Why Pence Must Go Down with Trump

As unfit for office and as large a threat Donald Trump may be to the nation, should he be forced from office due to collusion with Russia, out right treason or some other cause, it is imperative that Mike Pence be caught up in the maelstrom and forced from office along with him.  Why? First, because I believe that Pence's "Sergeant Schultz routine" is a charade and that he was very much aware of the activities of the Trump/Pence campaign.  Secondly, because Pence represents as much of a clear and present danger to America as Trump poses. Pence is just as dishonest as Trump and, perhaps, more frighteningly, the man is deranged religious zealot who believes that he is on a mission from God to impose the equivalent of a Christofascist theocracy on the nation.   A column in the New York Times focuses on Pence and just how dangerous he is for constitutional government and secular society.  Indeed, the author of a biography on Pence says Trump is the lesser evil.  Here are excerpts:

There are problems with impeaching Donald Trump. A big one is the holy terror waiting in the wings.

That would be Mike Pence, who mirrors the boss more than you realize. He’s also self-infatuated. Also a bigot. Also a liar. Also cruel.

To that brimming potpourri he adds two ingredients that Trump doesn’t genuinely possess: the conviction that he’s on a mission from God and a determination to mold the entire nation in the shape of his own faith, a regressive, repressive version of Christianity. Trade Trump for Pence and you go from kleptocracy to theocracy.

That’s the takeaway from a forthcoming book by the journalists Michael D’Antonio, who previously wrote “The Truth About Trump,” and Peter Eisner. It’s titled “The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence,” it will be published on Aug. 28 and it’s the most thorough examination of the vice president’s background to date.

The book persuasively illustrates what an ineffectual congressman he was, apart from cozying up to the Koch brothers, Betsy DeVos and other rich Republican donors; the clumsiness and vanity of his one term as governor of Indiana, for which he did something that predecessors hadn’t and “ordered up a collection of custom-embroidered clothes — dress shirts, polo shirts, and vests and jackets — decorated with his name and the words Governor of Indiana”; the strong possibility that he wouldn’t have won re-election; his luck in being spared that humiliation by the summons from Trump, who needed an outwardly bland, intensely religious character witness to muffle his madness and launder his sins; and the alacrity with which he says whatever Trump needs him to regardless of the truth.

“People don’t understand what Pence is,” D’Antonio told me. Which is? “A religious zealot.”

And D’Antonio said that Pence could end up in the White House sooner than you think. In addition to the prospect of Trump’s impeachment, there’s the chance that Trump just decides that he has had enough.

So it’s time to look harder at Pence. “The Shadow President” does. It lays out his disregard for science, evident in his onetime insistence that smoking doesn’t cause cancer and a belief that alarms about climate change were “a secret effort to increase government control over people’s lives for some unstated diabolical purpose,” according to the book.

It suggests callousness at best toward African-Americans. As governor, Pence refused to pardon a black man who had spent almost a decade in prison for a crime that he clearly hadn’t committed. He also ignored a crisis — similar to the one in Flint, Mich. — in which people in a poor, largely black Indiana city were exposed to dangerously high levels of lead. D’Antonio told me: “I think he’s just as driven by prejudice as Trump is.”

At Trump’s urging and with taxpayer money, he and his wife, Karen, flew to a football game in Indianapolis just so he could make a big public gesture of leaving in protest when, predictably, some of the players took a knee during the national anthem.

And, following Trump’s lead, he rallied behind the unhinged former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. . . . The conservative columnist George Will seized on Pence’s speech to write that Pence had dethroned Trump as “America’s most repulsive public figure.”

“He is absolutely certain that his moral view should govern public policy,” D’Antonio told me.

D’Antonio then recounted two stories that he heard from college classmates of Pence’s after the book had gone to bed, so they’re not in there. . . . . Another involved a college friend of Pence’s who later sought his counsel about coming out as gay. D’Antonio said that Pence told the friend: “You have to stay closeted, you have to get help, you’re sick and you’re not my friend anymore.”

