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Hillary’s Best :Frenemies"

On the GOP side of the isle, the would be GOP presidential candidates comprise a virtual clown car of lunacy with some like Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee having little chance of winning in the general elections.  On the Democrat side, we have undeclared Hillary Clinton, the draft Elizabeth Warren crowd -  personally I like Warren, but question her ability to win in the general election at this point in time - and folks like Jim Webb who seem to have no real base of support.  Add to that the fact that none of Hillary Clinton's "friends" will speak ill of her and some believe Hillary is "inevitable."  Here are highlights from a piece in Politico that looks at the current situation:

What makes Jim Webb a better presidential candidate than Hillary Clinton? “I really don’t have an answer for you on that,” the former Virginia senator told NPR late last month. Where does Martin O’Malley differ from Clinton as a leader? “My mind is not even in the compare-contrast mode,” O’Malley told the New York Times. How does the bombastic Bernie Sanders feel about the candidate he’s planning to challenge for the Democratic nomination? “This is a woman I respect, clearly a very intelligent person,” Sanders said Monday. 

With enemies like these, who needs friends?

Time and time again, when invited to criticize Clinton, her potential Democratic primary rivals have ducked, deflected and dodged. They’re trying to present themselves as viable alternatives to the daunting frontrunner without addressing the obvious question of how they stack up against her.

“At the end of [interviews], somebody has to ask me a question about Hillary, and I try not to attack her. Usually, no matter what I say, it becomes ‘Hillary Clinton,’” said Sanders, raising his arms in a sweeping gesture as if to indicate that Clinton’s name becomes the banner headline. “What I’m running on are the issues … Her name recognition is about 10 times greater than mine, so if I run, it would take a lot of work getting around the country introducing myself to people.”

With Elizabeth Warren continuing to resist entreaties to enter the race, liberals are still waiting for a serious challenger to Clinton to emerge — if only to ensure the party’s progressive wing gets the attention and respect it believes its views deserve. 

The repeated questions and dodges underscore the unusual nature of the Democratic race. Though Clinton is a private citizen who has not declared she is running, she has cultivated an aura of inevitability so strong that, “She’s tantamount to an incumbent,” in the words of Democratic consultant Tad Devine.

Naturally, voters will want to know how lesser-known candidates compare to Clinton, but advisers to those candidates argue that talking about the former secretary of state would be a mistake.

“It makes no sense, whether it’s Webb, Sanders, or O’Malley, to start a campaign by going on the attack,” said an adviser to one Democrat considering a 2016 run who was not authorized to speak on the record about messaging strategy. “It would be putting the cart before the horse a little bit to start lobbing bombs at Hillary Clinton before you even enter the race.”

“You need to make an affirmative case before you get to the contrast,” said the adviser, who added that Mitt Romney erred in 2012 by focusing on Obama before he had articulated a positive vision of his own candidacy.

[T]he Democratic field faces something of a Catch-22. Because no challenger has gained traction, Clinton feels little pressure to campaign and is reportedly considering postponing an announcement until July. But the longer Clinton stays out of the race, the longer she can avoid taking positions that opponents can attack to gain traction.

Webb, Sanders and O’Malley are all planning to travel to early primary states in the coming weeks and months, and the pressure to define themselves in contrast to Clinton will only intensify.  For now, though, they’re content to play nice.

I like many of the views of Sanders and Warren.,  My concern again is who can win in November, 2016.  Right now, I think Hillary may be the Democrats' best bet.  Readers thoughts?

Father: Chapel Hill Muslims Were Killed "Execution Style"

Two of the Muslim murder victims

UNC at Chapel Hill is about 3 hours or so from Hampton Roads.  Hence, it is shocking to learn of the murder of three Muslim students were murdered by a Southern Bubba (see the image below) looking suspect who had apparently posted anti-Muslim comments on social media.  Given that the murders happened in North Carolina - which seems to be striving to make rural Virginia look liberal - and the constant spewing of anti-Muslin rhetoric by the Republican Party and Fox News, it's all too easy to believe that the murders were not triggered by a "parking dispute."  Here are highlights from The Hill on today's tragic events:

The three Muslim students shot dead Tuesday in Chapel Hill, N.C., were killed “execution style,” according to the father of two of the students.

"It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” Mohammad Abu-Salha told the Charlotte Observer Wednesday.

Police in Chapel Hill have arrested Craig Stephen Hicks in the slayings, and in a statement Wednesday said a preliminary investigation indicates the crime "was motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking."

