The GOP Rush to Abandon the Poor

As this blog has noted many times before, the Republican Party's verbal claims that it's the "family values" party and the party of Christian values are totally disconnected from the Party's actions.  While the GOP kisses the ass of the Christian Right non-stop, the Gospel message is nowhere to be seen in the hate, geed, and ignorance agenda of the Party. One of the things this blog tries to highlight is hypocrisy whether the hypocrisy occurs in government, religious institutions or elsewhere.  Today's GOP is all about hypocrisy and the policies it is pursuing makes a mockery of the Gospel message of the Bible - the book that the whore like members of the GOP claim to honor, if not outright worship.  The New York Times looks at the total disconnect of the GOP the Gospel message of aiding the poor as the GOP at the state and local level strive to kick the poor to the curb.  Interestingly enough, Taliban Bob McDonnell is acting in a moderate manner as he apparently still campaigns for the VP nod from Mitt Romney.  Here are editorial highlights:

The state with the country’s worst health care record just happens to have a governor who has been the loudest voice against national efforts to improve it.

A quarter of the residents of Texas, 6.3 million people, are uninsured, by far the highest percentage in the country. (That number includes more than a million children.) Texas ranks last in prenatal care and finished last on a new federal assessment of overall health quality that examined factors like disease prevention, deaths from illnesses, and cancer treatment.

Yet Gov. Rick Perry — strangely puffed up as he was so often in his presidential bid — recently told the Obama administration that he would proudly refuse a huge infusion of Medicaid money that would significantly reduce those shameful statistics and cover 1.7 million more people. The same indifference to suffering that pushed Texas to the bottom is now threatening to keep it there.

At least five other Republican governors have made a similar choice, announcing that they will not expand their Medicaid program for the poor even though the federal government would pay for almost all of it for several years under President Obama’s health care reform law.

Their refusal illuminates a growing divide over the nature of a state government’s role. Around the country, a new study shows, states continue to face a fiscal crisis because of rising costs and Republican-driven cuts in federal aid. 

Over the last year, for example, eight states have cut or eliminated cash welfare payments to their poorest residents. It happened last week in Pennsylvania, where 61,000 residents — almost all of whom are disabled and poor — were told that they would abruptly lose their $200 monthly general assistance payments, all to save $150 million a year. Our hands are tied by a tightening budget, welfare officials told astonished recipients, though Gov. Tom Corbett’s hands didn’t seem restrained when he handed out $300 million in business tax cuts earlier this month.

Gov. John Kasich of Ohio has cut hundreds of millions from education, but when the state found itself with a $235 million surplus a few weeks ago, he announced that it would all go into a rainy-day fund, doing nothing to deal with rising classroom sizes. In Maine, Gov. Paul LePage — who compared the health care reform law to the Holocaust — signed a budget bill in May that will reduce or eliminate existing Medicaid coverage for 21,000 people. 

Many mainstream Republican governors are taking a different approach. In a letter to the president last week, Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said states should think carefully before they reject Washington’s money. Though he remained quite critical of health reform and Medicaid, he also noted that refusing the expansion would create “a significant gap in coverage” for low-income people.

For now, at least, Virginia recognizes an obligation to its weakest citizens. It’s time for Texas, Florida, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Iowa and Louisiana to do the same.

U.S. Justice Department Demands GOP Stop Purging Voter Rolls in Florida

I noted recently who GOP Florida Governor Rick Scott and his GOP political have launched an effort to purge "unqualified voters" from the voting rolls in Florida.  By coincidence - wink and nod - those targeted for purging almost without exception seem to be Democrats and minorities.  Elderly whites and far right Bubbas have been unaffected.  Apparently, the GOP knows that its platform and policies cannot win a majority of voters, so it's necessary to knock opposition voters of the voting rolls.  All of this is done, of course, to protect against "rampant voter fraud."  The problem is the numbers from past elections demonstrate that there is no rampant voter fraud to be protected against.  The entire agenda is aimed at stifling anti-GOP votes so that the GOP can steal the election in Florida - a must win state for Mitt Romney.  Thankfully, the U. S. Justice Department has demanded that Florida cease the Scott?GOP directed voter purge.  One can only hope that charges will be filed against the state of Florida and ideally, Scott personally, to make sure this kind of outrage stops.  Here are highlights from Talking Points Memo:

The Justice Department sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner Thursday evening demanding the state cease purging its voting rolls because the process it is using has not been cleared under the Voting Rights Act, TPM has learned.

DOJ also said that Florida’s voter roll purge violated the National Voter Registration Act, which stipulates that voter roll maintenance should have ceased 90 days before an election, which given Florida’s August 14 primary, meant May 16.

Five of Florida’s counties are subject to the Voting Rights Act, but the state never sought permission from either the Justice Department or a federal court to implement its voter roll maintenance program. Florida officials said they were trying to remove non-citizens from the voting rolls, but a flawed process led to several U.S. citizens being asked to prove their citizenship status or be kicked off the rolls.

