I hate to rip off the title of both a book about Victorial literature AND the first episode of the great CRACKER mystery series, but nothing else seems appropriate when you're talking about Janet Barton, who is perhaps the reason Mike Huckabee decided against a presidential run.

Because Janet Barton, who used to head up Huck's Faith and Values Coalition, brings a new dimension of Teh Crazy to a right-wing that's already elevated batshittery to an art form. And if Huck ran, perhaps he'd have some 'splainin' to do about the people with whom HE associates.

Tim Murphy at Mother Jones explains:

Since the 2008 election, the two have largely gone their separate ways. For Huckabee, that meant a well-paid gig on Fox News as the host of his eponymous television show. Porter, meanwhile, found a new target in the current president—a topic she explored in the detail in the pages of WorldNetDaily.

"Brace yourself for what I am about to say next," Porter began one column, published shortly after the inauguration. She then detailed an email that had been forwarded to her raising questions about the president's status as an American citizen. But that was the least of it: If the email were correct, the president was a Soviet agent—and so were his parents. He had been conceived, in other words, with the sole purpose of destroying the nation from within.

As Porter explained, the letter had originally been composed by a software developer named Tom Fife. "All I know is that Tom Fife is a real guy—not some e-mail scam," she wrote. "I've talked to him." In the email, Fife recounted a dinner-party conversation he'd had with a Soviet scientist in Moscow in the early 1990s.

"Since I had dabbled in languages," Fife wrote, "I knew a smattering of Arabic. I made a comment: 'If I remember correctly, 'Barack' comes from the Arabic word for 'Blessing.' That seems to be an odd name for an American.' [The Soviet scientist] replied quickly, 'Yes. It is 'African,' she insisted, 'and he will be a blessing for world Communism. We will regain our strength and become the number one power in the world.'"

It's sad, really, to see how desperately some people on the right NEED the Communist boogeyman, and how unmoored they've been ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Soviet Communist Threat™ gave them a convenient vessel into which to pour all their anxieties, and nothing else has really replaced it. Scary Swarthy Men™ filled in nicely for a while, but a few car bombs and numbskulls with powder in their underpants just don't pack the same punch as atheistic high-cheekboned guys in uniforms speaking an unfamiliar language imposing totalitarian rule at the point of an atomic bomb. That the Soviet Union was dismantled twenty years ago doesn't matter to people like Janet Barton. To them, it's lurking just under the surface like 17-year cicadas, lying in wait to jump out and say "Boo!" to frightened wingnuts. No, if anyone's going to impose totalitarian rule on this country, then by gum it's going to be a Christian!

(via)

Labels: batshit crazies, Mike Huckabee

While the "birthers" are insisting that they won't believe Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S. even if the Archangel Gabriel himself comes down from heaven with an army of winged cherubs playing trumpets and hands it to them, they are peculiarly silent on another set of documentation that really IS actually missing:

There's a Mike Huckabee mystery that won't go away.

Send a public records request seeking documents from his 12-year stint as Arkansas governor, as Mother Jones did recently, and an eyebrow-raising reply will come back: The records are unavailable, and the computer hard drives that once contained them were erased and physically destroyed by the Huckabee administration as the governor prepared to leave office and launch a presidential bid.

In 2007, during Huckabee's campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, the issue of the eradicated hard drives surfaced briefly, but it was never fully examined, and key questions remain. Why had Huckabee gone to such great lengths to wipe out his own records? What ever happened to a backup collection that was provided to a Huckabee aide?

Huckabee is now considering another presidential run, and if he does enter the race, he would do so as a frontrunner. Which would make the case of the missing records all the more significant. These records would shed light on Huckabee's governorship—and could provide insight into how a President Huckabee might run the country. Meanwhile, observers of Arkansas' political scene—including one of Huckabee's former GOP allies—say the episode is characteristic of a politician who was distrustful and secretive by nature.

In February, Mother Jones wrote to the office of Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe seeking access to a variety of records concerning his predecessor's tenure, including Huckabee's travel records, calendars, call logs, and emails. Beebe's chief legal counsel, Tim Gauger, replied in a letter that "former Governor Huckabee did not leave behind any hard-copies of the types of documents you seek. Moreover, at that time, all of the computers used by former Governor Huckabee and his staff had already been removed from the office and, as we understand it, the hard-drives in those computers had already been 'cleaned' and physically destroyed."

He added, "In short, our office does not possess, does not have access to, and is not the custodian of any of the records you seek."

"Huckabee just absolutely doesn’t trust anybody," says one former high-ranking Arkansas Republican. "In my experience, if you don't trust people, it's because you're not trustworthy."

