nationwide investigation into allegations that the community organization ACORN is somehow working to undermine the November election through fraud. For more from Iglesias and his fellow fired US Attorney Bud Cummins, don't miss TPMMuckraker's Zack Roth's interview post from earlier this evening.

Iglesias got fired not long after the 2006 midterm election because he wouldn't get off the dime and bring bogus vote fraud indictments against Democrats or time other indictments of Democrats to sway the 2006 election. In other words, he got canned for not doing what a number of his former colleagues at the DOJ are happily doing this very day.

Nor was Iglesias simpy a respected attorney with solid enough connections to swing a US Attorney appointment. He was a rising start in the New Mexico Republican party. Iglesias was the Republican nominee for Attorney General in 1998. (Not that it's immediately relevant to this question, but Iglesias was the Navy JAG lawyer on whom Tom Cruise's character in A Few Good Men was based.) This was that reassuring case where a political person's partisan attachments butted up against his integrity and the latter won the day hands down. This is someone who knows this scam from the inside and whose testimony -- literal and figurative -- comes not in line with partisan attachments but in spite of them. Everyone should listen.

This is not for one minute about sustaining the integrity of the voting system. These people who are registering under phony names are not going to show up at the polls. This is about selective prosecution of an organization that was once supported by John McCain when it was convenient and advantageous for him, because it is encouraging people to exercise their right to vote.

If the Republican Party does not feel Americans have the right to vote, then perhaps it ought to just say so -- and let the voters decide.

Thursday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said -- special RNC edition

Today's honoree: Keith Olbermann, for his expression of disgust and dismay at the Republicans shamelessly exploiting 9/11 yet again as a vehicle with which to score cheap political points:

I swear, sometimes I think Republicans masturbate to images of the 9/11 attacks.

(h/t: Hoffmania. And yeah....what he said too.)

Party on, dudes!

I'd like to know how being entertained by a band called "Hookers and Blow" is consistent with conservative Christian family values:

And what is it with Republicans and pink feather boas anyway?

By the way, Bob Marley is turning in his grave at the notion of one of his songs being played at a big party for Republicans given by the oil industry.

(h/t)

It's DemocratIC Party, you heartless bastard

Nestled in the remarks made by various and sundry officials in response to the senseless shooting death of Arkansas DemocratIC Party chair Bill Gwatney today is this, from Arkansas Republican Party chair Dennis Milligan:

It is with great sadness that we have learned of the tragic death of Democrat Party Chairman Bill Gwatney. He was an admirable Arkansan and gave so much to this state and his party.

Even when a man is shot dead in his office, this -- boy, it's really hard to keep it clean right now -- hyperpartisan, petty, heartless moron, can't even let go of the "Democrat Party" horsepuckey.

These people really are shameless. And vicious. And mean-spirited.

Republican Ratfuck alert

They must think we're stupid; that we aren't wise to the tactics used by wingnuts to make it look like Democrats are radicals. Another Republican ratfuck busted:

Earlier today, some extreme rightwing blogs went into outrage overdrive as someone "discovered" an anti-semitic blog over at the open-registration "community blog" my.barrackobama.com. Israel Matzav declared “Barack Obama Explains how the Jewish Lobby Works.” Doug Ross was a little better off with the “Official Obama Blog.” LGF, in a classic pot-calling, said that there was "something deeply wrong with a presidential candidate who attracts so many of these hateful psychotics."

Kyle and Matt over at Comments From Left Field, however, would like to point out that - as usual - the outrage is entirely manufactured. The truth is that it's a "ratfuck" operation, reminsicent of Roger Stone's infamous "Socialists for McCloskey" scam in 1972.

How? Matt explains:

- The original “Jewish Lobby” post, copy-pasted to my.barack.com by a “Juan Carlos”, appeared in April in on a site called “Real Jew News”, run by anti-semite nutcase “Brother Nathaenal”.

- All anti-semitic comments originally appeared on the Real Jew News post, with corresponding timestamps. For some reason the comments at my.barack.com have my.barack urls, even though they appear to have been directly copy pasted from Real Jew News.