Abu-Salha rejected that explanation, calling the shooting a "hate crime."  “This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime. This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far.”

He said that his daughter, who lived nextdoor to the suspect, had said she had “a hateful neighbor.”

Police have charged Hicks with shooting Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Barakat, 21; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19.

Hicks reportedly made anti-religion posts on social media, stirring speculation that the alleged attack might have been motivated by animosity toward Muslims.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations called Wednesday for police to investigate the possibility that the shooting was a hate crime.

“Based on the brutal nature of this crime, the past anti-religion statements of the alleged perpetrator, the religious attire of two of the victims, and the rising anti-Muslim rhetoric in American society, we urge state and federal law enforcement authorities to quickly address speculation of a possible bias motive in this case,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. 

Shooter Craig Hicks

I hope the hate crimes allegations prove untrue, but having lived in the South for over 40 years and witnessed how racist, anti-Muslim and anti-foreigner the GOP has become, I would hardly be shocked if the allegations prove true.

Alabama GOP: God Will Destroy America Over Same-Sex Marriage

The batshitery and insanity coming out of Alabama or more particularly the Alabama Republican Party seems to be increasing hourly.  As I've done before, I cannot help but wonder WTF happened to the state where I lived for four years.  If the Christofascists in Virginia have working control of the Virginia GOP, in Alabama the Christofascist take over of the Republican Party seems to be total.  How else to explain the chairman of the Alabama Republican Party authoring a spittle flecked rant  on the Party website that claims that God will destroy America because of gay marriage.  Here's a sampling of Alabama GOP chairman Bill Armistead on on the official Party website (Note: Armistead ignores the fact that the human genome project has confirmed that Adam and Eve never existed):

One of the basic truths that was revealed in the oldest of Scriptures is found in Genesis 1:27 where God created a man – Adam – and a woman – Eve. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”. Scripture then teaches that “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). This is God’s word. This is God’s truth.

So, how is it that God’s truth can be turned on its head as the debate now rages in Alabama regarding the meaning of marriage? The answer is that we, as a society, have become our own god. We have made God in our image. But, God will not be mocked. The State of Alabama and the United States of America will reap God’s wrath if we embrace and condone things that are abhorrent to God, such as redefining marriage as anything other than a union between one man and one woman.

We now find ourselves embroiled in a legal battle here in Alabama concerning the definition of marriage because one appointed federal judge has ordered that a marriage certificate be given to two women who want to be married. The state has appealed the ruling all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking a stay in the case so that more clarity can be given to officials in the state regarding the issuing of marriage certificates.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to issue a stay in the case.

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, a staunch defender of Alabama’s Constitution, has directed the state’s Probate Judges to abide by our Constitution which prohibits the issuance of marriage license to same-sex couples. Moore also has also released a letter to Governor Bentley saying he intends to continue to recognize the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and urges the governor to do the same.

God’s word never changes, and neither should our defense of His truths. Though we are being tested, we will stand true to our principles and fight for the rights of the states. I thank those elected officials who are standing with us to defend those truths we hold on high.

Obviously, if Armistead is supporting disobedience of federal court orders and refusing to recognize actions by the U.S. Supreme Court, it is time for him to resign as chair of the Alabama GOP.  It may also be time for him to face contempt charges. 

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

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Kansas Governor Eliminates Discrimination Protections for LGBT Workers

The anti-gay jihad of the Republican Party is not limited to Virginia or Alabama (where Republicans seem set on reprising George Wallace's ugly history).  After having largely destroyed Kansas' economy with GOP voodoo economics and tax cuts for the rich and corporations, Republican Governor Sam Brownback - a Neanderthal if there ever was one - has eliminated LGBT nondiscrimination protections.  Not content with destroying the state's finances, Brownback now wants to make it less competitive in the world marketplace as well.  Here are excerpts from a piece in Slate:

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback rolled back legal protections on Monday that protected state workers from being discriminated against in the workplace on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The Republican rescinded a 2007 executive order issued by his predecessor, Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, that specifically barred discrimination against gay and transgender workers.

“In a statement announcing the order, Brownback said the measure is meant to guarantee all Kansans enjoy the same civil rights, without creating new protected classes,” WIBW reports. “Any such expansion of ‘protected classes’ should be done by the legislature and not through unilateral action," Brownback said in a statement. . . . . such an expansion is unlikely from the Republican-dominated Legislature.”