Perhaps focusing on Huckabee is as pointless as focusing on the suddenly-invisible Sarah Palin, or the media's latest favorite MILF, that crazy-ass Michele Bachmann, under the doctrine of These Nutjobs Cannot Get Elected. However, if you think that a mean bastard with Gomer Pyle's aw-shucks manner like Huckabee can't get elected, or an aging high school mean girl like Palin who can't accept that she's not the prettiest girl at the prom anymore can't get elected, or a crazy bitch like Bachmann who wants Congresspeople investigated for un-American activities can't get elected; you're forgetting two things. One is the power of the media, which cares more about who makes the best copy to fill the giant maw of the 24-hour newsotainment cycle than who is capable of running the country. The other is this: that Republican state houses nationwide are rushing to pass laws to address the NONEXISTENT issue of "voter fraud" that would essentially disenfranchise three groups that are most likely to vote Democratic: students, minorities and the elderly:

According to data from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, at least 27 state-level voter ID bills -- from Alaska and Arizona to Wisconsin and West Virginia -- have been proposed in recent months.

"It's unbelievable, probably half the states in the country have bills in play and more than a dozen are seriously in the pipeline," Tova Wang of the left-leaning think tank Demos told TPM in an interview. "It's really unprecedented in terms of geographic scope. I've never seen anything like it certainly since I've been working on voting rights issues that voter suppression bills would be introduced in so many places at the same time."

"Definitely students are a target here. It's totally clear to me that you saw in 2008 this unprecedented historic turnout among African-Americans, Latinos and young people -- and those happen to be the exact groups of people that are being targeted by these laws to disenfranchise them, and that's really sad," Wang said.

Wang said the most restrictive bills are in Ohio and Wisconsin, which Wang said require identification issued by the DMV. "Perhaps most interestingly, it doesn't even include student ID even from schools that are public universities," she said.

"This apparently concerted effort on the part of Republicans in state legislatures nationwide to effectively suppress voting is as disturbing as it is un-democratic," said Carolyn Fiddler, spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, an arm of the Democratic Party charged with boosting the number of Democrats in state governments. "Additionally, these restrictive measures are often costly and do nothing to balance state budgets and create jobs, which are the top priorities in statehouses across the country right now."

Of course these measures do nothing to balance state budgets or create jobs, because that's not what Republican legislators are about. From the lowest councilman in a town like mine that has been Republican for thirty years in elections that are almost always uncontested to the Presidency, Republicans are about one thing -- gaining and keeping power, and rigging the system so that no one who disagrees with them can ever be elected again.

Right now there is a voter ID bill winding through Scott Walker's legislature in Wisconsin. It would require anyone wishing to vote to present one of three types of identification: a driver's license, a military or state identification card or a certificate issued by (for some reason) the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. A passport would not suffice, even though it is a better proof of citizenship than a driver's license, which can be obtained by non-citizens as well. Consider this while pondering such a law: Yesterday there was an election for the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin. With 98% of precincts reporting, the race is too close to call, with the Democratic challenger, Joanne Kloppenburg, having been given no chance until Scott Walker turned his state into a dictatorship, within 1900 votes of Teabag Republican David Prosser. A recount is likely, and the election could still go either way. What do you think happens to an election like this when the young, the elderly, and minorities are blocked from voting?

Still think Huckabee, Palin, Bachmann, or God Help Us even Donald Trump can't get elected?

Labels: corruption, It's OK if You're a Republican, Mike Huckabee, Republican brownshirts, vote suppression

I have many gay friends. And you know what? I don't spend any time at all thinking about how they have sex. None. I also have many straight friends. I don't spend any time thinking about how they have sex either. Even in those rare times when there IS a conversation about sex, I don't think about it. It's not that I block it out, it just doesn't enter into the equation.

So why is it that anti-gay and anti-choice conservatives spend so much time thinking about people having sex? Take Mike Huckabee, for example:

No, “The Ick Factor” isn’t a cable news show; it’s how former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee describes his opposition to gay marriage in a New Yorker profile. And gay groups are not pleased.

“I do believe that God created male and female and intended for marriage to be the relationship of the two opposite sexes,” Huckabee said in explaining his views on gay marriage. “Male and female are biologically compatible to have a relationship. We can get into the ick factor, but the fact is two men in a relationship, two women in a relationship, biologically, that doesn’t work the same.”

And Mike Huckabee ought to know, because clearly he spends lots and lots of time thinking...perhaps even fantasizing...about it.

It isn't just gay sex about which wingnuts obsess. Remember Bill Napoli?

A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

What IS it with these people?

Labels: gay rights, Mike Huckabee, right-wing hatemongers, sex

Gene Lyons:

During the former Baptist minister's decade as Arkansas governor, it appeared that no matter how heinous an inmate's crimes, all he had to do for a pardon was drop to his knees, praise Jesus and persuade some preacher known to Huckabee of his newfound holiness. "Everybody knows that Mike Huckabee makes up his mind what to do by what God tells him to do," said one minister who gained clemency for a prisoner serving 100 years for the strong-arm robbery of elderly neighbors.

Making the governor's personal acquaintance also seemed to help. Inmates competed to be assigned to do yard work at the Governor's Mansion. "If you do a good job raking the governor's leaves," Pulaski County (Little Rock) prosecutor Larry Jegley complained bitterly, "you can go free."