[snip]

Let's repeat that for the hard of understanding : The anti-semitic post and its hateful comments were ported directly over from the rightwing Real Jew News site; the names and time stamps weren’t even changed to protect the innocent. Only two comments were made on the actual Obama site - and they were both complaints about the post.

You know, that the wingnuts are doing this tells us a lot more about them than it tells the world about us. They are frightened, cornered animals, who are always the most dangerous. I'm sure some of your friends will get e-mails about this alleged anti-Semitic post at My.Barack.Obama. It's our job to set them straight.

I swear, you couldn't Photoshop this

Hoff mentioned what a joke the GOP site is, so I went and took a look for myself. And hoo-boy, is he ever right:



Now, I could swear that one of these rotating banners said "9,400 members and counting!", but I sat for as many minutes as I could stand and it never came back. But what's here is priceless enough.

First of all, if you didn't know better, you'd think this was an Obama campaign site, because Barack Obama is mentioned more than the party's own presumptive nominee. Look at the headlines -- every last one about Barack Obama, and nothing about John McCain.

Now the funny stuff:

Note how the first headline is "05-12-08 - Obama's inability to hire good help rears its head -- again." Now notice the four rotating images under the picture of Obama. Look at the one to the far left: "The Republican Party is Hiring!!" Looks like their inability to hire good help rears its own head -- again. Now look at the image next to it: "Political Education": Learn some new political skills." Like what -- gay bashing, opposing a G.I. Bill because it might give people who enlist hope for a different future than just being cannon fodder?" And speaking of opposing the G.I. Bill, look at how Republicans support the troops -- why, they create a petition! Because nothing says "Thank you for your service" quite like signing a petition expressing your support for leaving the troops over in Iraq until they are "victorious" -- whatever the fuck that means. Does anyone even know? Helping them get medical care, housing, and education when they get home -- that's for sissies. Real men, real patriots, sign a petition. Oh yeah, and they donate to McCain while they're at it.

You don't even want to KNOW about the "Faces of the GOP". But if you look at this and think "Faces of Death", you're not alone.

Ah....OK, I reloaded the page and here it is -- a screencap crowing about how the GOP's Facebook group is "9,400 members strong and growing!!" (Pssst....Barack Obama's has 831,532 strong...and growing.)



And of course, this one has the ever-popular "Vote Fraud Updates" -- designed to make sure that the nonexistent problem of illegal immigrants deciding to expose themselves to government officials so they can vote is Taken! Care! Of! Let's click on that one, shall we?

It's a compendium of "vote fraud" cases. Let's see what we have....more than 500 absentee ballot applications rejected in Howard County, Indiana. They claim it's because parts of the applications were filled out by United Auto Worker officials. Now remember, these are not the ballots themselves, they are requests for absentee ballots. The beef here is that the UAW officials pre-filled some of the information, including checking off "Democratic" for the party affiliation. Now the UAW ought to know better, but the fact that they were all Democratic Party requests doesn't necessarily mean that there were any Republican UAW members who were "forced" to request Democratic Party ballots. And really, what's the big deal? It's not as if the Republican primary in Indiana was contested, and Rush Limbaugh was telling Republicans to cross over anyway.

So what else....OK, we have a blurb about the Supreme Court's upholding of Indiana's Voter ID law and we have ONE WOMAN who was allowed to keep her right to vote after being indicted for trying to vote twice in a local election last August. We have news of 14 indictments in elections dating back to 2003. That's nationwide. That sure doesn't sound like a serious and endemic "vote fraud" problem to me. I'm frankly a lot more concerned about 93,000 innocent Floridians who were disenfranchised by Karl Rove in 2000, or about the tens of thousands of largely minority Ohioans who were turned away at the polls in 2004 after standing in the rain for ten hours. If all you can do is come up with fourteen people -- even 100 people -- constituting "vote fraud" OVER THE LAST FIVE YEARS, that hardly seems like justification to implement laws designed to keep everyone lower on the socioeconomic scale than middle-class away from the polls.

