Bark Bark Woof Woof

Quote of the Day

2012-01-27T06:29:00.001-05:00

Melissa McEwan responds to Mitt Romney's claim that Barack Obama is "waging an assault on religion."

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA GASP! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA GASP! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA GASP! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA SNORT!

Yes, everywhere I look there is evidence we are about to become a godless society, like: Our Christian president, our last Christian president, their almost exclusively Christian administrations who relentlessly pander to conservative and/or moderate Christians, the almost totally Christian Supreme Court, an almost entirely Christian Congress who start each session with a prayer, the millions and millions of other American Christians whose day of worship is still respected in various state laws across the country (like in Indiana, where you still can't shop for a car or buy booze on a Sunday), whose views are reflected in various federal laws (like denying same-sex couples the right of marriage in order to protect its "sanctity"), whose holidays are also national holidays, whose holy book must be sworn on in state and federal courts, and whose churches are not required to pay taxes, guaranteed freedom of religion, money that says "In God We Trust," a pledge of allegiance that describes us as "one nation under God," television networks who will accept advertising from conservative religious groups but not liberal political groups, schools who are incorporating a religious belief into science classes, conscience clauses for pharmacists and healthcare providers, religion-based residential communities being built, religious museums and amusement parks springing up all over the country, religious leaders being given diplomatic immunity, faith-based initiatives being federally funded, and our national media being constantly embroiled in a debate about in which god the president believes.

We are on the precipice, people!

Voting Rights

2012-01-27T04:21:00.004-05:00

New Jersey's legislature is on the verge of voting on marriage equality, and Gov. Chris Christie (R) is threatening to veto the law should it pass. His stand is that it should be voted on by referendum, not "121 people in Trenton."

That's a weaselly way of getting out of it the discussion. He's doing it so he doesn't have to take a stand and come across as a homophobic right-winger; hey, it's not the law, it's the process. That's a typical chickenshit way out for a politician. So far so good. But then he goes and steps on the rake.

...he said, there's nothing "so special about this particular issue that it must be handled by a legislature."

"The fact of the matter is, I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South," he said.

That didn't go over too well with some of the people who remember all too well what it was like to fight for civil rights.

The comment outraged many African-American leaders in the state, who pointed out that such a referendum never would have passed in the south during the 60s — and that many black people were also disenfranchised at the time.

“People were fighting and dying in the streets of the South for a reason,” Oliver said. “They were fighting and dying in the streets of the South because the majority refused to grant minorities equal rights by any method. It look legislative action to bring justice to all Americans, just as legislative action is the right way to bring marriage equality to all New Jerseyans.”

“The governor’s comment is an insult to those who had no choice but to fight and die in the streets for equal rights,” she added.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) had a similar take. “Dear God, we should not be putting civil rights issues to a popular vote, to be subject to the sentiments, the passions of the day. No minority should have their rights subject to the passions and the sentiments of the majority. This is the fundamental bedrock of what our nation stands for.”

Gov. Christie sounds like someone who has never faced any kind of discrimination. He has never lived a day in his life with the knowledge that there are laws that were written in such a way as to deny him a life with all his basic rights intact. Must be nice.

Rights are not something you vote on. That's why they are rights; they are fundamental to the foundation of our country. They are the essence of freedom; they don't restrict us, they liberate us. And that is why a lot of people didn't like the idea of black people voting in the South -- or anywhere else -- and that's why they don't like the idea of same-sex couples having the same rights and responsibilities as straight couples. It's not the act that enrages them (although some of them are really hung up on gay sex); it's the fact that they cannot abide the idea of people they hate and fear having the same rights as they do.

I'll give Gov. Christie the benefit of the doubt; after all, he just appointed an openly gay man to the state supreme court. He's a privileged white guy who doesn't have the insight to know or understand what it's like to live without something, so it's easy to dismiss the call for a right that he's never been without. That doesn't make him a homophobic bigot; it just makes him a jerk.

Yet Another GOP Debate -- Ctd.

2012-01-27T03:29:00.000-05:00

Oh, did I miss another one? Darn.

From what I can glean from the overnight instant analysis, Mitt Romney kept his cool, Newt Gingrich didn't land any big roundhouses, Rick Santorum made enough noise to remind everyone that he's still around, and Ron Paul was Ron Paul. The vote is on Tuesday. Oh boy oh boy I can't wait.