Altogether, Huckabee commuted 163 inmates' sentences, including a dozen murderers. Several have already ended up back in prison. Indeed, given Huckabee's track record, Maurice Clemmons probably won't be the last to earn notoriety. We must pray that he ends up being the worst. Only a strong public outcry in 2004 prevented the governor from freeing a Lonoke County killer who'd beaten, raped and run over a pregnant woman with his car, only to get religion in the penitentiary.

Look, there are those people who can only control their behavior when they have a religious framework within which to work. I don't understand needing a great white alpha male in the sky ready to smite you in order to behave because I don't need one, I can do it on my own. But hey -- whatever it takes. However, as I noted on Tuesday, deeds rather than faith ought to be the benchmark of whether someone has truly repented. And where Mike Huckabee is concerned, it's all about the professions of faith rather than tha actions of faith. But isn't this a logical outcome of a theology which states that nothing you do actually DO counts, it's all about whether you choose to believe a story? Isn't it only a matter of degree of heinousness that takes you on the road from being Mark Sanford to being Maurice Clemmons? Once you decide that it's about faith not deeds, isn't it one long continuum of amorality and criminality? And that's if you want to buy (as Huck did) that Clemmons' "conversion" was real, and not something being more a function of getting off on the old ultraviolence and tolchocking and getting to bed with one's wives' handmaidens, as Alex in A Clockwork Orange does.

How does one reconcile someone like Mike Huckabee, who's a rabid fetophile, wanting to free someone who beat, raped, and ran over a pregnant woman with his car? What about THAT fetus? Or does a man's conversion take priority over even a fetus?

Labels: just another outrage, Mike Huckabee, religion

Joe Conason notes today Mike Huckabee's unfortunate tendency to buy professions of religious conversion as "proof" of rehabilitation, while Barbara at Mahablog expands on Conason to note that in Huck's world, finding religion in faiths that are not his own don't count.

Conason, who also reminds of the infamous Wayne Dumond case as well as another where a mere profession of a Come to Jesus moment sufficed as evidence of true repentance:

Huckabee has proudly declared on many occasions that he disdains the separation of church and state, insisting that his strict Baptist piety should serve as the bedrock of public policy. Nowhere in his record as governor was the influence of religious zeal felt more heavily than in the distribution of pardons and commutations, as his own explanations have indicated. During those years he granted more commutations and pardons than any governor during the previous four decades, many of them surely justified as a response to excessive penalties under the state's draconian narcotics laws. But others were deeply controversial, especially because so many of his acts of mercy appeared to depend on interventions by fellow Baptist preachers and by inmate professions of renewed Christian faith.

No doubt word spread among the prison population that the affable governor was vulnerable to appeals from convicts who claimed to be born again. Clemmons too was among those who benefited from Huckabee's tendency to believe such pious testimonials. "I come from a very good Christian family and I was raised much better than my actions speak," he explained in his clemency application in 2000. "I'm still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought upon my family's name ... I have never done anything good for God, but I've prayed for him to grant me in his compassion the grace to make a start. Now, I'm humbly appealing to you for a brand new start."

Barbara:

I wrote about Dumond and another Arkansas convict, Frankie Parker, almost two years ago in “A Tale of Two Prisoners.” For reasons explained in the earlier post, Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, was pressured by the Christian Right into pardoning Dumond.

But the Christian Right kept silence on Frankie Parker, who was executed in 1996 over the objections of Mother Theresa and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In fact, Governor Huckabee was so keen to execute Frankie Parker that he intervened to move the execution date up by six weeks so that Parker could be executed sooner. He was so keen to execute Parker that moving up the execution date was Huckabee’s first official proclamation as Governor of Arkansas. Clearly, this was an itch that Huckabee was rarin’ to scratch.

It is true that Parker was convicted of committing two murders while under the influence of drugs. He admitted he had done this. He wasn’t asking for a pardon; just life.

What made Frankie Parker’s life so untenable? In prison, he had acquired a copy of the Dhammapada, which inspired him to convert to Buddhism. He corresponded with a Zen priest and also worked with a Little Rock Buddhist group to learn the practice. He became a spiritual leader within the prison. A Buddhist spiritual leader. Can’t have that.

So if people are wondering why Mike Huckabee took it upon himself to grant clemency to Maurice Clemmons, look for a religious angle. I don’t know that there is one, but I’ll be surprised if there isn’t.

And that, my friends, is what happens when you allow an unholy marriage of church and state.

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, Mike Huckabee

Yesterday I was surprised to see that Mike Huckabee, who would appear to be the front-runner at this point for the 2012 presidential nod for those for whom Sarah Palin is just too batshit crazy, was leaning AGAINST a presidential run. At first I thought it was because it's far more fun to be a talk show host than to actually DO anything (something Mrs. Palin should consider as well). After all, no one cared during the 2008 campaign that Huckabee had pardoned a rapist after urging by lunatic wingnuts because the victim was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton, and that said rapist went on to rape and kill another woman. We already know what the right wing thinks about women and rape.