But this is your 2008 GOP, folks -- a party that's ashamed to put its own nominee on its web site in anything other than a cursory manner, a party looking for onesies and twosies of "vote fraud" but cares not about mass disenfranchisement or voting machines that don't work and change votes when they do; a party selling a 5=inch pink elephant named Maxine -- yours for the modest sum of $35. Maxine is, of course, pink, which I guess is supposed to mean she's a girl, but since she is a pink elephant, feel free to insert your own Vito Fossella joke here.

The new qualifications for the Republican nominee

...from Roger Simon at Politico:

All he has to do is not fall asleep.

All he has to do is not throw up.

All he has to do is not drool.

If Fred Thompson does none of these, the pundits say he wins the debate tonight. Even though he knows nothing about the Terri Schaivo case, thinks the Soviet Union still exists, and insists that Saddam Hussein "clearly had weapons of mass destruction".

Republicans sure do like their tough-talking Big Manly Idiots, don't they?

Gee, ya think?

There is one good thing about the appalling rhetoric coming from the Republican presidential candidates this year on topics ranging from immigration to evolution to the Iraq war as they jockey for position in pandering to the most lunatic elements of their base. If it weren't so sad, it would be fun watching John McCain change religion on what seems to be an hourly basis.

We know that the Republican base is susceptible to the "immigrants are the boogeyman" rhetoric, but it also has been known to respond positively to race-baiting, as we saw with the infamous "Harold, call me" ad that ran in Tennessee's Senate race (heh) last year.

But the decision of the major Republican candidates to skip Tavis Smiley's All American Presidential Forum on the 27th shows you exactly where they stand on issues relevant to minorities:

"We sound like we don't want immigration; we sound like we don't want black people to vote for us," said former congressman Jack Kemp (N.Y.), who was the GOP vice presidential nominee in 1996. "What are we going to do -- meet in a country club in the suburbs one day? If we're going to be competitive with people of color, we've got to ask them for their vote."

Making matters worse, some Republicans believe, is that the decision to bypass the Morgan State forum comes after all top GOP candidates save McCain declined invitations this month to a debate on Univision, the most-watched Hispanic television network in the United States. The event was eventually postponed.

"For Republicans to consistently refuse to engage in front of an African American or Latino audience is an enormous error," said former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), who has not yet ruled out a White House run himself. "I hope they will reverse their decision and change their schedules. I see no excuse -- this thing has been planned for months, these candidates have known about it for months. It's just fundamentally wrong. Any of them who give you that scheduling-conflict answer are disingenuous. That's baloney."

James Baker (yes, THAT James Baker, the Bush consiglieri) said to Bush Sr. in 1992, "Fuck the Jews. They don't vote for us anyway." Someone has clearly said something similar about black and Latino Americans to the Republican candidates. Well, let them enjoy this luxury now, because in future election years, the same minorities they snub now won't be the minority anymore.

And perhaps that's why they are pushing so hard on anti-immigration sentiment and limiting women's reproductive self-determination.

Where on earth do they FIND these people?

Another Republican campaign bigwig turns out to be a nasty, naughty boy. This time it's child abuse.

Howie Klein:

Norman Hsu donated to Democratic candidates and, believe me, he will be front and center in the media forever. I bet you never heard of Robert Lichfield though, right? He wasn't just a random donor to Republicans. He was a member of the Mitt Romney campaign, charged with bringing in money to the biggest spending campaign. But, besides sucking up cash for Full of Mitt, Lichfield was also involved with child abuse. He quietly slinked away from the campaign but... not much has been heard about this in all the yelling and screaming over Hsu even though he's been bringing in far more money for Flip Flop than Hsu has brought in for Democrats.

Lichfield is named in a federal lawsuit charging that students of the "behavior modification" schools with ties to WWASPS [Worldwide Association of Specialty Schools, founded by Lichfield] were subjected to "physical abuse, emotional abuse and sexual abuse."