Apparently the prospect that Newt Gingrich could be the GOP nominee has enough people in the Establishment so freaked out that they are hauling out anyone they can find to talk trash about him before it's too late. They even got Bob Dole to chime in on the bleak future of the party if Mr. Gingrich is the nominee. The statement, put out by the Romney campaign, also reaches back to 1996 when Mr. Dole was running for president and the Democrats were able to successfully marry Mr. Gingrich's bomb-throwing in the House to Mr. Dole's leadership in the Senate, and thereby costing him the election against Bill Clinton.

He was very unpopular and I am not only certain that this did not help me, but that it also cost House seats that year. Newt would show up at the campaign headquarters with an empty bucket in his hand — that was a symbol of some sort for him — and I never did know what he was doing or why he was doing it, and I’m not certain he knew either.

Yeowch.

Not to be outdone, there's pushback from the Newt-backers such as Michael Reagan and Rush Limbaugh -- pompous asses go for solidarity, I guess -- so even though the debate last night might have sealed the deal for Mitt Romney here and the Inevitability Express rolls on, the battle isn't over yet.

Short Takes

2012-01-27T03:04:00.000-05:00

The Pentagon proposes budget cuts and reductions.

Egypt -- Six Americans are barred from leaving the country.

Syria -- Arab League observers of the fighting get a very short tour.

Iran -- Israel thinks they're bluffing about retaliation.

Yet another GOP debate, this time in Jacksonville.

Buying American -- Car buyers steer away from imports.

Back On -- Channel 7 in South Florida settled its dispute with DirecTV.

R.I.P. Robert Hegyes, 60, actor from Welcome Back, Kotter.

Friday Catblogging

2012-01-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

After yet another Mitt Romney spot on TV:

"Make it stop."

A Little Night Music

2012-01-26T18:21:00.002-05:00

My Mel Brooks Blu-Ray collection arrived today. Yea!

Just The Facts, Ma'am

2012-01-26T04:59:00.000-05:00

Rachel Maddow opens a can on PolitiFact.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Annals of Asshattery - Continued

2012-01-26T04:34:00.002-05:00

There are always plenty of little stories to pick up here and there about some outrageously stupid right-winger going off the rails (see below), but this one made me laugh out loud when I first read it.

A bill has been sponsored by Rep. Frank Sapareto (R-Derry) in the New Hampshire legislature that would allow businesses to refuse service to gays and lesbians "for religious or conscience reasons."

The bill would put an exemption in state marriage law. The proposed text says no person, including a business owner or employee, should be required to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges for wedding services in "violation of the person's conscience or religious faith."

The bill also would protect against lawsuits arising from refusal to provide those services.

Sapareto acknowledged the sponsors oppose gay marriage. "Our definition of marriage is heterosexual," he said.

Sapareto has drawn personal criticism because of the bill. He said he's been called a bigot for raising the issue. "They're completely intolerant," Sapareto said of opponents.

He's the guy sponsoring the bill that would enact discrimination and his opponents are the "intolerant" ones?

Joe at Joe. My. God notes, "Sapareto is preparing a companion bill granting the right to discriminate against darkies."

Playing Well With Others

2012-01-26T04:11:00.000-05:00

Look who's talking:

Sen. Marco Rubio scolded Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign over a Spanish-language radio ad that accuses rival Mitt Romney of being “anti-immigrant”

“This kind of language is more than just unfortunate. It’s inaccurate, inflammatory, and doesn’t belong in this campaign,” Rubio told The Miami Herald when asked about the ad.

“The truth is that neither of these two men is anti-immigrant,” Rubio said. “Both are pro-legal immigration and both have positive messages that play well in the Hispanic community.”

What a hoot; not just the spat between Gingrich and Romney camps over "inflammatory" ads, but the fact that any Republican could be considered anything other than anti-immigrant, legal or otherwise.

Baby Food

2012-01-26T03:41:00.000-05:00

No, this is not from The Onion.

A Republican state senator in Oklahoma has introduced a bill banning aborted human fetuses in food, despite the fact that there are no known foods or food products that actually contain aborted fetuses.

Sen. Ralph Shortey of Oklahoma City introduced on Tuesday Senate Bill 1418, which prohibits "the sale or manufacture of food or products which contain aborted human fetuses." He says he based the bill on an article he read online about an anti-abortion group boycotting companies that allegedly use embryonic stem cells to research and develop artificial sweeteners.