“To enable us to meet our responsibility to enforce federal law, please inform us by June 6 of the action that the State of Florida plans to take concerning the matters discussed in this letter,” Christian Herren, chief of the voting section of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, wrote in the letter obtained by TPM. “Specifically, please advise whether the State intends to cease the practice discussed above, so that the Department can determine what further action, if any, is necessary.”

The DOJ letter can be seen here.

GOP Telling Hundreds of Voters They Are Inelligible to Vote

If you can't win the voters over with your lies about failed policies, then the next best thing is to strike them of the voter registry so that they cannot vote against your failed policies.   Or so seems to be the agenda of the Florida GOP and Florida GOP Governor Rick Scott (shown at left) who want to purge all "non-citizens" from the voting rolls.  The only problem is that the voters being stricken are in fact qualified voters.   I'm sure it's an approach that Bob "Governor Ultrasound" McDonnell would like to emulate here in Virginia.  Not surprisingly, those viewed as least likely to vote Republican are being particularly targeted while white Republicans are not.  It's yet another example of why I find it impossible to be a Republican nowadays.  Here are excerpts from Think Progress:

Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) has ordered the state to purge all “non-citizens” from the voting rolls prior to November’s election. But that list compiled by the Scott administration is so riddled with errors that, in Miami-Dade County alone, hundreds of U.S. citizens are being told they are ineligible to vote, ThinkProgress has learned exlusively.

According to data from the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections obtained by ThinkProgress:

- 1638 people in Miami-Dade County were flagged by the state as “non-citizens” and sent letters informing them that they were ineligible to vote.
- Of that group, 359 people have subsquently provided the county with proof of citizenship.
- Another 26 people were identified as U.S. citizens directly by the county.
- The bulk of the remaining 1200 people have simply not responded yet to a letter sent to them by the Supervisor of Elections.

You can see a similar letter sent to alleged “non-citizens” by the Broward County Supervisor of Elections HERE. (“The Supervisor of Elections… has received information that you are not a citizen of the United States.”) If recipients of the letter do not respond within 30 days — a deadline that is mere days away — they will be summarily removed from the voting rolls. The voters purged from the list, election officials tell ThinkProgress, will inevitably include fully eligible Florida voters.

An analysis of the state-wide list by the Miami Herald found that “Hispanic, Democratic and independent-minded voters are the most likely to be targeted” as ineligible by the list. Conversely, “whites and Republicans are disproportionately the least-likely to face the threat of removal.” 

Late last year, Scott ordered his Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, to “to identify and remove non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls.” Browning could not access to reliable citizenship data. So election officials attempted to identify non-U.S. citizens by comparing data from the state motor vehicle administration with the voting file. That process produced a massive list of 182,000 names, which Browning considered unreliable and refused to release. Browning resigned in February and Scott pressed forward with the purge.

For example, Juan Artabe, a resident of Miami-Dade, was flagged as a “non-citizen” based on motor vehicle records from 2006. He became a citizen in 2008 but no one notified the state. He was able to retain his ability to vote only by sending his citizenship papers to the Supervisor of Elections.

The purge of fully eligible voters from the voting rolls by Scott could be enough to tip the balance in Florida and, perhaps, the presidential election. In 2000, the final (disputed) margin was just 537 votes. 

Marco Rubio's Fictional Family History

It seems the typical GOP politician is either a closeted gay, a religious fanatic or someone who invents a more dazzling self-history to dupe the gullible. A case in point for the latter phenomenon is Florida Senator Marco Rubio who fabricated a compelling family story to promote his political future. The only problem is that now the story has been shown to be totally false. It's one thing to modestly enhance one's biography. It's something far different to totally make it up. Yet that's what Rubio apparently did in part to cater to Cuban-American voters in Florida. The question obviously arises as to what elese Rubio has lied about in the course of his self-promotion. The Washington Post has details - here are some highlights.

During his rise to political prominence, Sen. Marco Rubio frequently repeated a compelling version of his family’s history that had special resonance in South Florida. He was the “son of exiles,” he told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after “a thug,” Fidel Castro, took power.

But a review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that the Florida Republican’s account embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than two-and-a-halfyears before Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year’s Day 1959.

The supposed flight of Rubio’s parents has been at the core of the young senator’s political identity, both before and after his stunning tea-party-propelled victory in last year’s Senate election.

And the 40-year-old senator with the boyish smile and prom-king good looks has drawn on the power of that claim to entrance audiences captivated by the rhetorical skills of one of the more dynamic stump speakers in modern American politics.

The real story of his parents’ migration appears to be a more conventional immigrant narrative, a couple who came to the United States seeking a better life. In the year they arrived in Florida, the future Marxist dictator was in Mexico plotting a quixotic return to Cuba.

The senator’s office tried to clarify the facts in its statement Thursday. . . . legal scholars on both sides of the McCain debate told The Post that Rubio’s citizenship does not appear to be an issue.

George "Rent Boy" Rekers Continues to Haunt Bill McCollum

Karma can truly be a bitch. Ask Bill McCollum - the Florida GOP candidate for governor who hired George "Rent Boy" Rekers as a fraudulent expert for the state in the lawsuit seeking to uphold the Florida ban on gay adoption. The ad shown above - is being run by McCollum's opponent for the GOP nomination. While McCollums is a far right Neanderthal, I cannot help but savor the way McCollum's sleazy dealings with Rekers are now biting him in the ass.