I asked D’Antonio the nagging, obvious question: Is America worse off with Trump or Pence?

“I have to say that I prefer Donald Trump, because I think that Trump is more obvious in his intent,” he said, while Pence tends to “disguise his agenda.” D’Antonio then pointed out that if Pence assumed the presidency in the second half of Trump’s first term, he’d be eligible to run in 2020 and 2024 and potentially occupy the White House for up to 10 years.  Heaven help us.

Pence must never occupy the White House.  Nothing would be more fitting than seeing his sanctimonious, cruel, bigoted ass go down in flames with Trump.  

Scalia Was an Intellectual Phony and a Bigot

Some say that is it bad form to speak ill of the dead.  I take the position that it is even poorer form to lie and speak well of those who don't deserve to be lauded simply because they are no longer among the living.  This latter concept is lost on those gushing with kind words for the late Antonin Scalia who, contrary to what one is hearing now, wasn't a brilliant jurist.  He was instead a pompous bigot in love with his own perceived but non-existent brilliance.  The constitutional rights of the many took a back seat to Scalia's own racial and religious prejudices and a number of his positions have lead to some of America's current problems, such as the horrific Citizens United decision and the unrestrained gun rights now pushing deaths by gun violence to exceed automobile accident deaths.  Americans should be giving a shy of relief with the man gone. A piece in Salon looks at the truth about Scalia's less than brilliant career.  A second piece looks at Scalia's undisguised animus toward LGBT Americans.  First, these highlights from Salon:

 Scalia was not a great judge: he was a bad one.  And his badness consisted precisely in his contempt for the rule of law, if by “the rule of law” one means the consistent application of legal principles, without regard to the political consequences of applying those principles in a consistent way.

One of Scalia’s many obnoxious qualities as a jurist was his remarkably pompous, pedantic, and obsessive insistence that the legal principles he (supposedly) preferred – textualism in statutory interpretation, originalism when reading the Constitution, and judicial restraint when dealing with democratically-enacted legal rules – were not merely his preferences, but simply “the law.”

Given that those principles are and always have been controversial among American judges, lawyers, and politicians, insisting that they ought to control judicial interpretation as a matter of definition makes about as much sense as arguing for the desirability of, say, a particular income tax rate by claiming that the advocate’s preferred rate simply is the “true” rate (in other words it’s a nonsensical argument on its face).

But this kind of question-begging nonsense was the least of Scalia’s judicial faults.  For the truth is that, far more than the average judge, Scalia had no real fidelity to the legal principles he claimed were synonymous with a faithful interpretation of the law.  Over and over during Scalia’s three decades on the Supreme Court, if one of his cherished interpretive principles got in the way of his political preferences, that principle got thrown overboard in a New York minute.

I will give just three out of many possible examples.  In affirmative action cases, Scalia insisted over and over again that the 14th Amendment required the government to follow color-blind policies.  There is no basis for this claim in either the text or history of the amendment.  Indeed Scalia simply ignored a rich historical record that reveals, among other things, that at the time the amendment was ratified, the federal government passed several laws granting special benefits to African-Americans, and only African-Americans.

No honest originalist reading of the Constitution would conclude that it prohibits affirmative action programs, but Justice Scalia was only interested in originalism to the extent that it advanced his political preferences.

Similarly, the men who drafted and ratified the First Amendment would, it’s safe to say, been shocked out of their wits if someone had told them they were granting the same free speech rights to corporations they were giving to persons.   Again as a historical matter, this idea is an almost wholly modern invention: indeed it would be hard to come up with a purer example of treating the Constitution as a “living document,” the meaning of which changes as social circumstances change.  In other words, it would be difficult to formulate a clearer violation of Scalia’s claim that the Constitution should be treated as if it is “dead dead dead.”