...The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Utah, alleges brazen acts of child abuse, including that students of the various programs had been forced to eat their own vomit, clean toilets with a toothbrush and brush their teeth afterward, were chained or locked in dog cages, kicked, beaten, thrown and slammed to the ground and forced into sexual acts.

But of course, it's OK if you're a Republian, right?

SOMEONE had to do it

Yesterday morning, as I was listening (yes, without Morning Sedition, the pickin's are pretty lean) to Mark Riley and Richard Bey sub for WWRL's awful morning team that I won't even pollute this blog with their names, and they flogged the Larry Craig business to death with one of Bey's song parodies, it occurred to me that I ought to make an MP3 of the song "If You Were Gay" from Avenue Q and post it. I didn't have time to do it, but Michael Jensen at After Elton found that someone had done even better:

(NOTE: If you're in the New York area, or if you're coming to New York, don't miss Avenue Q. Tickets are as low as $46 for balcony seats where you can see just fine.)

I'm highly conflicted about the relentless piling on regarding Larry Craig's fall. On the one hand, I have nothing but contempt for a closeted gay man who feels that he has the right to work to legislate the entire country into a place that feeds his denial. People have died because of men like Larry Craig -- so frightened of himself that he's been willing to throw red meat at homophobes. In a very real sense, Matthew Shepard died because of things Larry Craig did. That the closet is important enough to these guys that they are willing to sacrifice any number of out gay Americans is reprehensible. It's tempting to say that he deserves anything that happens to him. And certainly some of the satire coming out of this is clever.

But what are we going to say if, after seeing not just his career, but the entire wall of lies he's built to hide from himself, crumble into nothingness, and he's forced to face himself, he can't deal with it and (God forbid) takes his own life? What happens to the jokes then? Are they still funny? When does Schadenfreude run its course? Admit it -- don't you feel a bit skeevey listening to the audio of Craig's arrest interview? Don't you feel just a wee bit that it's really not necessary for us to hear this?

It should be noted that it isn't the gay community, nor is it Godless Heathen Liberals™ clamoring for Craig to step down (despite the insane ravings of lunatics like this one, claiming that liberals are the real homophobes). Funny how David Vitter violating the "sanctity" of his own marriage by patronizing prostitutes doesn't warrant ostracism by his own party, but Larry Craig looking for sex from consenting adult males does. And Craig must be wondering why, after having been such a good soldier for the Christofascist Zombie Brigade™ for so long, his beloved party is dropping him like a hot potato. Perhaps it's because the CZB's morality is so characteristic of the movement's "clean slate" Christianity, in which the only thing you need do for salvation is believe a story -- unless you dare to go places where mainstream CZB'ers don't dare to tread.

Glenn Greenwald explains in a post you must read:

The only kind of "morality" that this movement knows or embraces is politically exploitative, cost-free morality. That is why the national Republican Party rails endlessly against homosexuality and is virtually mute about divorce and adultery: because anti-gay moralism costs virtually all of its supporters nothing (since that is a moral prohibition that does not constrain them), while heterosexual moral deviations -- from divorce to adultery to sex outside of marriage -- are rampant among the Values Voters faithful and thus removed from the realm of condemnation. Hence we have scads of people sitting around opposing same-sex marriage because of their professed belief in "Traditional Marriage" while their "third husbands" and multiple step-children and live-in girlfriends sit next to them on the couch.

They're all willing to cheer on the "rules of traditional marriage" which do not impose on them in any way (marriage must have a man and a woman -- no problem there). But no "Family Values" politician could possibly survive politically by seeking to enshrine with the force of law all of the other equally important prongs of "Traditional Marriage" (all of that dreary, outdated "until death do us part" business which would deny the "right" for Values Voters to dump their wives and move on to the "next wife" when the mood strikes, or remain shacked up with their various girlfriends and the like).

In an ideal world, Larry Craig would have his Lee Atwater Moment, he'd apologize profusely to the gay community and spend the rest of his life as an out and proud gay activist, atoning for being so instrumental in the Republicans' campaign of gay persecution. I'll bet he'd be happier than he's been. But that's assuming that the real, flesh-and-blood people who have been hurt by the policies he's so tirelessly advocated for so long would have him; and who could blame them if they won't?