Pensacola Paper Slams Rekers' BFF McCollum

It doesn't take much effort to figure out that GOP candidate for governor of Florida, Bill McCollum, is a sleazy piece of work. His involvement with George "Rent Boy" Rekers as an paid "expert" witness for the state in failed litigation to block gay adoption speaks volumes by itself. Yet McCollum - apparently in a desperate play to garner the ultra-far right and Christo-fascist vote - has gone a step further and endeavored to revive the anti-gay adoption debate. Never mind that recent studies such as the one done at the University of Virginia have documented that children of same-sex couples do just as well developmentally as their compatriots in heterosexual headed homes. Like all true bigots, McCollum isn't one to let objective facts get in the way of his shrill demagoguery. Even the Pensacola News Journal found McCollum's latest behavior reprehensible and let him have it in an editorial over the weekend. Here are some highlights:
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There are few things as dangerous as a desperate politician frantic to elbow past an election opponent to grab votes on the extreme edge of a political party's "base." Case in point: Bill McCollum.
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Entering the race for the GOP nomination for governor, it probably never occurred to the lifelong conservative that another Republican could successfully run to his right. But billionaire Rick Scott, unknown to most Floridians just a few months ago, dumped tens of millions of dollars from his personal fortune into the race, and suddenly McCollum was looking — at least to right-wing GOP voters — like the "liberal" candidate in the race. So McCollum veered right, with his first target being illegal immigrants, a sure-fire GOP vote-getter already usurped by Scott.
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But now McCollum is onto one of the right's most reliable political boogeymen: homosexuals. In an interview last week, McCollum — as attorney general currently losing the state's court case to retain a ban on homosexual adoption — lashed out against gay foster parents, saying that their legal right to take in foster children should be revoked.
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McCollum has revealed just how desperate he is to win the GOP primary, even if it means trampling on the foster parent program. With a constant need for both foster parents and adoptive parents, the last thing these children need is for the state to go backward.

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Of course, Christianists and political opportunists like McCollum in reality don't give a rat's ass about children in need of stable and loving homes. Rather, it's all about inflicting their religious based prejudices on all citizens. The needs of children be damned..

Orlando Sentinel Column Slams Florida AG for Use of Rekers

The fall out from the exposure of George Rekers as a fraud and closet case continues to mount and with luck will have a chilling effect on the use of other Christian Right water carriers motivated by religious extremism as "expert" witnesses in future trials seeking to limit LGBT rights. An op-ed column in the Orlando Sentinel takes Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum (at left) to serious task for having used Rekers as his "expert" witness in the litigation where the State of Florida sought to bar gays from adopting children. The column also brings out what should have been an obvious fact to McCollum: Duh . . if it's near impossible to secure an expert witness that supports your factual/scientific argument, then maybe that ought to tell you something from the get go. As McCollum has hopefully learned, putting religious dogma ahead of true facts is a good way to end up looking like an ass (not that seems to deter Virginia AG Ken Kookinelli). Here are some column highlights:
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In 2008, I wrote about the state's legal battle to block foster parent Frank Martin Gill, a gay man, from adopting two abused children he rescued from a crack house. Florida lawmakers banned gay adoptions in 1977 during the state's Anita Bryant phase.
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The Attorney General's Office hired Dr. George Rekers, a Miami psychologist and co-founder of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group, to defend the ban. Rekers considers gays immoral deviants, doomed to an early death and thereafter to eternal damnation.

So it understandably caused a stir when the Miami New Times busted Dr. Rekers for going on a 10-day European vacation with Lucien, a 20-year-old male prostitute who advertised on rentboy.com. Don't you just hate it when Stephen Colbert names your expert witness the "Alpha Dog of the Week"?
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If you think Rekers is a laughingstock, imagine how the Attorney General's Office feels. It represented the Department of Children and Families, charged with enforcing a gay adoption ban that DCF Secretary George Sheldon opposed when he was in the Legislature. The Attorney General's Office paid Rekers $60,900 for his expertise.
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Attorney General Bill McCollum said last week that his agency did a "thorough search" to find him. He said Rekers had a Ph.D. from UCLA and experience testifying in similar cases. Rekers did testify in Arizona in opposition to gay foster parents. But the judge there called his testimony "extremely suspect and of little, if any, assistance to the court."
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So much for a thorough search. McCollum then admitted the obvious about hiring Rekers: "There wasn't a whole lot of choice."
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Rekers was so embarrassing, even back in 2008, that McCollum's office blamed DCF for finding him. That infuriated a DCF official, who said the Attorney General's Office found him, which McCollum now confirms. The Florida judge didn't find Rekers any more credible than the Arizona judge and tossed out the state's gay adoption ban. The Attorney General's Office is appealing.
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Meanwhile, McCollum is flagging in his bid to be the GOP standard bearing for Governor. Based on his judgment on Rekers, I do not blame Floridians in questioning McCollum's competence.