But now it turns out that the suspect in yesterday's shooting ambush of four police officers in Seattle was also pardoned by Mike Huckabee:

A man with an extensive criminal past -- whose 95-year prison sentence was commuted in Arkansas nearly a decade ago by then Gov. Mike Huckabee-- was being sought Sunday as a "person of interest" in a deadly ambush on four police officers who were gunned down inside a coffee shop.

Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer told reporters that Maurice Clemmons, 37, was one of several people investigators want to talk to and that he could not be called a suspect at this point.

In a news release, the sheriff's office said Clemmons has an extensive violent criminal history from Arkansas, including aggravated robbery and theft. Clemmons was also recently was arrested and charged in Pierce County, Washington state for third-degree assault on a police officer, and second-degree rape of a child.

According to The Seattle Times, Clemmons was released from the Peirce County Jail last week, despite facing eight felony charges. Clemmons posted $15,000 with a bail bondsman, who paid the remainder of the man's $150,000 bail.

In 1989, Clemmons, then 17, was convicted in Little Rock for aggravated robbery. He was paroled in 2000 after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted Clemmons' 95-year prison sentence. Huckabee, who was criticized during his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 for the number of clemencies and commutations he granted, cited Clemmons' age at the time of the sentence.

After his release from prison, Clemmons violated his parole and was returned to prison in July 2001. He was released March 18, 2004, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper

Republicans haven't camppaigned on "law and order" for a long time. It's hard to do that when you are the party of Jack Abramoff and trumped-up wars. But I can see where, if one is safely ensconced in wingnut talk television, that it might be preferable to having to explain to those people who in 1988 responded to the Willie Horton ads just why TWO people you released from prison went on to commit more heinous crimes.

Labels: double standards, Mike Huckabee, Republicans

Newt Gingrich, that good, virtuous Christian man who is converting to Catholicism so he can wipe his first two marriages and his adulteries off the map, is concerned that Americans are surrounded by paganism:

Two leading voices of the Republican Party's evangelical wing visited Rock Church on Friday for a forum aimed at recapturing some of the movement's political momentum.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee urged Christians to get involved in politics to preserve the presence of religion in American life.

"I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history," Gingrich said. "We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism."

They and other speakers warned about the continuing availability of abortion, the spread of gay rights, and attempts to remove religion from American public life and school history books.

Gingrich and Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, argued the rights of Americans stem from God and to ignore that connection is perilous. The two were among several speakers, including former U.S. Senate candidate Oliver North, at the three-hour "Rediscovering God in America" event. The event was closed to reporters but was broadcast live on God.TV, an evangelical Web site.

Huckabee told the audience he was disturbed to hear President Barack Obama say during his speech in Cairo, Egypt, on Thursday that one nation shouldn't be exalted over another.

"The notion that we are just one of many among equals is nonsense," Huckabee said. The United States is a "blessed" nation, he said, calling American revolutionaries' defeat of the British empire "a miracle from God's hand."

Uh....what did I say yesterday about God micromanaging people's lives?

Here's what I never understood: Why is it that so-called Christians like Gingrich and Huckabee are so insecure in their faith that they need constant affirmation of it in the public square? If they are so certain that theirs is the One True Way, isn't that enough?

Labels: Christian Dominionism, Christofascist Zombie Brigade, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich

I don't recall Jesus saying anything about Emily's list and the ACLU, do you? Apparently Mike Huckabee does:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee warned supporters Tuesday that the $828 billion stimulus package is “anti-religious.”

In an e-mail that was also posted on his blog ahead of the Senate’s passage, Huckabee wrote: “The dust is settling on the ‘bipartisan’ stimulus bill and one thing is clear: It is anti-religious.”

The former Republican presidential candidate pointed to a provision in both the House and Senate versions banning higher education funds in the bill from being used on a “school or department of divinity.”

“You would think the ACLU drafted this bill,” Huckabee said. “For all of the talk about bipartisanship, this Congress is blatantly liberal.”

So, Huck, does that "blatantly liberal Congress" include the whiny-ass babies like Lindsey Graham and John Boehner, throwing tantrums because they no longer get EVERYTHING they want?

Guess what, Huck. Your party lost. You lost because your party is populated by people like you -- people who worship at the altars of greed, hypocrisy, and willful stupidity. And thank God Americans aren't so far gone yet that they couldn't realize that.

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, insanity, Mike Huckabee, You can't make this shit up

Note in particular that even though Jon Stewart points out that no one is trying to make Mike Huckabee marry a guy, Huck ends the interview assuming that Stewart's support of gay marriage means that he's coming onto him.

Mike Huckabee, with his aw-shucks quiet demeanor and his rock 'n' roll bass playing, is going to be right out there in 2012 -- the "reasonable" alternative to the red meat-tossing of Sarah Palin. I hope Comedy Central leaves this clip up, because Americans will be reminded of what a reprehensible individual Huckabee is.