The Virginia GOP - Today's Roman Inquisition

It's not just the Times-Dispatch which is bashing Virginia Republicans.  The Roanoke Times is running an editorial that compares today's Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly to the ignorance embracing members of the Roman Catholic Church Inquisition that condemned Galileo for stating that the Earth revolved around the Sun instead of vice versa.  This comes after the Washington Post compared GOP opposition to Medicaid expansion to "Massive resistance" - i.e., the closing of public schools rather than allow black students to attend.  Frankly, both comparisons are right on and address the reality that bigotry, racism, and the celebration of ignorance are what motivate today's Republican Party of Virginia.  Here are highlights from the Roanoke Times editorial:

Virginia House Speaker Bill Howell issued a blistering news release Sunday, flaying the Washington Post for an editorial he called “patently offensive,” “outrageous” and “frankly indefensible.”
And that was just in the first paragraph. He was reacting to “Massive resistance, again, in Virginia,” in which Post editors likened the House of Delegates’ refusal to expand Medicaid in Virginia to the commonwealth’s blighted history of massive resistance to school desegregation.

If a historical analogy is wanted, there’s no need to stir up so raw an example of unreasoned policymaking. We’ve been thinking more along the lines of the Roman Inquisition.

Virginia needs Medicaid expansion. By building an impregnable wall against all offers to compromise on particulars to make this part of Obamacare accessible, the House has left the state’s working poor and lower middle class without the means to get health care coverage.

Immovable faith in conservative dogma seems to have blinded the House Republican majority to the reality that, without government subsidy, as many as 400,000 adult Virginians will go without primary health care, much less coverage for hospitalizations – and not for want of honest labor. So, they will ignore troublesome symptoms until they are desperately ill – or not ignore them, and crowd emergency rooms for treatment of minor ailments – because they work for little pay, with no benefits. In this, they do not fit a tenet of self-sufficiency: That any able-bodied adult capable of working can take care of life’s basic needs.

So how is this like the Roman Inquisition? House Republicans bring to mind the Congregation of the Roman Inquisition, which in 1633 silenced Galileo about his observations that supported Copernicus’s theory of the previous century: Earth, rotating on its axis every 24 hours, was orbiting the sun. Earth was not the center around which all of the universe spun.

So radical an idea contradicted church dogma, threatening the established order – though, despite the fears of the Catholic hierarchy, it really didn’t much grab the public imagination. “Common sense” at the time indicated it simply could not be true: The earth didn’t move under people’s feet.

The [Republican] position defies reason. Howell’s protestation that his own opposition “is based on serious worries over its fiscal implications and the effectiveness of the program” are rhetorical static. The federal government would pay almost all of the costs over time, and if – as Republicans claim to fear – it reneges on its promise, the state could withdraw.

People like Amy Hedges of Penhook, a divorced mother of three who works full time in a diner, volunteers one day a month at a nonprofit, and coaches three rec-league basketball teams. Oh, and she can’t afford health insurance. Columnist Dan Casey told her story last week; she wants to know why she does not qualify for a subsidy on the federal health insurance exchange set up under Obamacare. . . . House Republicans seem unable to accept that it exists for people like Amy Hedges.

The editorial gets one thing wrong.  It's not that the Republicans cannot grasp that such people exist.  It's that they simply do not care - despite all their blather about "Christian values."  They make the Pharisees look like pretty decent people in comparison.

Richmond Times Dispatch: No Rational Reason To Oppose LGBT Employment Protections

As noted many times, in Virginia LGBT citizens have ZERO state law employment protections from private employer bigotry.  Worse yet, even the Commonwealth's own agencies and departments are currently free to fire gays at will simply because they are gay.  A bill has cleared the Virginia Senate - with Lt. Governor Ralph Northam casting the deciding vote - and now faces an uncertain fate in the Virginia House of Delegates which sadly typically acts as an arm of The Family Foundation, a rabidly anti-gay hate group which also opposes modernity in general.  Now, the Richmond Times Dispatch (one of the most conservative newspapers in Virginia) has an editorial demanding that the GOP controlled House of Delegates pass the LGBT employment non-discrimination bill that only applies to state workers.  Here are editorial highlights:

The astounding thing about Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam’s tiebreaking vote on a hiring-discrimination bill was that he had to cast it in the first place.
The measure Northam voted for would forbid state agencies to discriminate in hiring based on sexual orientation or gender identity. That has long been state policy thanks to gubernatorial edict, but the principle should not depend on the occupant of the Executive Mansion. It should be law.