Closeted Crist Becomes a Right-Wing Target

There definitely is an entertainment factor in watching the lunatic element within the Republican Party attack and trash the party's members who are moderates and appealing to independents and conservative Democrats - to the extent any remain in the GOP - and seek to nominate instead Kool-Aid drinkers such as themselves. The recent circus in New York's congressional race yielded the first Democrat win in the district in well over 100 years. Now the nutcase crowd is out for Charlie Crist's blood. I'm no fan of the closeted Crist, but the self destruction of the GOP by the litmus test crowd can only help Democrats overall. One need only look at how Sarah Palin drove moderate Republicans to vote for Obama a year ago. I continue to be amazed that the lunatic element of the GOP thinks that extremist candidates will somehow be more electable. Here are some highlights from the New York Times on the ongoing bloodbath in Florida:

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It was in the glow of a new day in politics last February when Mr. Crist, this state’s popular Republican governor, took the stage with President Obama and declared that Republicans and Democrats had to rise above partisanship in support of an economic stimulus. And Mr. Obama embraced him.
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Now, as a season of tea parties and fractious town hall meetings has energized the right wing, that embrace has endangered what once seemed like Mr. Crist’s surefire bid for a Senate seat and put Florida at the center of a debate about the future of the Republican Party.
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A raft of conservative groups, commentators and politicians are supporting a primary challenge to Mr. Crist by Marco Rubio, a telegenic former speaker of the Florida House christened a Reaganite’s answer to Mr. Obama by The National Review. “Florida is a hill to die on for conservatives,” said Erick Erickson, editor of the conservative blog RedState.com, which leads a daily drumbeat against Mr. Crist. “This is the clearest example we have of these two competing concepts.” Similar fights are playing out in primary races in other states.
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Conservative and moderate Republicans take very different lessons from this month’s special Congressional election in upstate New York, in which a third-party conservative challenged the moderate Republican candidate. In the end, a Democrat won the seat in the historically Republican district after the Republican dropped out under pressure from the right and then endorsed the Democrat. Republicans took it as evidence that candidates from the far right cannot win. But conservatives say their candidate would have prevailed if the establishment had been smart enough to put its money behind him, rather than a Republican they argue was a Democrat in thin disguise.
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One can only hope that the far right in the GOP drive down Crist only to see their far right candidate crash and burn. That would definitely be some divine justice.

Young, Evangelical ... for Obama?

The Seattle Times has an article today that may indicate yet another problem for the GOP come November. Namely, the fact that some of the younger evangelicals may be moving to abandon the GOP and the mean, intolerant form of Christianity peddled by Daddy Dobson, et al. I know based on my own children and many of their friends that the Christianists are driving many of the younger voters to shun the GOP even when their parents remain within the GOP fold. Here are some story highlights:

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Michael Dudley is the son of a preacher man. He's a born-again Christian with two family members in the military. He grew up in the Bible Belt, where almost everyone he knew was Republican. But this fall, he's breaking a handful of stereotypes: He plans to vote for Democrat Barack Obama.

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Dudley's disenchantment with the GOP isn't unique among young, devoutly Christian voters. According to a September 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 15 percent of white evangelicals between 18 and 29, a group traditionally a shoo-in for the GOP, say they no longer identify with the Republican Party. Older evangelicals are also questioning their traditional allegiance, but not at the same rate.

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But students at a recent bipartisan political union meeting at SPU say there's something more going on with young Christians than disenchantment with McCain. In an informal poll of the political union, the majority supported Obama. "I think it's a new movement starting," said Amy Archibald, 19, a sophomore at the evangelical school. "Most of us would never blindly follow the old Christian Right anymore. James Dobson has nothing to do with us. A lot of us are taking apart the issues, and thinking, 'OK, well, [none of the candidates] fits what I'm looking for exactly.' But if you're going to vote, you've got to take your pros with your cons."

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Young evangelicals are more of a swing constituency than they've been for decades, said Andy Crouch, an editor at Christianity Today, a national evangelical magazine. "This could turn out to be the election where both parties realize that the evangelical vote is so hopelessly split down the middle that it's not worth courting them at all because what parties need are blocs that can be appealed to en masse," Crouch said. "Paradoxically, evangelicals would become less relevant than ever before."

Florida Anti-Gay Amendment Heads To Ballot

Unfortunately, the GOP effort to get an anti-gay constitutional amendment measure on the Florida November ballot has succeeded and once more gay bashing is being used as a disgusting vehicle to work to turn out the fundie vote so that the GOP can win Florida's electoral votes. What I find so disgusting is (1) the mentality that will allow these Republicans to cynically use gays as targets in order to win at any cost and (2) the fact that the Christianist voters are such morons that they do not even understand that they are being cynically and systematically used. Once again, as more and more jurisdictions around the world are marching forward and legislating equality, the USA continues its march backwards with bigotry and hate. Here are some highlights from 365gay.com (http://www.365gay.com/Newscon08/02/020208fla.htm):

(Tallahassee, Florida) Florida LGBT civil rights groups said Saturday they will mount an aggressive campaign to defeat a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would ban same-sex marriage. The state Division of Elections late Friday announced that an umbrella group pushing the amendment had collected more than 611,000 signatures to have the issue placed on the November ballot. Two weeks ago the fate of the ballot petition was in doubt when the state said that a tabulation error in Dade County meant the group was 20,000 names short.