Finally, and most disgracefully, Justice Scalia played a key role in the judicial theft of the 2000 presidential election.  He was one of five justices who didn’t bother to come up with something resembling a coherent legal argument for intervening in Florida’s electoral process.  A bare majority of the Court handed the election to George W. Bush, and the judges making up that majority did so while trampling on the precise legal principles Justice Scalia, in particular, claimed to hold so dear: judicial restraint, originalist interpretation, and respect for states’ rights.

These examples are not rare deviations from an otherwise principled adherence to Scalia’s own conception of the rule of law: they were the standard operating procedure for the most over-rated justice in the history of the United States Supreme Court.

As for the piece looking at Scalia's animus toward LGBT citizens, here are excerpts:

It’s a blessed thing for a great many that Scalia is off our high court, though even in death, he continues to bring harm to many who may be silently thankful for his departure.

Our nation is home to an estimated 16 million lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, an estimate based on a conservative 5 percent of the current U.S. population of 319 million. Scalia targeted, marginalized and slurred our community so often and so routinely, his hatred of LGBT Americans became something of a caricature.  But for us, it was no joke.

It’s important to understand that his bigotry was not only deeply felt, but had the ability to dramatically impact those who were its target.

Had Scalia had his way, for instance, laws criminalizing consensual homosexual sex in the privacy of the homes of consenting adults would still be in force in many states. See his ugly dissent in Lawrence v. Texas for proof, where he compares homosexuality to prostitution, bestiality, heroin use and incest.

To Scalia, such progress not only represented bad law, he didn’t consider LGBT Americans worthy of legal recognition or protection. He thought it entirely appropriate that Americans and their governments be allowed to discriminate against gays and lesbians, that the “moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct,” as he called it, was just and right. Expressing animus toward LGBT individuals and conduct was perfectly fair, to Scalia.

Given that, he saw no problem in denigrating our relationships and lifetime commitments, describing them as no different than roommate situations. He thought laws banning employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity amounted to undeserved “special rights.”

And he argued that “deviate sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex” deserved no protection under the law, that states were well within their rights to make such relations illegal and to arrest and prosecute those engaging in such sexual activity.

Rather than mellowing with age, Scalia and his anti-gay bigotry seemed only to sharpen over the years. 

Simply put, America is a far better place with Antonin Scalia no longer among the living.  If there is a Hell, I suspect Scalia is now occupying his reserved seat.  

Scalia: Affirmative Action Sends Blacks To Schools Too Advanced For Them

I have long argued that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia needs to be removed from the United States Supreme Court for continued violations of the conduct and impartiality of a federal judge (dimwit Clarence Thomas also needs to be removed).  Indeed, if Scalia were still on the U.S. District Court or U. S. Court of Appeals level, he would likely have already been removed from the bench and/or would be facing removal charges for flagrant violations of the Canons of Judicial Conduct.  Now, right after hearing oral arguments in an affirmative action case out of Texas, Scalia has made the statement that affirmative action was hurting minority students by sending them to schools too academically challenging for them. Keep in mind, the Court has not yet ruled in the case and if a lower federal court judge made a similar statement, he or she would have their ass handed to them in a sling.  No doubt Scalia thinks blacks should be majoring in grounds keeping and/or restaurant wait staff services.  The man is both a racist and a religious - and he so arrogant can't even hide his bias by keeping his mouth shut until after the Court issues it ruling. Talking Points Memo looks at Scalia's improper conduct and bigotry.  Here are highlights:

In the oral arguments Wednesday for a Supreme Court affirmative action case, Justice Antonin Scalia—a well known critic of affirmative action—suggested that the policy was hurting minority students by sending them to schools too academically challenging for them.

Referencing an unidentified amicus brief, Scalia said that there were people who would contend that "it does not benefit African-Americans to -- to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less -- a slower-track school where they do well."

A decision in Fisher v. University of Texas-Austin is expected by the end of the Supreme Court's term next summer.

Scalia would have been a perfect judge for the Spanish Inquisition.  He is one foul individual. 

