Hat tip to Brian at BlueNC for this news — homobigot Vernon Robinson, who tried and failed to unseat Congressman Brad Miller in the 13th District race here in 2006, has picked up something as a consolation prize — the “Willie” award for Worst Political Advertisement, given by progressive thinktank Growth & Justice.

Here’s what Vern actually put on the air to receive the honor; he does the NC GOP proud:

And a snippet the post I did back when that ad was first released (March 2006) is below the fold.
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This is getting so tired now — lower the discourse, then trot out with a lame apology that doesn’t address the horror of what was said. Faux News contributor Liz Trotta doesn’t even attempt to sound sincere with this bullsh*t mea culpa:

“I am so sorry about what happened yesterday with that lame attempt at humor…I just really fell over myself in making it appear that I wished Barack Obama harm or any other candidate for that matter. I sincerely regret it and apologize to anybody I’ve offended. It’s a very colorful political season, and many of us are making mistakes in saying things we wish we hadn’t said.”

Let’s take a look at what she said that got her into hot water. I don’t see any other candidates mentioned in her assassination joke:

Please.

(10:40 AM: Wow, people — is this topic so radioactive that no one is willing to comment on it? I’d actually like some feedback.)

I’ve laid off commenting about the dustup regarding the announcement of the 55 blogs selected for the DemConvention State Blogger Corps over the last few days in the hope of receiving more information regarding the program and handling of the fallout. There were actually two points of contention about the selection process that have been covered unevenly in the blogosphere.

1) Lack of racial diversity in the state pools selected (given the overall composition of the Dem party), and the fact that there is a different level of access to the state delegation given to these blogs on the floor at the Dem National Convention versus the general blogger pool, which will be announced this week;

2) The charge that there were political factors that went into the decision-making process for state blogs that resulted in highly qualified state blogs not making the final cut. This was the suggestion that state parties were consulted and were able to give thumbs up or down to specific blogs that may have been hard on the state parties.

Item number two has already been heavily covered in the progressive blogosphere, while outside of black blogs, the first item has been largely and curiously ignored by the top-tier blogs. As is the norm on such things, my position seems to straddle that group of progressive blogs. On the one hand, I think the problem is due to 1) an inability of state blogs to include more minority contributors; 2) some may not have thought about a lack of minority perspective on state and local issues as important; 3) those state blogs have truly tried by haven’t seen interest from POC who are well-versed in state and local issues who are able to/want to contribute to a state blog.

On the other hand, some of the black/brown bloggers have seen the selection results and have tossed “Jim Crow” charges out there — meaning overt, purposeful exclusion. I don’t see purposeful exclusion, what I see is a DNCC that wanted blogs represented at the convention in an unprecedented way, but was unable to see or fully address the minority representation problem (and we’re not only talking about racial minorities) it was going to create with its selection system.

The bottom line is that the lack of minority participation at the state blogger level is real, and it is a problem for the Democratic Party as well as the blogosphere.

However, both reactions aren’t particularly helpful in terms of improving dialogue long term — the defense shields go up, and nothing positive usually comes of this. It’s been frustrating to see it all unfold.

I was contacted by Aaron Myers, the director of online communications for the 2008 Democratic National Convention Committee, and spoke with him a couple of days ago to ask him about the credentialing process, the details in level of access, and some logistics, in an effort to get some information on the record. My notes are below the fold.
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A completely politics-free thread for fun that folks are enjoying over at my place as we close out a holiday weekend here. Share your preferences (and why).

Peanut butter: chunky, creamy or don’t eat it/allergic?
Bread: white or wheat?
Steak: rare, medium, well-done, or no meat?
Ice Cream: chocolate, vanilla or mixes (Cookies n Cream, Rocky Road, Butter Pecan, etc.)?

More below the fold.
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Former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr has secured the nomination of the Libertarian Party for president, and this news has no doubt has given the GOP a big case of agita.

The GOP already knows John McCain’s support is soft (to be charitable) with the lunatic Base, so an opportunity to cast a protest vote is a real problem. Barr supported Bush’s drug war and authored the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 while a congressman; out of office, he’s reversed his position on those issues, as well as lobbied for the legalization of medicinal use of marijuana.