Free-market purists sometimes contend that the right to freedom of association means employers should be allowed to discriminate in hiring for the private sector. But government is not the private sector. Government has no rights — only powers and obligations. And one of its most important obligations is to guarantee equal treatment under law. There is no rational reason to let the commonwealth do otherwise.

“Virginians’ employment should be based on their job performance, not on other irrelevant characteristics,” says the bill’s sponsor, Sen. A. Donald McEachin. That is entirely right. . . . Some Virginia lawmakers clearly hold objections to homosexuality — but their personal reservations have no business affecting state policy. When it crosses over to the House, McEachin’s bill should receive swift passage.

I hope the bill passes, but I will not be holding my breath.  What The Family Foundation wants - which in this case is for LGBT Virginians to continue to be third class citizens - is what it usually gets from the Virginia GOP.

More Tuesday Male Beauty

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GOP Rep. Aaron Schock Spending Tax Moneys On Hot Male Personal Photographer

Last week was not a good week for presumed to be gay GOP Congressman Aaron Schock.  Between the racists Facebook posts by his now former aide and ethics investigations concerning gifts and the questionable sale of his home to campaign contributors, the bad PR was nonstop.  This week is shaping up to be not much better.  Wonkette is having a field day about Schock's boy toy personal photographer - Jonathon Link (pictured above) - who seemingly travels with Schock everywhere.  Here are tongue in check highlights:

My goodness, America’s Top Heterosexual Congresscritter is in the news so much lately! We’ve gone from Not Gay Downton Abbey office to gayest ethics complaint ever to racist spokesgoon having to resign for being racist spokesgoon, all in the space of a week, and apparently Aaron is not done Shaking It Off, because here comes more!

Politico decided that it needed to win some mornings, so they did their own profile of the congressman from Illinois, focusing on the things he spends his taxpayer and campaign moneys on, and MOSTLY we don’t learn anything we didn’t already know from looking at Aaron’s Instagram account — he takes a lot of trips, likes being naked — but there is one scoop we find very interesting, and that scoop’s name is Jonathon with an ‘O’, and he is Aaron’s Personal Photographer:

To keep track of all his comings and goings, Schock has hired a personal photographer. Jonathon Link, a former Dallas-area wedding photographer, now snaps shots for Schock, and both his campaign and taxpayers pick up the bill.

You can tell Jonathon is his personal photographer, because personal photographers pose next to their bosses, in pictures. This is the man Aaron bought with tax moneys to travel all over the place with him. They make for a cute duo, of a Congressman and a Jonathon.

Aaron’s remaining, presumably non-racist spokesgoons say it’s totally normal to do this, because Aaron is the biggest fundraiser ever, and apparently having a Jonathon around helps him bring in the big bucks:

Schock aides defended employing a full-time photographer; “what is spent on photographers is in line with what is raised as a result.”

FULL TIME. To be fair, though, maybe his Jonathon is a Jack Of All Trades, always ready to lend a hand with whatever needs to be done, you know, at the office or on vacation in Argentina or wherever, because really, Aaron goes A LOT of places, all of them essential to the well-being of taxpayers in Peoria, Illinois

It is also very interesting that Jonathon is referred to by the Politico as a “former” wedding photographer. His website appears to be up and running, and when you load it, it doesn’t give you a “404 ran off with congressman LOL” error, but maybe he’s too busy taking pictures of Aaron to get on the computer these days.

We don’t know if Aaron also has to buy a separate hotel room for Jonathon every single time, but we’re guessing that, since Aaron is a fiscal conservative, probably not, that’s wasteful.

Oh, also, Aaron has another ethics complaint to contend with, concerning the sale of his Peoria home for $925,000, to a political donor. SOME SAY that the purchase price was FAR above market value, which, if true, would basically be like a big, illegal, unreported donation. . . . Maybe the donor and Aaron were taking shirtless selfies together and Aaron said, “I need to sell my house,” and the donor was like “I want it,” and it was just one of those right time, right place things. Or maybe it was FRAUD STUFF.

Time will tell on that ethics complaint, of course, but maybe that’s where he got the money to bring Jonathon Onto His Staff, haw haw, get it?

Wonkette is definitely maintaining the tradition started by founder, Ana Marie Cox!  Love it!