Labels: homophobia, Jon Stewart, Mike Huckabee

Christofascist Zombies sure spend a lot of time obsessing about bestiality, don't they?

Mike Huckabee picks up Rick Santorum's baton in an interview with Beliefnet:

QUESTIONER: Is it your goal to bring the Constitution into strict conformity with the Bible? Some people would consider that a kind of dangerous undertaking, particularly given the variety of biblical interpretations.
HUCKABEE: Well, I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what’s been historic.

(via TPM)

Why do these people think so much about other people's sex practices? I don't think about it. Do you think about it? As I've written before, every time one of these religious nuts reveals what concerns them about what other people do, they are telling you a lot more about themselves, and what they would like to do, than they are about anyone else. That's why they want to impose their religious restrictions on the rest of us -- because they can't imagine anyone being able to control themselves without it.

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, Mike Huckabee

Life after the morning shows?
Planet Earth on Discovery Channel.....
The world outside seems pretty big sometimes.... and the pathological bullshit going on in here is sort of unbearable in the face of this:



These guys can stay down for up to 30 mins!
Forget the tiny pandering of the animals with the biggest egos on this planet. we've got nothing compared to the survival skills that are evolving every day out there on Planet Earth...Pick your nature show, folks, and sit right down for a heart warming HD journey into how small we really are in the scheme of things. Maybe I'm getting old, and maybe its that I resisted the new technology for so long, but high definition really is the new hallucinogenic for people of a certain age.

And that drowning feeling? Well, after long strange dreams about swimming in the tropics with old ex-friends who I hope to never see again, I was brought back to Mitt Romney by Frank Rich, who shines a light once again on the should-be criminal ball-dropping of the pundits and press in this country. The frustration of that on this icy morning, chipping away at the path, and fuming about how a swift boat attack is all that could stand between us and a Romney presidency, is just too much for my weakened sensibilities!
Surely, its our fault because we give them the ratings, but then, we also don't have much choice, do we? Why would it be so wrong to bring back some type of fairness doctrine? What are they so afraid of if they are so right...?

So, we watch the same old corpses, and hope for an explosion by the likes of Larry O'Donnell, who has been as much as pooh-poohed this week for his temper last week, as opposed to looking at what it was that he said that was just so unseemly.
According to Frank Rich in today's New York Times:

Pushed over the edge by his peers’ polite chatter about Mitt Romney’s sermon on “Faith in America,” Mr. O’Donnell branded the speech “the worst” of his lifetime. Then he went on a rampage about Mr. Romney’s Mormon religion, shouting (among other things) that until 1978 it was “an officially racist faith.”

That claim just happens to be true. As the jaws of his scandalized co-stars dropped around him, Mr. O’Donnell then raised the rude question that almost no one in Washington asks aloud: Why didn’t Mr. Romney publicly renounce his church’s discriminatory practices before they were revoked? As the scion of one of America’s most prominent Mormon families, he might have made a difference. It’s not as if he was a toddler. By 1978 — the same year his contemporary, Bill Clinton, was elected governor in Arkansas — Mr. Romney had entered his 30s.

The answer is simple. Mr. Romney didn’t fight his church’s institutionalized apartheid, whatever his private misgivings, because that’s his character. Though he is trying to sell himself as a leader, he is actually a follower and a panderer, as confirmed by his flip-flops on nearly every issue.

Polite chatter. That's what gets me. Its politeness that got us where we are now...so, for Christ's sake, lets at least look at the truth before we install another idiot president in place of the current one. The words that we shall not speak are the ones that need to be spoken, so lets look at the skull and bones underpants of this thing. The Iraq war shows us that if we keep quiet in the runup to a disaster, it can be nearly impossible to disentangle ourselves from the ensuing mess.

Racism; I keep hearing it mentioned as a cautious point on why we shouldn't support Obama. He might not be able to win the general. But that caution belies a disconnect with what is really going on out there.
Its evident in how the press and other candidates on both sides underestimated the Oprah-Obama factor. Its evident in the condescending way with which Oprah, who is arguably a spokeswoman for not only African Americans in general, but American women and her fan base, which spans larger than most of us realize, was dismissed as a pop-icon with no real weight in something as heady as an election. Think again. The woman who decided to turn her back on trash talk, and who got the country reading again, is more powerful than maybe Jesus, and probably, at least as powerful as the M$M's script for this thing. At least she knocked things around a bit and made the contenders show some of their real colors. This is not Springsteen or Bon Jovi rallying the kids; Oprah is another animal altogether and she speaks to a different place in the psyche of real people who are struggling to get by. Why? I really don't know. Call it a mysterious phenomenon; but don't disregard it.

Oprah is a populist who has taken chances for her convictions, and as much as she turned her back on the wrestling masses that Jerry Springer gave a stage to for ratings, she still has been a forgiving force who finds the common ground that represents every person in every trailer park, every upper east side matron, and those in-between. Its uncanny how she has built on that and has managed to remain above the fray in her objectives, and its not something that anyone could have predicted. But, I would think that people who watch this stuff for a living might be a little more aware of who Oprah is.