6th Circuit Ruling Patterned on White Supremacist Brief?

In a recent post I speculated whether Judge Jeffrey Sutton was a modern day segregationist.  Perhaps my shots at Sutton were closer to home than I realized.  A white supremacist group that filed an amicus curiae in the 6th Circuit case is ecstatic that Sutton seemingly adopted the hate group's argument in support of upholding same sex marriage bans.  And, of course, leave it to a Chimperator George W. Bush appointee to side with the argument of white supremacists. Here are  excerpts from the group's own website boasting about the argument swallowed by Sutton who needs to receive a set of KKK robes for his Christmas gift:

When vice is celebrated as virtue and the proponents of that which is Good are labeled political heretics by the System, it is only just and proper for one to be “bad” as far as the powers that be are concerned.   

In DeBoer v. Snyder, Texas Attorney Jason Van Dyke of the Van Dyke Law Firm, PLLC, and I, Michigan and Ohio Attorney Kyle Bristow of Bristow Law, PLLC, submitted what we jokingly refer to as an “animus curiae brief” in which we articulated why the Western Legal Tradition and American history evince that there is no constitutional or natural law right for homosexuals to marry one another.  Although Schuette opined that our amicus brief should only be used to “line a birdcage” by the Sixth Circuit since it did not mince words by employing the System’s politically correct language or ideals, the judges disagreed with him:  our brief was not only accepted and considered by the Court, but the position we articulated was in effect adopted by the federal appellate judges since they saw fit to rule 2-1 that Michigan’s ban on homosexual marriage is constitutional.

Did the Sixth Circuit consider the amicus brief of us two villain lawyers and bad guy Michigan limited liability company?  Judge Jeffrey Sutton, who wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by Judge Deborah Cook, cited Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810 (1972) in the opinion, and then followed it up by citing Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332 (1975)—which were both cited in our brief in the same manner as the Sixth Circuit cited them.

Judge Sutton also referred to “thousands of years of adherence to the traditional definition of marriage” in his written opinion, which echoes the sentiment espoused within our brief:  “[T]he Western and American legal traditions have proscribed sodomy—much less same-sex marriage—for thousands and hundreds of years, respectively.”  Not surprisingly, Judge Sutton mentioned the importance of tradition in the very first paragraph of his lengthy written opinion:  “[M]arriage has long been a social institution defined by relationships between men and women.  So long defined, the tradition is measured in millennia, not centuries or decades.  So widely shared, the tradition until recently had been adopted by all governments and major religions of the world.”

Also, our brief pointed out that sexual deviants with proclivities stranger than those even of homosexuals could demand the “right” to marry if the Court ruled that states cannot constitutionally regulate marriage, and the liberals mocked us for making the “slippery slope argument.”  Well, Judge Sutton agrees with us, which is evinced by what he opined in his opinion:  “If it is constitutionally irrational to stand by the man-woman definition of marriage, it must be constitutionally irrational to stand by the monogamous definition of marriage.”  How do you liberals like them apples?

Given the thousands of years that slavery was legal and an accepted institution, one can only assume that Sutton would up hold that institution as well.   Oh, and what about antisemitism?  That was acceptable too for centuries and in Poland and Russia pogroms were government sanctioned. Under Sutton's rational, that must be perfectly fine as well.  Disgusting!

Is Cumulus Looking to Dump Rush Limbaugh?

Rush Limbaugh has become increasingly crude and down right hateful in many of his rants.  And advertisers seem to be catching on that attaching their brand to Limbaugh may not be in the best interests of product sales to the larger consumer base even if the spittle flecked, racist conspiracy crowd that makes up Limbaugh's core listeners still are enthralled by his crudeness and bigotry.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at what may be an effort by Limbaugh's syndication to dump him.  Obviously, such a put down for Limbaugh would be all too delicious.  Here are some article highlights:

“We've had a tough go of it this last year,” Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey said Tuesday morning. “The facts are indisputable regarding the impact certain things have had on ad dollars."