The amendment says, "Inasmuch as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized." Opponents of the proposed amendment say it would bar civil unions and would be used to deny partner benefits not only to same-sex couples but also to unmarried couples who live together.

An investigation by the St. Petersburg Times into funding for the Florida4Marriage has found that of the $193,000 that had been raised by the group $150,000 came from a single donor - the Florida Republican Party. . . . a constitutional amendment in Florida has a higher bar than in most states. It must be approved by 60 percent of voters.

Florida Anti-Gay Amendment In Trouble

I truly hope that this hate motivated amendment proposal does not make it onto the Florida ballot. First because it is wrong to encode discrimination into a state's constitution and secondly, I have had enough of the GOP's gay bashing ploys to bring out the most bigoted and un-Christian voters, particularly with a goal of affecting a presidential election. Here are some highlights form 365gay.com (http://www.365gay.com/Newscon08/01/011408florida.htm):

(Miami, Florida) Backers of a proposed amendment to bar same-sex marriage in Florida are scrambling to find 20,000 signatures to get the measure on November's ballot after the Secretary of State announced Monday that a counting mistake put them well short of the required 611,000 signatures needed. Last month the Secretary of State's office said that Florida4Marriage collected 612,192 names, a thousand more than was required.

Monday Browning announced there had been a massive error in Dade County. Browning, said the new count showed that election officials in Miami-Dade had ''double-counted'' some 27,000 paper petitions. With two weeks until the deadline for submitting signatures it is unclear if Florida4Marriage will be able to make up the 20,000 name shortfall.

The amendment says, "Inasmuch as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized." An investigation by the St. Petersburg Times into funding for the Florida4Marriage has found that of the $193,000 that had been raised by the group $150,000 came from a single donor - the Florida Republican Party. Opponents of the amendment say it could be used to cancel domestic partner benefits throughout the state, for both gay and straight couples.

Patti Davis to Candidates: Stop Invoking Reagan

It is interesting to see Patti Davis telling the GOP candidates to stop comparing themselves to her father, not that I blame her for doing so. While I am not going to go off on a discussion of Ronald Reagan, I will note that even when he took conservative positions, he never had the level of meanness and nastiness that has come to embody today's GOP where the party's base is dominated by the Christianists and hates and despises anyone not like themselves, be they black, Hispanic, gay or non-Christian. But I digress. Here are some highlights from Patti Davis's column (http://www.newsweek.com/id/82384):

On Friday's “Today Show”, Mitt Romney again brandished my father's name, and claimed that, just as Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, Romney can effectively govern and manage foreign policy in this horribly troubled world. This, of course, was preceded by Romney's televised speech about his religion and his personal faith—something my father would never have dreamed of doing because his faith was, well, personal.

To prove his virility, Huckabee has been photographed in those ridiculous hunting clothes holding a large rifle and several dead pheasants. Lest we forget about God, Huckabee's campaign offered up a special Christmas advertisement—complete with the now famous “floating cross” behind him—something Huckabee has said was simply a bookcase. Yes, with the books removed and lit with a golden glow that looked like the Star of Bethlehem had been summoned for duty in a political ad.

So, apparently, we are being told that a competent, trustworthy president is someone who brandishes his religion like a neon sign, loads a gun and goes out hunting for beautiful winged creatures, and tries to imitate a past president (who, by the way, never shot a bird or felt the need to imitate anybody.) I don't think I'm alone in my reaction to all of this when I say, "Do you think we're stupid?" If we want religious evangelism, we can turn on one of those cable channels. If we want leadership, we don't ask, "Now who has killed the most birds?" And most importantly, when we are thinking about trust and confidence, we don't look for someone who is trying to mimic anyone else.

Can't we just leave the ducks, the rabbits, the deer alone, and focus on a world that is aching with strife, that is weighed down by wars and conflicts, not to mention disease and hunger in vast stretches of Africa? Can't we go back to respecting the privacy of religious faith and stop using God as a campaign tool? And can't we please, please, please admit that imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery; it's just an indication that the imitator is going through a serious identity crisis.

Get Ready for a Democratic Era??

It would be nice if the analysis in this Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/21/AR2007122101415.html?hpid=opinionsbox1) were to turn out to be accurate and come true. The analysis does make sense and does seem to track trends properly. Of course, personally, I would enjoy nothing more than seeing Karl Rove's ambitions turned upside down and for the GOP to become a permanent minority party - or least a party out of power for many years to come. It would be a most fitting reward for those Christianists who have preached division, anti-gay hatred, taken the country to war based on lies and endorsed the use of torture. Here are some highlights:

Karl Rove's grandest aspiration was to create a Republican majority that would dominate American politics for a generation or more. But as the effects of his distinctive brand of fear-mongering fade, it's the Democrats who are poised to become the country's majority party -- and perhaps for a long time to come.