Even as Oprah represents the black thing when she goes into her hey girl! ghetto voice or does her MLK I have seen the mountain tone,she crosses a line that white America cant cross; not even Hillary as the wife of the "first black president," or whatever he was....but as she crosses those lines, she does it as if white and brown America are right there with her. She makes people of all colors warriors in a battle that is more intellectual than anyone realizes. She is talking about racism, which is absolutely knee-jerk visceral in those who grew up in places where it was ingrained, but she does it as if we were all in the battle together against what might even be something even within ourselves. What works about this is that she has a tone of self-forgiving and understanding, which makes it all more understandable and acceptable as something that we all need to change. I say all of this as someone who doesn't much watch Oprah and who is not much of a fan, unless she has on a specific subject that I want to see.

According to Rich, though, the worry about ingrained racism shouldn't be that much of a problem for Obama:

Race is certainly a part of the groundswell, but not in a malevolent way. When I wrote here two weeks ago that racism is the dog that hasn’t barked in this campaign, some readers wrote in to say that only a fool would believe that white Americans would ever elect an African-American president, no matter what polls indicate. We’ll find out soon enough. If that’s the case, Mr. Obama can’t win in Iowa, where the population is roughly 95 percent white, or in New Hampshire, which is 96 percent white.

I’d argue instead that any sizable racist anti-Obama vote will be concentrated in states that no Democrat would carry in the general election. Otherwise, race may be either a neutral or positive factor for the Obama campaign. Check out the composition of Oprah’s television flock, which, like all daytime audiences, is largely female. Her viewers are overwhelmingly white (some 80 percent), blue collar (nearly half with incomes under $40,000) and older (50-plus). This is hardly the chardonnay-sipping, NPR-addicted, bi coastal hipster crowd that many assume to be Mr. Obama’s largest white constituency. They share the profile of Clinton Democrats — and of some Republicans too.

And that sticky religion thing? The things that we might prefer not to mention? Oprah and Obama both come off as pretty heavily religious, but they are not exclusive or freaky, like the underpants that Romney and his folks wear:

“Church free” is the key. This country has had its fill of often hypocritical family-values politicians dictating what is and is not acceptable religious and moral practice. Instead of handing down tablets of what constitutes faith in America, Romney-style, the Oprah-Obama movement practices an American form of ecumenicalism. It preaches a bit of heaven on earth in the form of a unified, live-and-let-live democracy that is greater than the sum of its countless disparate denominations. The pitch — or, to those who are not fans, the shtick — may be corny. “The audacity of hope” is corny too. But corn is preferable to holier-than-thou, and not just in Iowa.

I don't know about anyone else, but the idea of an Obama candidacy seems sort of nice to me. I don't want another Clinton crammed down my throat and I want real chance. I'm willing to, at least, pretend that there is some choice and that big corporations and oil interests don't control everything. Whats the worst thing that can happen? Hasn't it all happened already?

In an absolute reversal of the prevailing news blackout on John Edwards, this week's Newsweek calls John Edwards The Sleeper and The Road Warrior, and talks about how he really could win Iowa and become a contender in the big show:

But it's worth keeping in mind just how wrong the media echo chamber can be when it comes to predicting winners and losers. At about this time four years ago, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean was the press-anointed darling who could seemingly do no wrong in Iowa. Dour John Kerry was scorned by reporters as the should-have-been who had blown it and couldn't possibly win. But on caucus night, Kerry wound up the victor—and Dean wound up screaming. Reporters were left to wonder what they had missed. One story the talking heads may be missing this time: just how badly John Edwards hates to lose.

I'm so tired of being told who my candidate is gonna be. I'm so tired of the likes of Chris Matthews and his ilk bleating on about how Hillary cant possibly lose...so, why bother even voting? It seems to me that as the networks have a responsibility to not give results too early on election day, they should try to act like there is a choice and try to encourage people to vote. The problem with them is that their responsibility is to the shareholders and not to the process. Every time I get the feeling that I'm being told to not bother any longer, I send Edwards some money. I honestly think he is the best one for the job at this time, and I honestly think that he has a chance. I also would like to make Chris Matthews and Tim Russert wrong (even though they have started to change course already...cue Sam Seder's backup beep!)
Its just nice to see a little coverage of Edwards, as if he were there and an entity in this race, and its also a nice article. It acts as if he is some new guy that no one knows about...but the background never gets old in a race like this.

Huckabee is on the cover of the New York Times Magazine this week and if you needed any further evidence of his particular brand of insanity, just look to the third paragraph for Huckabee's joy at the endorsement of Tim LaHaye, the author of the Left Behind series and game. I wrote about the game a year ago here, and, really, if Huckabee believes in the wrathful Jesus of the Left Behind series, and that our kids should be playing a game that allows them to ride at the side of the angry Jesus and kill those who were not raptured up to heaven (your choice of automatic weapons!)...you know, the left behind...kill 'em all! This is when I start to wonder what the fuck is going on in the republican party; what could they be thinking?