But politics is a strange and corrupting game, and fundamentalist Christianity and even more strange and corrupting game. In the real world, Larry Craig is more likely to at worst be a "horrifying and tragic" footnote on the evening news someday, or if he does come out, spend his life like Jim McGreevey, painting himself as a victim.

If anything good comes out of all this, one would hope that this detonation of the Republican closet door by Larry Craig, Bob Allen, Mark Foley, and others, finally puts an end to the Politics of Sexual Restraint But Only For Others. However, this doesn't seem likely, given the call by the so-called Idaho Values Alliance to purge the Republican Party of gays:

One larger issue must be addressed. The Republican Party platform clearly rejects the agenda of homosexual activists. The Party, in the wake of the Mark Foley incident in particular, can no longer straddle the fence on the issue of homosexual behavior. Even setting Senator Craig’s situation aside, the Party should regard participation in the self-destructive homosexual lifestyle as incompatible with public service on behalf of the GOP.

Still, one can hope. And it's not as if this latest example of Republican sexual hypocrisy (and not it seems that an organizer of an event for Saint Rudy of 9/11 in -- where else -- Florida -- is stepping down "amid revelations of his arrests for allegedly extorting an FSU student in a sex case and his conviction for dealing in stolen state computers.") gives the Republican presidential candidates no target of fear and loathing on which to base their campaign. There's always immigrants.

It's the hypocrisy (and the double standard), stupid!

Pam has a compendium of handwringing by wingnuts who all of a sudden, in the wake of the ever-escalating Republican sex scandals, think that perhaps private behavior outside the context of the job a legislator does isn't relevant after all:

First up, Jim Smith, editor of the Jacksonville-based Florida Baptist Witness:

"If someone's walk doesn't match their talk, of course it's relevant. But a politician's conduct "also has to be evaluated in light of other considerations, and we aren't electing saints here," Smith said. "All of us are fallen and subject to sin. We're not looking for perfection. But we do want integrity."

They accuse the left of moral relativism and hair-splitting? On to Father Tony Palazzolo, priest and pastoral consultant at the Diocese of St. Augustine:

"Is it a one-time indiscretion, or a pattern? Was there an apology? Repentance? It seems to me your religious values determine how you make a decision about right or wrong and good and bad, and if you're willing to compromise those values in your private life, it seems the same thing would hold true for a person's public life."

How about this, from John Stemberger, of the Florida Family Policy Council Inc. (he's working to pass a same-sex marriage ban amendment in the Sunshine State). The article notes that he suggests a "sliding scale" when evaluating a politician's fall from grace.

"If I'm going to hire a plumber, their primary job is to do it right, and I'm not too concerned with their character and moral life. When does it become relevant? To be a lawmaker and then a lawbreaker means there has been a violation of trust. Character does matter."

Oh, so it only matters if you're caught breaking the law. What this is really about is going back to the good old days where "forbidden immoral acts" occurred on the DL on Saturday night, and you turned up in church in your Sunday best the next day -- and no one knows you broke your marital vows by blowing that guy in that highway rest stop, potentially exposing your spouse to STDs. That's correct "Christian" behavior.

My personal favorite comes from Ralph Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition, associate of Jack Abramoff, and frequent talking head when the MSM wants a rep from the far right:

Let's be clear what voters of faith are saying. They're not saying that every single politician who professes a conservative viewpoint should live up to that standard. It's really the opposite. None of us are perfect, and we all fall short of God's grace. A lot of times that gets lost when someone's failing becomes politicized."

Yes, working to elect people to deny tax-paying, law-abiding LGBT citizens civil rights while those self-loathing pols cruise for gay sex makes perfect sense.

One frustrated Florida pol wants more reasonable standards for hypocrites. Republican State Senator Jim King of Jacksonville has been fighting off rumors that he was frequenting t*tty bars.