Dickey told analysts on the earnings call that his radio empire’s revenue was down $5.6 million in the first quarter of 2013 on top of a boatload of debt. Why? Parse the weasel words (“the impact of certain things”) and you’ll see that Dickey is blaming one man for the precipitous decline of right-wing talk radio’s profitability: Rush Limbaugh. 

El Rushbo is still a giant in the industry, but the impact of slamming Sandra Fluke on his radio show one year ago persists—with some $2.4 million in losses attributed by Dickey to declines in the “syndicated-talk segment.”

Insiders confirm that these declines are primarily due to the ongoing reluctance of national advertisers to attach their name to the toxic talk-radio format that first made Limbaugh famous a generation ago. 

“We’re watching the end of right-wing conservative talk radio,” says Jerry Del Colliano, publisher of the radio-industry tip sheet Inside Music Media. “The genre is dying among ratings and dying among advertisers ... Rush is at the end of his career. His constituency is all wearing Depends. And he’s getting himself into trouble he doesn’t need. So can you put Humpty Dumpty back together again? They have been able to improve their advertising picture, but they have not been able to come back.”

“Sandra Fluke was simply the lightning that struck and hit an old building that collapsed,” Colliano says. “She didn’t do it. She helped to bring it down at the end, but it was falling apart on its own.”

He [Limbaugh]  then doubled down on the attack in unusually creepy terms:

“If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is: we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."

The blowback was immediate. Elected Republicans, usually loathe to offend the influential talker, distanced themselves from his comments. But more powerful was the boycott that ensued, with 98 advertisers pulling their support for the show. 

The numbers announced on Tuesday made clear the impact of the boycott. Rush's comments on Fluke came on Feb 29, leap day of last year, so the Cumulus numbers offer an apples-to-apples comparison: pre-Fluke and post-Fluke. While some advertisters have come back, the show has been unable to regain its footing, and the impact has spread across right-wing talk radio as advertisers have became increasingly gun-shy about association with the genre.

But the larger issue is the declining demographics of the right-wing talk-radio racket.  “Look at the millennial generation,” says Colliano. “There’s 80 million of them coming of age. They don’t see color. They don’t see gender. And they’re civic minded: they don’t like bloviating. They don’t like yelling and screaming. So you tell me: how’s right-wing talk radio working for them?”

Now we need to see the same phenomenon hit Fox News, a/k/a Faux News.

Is Pat Buchanan Encouraging Violence and Anti-Gay Unrest?

As noted in the last post, the main opposition to gay marriage comes principally from the Christofascists who in America and elsewhere have been allowed special rights and deference at the expense of other citizens.  Indeed, often, religious freedom has only been available to Christofascists while the rest of us either have no rights or are forced to endure far right Christian prayers and ceremonies.  Thankfully, those days are closer to ending.  But the hate and hysteria coming from the Christofascists at the prospect of no longer being able to ride rough shod over the rights of others is increasing.  One example is the spittle flecked rant of the often racists and bigoted Pat Buchanan in a column at World Net Daily, a/k/a Wingnut Daily, a constant outlet of scary right wing batshitery.  In it, Buchanan encourages the Bible beaters to consider ignoring the law and continuing their quest for hate and discrimination.  Here are highlights of what some might consider a call for insurrection:

That “loving Jesus means hating gay people” is “proclaimed in Christian churches and on Christian television and radio broadcasts.”  So declares Dan Savage in his review of Jeff Chu’s “Does Jesus Really Love Me: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America” – on Page 1 of the New York Times Book Review.

Who is foremost among those who have made “anti-gay bigotry seem synonymous with Christianity”? The Family Research Council and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

[I]n handing this review to an apostate Catholic and atheist homosexual, the Times was nailing its anti-Catholic colors to the mast. Yet what Savage alleges and the Times published is a lie.