Chris Matthews played a video today of a fake Huckabee commercial that is supposedly posted on Andrew Sullivan's site. I didn't see it there, or on YouTube, but I am looking for it.

Labels: John Edwards, lef, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Obama, Oprah Winfrey, religion

Tristero over at Digby's place has done a great job on this story, which until now has been (predictably) ignored by the mainstream media. But now, with Mike Huckabee surging in Iowa, the MSM has for some reason decided that the story is important. Brian Ross at ABC picks it up, and will have the story on Good Morning America this morning (video when I find it). CBS News picked it up yesterday.

My theory is that because Huckabee is a theocrat rather than a corporatist, the companies that own the media want to stop him, but it doesn't matter. The Dumond story is so ugly, and so emblematic of the kind of Clinton Derangement Syndrome that infects the entire Republican Party, that whatever the motivation, I'm glad it's getting out.

In 1988, the campaign of George H.W. Bush ran this ad against Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis:


The ad worked, and Dukakis' reputation as "soft on crime" never recovered.

But with Huckabee, you have a convicted rapist not just released for weekend furloughs, but outright released, and for only one reason: because wingnuts insisted that because the woman Dumond raped initially was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton's, that by definition that meant Dumond was railroaded, and therefore should be released. The Arkansas parole board, after being pressured by Huckabee, released Dumond was released, who went on to rape and murder at least one, and possibly two more women.

If there had been exculpatory evidence, Huckabee's decision might have been understandable. But the fact is that Dumond was released from prison for only one reason -- because the woman he raped had the misfortune to be distantly related to the man Republicans hate most in the entire universe -- more than Fidel Castro, more than they did Saddam Hussein, more than they hate Osama bin Laden, more than they hate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And therefore that meant anyone who raped her was by definition innocent.

What does THAT say about Republicans' ability to reason?

It should be well-known by now that I have no great love for the Clintons. But the level of insanity that has arisen around them goes beyond political differences and enters the realm of the pathological. And clemency for Wayne Dumond is what happens when Republicans let their fear and loathing get in the way of rationality.

Wayne Dumond should be hung, bodily, around Huckabee's neck for the remainder of this campaign. Huckabee may counter with the notion that mercy is a Christian trait. But when mercy only extends to rapists, but when victims who are related to Bill Clinton can go fuck themselves, THAT lack of judgment is a disqualification for the presidency.

(UPDATE: Murray Waas has even more. No way Huckabee can weasel out of this one. And it's just another reason why not one of these schticks dreck Republicans is fit to occupy the White House.)

(AND ANOTHER UPDATE: The letters Mike Huckabee received from Wayne Dumond's victims -- the letters he didn't take into account while lobbying for Dumond's release because the victim for whose rape he was in prison was a relative of Bill Clinton's, are here.)

Labels: Clinton Derangement Syndrome, Mike Huckabee, Wayne Dumond

It's tempting to hope that Saint Rudy of 9/11 and his would be Queen Consort, Evita Nathan, get knocked off their pedestal before the New Hampshire primary. After all, with Rudy sending his goons out to manhandle reporters, the rest of the nation is seeing why New Yorkers had had quite enough of Little Duce by the time he reluctantly ceded the mayor's chair in January 2002.

The problem with a Rudy fall, combined with Mitt Romney's idiocy become more apparent every day, is that Another Lunatic Shall Rise In His Place:

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG
Mark Karlin, Editor and Publisher, BuzzFlash.com

December 1, 2007

We received a memo from Liberty "Falwell" University on November 30th, signed by Jonathan Falwell, son of the recently deceased Jerry -- and now overseer of the vast Liberty University/Moral Majority corporate empire.

According to Jonathan Falwell, presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee believes that it is God, not himself, who is behind his rise in the polls: "Mr. Huckabee also said that Divine providence was responsible for his recent surge in the polls in Iowa, as he noted that he is the candidate with much less capital firepower than his rivals."

Former Arkansas Governor Huckabee made his comments during a recent visit to the "hallowed" grounds of the Liberty University campus.

Haven't we had enough of delusional Christofascists who think God has anointed them to bring about the End of Days?

God....they are all fucking batshit crazy. Every last one of them.

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, insanity, Mike Huckabee, Republicans

As Grandpa Fred sinks slowly into the oblivion of the vanity candidacy, the Washington press corps needs a new face with which to fall in love. They thought it would be Thompson, but with his obsession with the Soviet Union, his public declarations that he really doesn't so much want to BE president as to DO things you can only do if you're president (forgetting that in theory at least, there still are two other branches of government), and his general attitude of "I don't give a shit but vote for me anyway", he's made it impossible to prop up his candidacy.

Before that they thought it would be Rudy Giuliani, but the more we know about the extent of Bernie Kerik's crimes, and the nuttier Rudy sounds, the more difficult it is for so-called "serious people" to take him seriously. And before that it was Mitt Romney, who was "perfect" or "well-sculpted", and "looks like a president" -- until he opened his mouth.