I decided to venture over to the swamps of Freeperland to see what the knuckle-dragging crowd thought of Barr’s nomination. It’s after the jump.
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(UPDATE: See Francis’s take here and here. Also read the post over at A Slanted Truth about why these assassination remarks cut deep.)

How on earth do these sick people at Fox News get away with sh*t like this? Here is Liz Trotta, brought on to comment about Hillary Clinton’s ill-conceived remarks, and Trotta not only blurts out “Osama”, but laughs and “corrects” herself, suggesting it would be a good idea to knock both off. My god.

This is yet another example of filing the edges off of the egregious casual mention of assassination, so that those offended and concerned about such casual talk are eventually the ones perceived with a hangup. It is a caustic and disgusting tactic frequently used by Fox, Limbaugh and the rest. It surfaced a while ago in regards to overt racism in the conservative MSM (see my post Filing the edges off of racism). Watch for more of this crap.

More here.

Hat tip, floozy.

When the United States Supreme Court invalidated all state sodomy laws in the landmark 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling it didn’t take those state laws off the books. Last night in my state, two men, in what appears to be a domestic dispute/sexual assault case that occurred in private, were charged by the police under the North Carolina’s ridiculous “crimes against nature” law (CAN). From the Raleigh N&O:

And, in the ultimate outrage - the police did not charge Flynn with sexual assault. As you read, the police captain 1) doesn’t believe a sexual crime occurred; and 2) doesn’t have a problem with arresting the men under this law, when everyone knows a heterosexual couple would never be charged with CAN.

More below the fold.
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The party’s over for the GOP, my friends. This race is the Democrats’ to lose (and what’s scary is we’re fully capable of doing so).

What’s the new plan now that the huge convention center can’t be filled? To hold gatherings in private residences away from media prying eyes in the Phoenix area.

Jeremy of Good As You has the screenshots of the creative but too-late attempt by Save California (from gay marriage)’s Randy Thomasson to remove some serious sickness that was on his web site.

On it he compared ordering county clerks in California to marry same sex couples to a Nazi officer being ordered to gas the Jews during World War II. It’s so disgusting that someone probably told him it was a bit of a bad idea to run this, so rewrote the section — but not before the original had been cached by Google. Oops.

As we all know, a dump of less-than-favorable information always happens on a Friday, and something of this magnitude — 71-year-old cancer survivor and war torture survivor John McCain’s health records — happened on the Friday of a holiday weekend — and the terms of review of them were curiously restricted. (Newsweek):

By the way, we never learned in February that McCain had yet another cancerous growth removed from his face:
The cancer issue, while a relevant health issue to consider when electing someone to the highest office in the land, is not nearly as critical as the fact Sen. John McCain hasn’t had a mental evaluation in eight years. More below the fold.
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KO was overwrought on Friday, but what he said was spot on. What Hillary Clinton did by invoking Robert F. Kennedy’s late primary win (and, unnecessarily, assassination — for the second time in two months) to bolster her case for staying in the race is beyond the pale.

It became more so after the non-apology (the usual “I’m sorry if I offended anyone,” and it didn’t at all address the context of assassination and Obama). It was more egregious that her comparison in the remarks to Bill’s 1992 race that she claimed wasn’t wrapped up until June, something she has also repeated, wasn’t even true.

FYI: The number of hate groups operating in this country has increased 48% since Bush took office. Taking what Clinton said lightly or as an indication of a moment of fatigue is not an option (for me, anyway).

Between the political dog whistles floated and denied over the course of the primary season by the Clinton campaign, and the overt statements by voters that race is an issue for them, you simply cannot ignore the first black man to be a serious contender for the presidency is a man with a target on his back and words do mean something — particularly coming from a candidate. That Senator Clinton’s campaign doesn’t care to or doesn’t want to admit what she said has an interpretation other than a slight to the Kennedy family is BS. We’re not talking about her believing she wants something horrible to befall her opponent, it’s the lack of discretion and judgment in raising the issue not once, but twice.

Sadly, our country is too sick and too incapable of dealing with the race-based hatred, ignorance and fear that has bubbled up during this primary season, and the reality is that we have a man willing to take the personal risk to run for president in spite of this.