This sea change is the result of the electorate's disenchantment with conservative Republicans, beginning in the 1990s. Moreover, much of the electorate had grown leery of the GOP's fervent identification with the religious right. As early as 1992, mainstream voters were turned off by Pat Buchanan's nasty, divisive "culture war" speech at the Republican National Convention. Attempts by religious conservatives to stop teaching evolution and funding human stem-cell research spurred a widespread backlash, even in states such as Kansas, which Democrats had given up for dead.

[O]ver the past two decades, two new groups have migrated to the Democratic Party -- and provided the basis for an enduring majority coalition. First, there are women, who used to vote disproportionately Republican. (In 1960, for instance, women backed the Republican Richard M. Nixon, with his 5 o'clock shadow, over the dashing Democrat John F. Kennedy.) But in the 1990s, troubled by the Republicans' ardor for the religious right and opposition to social spending, they began voting disproportionately Democratic -- especially single women, working women and college-educated women. In the 2000 congressional elections, single women backed Democrats over Republicans by a whopping 63 percent to 35. Even better news for Democrats: Women are more likely to vote than men.

Second, there are professionals, once the most Republican of all occupational groups. The reason: Professionals typically used to see themselves as pro-business entrepreneurs, but by the 1990s, most had become salaried workers, wary of big corporations and the untrammeled free market.

So if the electorate is swinging Democratic, why does the GOP still hold the White House? The reason is 9/11, which revived the Republicans' Reagan-era advantage as the party of national security, an edge that had grown irrelevant since the Soviet Union collapsed. But after Bush's victory in 2004, the spell cast by 9/11 began to lift. The quagmire in Iraq undermined the Republicans' reputation for national security competence and toughness. And in the absence of new al-Qaeda attacks at home, Americans resumed their slow, steady movement toward a less traditional, more libertarian society -- one in which unmarried men and women now head the majority of households. The more the aura of 9/11 faded, the more the trends that began in the 1990s surged to the fore.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have consolidated their hold on the Northeast and have begun to make inroads in the Rocky Mountain states -- and even in some Southern border states. Virginia, once a Republican bastion, has elected two Democratic governors in a row and seems poised to make both of its U.S. senators Democratic. In the Southwest, where Rove dreamed of capturing the Mexican American vote, Democrats have been doing strikingly well, backed by Latinos alienated by Republican anti-immigration tirades, sagebrush libertarians fed up with the religious right and moderate transplants from states such as California.

These trends should give Democrats a striking political advantage over the next decade, and perhaps longer.

Proposed Florida Gay Marriage Ban Unneeded, Insulting

That's the conclusion of the Florida Sun-Sentinel in a recent editorial addressing the fact that a proposed constitutional amendment will be on the ballot in November, 2008 - just in time to try to sway the presidential election results (.http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-editgsmarriagesbdec20,0,798399.story?coll=sfla-opinion-utility). Perhaps the Florida Republicans who pushed this issue should have learned something from the fate of former Virginia U.S. Senator George Allen who may have LOST to Jim Webb in part because enough opponents to Virginia's "Marriage Amendment" came out to vote who might not have otherwise voted. While the amendment passed - not by a huge majority - Allen went down to defeat. Bringing out voters can cut both ways. Here are highlights from the editorial:

Let's call this proposed state constitutional ban on gay marriage exactly what it is: unneeded, divisive, and a transparent attempt to get out the ultra-conservative vote.And it's also one gigantic example of overkill. Florida law already forbids gay marriage, but that's not nearly enough for the folks at Florida4Marriage.org, which claims it has enough signatures to put the proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage on the November ballot. According to the group, there must be a constitutional amendment to guarantee a permanent prohibition.Who are they kidding?

This is one of the oldest political ploys going — get a good red meat issue on the ballot to bring out ultra conservatives who might otherwise sit at home on election day. Maybe scare some people and get a little fear out there. The only thing surprising about this is there isn't a group — yet — that's trying to get an amendment banning flag burning onto the November ballot in Florida.

The Florida Constitution should not be the place for zealots to turn to when they want to advance their cause. The folks promoting the constitutional gay marriage ban are insulting not only gays, but voters of all political ilk who can tell a real issue from a ruse.Unfortunately, it will take up valuable time, and space on a ballot. It never should have gotten that far.

BOTTOM LINE: Amendment isn't needed, and looks like a political play.

Barack Obama's Youthful Drug Use

As has been widely reported, a now unemployed campaign adviser for Hillary Clinton floated a balloon concerning Barack Obama's admitted use of drugs in his late teen years. Yes, it is true that the GOP candidate whoever he may be will no doubt try to depict Obama - should he be the Democrat nominee - as what the typical GOP white voter views blacks as being like anyway: drug users, criminals, welfare cheats and low life types in general. The GOP base is not mostly lily white without good reason. Back when Doug Wilder ran for and was successfully elected Governor of Virginia, that under current was discernible. It will be even worse in 2008. Of course, Christian Right base that now controls the GOP not only dislikes gays, but Hispanics, Catholics (unless they are so far right that they want the Latin mass returned church wide), Jews (except for their role in bringing about Armageddon), and basically everyone who is not a white evangelical.