"I live a pretty good Christian life, but in the eyes of some people I'm being disrespectful because sometimes I like to drink wine with dinner. That's frustrating. Elected officials are expected to live a totally different life than their neighbors."

J. Taylor Rushing writes in the Florida Times Union:

Should private behavior matter in public leaders? Some political observers say yes, arguing that morality is the only way to ensure a politician's voting record stays consistent with his or her personal values. But others say the recent revelations only prove hypocrisy, and some politicians say public expectations can be unreasonable.

Allen's arrest is among sex scandals involving state and federal politicians, such as U.S. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana. Former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley of South Florida remains under investigation after resigning from Congress last year when e-mails revealed him pursuing young former congressional aides. Foley, Vitter and Allen are all Republicans.

One of Florida's gay-rights leaders took note of how some politicians rail against the very behavior to which they are sometimes linked.

"It seems like the people who are the most vocal, the most condemning, the most judgmental, seem to be people struggling deeply with their own personal conflicts, and that's where the scandals come from whether it's the church or politics," said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, a Tampa-based gay-rights group. "It's fairly routine. Find someone banging the drum of hysteria around an issue, and you'll find someone, generally speaking, who is wrestling themselves internally."

Jim Smith, editor of the Jacksonville-based Florida Baptist Witness newspaper, which circulates 46,000 copies weekly, said "if someone's walk doesn't match their talk, of course it's relevant."

But a politician's conduct "also has to be evaluated in light of other considerations, and we aren't electing saints here," Smith said. "All of us are fallen and subject to sin. We're not looking for perfection. But we do want integrity."

Part of that integrity is that if you are going to accept that conservatives falter from the righteous path, you cannot attack the same in liberals. Being conflicted and self-loathing because you patronize prostitutes, or because you seek anonymous sex in airport bathrooms does not give you the right to try to punish others for same. If you're going to divorce two wives because something younger and prettier comes along, you cannot preach to others about the sanctity of marriage and work to make divorce more difficult. If you're the Speaker of the House and you're fucking an aide in your office, you do not impeach a president for doing the same. If you're on the down low, you cannot work to pass legislation to prevent gay Americans from marrying, adopting children, obtaining health benefits for their partners, and having jobs and a place to live.

The law is no place for politicians to work out their internal conflicts. Just because "faith not deeds" Christianity gives these guys a "get out of jail free" card in which they are sure to go to heaven because someone told them a story about something that supposedly happened 2000 years ago and they chose to believe it doesn't mean they have the right to sit in judgment on others.

If these guys are so afraid of themselves, let them get some therapy and leave the rest of Americans alone.

So how about we call a stop to holier-than-thou posturing from politicians, 'kay?

I almost feel sorry for Larry Craig. Imagine how awful it must be to wake up every day terrified that today is the day you'll be found out. Imagine having to fight your true nature every day of your life, wondering when that tipping point will be reached and you won't be able to any more. It's almost enough to make you feel badly for him.

Almost.

If he were just some guy struggling with his own sexuality, I could feel sorry for him. But Larry Craig is just another of the right-wing hypocrites trying to turn an entire group of people into second-class citizens because he can't admit that he is among them.

It's one thing to be uncomfortable around a group because your entrenched upbringing is bumping up against what your rational mind knows is nothing to fear. That kind of discomfort ebbs with time and familiarity. I've always distinguished between what I call the "bigotry of ignorance" and the "bigotry of hate." When I was at a small, provincial college in Pennsylvania in the 1970's, people who had had no prior exposure to anyone Jewish asked me questions like where my horns were, and why I drove such an old car, because all Jews are rich, aren't they? But it doesn't matter whether someone carries preconceived notions about you because they were lied to as a child, or because they genuinely hate you -- it always feels like the bigotry of hate.

It's quite another to take that discomfort, run for and win public office, and use it as an excuse to enact legislation that denies some Americans the same rights everyone else takes for granted. And it's even more heinous to take your own self-loathing and try to turn it into public policy as a substitute for coming to terms with yourself.