And that is what Keith Olbermann addressed.

The transcript is here.
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[UPDATE: One of Homosexual and Homosexualist HQ most seasoned operatives, Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin, saw the unforgiveable leak of The Homosexual Activism Overview and took quick action. See below the fold.]

Someone’s going to get a spanking from me! I want to know who has turned over one of our top secret strategy documents to the fundie Alliance Defense Fund. Reader Karen in Kalifornia alerted me to the security breach; click the image to see what has been leaked from Homo Headquarters:

Here are the other documents that got away…

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Wow, talk about hardball. This was on CNN this AM, and it looks like the Clinton camp is tossing out some kind of not-so-veiled convention chaos blackmail card for the VP slot, and/or a way for the New York senator to have a face-saving exit strategy. The report from Suzanne Malveaux describes three scenarios being floated by people “inside Hillary’s inner circle.”

Scenario 1: Obama “ignores” Clinton and her supporters by offering the VP slot to someone else, which her camp sees as “a total dismissal of her” and is an unacceptable endgame that one Clintonista said could lead to open civil war within the party — and that this scenario is going to have consequences. This will allegedly manifest itself as women’s groups not willing to do any fundraising for Obama, and a tepid campaign by Hillary during the general campaign.

Scenario 2: Obama offers Hillary the VP slot, knowing she’ll turn it down.( Huh? This spin is weird. Why is there an assumption that she would turn it down?) The leaking Clinton camp description here is that option obviously isn’t acceptable to the Obama camp precisely because they believe she would accept, and the two camps don’t trust each other enough to see it a workable teaming.

Scenario 3: Meet and figure out some compromise for public consumption. The idea suggested here is that Obama’s campaign would cover Clinton’s enormous debt, or back her for the Senate Majority Leader position, even though the insiders have seen no indication that Hillary wants the job in the first place, since she’s still running to win.

Raw Story has the CNN video.

OK, given the fact that this is surfacing from the perspective of the Clinton campaign, what do you think the motivations are for offering up these particular scenarios that don’t really look plausible or workable (in that it benefits Obama as the prospective nominee)?

And in other, even more surreal news, Clinton invokes RFK’s assassination in a newspaper editorial board meeting to bring up “historical context” in terms of why she shouldn’t drop out before the primaries are over. WTF?
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Ah, Rick Santorum, returning from his anti-”Islamofacism” post-Senate efforts to familiar homo-hate territory. He’s back in the news, penning a ridiculous op-ed in the Philly Inquirer, “The Elephant in the Room: A wake-up call on gay marriage after ‘03 alarm went unheeded.”

And look, he’s worried that the elimination of discrimination will make all of the heterosupremacists look back at the good old days when homos were on the run.
Have fun with the rest.

(UPDATE: Now that he’s going to be the GOP’s nominee, John McCain finally “discovered” how radioactive Rod Parsley is and repudiated him as well. There will definitely be a fundie eruption over this one.)

Today John McCain finally gave the boot to batsh*t fundie Pastor John Hagee of the 17,000-member Cornerstone Church in Texas after audio was released of the televangelist saying that Hitler had been sent by God to help Jews reach the Promised Land via the Holocaust. This was nothing new, however, so one wonders what rock the Arizona senator and his staff have been hiding under:

Of course it would be interesting to know why this particular insanity crossed the line for McCain, since he had previously refused to reject the endorsement of Armegeddon proponent Hagee, who has condemned Catholics, gays, women, blacks and more from the pulpit and on video.

We’ve been blogging about the juicy-mouthed Patriot Pastor for a long time now. Apparently this influential nutbag has finally caught fire on the blogs.

More below the fold.
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He knew what he was getting into when he walked onto the set of Ellen’s show, and she held John McCain’s feet to the fire on same-sex marriage and legal rights for gay couples. McSame believes that same-sex couples should be allowed to enter into legal agreements, but they should not be able to marry due to what he says is “the unique status of marriage between and man and a woman.”

Wait - is this the same John McCain who made this commercial for the failed 2006 Arizona Marriage Amendment, which would have effectively banned same-sex couples from legal recognition of any kind?