Now it's Mike Huckabee, the unflashy Baptist Preacher who's the Republican "Man from Hope", Arkansas. It's easy, as even I did, to regard Huckabee as the least loathsome option -- until you look at his record. I've already linked to Tristero's terrific coverage of his granting of clemency to Wayne Dumond, who had raped a woman who turned out to be a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. The wingnuts decided that this meant by definition that Dumond had been framed, and so Huckabee let the guy out -- whereupon he proceeded to rape and kill two more women. But it's more than just the Dumond case. In Salon today, Arkansas journalist Mike Brantley debunks the rest of the "Huckabee's Fundamental Decency" myth:

Huckabee seems to love loot and has a dismissive attitude toward ethics, campaign finance rules and propriety in general. Since that first, failed campaign, the ethical questions have multiplied.

In the 1992 contest with Bumpers, Huckabee used campaign funds to pay himself as his own media consultant. Other payments went to the family babysitter.

In his successful 1994 run for lieutenant governor, he set up a nonprofit curtain known as Action America so he could give speeches for money without having to disclose the names of his benefactors. He failed to report that campaign travel payments were for the use of his own personal plane.

After he became governor in 1996, he raked in tens of thousands of dollars in gifts, including gifts from people he later appointed to prestigious state commissions.

In the governor's office, his grasp never exceeded his reach. Furniture he'd received to doll up his office was carted out with him when he left, after he'd crushed computer hard drives so nobody could ever get a peek behind the curtain of the Huckabee administration.

Until my paper, the Arkansas Times, blew the whistle, he converted a governor's mansion operating account into a personal expense account, claiming public money for a doghouse, dry-cleaning bills, panty hose and meals at Taco Bell. He tried to claim $70,000 in furnishings provided by a wealthy cotton grower for the private part of the residence as his own, until he learned ethics rules prevented it. When a disgruntled former employee disclosed memos revealing all this, the Huckabee camp shut her up by repeatedly suggesting she might be vulnerable to prosecution for theft because she'd shared documents generated by the state's highest official.

He ran the State Police airplane into the ground, many of the miles in pursuit of political ends. Inauguration funds were used to buy clothing for his wife. He once took control of the state Republican Party's campaign account -- then swore the account had been somebody else's responsibility when it ran afoul of federal election laws. He repeated the pattern when he claimed in a newspaper story that his staff controlled the account to stage his second inauguration. When I filed a formal ethics complaint over what appeared to be an improper appropriation of donated money, he told a different story, disavowing responsibility for the money. He thus avoided another punishment from an Ethics Commission, which had sanctioned him on five other occasions. He dodged nine other complaints (though none, despite his counter-complaints, was held to be frivolous). In one case, he was saved by the swing vote of a woman who left the chairmanship of the Ethics Commission days later to take a state job. She listed the governor as a reference on the job application. Finally, unbelievably, Huckabee once sued to overturn the ban on gifts to him.

[snip]

Huckabee insists he's not one of those harsh, punitive, "angry" conservatives, but again, there are witnesses who might say otherwise if anyone's interested.

Ask the retarded Fort Smith teenager, raped by her stepfather, who sought Medicaid funding for an abortion as federal law required. Huckabee stood in the hospital door, at least figuratively, to prevent state funding. Ask the gay people belittled by his cracks about "Adam and Steve." Ask the scientists who've seen evolution virtually disappear from the textbooks and classrooms of Arkansas with his administration's acquiescence.

Social issues alone should give moderates pause. He championed a law in Arkansas making it harder to get a divorce, the so-called covenant marriage law that has been widely ignored except when he and his wife recommitted in a Valentine's Day publicity stunt held in a 17,000-seat arena.

[snip]

But then, you don't have to believe me about any of this. After all, I live in Little Rock and, as Huckabee has often said, I'm just the editor of a trashy, throwaway liberal tabloid. Why not look instead to a conservative voice from the national media? At the American Spectator, once home to the anti-Clinton Arkansas Project, senior editor Quin Hillyer, a former Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial writer, wrote recently, "National media folks like David Brooks [of the New York Times], dealing in surface appearances only, rave about what a nice guy Huckabee is, and a moral exemplar to boot. If they only did a little homework, they would discover a guy with a thin skin, a nasty vindictive streak, and a long history of imbroglios about questionable ethics."

Republicans are desperate for the perfect candidate, a candidate who can somehow keep the 28-percenters who still regard George W. Bush as the second coming of Christ in the fold without being seen as Just More of George. The media are also desperate for a Republican candidate who can somehow overcome Americans' disgust with Republican doctrine. This is a desperation that is probably not necessary, given the Democrats' ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the party's determination to nominate the most divisive and corporatist candidate possible, and the Democratic Congress' demonstrated willingness to crumple into a fetal position in the corner at the mere thought of the words "weak on terrorism".

But if there was ever a case of "Not to know him is to love him", it's Mike Huckabee.

Labels: 2008 election, Mike Huckabee, Republicans