Undeniably, the Christian view, though mislabeled “homophobia,” alienates millions. Many of America’s young have come to accept that homosexuality is a natural preference of a significant minority and ought to be accommodated, and same-sex unions ought to be treated as traditional marriages. 

[T]traditional Christianity’s view that homosexual acts are immoral and same-sex marriage an absurdity cannot be reconciled with the view that homosexuality is natural and normal and gay marriage a human right.   The issue is pulling the Republican Party apart. It is pulling Christian communities apart. It is pulling the nation apart.

What happens if the gay rights movement, as it appears it may, succeeds politically on same-sex marriage, but many Christians refuse to recognize such unions and continue to declare that American society has become ungodly and immoral?

Imagine the situation in America today if priests and pastors were telling congregations they need not obey civil rights laws. They would be denounced as racists. Church tax exemptions would be in peril. 

Something akin to this could be in the cards if the homosexual rights movement is victorious – a public rejection of the new laws by millions and a refusal by many to respect or obey them.

The culture war in America today may be seen as squabbles in a day-care center compared to what is coming. A new era of civil disobedience may be at hand.

No one better embodies the angry white Christianist male that has become the bedrock of the GOP base than Buchanan.   He consistently thinks that his rights and beliefs trump those of other Americans and that he can pick and choose what laws to obey.  It is sadly all too typical of the Christofascists who are among the most self-centered individuals can encounter.   And behind it all is a fear of modernity and a refusal to recognize the common humanity of others.  It's not pretty, but it is largely the public face of Christianity one sees nowadays.  Oh yes, there are "good Christians" - many in the ELCA and Episcopal Church fit this description - but they are drowned out by the message of hate and bigotry that is pumped out daily by the self-congratulatory pious set who are, in fact, purveyors of evil.

A Bizarre Rick Santorum Anti--Obama Ad

As most readers likely realize if they've visited this blog very often, in my opinion, Rick "Frothy Mix" Santorum is more than a bit insane and plagued with deep seated pychological issues to boot. Hence, it should come as no surprise that Santorum has a new You Tube ad that is really bizarre - just like Frothy Mix himself. Andy Towle has a good description of the ad which is posted below:

Entitled Obamaville, it presents a horror-show vision of America in the dread year 2014. In Obamaville the streets are empty, and scary-looking crows are everywhere. Children's shoes are discarded in the dirt -- and where are the children? They're gone! Look at the abandoned playgrounds, the equipment therein manipulated by naught but the lonely wind. (Or is it something more sinister?) This is 28 Days Later, reimagined in the rustbelt. Lookit the little lonesome baby, squirming in what might be a bathtub. Lookit the psychotic smiling nurse wearing too much lipstick, saying "Shhhhhhh" -- is she euthanizing us? Is that horrible nurse lady euthanizing the American Dream? And see the man who appears to be blowing his brains out with a gasoline pump.

The narrator intones: "A rogue nation, and sworn American enemy, has become a nuclear threat." As the narrator says "sworn American enemy," Ahmadinejad's face is replaced for just an instant with Barack Obama's. They are one and the same, goes the implication; brother jihadis beneath the skin.

The ad's got no ideas, no arguments, no obvious references to the actual objective reality inhabited by actual citizens in the actual world. Whoever made it doesn't think the American people are smart enough to be swayed by such things. Rather, the ad's an appeal for the votes of idiots and paranoiacs -- which, you'd think, would be galling to the potential Santorumites at whom it's aimed.

It may sometimes be difficult to discern who the good guys are in American politics, but the really bad guys are never hard to locate. They're the ones who make ads like this:

Ron Paul's Bigoted and Racist Past and Present?