Now watch his appearance on Ellen through that prevaricating lens; it’s below the fold.
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Oh yesssss…bring it on, sister:

Related:
* Tongues wag whether Crist’s ‘girlfriend’ is ‘the one’
* Poor Charlie Crist - he’s really desperate for that VP slot
* Howie Klein: Charlie Crist Has A “Girlfriend”– A First Step Towards Getting On The Mccain Ticket… To Nowhere?
* Oh my — more GOP closet doors are flying open…
* Florida gov Charlie Crist: leave ban on adoption rights for gays on the books

Do I even need to bother identifying U.S. Representative Paul Broun as a Republican? With an economic wasteland left by this president, as well as military carnage, waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption, of course this guy has to pull out the Homo Straw man — he has nothing else to run on. (Washington Blade):

See him bleat about the California Supreme Court ruling after the jump.
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Here’s an example of really poor editorial judgment. The Roswell (GA) Beacon, a weekly free paper, featured the image at left on its cover. The article in the edition was actually relevant — about the increasing threats against Barack Obama from white supremacists in the state. (AJC):

Blender Jeremy from Cobb (GA) gets the hat tip for this one. The only other places you can find the Beacon’s article is on neo-Nazi sites, and I’m obviously not going to link to them. You can now find the article at the Beacon site (a search pulled up a 404 error earlier). I’m sure those hate groups snatched up copies of the issue to put on their walls. Read a snippet of the article below the fold.
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Here is a completely brain-dead quasi gay-baiting ad for Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO), who tries to paint his opponent, Kay Barnes, as joined at the hip with Nancy Pelosi and her “San Francisco style values.” We all know what that means. Those values are hilariously depicted by a man in a cowboy hat dancing with two women…and even better, two of them are brown.

Talk about having zero to run on.

See the response from Barnes below the fold.
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OK, folks, we all know Faux News is chock full of sick f*cks, but the cat box king of the week is Red Eye’s Greg Gutfeld, who has a conniption over Ellen DeGeneres announcing on the air that she plans to marry Portia de Rossi. He thinks she needs to closet herself rather than declare her love for her partner — because it offends him in a manner that is akin to jawboning about taking a crap. Thanks to folks at Media Matters, we have the clip of this, ahem, turd.

Mike also notes at his pad that E.D. Hill, subbing for Bill O’Reilly, had a guest on intimating Ellen’s joyous announcement will drive sponsors away.
As someone at my pad noted,
Ellen’s announcement was benign and unremarkable other than the legal news that make it possible to marry; certainly everyone has seen all sorts of on-air proposals, discussions about spouses, and talk about being pregnant/having a baby by celebs, anchors, etc. Do you see anyone saying a morning anchor announcing she’s going to have a baby is flaunting the fact she had to boink her husband to get knocked up? Of course not.

Gutfeld rode the heterosupremacy horse onto the set of Red Eye and let it take a dump on the air.

You might recall that Gutfeld is the same guy who hurled every nasty slur you can imagine about pregnant transman Thomas Beatie. See that below the fold.
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Hillary Clinton easily breezed by Barack Obama in the Kentucky primary, bolstered again by working-class, less educated whites who made their decision to vote for her based on their unwillingness to vote for a black person. Another sad day in America.

How much does prejudice factor into this? The Bluegrass State is living in another time, where Negroes knew their place — and one of those places was certainly not on a ballot running for president.

* About one in five whites said race played a role in choosing a candidate;
* Nine in 10 of that group backed Clinton — the highest proportion yet among the 28 states where that question has been asked in exit polls;
* Only three in 10 whites who said race was a factor said they would vote for Obama should he oppose McCain in November;
* Nearly four in 10 said they would back McCain, while the rest said they wouldn’t vote.

These results in Kentucky (and West Virginia) neatly fit David Sirota’s theory of the Race Chasm. He originally pointed out the fascinating slice of statistics for In These Times. See the graph and a snippet below the fold.
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Yes, the god-fearing denizens of the Freepi swamps were so vile after hearing the news about Ted Kennedy that the moderator posted this message upon shutting down the thread:

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And I thought I was through with the Prada-wearing pontiff after his expected bleating about man-woman marriage in light of the Cali Supreme Court’s ruling.