Obama will need to face up to this situation should he win the nomination and be prepared to address the issue head on. At the same time, many voters will be utterly turned off by this probable GOP tactic, not the least black voters. At the same time, Hillary needs to be prepared to face down ever imaginable skeleton that will be dredged up by the GOP from Bill Clinton's years in office should she be the Democrat nominee. Regardless of who is the nominee, expect the GOP to run a mean, nasty campaign with race baiting, gay bashing, anti-immigrant nativism, etc. That is standard operating procedure for the Christianists: wear your religion on your sleeve and then utterly ignore the principles of that claimed faith which would bar such dishonest and hate-filled statements and actions.

As for the leak from Hillary's campaign, I view it as just plain stupid. Thankfully, the campaign staffer was fired. Hopefully, others on Hilliary's campaign staff took notice. For many people - myself included - one of her big hurdles is convincing them that she is not a female "Slick Willie" and that she has some standards of fair play. This stunt did not help win them over. Here are highlights from a New York Times article that looks at this issue among others (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/us/politics/16obama.html?pagewanted=2&hp):

An adviser to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign suggested this week that Mr. Obama’s admission of drug use as a young man could weaken his candidacy should he win the general election. The Clinton campaign repudiated the remarks, Mrs. Clinton apologized and the adviser resigned, but she and her aides have kept the issue alive by referring to it publicly a number of times in what appeared to be an effort to drive up negative views of his character and raise doubts about his ability to weather a general election.

In an interview, Mr. Obama responded that voters would ultimately be turned off by such attacks on him, particularly about his admission more than a decade ago that he used marijuana and cocaine in his youth. “My past and my character seemed to be fine when I was 20 points down,” Mr. Obama said. “Those kinds of tactics or strategies, I think, are emblematic of an old politics. It’s the exactly the kind of politics that the American people are tired of.”

As he reaches out to those voters, Mr. Obama implores upon them a heavy sense of responsibility. At the same time, though, he seemed to unwittingly raise expectations for his own campaign here, particularly if he doesn’t win in Iowa and seeks to move on to the Feb. 5 contests for a second chance. “You in Iowa have this extraordinary privilege of choosing who the next president of the United States is going to be,” Mr. Obama told an audience at the Lakeside Ballroom in Guttenberg, a town that overlooks the Mississippi River. “Whoever wins this caucus is likely to win the nomination and is likely to win the presidency.”

Blowing Off the GOP

It is almost comical that I received a fax and then a telephone call today from the National Republican Congressional Committee asking me to be a Virginia member of the Committee's Business Advisory Council. Suffice it to say, the caller got quite an earful on my views of the current state of the party and how neither I nor most of my extended family would even remotely consider voting for a GOP candidate, much less help the party financially or otherwise unless and until it disassociates from the Christianist element and ceases to be an arm of the Christian Right.

The caller argued that my view of the party was incorrect until I read her chapter and verse on numerous issues. Finally, we ended the conversation, with her thanking me for explaining my views. I also asked that my name be purged from all records and mailing lists in their data base. Realistically, I do not see the Party changing, however, until it suffers more crushing defeats at the polls. I hope 2008 is a massacre.

On Capitol Hill, Congressman Forbes is the Point Man for Prayer

As if I needed any more proof as to the GOP's misplaced priorities, this article showed up in today's Virginian Pilot (http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=137834&ran=133605&tref=po). Congressman Randy Forbes is an old law school classmate of mine and I certainly knew him during my years in the GOP. He is not a bad guy in general. However, that he and others in Congress are spending time on a Congressional Prayer Caucus while the nation faces many real problems, the economy is roaring towards a recession and millions of American families are faced with losing their homes to foreclosure, is both mind numbing and disheartening. I fully agree with Barry Lynn's (I met him at the 2003 NGLTF Creating Change Conference and was very impressed) view that the motivation behind the Caucus is to give the appearance of a problem existing when there is none. Here are some story highlights:

There are plenty of special interests at work within Congress, and U.S. Rep. J. Randy Forbes is point man for one of them: the Congressional Prayer Caucus. The caucus, a formal congressional group Forbes founded in 2005 , helps the Chesapeake congressman fight what he calls the “constant, dripping erosion” of the nation’s heritage of prayer and faith. Just last month , the caucus swung into action when an official deleted “God” from a certificate accompanying a flag flown over the U.S. Capitol.

The prayer caucus Forbes founded is probably the first of its kind in congressional history, said Laura Olson , a Clemson University political scientist. The caucus is bipartisan, but most of its 25 members are evangelical Christians representing districts “with sizable populations” of evangelicals, she said. The group includes at least one Jew and one Catholic. The prayer caucus reflects Forbes’ convictions as a Christian who has taught adult Sunday School for 20 years at Great Bridge Baptist Church. “Randy believes that prayer is what changes things and our country needs to be on our knees in prayer,” said the Rev. Allan Campbell , the church’s music minister.

The caucus is separate from the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, a nonprofit that Forbes recently launched to promote prayer by private individuals. Forbes said he spoke for the foundation, not the caucus, when he led a Capitol news conference last March that urged Americans to pray five minutes a week for the nation. The caucus, which has no paid staff, acts as a religious Paul Revere – on watch for challenges to prayer, warning members and arming them with information they can use to fight back.