It seems as each member of the GOP presidential nomination clown car reaches near the top of polls, suddenly a raft of sleazy information and/or evidence of racism and bigotry comes swirling to the surface. The latest to be engulfed by his past heinous statements and positions is Ron Paul. Newsletters that Paul circulated to supporters are gaining new levels of scrutiny and the picture that is emerging is anything but pretty. Indeed, before the nomination process is over, they yet be his undoing no matter how popular the racist and anti-gay positions may be with the Christianist/Tea Party base of today's Republican Party. Andrew Sullivan, who had previously endorsed Ron Paul largely because of some of his libertarian positions has re-thought his support and has now disavowed Paul. Here are some highlights:

In my view, my friend Joe Klein goes too far: The newsletters went out under his name. They are replete with hateful filth. They disqualify him from the presidency. The idea that someone else wrote them and Paul didn’t read them is utter nonsense–even if true, it would be a devastating commentary on Paul’s executive abilities. How could he hire whomever wrote this crap? And so, when I called Ron Paul honorable yesterday, I was wrong. He is not.

But it is not nothing. . . . . a man who could win the Iowa caucuses and is now third in national polls has to have a plausible answer for this. It's what happens when you hit the big leagues. . . . Paul has not had the wherewithal or presence of mind to do that. Indeed, he has not even named the association, the first step to disowning it. And unlike Obama with Wright, Paul got money from these newsletters.

It seems to me that even though I don't believe these old screeds reflect Paul's own beliefs, his new level of prominence demands a new level of accountablity, even on issues this old. If Paul did not write these newsletters, then he has an obligation to say if he knew who did, or conduct an investigation.

[A] person who has that kind of bigotry directly printed under his name without a clear empirical explanation of why he is innocent cannot be an honorable president of the United States. The hatred of groups of people in those letters - however gussied up by shards of legitimate arguments - is too deep and vile to be attached to a leader of the entire country.

I just cannot see how he can be such a president without explaining away the newsletters convincingly. Until he does, I have to say that the balance of the endorsement must now go to Huntsman. Oddly, I think that Paul's courage in challenging the neocon establishment has made a Huntsman candidacy possible.

[U]ntil Paul fully explains this incident, in the kind of way Michael Tomasky recommends, I have to say there is an alternative, as I described at length in the endorsement: Jon Huntsman. He's what my super-ego tells me is the right choice.

You can read Michel Tomasky's article and timely questions referenced by Andrew here at The Daily Beast.

Christofascist Rigell Beats Incumbent Nye in 2nd Virginia District

We'll never know if the election results would have been different if the Virginian Pilot (depicted in the blue pants in the photo) had not deliberately refused to print a story on Scott Rigell's ties to a registered anti-gay hate group. However, we can pretty safely figure out why the nasty rag of a newspaper killed the story: Rigell's dealerships under the Freedom Automotive umbrella spend big bucks advertising with the Pilot. The other possibility is that from my personal encounters with Frank Batten, Jr. - whose family controls the Pilot - Batten, in my opinion, is a far right Christian and likely drinks the same Kool-Aid as Rigell. It's disgusting and, in my opinion, is yet another example of bad political consequences resulting from journalistic malpractice and prostitution. The only good news is that the Pilot's circulation numbers continue to drop as more and more area residents realize that the only way to get accurate news coverage is via the Internet and papers from outside the area. Increasingly, the Pilot's only value is for store coupons or as a liner for a bird cage. Here's a sampling of the Pilot's crowing over Rigell (excuse me as I vomit):

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Scott Rigell, a Republican who pledged to promote job growth by cutting federal taxes and reducing regulations on business, defeated Democratic incumbent Glenn Nye on Tuesday in Virginia’s 2nd District.
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Rigell, 50, a multimillionaire car dealer making his first run for public office, won the close race after a 16-month campaign that was funded mostly with his own money.
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Fueled by a $3 million campaign fund that included close to $2 million of his own money, Rigell used marketing skills developed over two decades of selling automobiles to get out his name and his message. The campaign’s mantra, Rigell said, was “operation domination.”
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With all that money, the Pilot must feel secure that Rigell's advertising revenue teet will remain available to it. The message to area LGBT residents? Cancel your subscription to the Pilot and avoid it's advertisers. Oh, and moving from Virginia might not be a bad move either.