While gay state-side Catholics are told by the church that they can be gay — but celibate, take a look at the “ex-gay” BS Papa’s reps are shoveling over in Poland, a country where half of the population believes homosexuality is a sin. It’s right out of the Exodus International playbook. (PageOneQ):

Good grief, what polluted thinking. Watch the AFP report on it below the fold.
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In what is a sign of the times, the Republican party is unable to field a single candidate of color with a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected to House, the Senate or governor. So much for former RNC head Ken Mehlman’s “legacy” of GOP outreach to blacks.

Taking a look at the current field, the GOP only has one minority governor — Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who is Indian-American. The Dem tally? Three minority governors and 43 black members of Congress. The GOP obviously sees nothing wrong with this growing problem with gaining interest from POC in its party. Given the vitriol from the Fear of the Brown Menace wing of the party, it crapped away its prospects with Latinos as well. Look at this laugher:
WTF? Anyway, one respected member of the GOP doesn’t mind being blunt about the whiteout:
Should we bring out the tiny violin? I absolutely cannot wait to see the pale sea of faces during the GOP convention. The party may have to resort to some sort of rent-a-POC service to avoid looking like the fossilized, insular entity it has done everything to cultivate.

Hat tip to Oliver Willis, who said:

Guess someone told Goodtime Vito “it’s game over man.” The reason Fossella, who was arrested for DUI in Virginia (and was fornicating and procreating outside of his sacred marital bond), isn’t resigning is because there would have to be a special election held for his seat, and the Republicans don’t want to lose it. (Staten Island Advance):

Apparently Fossella doesn’t care about any wounds he caused in the past to his lesbian sister, as the homophobic lawmaker will not attend any family events if she and her partner are there; he also voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Related:
* Fossella’s judgment day?
* Another Republican protects the sanctity of marriage

According to Town Hall columnist, racism apologist and author Dinesh D’Souza, the advancement of gay rights via the courts is undermining our democracy. I almost refrained from posting this asshattery, but I just couldn’t after reading:

And since when did the will of the majority become the standard for extending civil rights to a minority group? Oh yes, when the fundies said so. And look at this nonsense:
I guess Loving v. Virginia was “dirty work” in his book as well as Brown v. Board of Ed. Go read the rest of that insanity. I just cannot deal with this level of bigotry today.

This is beyond absurd. We’ve already got the police Taser-happy, now we have guards and citizens settling disputes (that would be settled in the past with a civil conversation) by pulling out the shock devices on one another. In this case, a guard claimed the co-owner of a Boulder restaurant had parked his van on property it didn’t belong on and was placing a boot on the vehicle, and then …

If you read the entire article, there are differing versions of the event, so it’s hard to tell who is at fault, but incidents like these are sure to escalate and increase in frequency in the new Taser Wild West.

In more positive Taser news, the stun-gun manufacturer is seeing a slump in sales due to tight police department budgets thanks to the Bush Economy. So sad:

Hat tip, Sue.

If you had any doubt that John McCain is a complete tool — and a prevaricating one at that — take a look at this video from Brave New Films:

I would love to hear an argument from the Log Cabin Republicans, for instance, explaining why our country needs to elect McSame.

Bonus: check out the new fact-checking resource McCainpedia.

When the big announcement of the state blogs that will receive credentials to the Dem National Convention came down this week, there was an immediate buzz about the choices made by the DNCC.

The first controversy is over the unclear representation of minority bloggers in the state blogging corps. Francis L. Holland: Jim Crow Blogging at the Democratic National Convention?

(Also see African American Political Pundit, The 2008 DNC Bloggers Corp - No Diversity! Jim Crow at DNC ??)

By the way, I can happily report that BlueNC, the progressive state community blog in my state, where I regularly post, will represent Tar Heels, though I won’t be attending under the BNC credential. There won’t be black representation in the state blog at the convention; the person and alternate on the list to go for BNC are white. Not that I have a problem with the two folks slated, because they are extremely well-versed in state issues, certainly more so than I.

More below the fold.
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