At Americans United for Separation of Church and State – a group Jones blamed for lawsuits questioning public prayer – the Rev. Barry W. Lynn disputed any need for the caucus. “It was created to give the appearance that if they didn’t protect the right to pray, that right would somehow disappear,” Lynn said. “There’s no war against religion in general or Christianity in this country.”

Global Warming May Devastate the USA South's Agriculture

This story from AmericaBlog.com (http://www.americablog.com/2007/11/global-warming-may-devastate-souths.html) which in turn picks up from a Washington Post story (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/18/AR2007111800501.html?hpid=moreheadlines&sid=ST2007111800526) looks at the irony of the voting patterns in the U.S. South and how the region elects politicians who refuse to admit that climate change is even occurring, much try to do anything about it. Virginia gets some much deserved badmouthing in the process too. Here are some highlights:

We've written before about how the South has a reputation for electing far-right Neanderthal politicians who don't care about much beyond God, gays and guns (embracing the former and the latter, and bashing the guy in the middle). And we've written about how the South's biggest problems, like poverty, have little to do with God, gays, guns or the Republican (or far-right Democratic) politicians they elect. It's therefore funny, yet again, that the conservative South is shooting itself in the foot by siding with politicians (that would be Republicans) who deny the existence of global warming. Why? Because according to a new study, America's South will be among the world's regions worst hit by the impact of global warming on local agriculture.

Still, when you consider that the South produced the likes of Jesse Helms and is still home to possibly the most bigoted state in the Union, Virginia (which has the proud honor of being the state that most fought against inter-racial marriage and now has possibly the most gay-hating legislation on the books in the entire country), there's still a certain understandable schadenfreude in watching their embrace of the far right lead to their slow self-destruction.

Affluent Voters Switch Brands - Stands on 'So-Called Moral Issues' Prove Costly for Republicans

It is about time that educated, affluent voters leave the anti-knowledge, anti-equality GOP and focus on those who seek to move the country forward, not back to the 19th Century. This Wall Street Journal story (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119518268221495363.html?mod=hpp_us_editors_picks) shows that the GOP's ties to the Christianist lunatic fringe are beginning to take a serious toll. I for one hope the trend continues unabated. Here are some story highlights:

Jim Kelley, . . . , looks like one of those plutocrats whom Democrats are talking about taxing more. He buys companies for the $7 billion private-equity firm Vestar Capital Partners, with headquarters on New York's Park Avenue. Mr. Kelley, 53, is writing big campaign checks for Barack Obama and other Democrats -- and taxes don't make his top 10 list of critical political issues.

In this newly competitive state and elsewhere, Republicans are struggling to reassure their nervous religious-right base, while Democrats are profiting from increasing support among high-income voters. And that support may be more impervious to warnings of higher taxes than some Republicans assume. "The Democratic Party stands more for creating equal opportunity," says Mr. Kelley. He says the party "speaks more to me on issues of the environment, and even more to me on national security," while he criticizes Republican stands on "so-called moral issues" such as gay marriage.

"There's a difference in the type of giver that I've seen," observes Kirk Dornbush, a veteran Democratic fund-raiser who runs an Atlanta-based biotechnology firm. In the past, he explains, affluent donors from business or the professions were often "people that needed access." Now, he says, Democrats are benefiting from concerns over America's "loss of standing in the world," Mr. Bush's environmental policies, and concern over the possibility of recession. An increasing number of high-income Americans "are yearning for something different. And something different is the Democrats."

"Twenty-five years ago...business could safely vote Republican and believe that their interests in business were going to be taken care of," says Neil Westergaard, editor of the Denver Business Journal. "As the Republican Party has changed, I think that became less [true]."

Florida Republican Guilty In Washroom Sex Case

This was too good to pass up. One more GOP closet case goes down, convicted by a jury of his peers. To say that Bob Allen is a stupid ass doesn't even begin to describe the matter. I continue to be amazed how it's the loudest homophobes who are just dying to have some gay sex. While I feel sorry for his family members, this guy deserves to be humiliated given his anti-gay voting record. I especially like the excuse that he solicited gay sex because he was afraid of blacks: I was afraid of the black men - - so I wanted to suck c**k? What the F***! Here are highlights from 365gay.com (http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/11/111007allen.htm):

(Tampa, Florida) State Rep. Bob Allen (R) has been convicted of offering an undercover male police officer cash for sex. Allen, a longtime foe of LGBT rights in Florida, will be sentenced next Thursday. He could be facing 60 days in the county jail and a $500. fine. Republicans in the legislature said the conviction will allow them to move forward with plans to remove Allen from office.

Following the verdict his attorney accused the prosecution of misconduct and said he will seek a new trial. Allen was busted in July during a sting at a men's washroom at Veteran's Memorial Park in Titusville, Florida. In taped statements made by Allen to police following his arrest and released by the force Allen admits to soliciting the male officer but claims that it was the result of being nervous by the high number of black men in the park.

Ironically, Allen was the Police Union's 2007 Lawmaker of the Year. In the last session of the Florida legislature he sponsored a failed bill that would have tightened the state's prohibition on public sex. He also has been a supporter of amending the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage and has opposed a bill to curb bullying of gay students.