And that is why it's impossible, ultimately, to feel sorry for Larry Craig or for any of the other right-wing sexual hypocrites who have come to light in recent weeks.

And what a parade of them it is, too, these closet cases, such as Ted Haggard and Bob Allen, Glenn Murphy, Jr and Larry Craig, who could be living a normal life as gay men, but instead choose to live a lie.

And yet, the response in Republican Washington is, predictably, not to re-examine its platform of Sexual Restraint for Everyone, but to bemoan the loss of a Big Daddy Leader who could keep them all in line:

It is tough enough being in the minority, weighed down by the burden of the war in Iraq. Now Republicans have an even more pressing task: keeping their party from being portrayed not just as hypocritical and out of touch with the values of people they represent, but also as a laughingstock — amid headlines like “Senator’s Bathroom Bust,” which ran all Tuesday afternoon on CNN. The story also ran at the top of all the network evening newscasts on Tuesday.

[snip]

With President Bush hobbled by his own political difficulties, the party can hardly look to him to lead them out of the morass. “If we had a coach,” said John Feehery, who was press secretary to Representative J. Dennis Hastert when Mr. Hastert was the House speaker, “the coach would take us in the locker room and scream at us.”

Some Republicans are indeed screaming, particularly the party’s social conservative wing, which places a high priority on ethics and family values. Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group in Washington, said the elections of November 2006, in which Republicans lost control of the House and the Senate, proved that voters want politicians in Washington to clean up their act.

“Exit polls show that was the No. 1 factor in depressing Republican enthusiasm,” Mr. Perkins said in an interview Tuesday. “There is an expectation that leaders who espouse family values will live by those values. And while the values voters don’t demand perfection, I do believe they want leaders with integrity.”

But what constitutes "integrity"? Does being a closeted gay man trying to push other gay men back into the closet give you "integrity"?

Why can't these people realize that legislating sexual behavior among consenting adults has no place in the political arena? Perhaps if Republicans would stop peeping through the keyholes of the bedrooms of consenting adults, both gay AND straight, while they themselves are cruising for anonymous sex and paying hookers to put diapers on them, they might do something about the appalling preponderance of pedophiles in their midst.

Imagine if the Republican Party just told the Christofascist Zombie Brigade to go stuff it, that the Republican Party stands for less government, not more government intrusion into people's private lives. Perhaps then it might be a party we could take seriously.

We currently have a president who lied us into a war, whose general in Iraq has an assistant quite probably involved in selling American weapons to the very insurgents who are killing American troops, who sat by while an American city died, who has appointed inexperienced, unqualified cronies to Federal positions, who had an Attorney General who declared the Magna Carta to be null and void and who turned the Justice Department into just another political arm of th Republican Party, and who has shoveled billions of dollars of American taxpayer cash into the pockets of corporations who donate to Republicans. And we can't impeach him because his predecessor was impeached for lying about a blowjob.

Hasn't this Republican obsession with OTHER people's sex lives caused enough damage? Can we please get this out of the political discussion now?

Now we know why the wingnuts had fits about Bill Clinton

After reading Pam's GOP cornucopia of carnal scandal this morning, I suddenly realized why the right went into such fits about Bill Clinton's sex life. Oh yes, some of it was the right's sense of entitlement to ALL the power, and their view of the southerner who wasn't in their club as a usurper to the throne. But with all the investigations, why go after sex?

In the wake of Mark Foley, David Vitter, former Spokane Mayor Jim West, Don Sherwood, Ted Haggard, USAID head Randall Tobias, and many others, with Florida State Rep. and McCain operative Bob Allen only the latest, we know know just how sexually screwed up the most vociferous advocates of sexual restraint are.

That Bill Clinton was a randy fellow was no great secret. But his own inability to control his sexual appetites opened the door in these hypocrites to their own failings and made them even more difficult to control. And that's why he had to be destroyed.

Perhaps we would be kinder to these guys if they would stop demanding that other people suppress in themselves what they themselves are unable to.