New Polls Shows Tea Party Members to be Homophobic and Racist

A new poll confirms that like, the majority of Christianists, the majority of the “true” Tea Party crowd are homophobic and racists. It’s a theme that has long been visible if one follows the websites of “pro-family” and professional “Christian” organizations such as Family Research Council, American Family Association, etc.: gays are to be kept stigmatized (and preferably criminalized) to the fullest extent possible and, in their view, the USA should only belong to white conservative Christians. All others are unwelcome and should be deported from the country. This theme was evident in the hate filled rallies with Sarah Palin during the 2008 campaign, but the mindset has been a common thread long before that amongst the Christian Right, which is neither right nor Christian. Here are some highlights from the Huffington Post on the poll results which ought to send a chill through all minorities in this country:
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A University of Washington poll finds that a majority of "true" Tea Party supporters say it's not the responsibility of government to guarantee equal rights to African Americans and other minorities.
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According to the survey, 74% of Tea Party supporters say they agree with the following statement: "While equal opportunity for blacks and minorities to succeed is important, it's not really the government's job to guarantee it."
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Fifty-two percent of respondents also said that "compared to the size of their group, lesbians and gays have too much political power."
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Other noteworthy findings from the University of Washington poll include:
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88% of Tea Party supporters approve of the controversial immigration law recently enacted in Arizona.
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Only 18% of those surveyed say gay and lesbian couples should have the legal right to marry.
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73% of Tea Party backers disapprove of President Obama's policy of engaging with Muslim countries.
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Almost half of the respondents believe "if blacks would only try harder, they would be just as well off as whites."

Virginia GOP Stoops to New Lows

I have often felt of late that the Republican Party of Virginia is even more reactionary, bigoted and down right nasty than the Party at the national level - even though the Virginia GOP claims to be the party of "family values" and "decency." While the GOP as a whole has sunk to despicable lows in this election cycle, the Virginia GOP has risen to the challenge to prove it is utterly sleazy and racist. The Talking Points Memo has a story that is almost too much to believe in terms of the racial overtones and bigotry now on display by the Republican Part of Virginia. The image above is from a a new mailer from the Republican Party of Virginia. Its hard to believe that any legitimate political party would put out such vile trash, but sadly it is indicative of how the Christianists and lunatic base has remade the Party into something evil. Here are some story highlights (other images from the vile mailer can be seen at TPM):

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In the race's final stretch, much of the real sludge and slime that floats to the surface will be the work not of the campaigns but of under-the-radar operations run by state parties and the like. Here, for instance, is a new mailer from the Republican Party of Virginia that has to be seen to be believed. It hits Dems -- and by extension, Obama -- for wanting to appease terrorists and rogue leaders.

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But the key is the last page, which displays a man who looks like Obama but with the same dark and sinister aspect as the bad actors depicted elsewhere in the mailing. . . . . We asked Virginia spokesperson Gerry Scimeca whether the likeness to Obama was in fact the Illinois Senator, and he said he couldn't immediately say. Asked to defend the mailer, he said: "It's about the fact that the world is evil," he said, referring to the multiple bad actors that populate the planet. "Choosing a president is about standing up to them."

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As Raising Kaine properly notes:

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All Virginians should utterly reject this entire approach to politics, as well as this specific mailer. And we're all still waiting for Bob McDonnell, Jim Gilmore, Bill Bolling, John Warner, etc. to denounce Jeff Frederick and demand his resignation as RPV chair. If not, we can only conclude that they agree with his approach, then vote accordingly.

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I suspect John Warner may condemn this action, but my bet is that Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell, Jim Gilmore and Bill Bolling will not. In fact, it looks like the type of bigotry McDonnell would support based on some of his past low life actions (e.g., the lynch mob atmosphere he helped create in forcing Verbena Askew from the Circuit Court bench because - my heavens - she was rumored to be a lesbian).