Oh, he read it on the internet. Then it must be true. I guess this means I'll have to stop putting a teaspoon full of Sweet Baby in my coffee every morning.

Over The Moon

2012-01-26T03:28:00.002-05:00

To infinity and beyond.

Newt Gingrich promised Wednesday on Florida’s space coast to create a moon colony by 2020 if elected president.

"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon. And it will be American," Gingrich told the crowd of roughly 700, taking them to their feet in applause.

Well, first, there won't be any Gingrich second term because there won't be any first term, and second, there are other ways to pander for votes in Florida than promising another space race. Like promising an extra ten percent off for early bird coupons at Golden Corral.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all in favor of space exploration. But Mr. Gingrich sounds like he's not exactly firing on all thrusters when he declares that he wants the moon colony to be the 51st state:

"At one point early in my career I introduced the northwest ordinance for space and I said when we got -- I think the number is 13,000 -- when we have 13,000 Americans living on the moon they can petition to become a state," Gingrich said, telling the crowd this was the "weirdest" thing he has ever done. "And I will as president encourage the introduction of the northwest ordinance for space to put a marker down that we want Americans to think boldly about the future…"

I think the books are still open as to what qualifies as the "weirdest" thing Mr. Gingrich has ever done.

Short Takes

2012-01-26T03:01:00.000-05:00

Details emerge about the rescue in Somalia.

Egypt marks the first anniversary of their revolution.

President Obama wants to get more aid to Egypt, and soon.

Long Recovery -- The Fed will keep interest rates low for the next two years.

School meals will become healthier under new rules.

Gingrich and Romney are basically tied in the polls here in Florida.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) officially resigned in an emotional ceremony on the floor of the House.

R.I.P. Nicol Williamson, 75, British actor.

Colbert Stands by Santorum

2012-01-25T21:16:00.000-05:00

That Rick Santorum is a coward is beyond dispute. He has no problem telling a woman what she can or cannot do with her body, or that same-sex couples cannot get married, but he trembles like a tower of jello when a little old lady spouts birtherism.

That's what makes Stephen Colbert's defense of Mr. Santorum priceless.

Gotta watch out for those canes; they might be loaded.

A Little Night Music

2012-01-25T19:10:00.000-05:00

The number 1 song on this date in 1982. Where were you?

In Estes Park, Colorado, on a winter wilderness expedition school trip.

Totally Not Racist

2012-01-25T06:47:00.002-05:00

Newt Gingrich's recent forays into the race-baiting game have included calling President Obama the "food stamp" president and suggesting that work is a "strange, distant concept" to Juan Williams, the African-American Fox anchor.

This isn't new for him. Or, as they say in Dixie, old times there are not forgotten.

At the height of his career in Congress, Newt Gingrich used to tell audiences that renewing American civilization was "the central challenge of the rest of our lives."

But before Gingrich could deliver his grand new theory of American civilization to the public in a 1993 speech, his deeply divisive racial stereotypes would need to be removed.

"For poor minorities, entrepreneurship in small business is the key to future wealth," Gingrich wrote by hand in a first draft. "This is understood thoroughly by most of the Asians, partially by Latinos, and to a tragically small degree by much of the American black community."

[...]

The draft is one of many handwritten sheets among the more than 1,000 pages of records, correspondence and disclosure forms that make up the evidence in the former speaker's long-running case before the House Ethics Committee, which was settled in 1997.

By the time a member of Gingrich's staff typed up the notes and prepared the speech for delivery at the National Review Institute, the racial stereotypes were gone.

Lest you think he had a change of heart, he really didn't. He probably got a copyright infringement threat from David Duke.

In the same speech, he said that "Bosnia, Somalia and Iraq are grim reminders that humans can be vicious, brutal and savage to each other," but "Anacostia in Washington, Techwood in Atlanta and East L.A. are reminders that Americans can return to barbaric behaviors and vicious brutality with frightening speed."

In case you're wondering, no, those are not white suburbs. But he's totally not a racist, and you're a racist if you even suggest it.

Long Division

2012-01-25T05:27:00.004-05:00

Gov. Mitch Daniels in the GOP response to the SOTU:

No feature of the Obama Presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others.

Translation: That pathetic un-American Kenyan avowed Muslim socialist destroyer is inciting class warfare against us put-upon straight Christian job creators for investing in the Cayman Islands. And he's laughing at us.

Applause, Applause

2012-01-25T04:55:00.002-05:00

Newt Gingrich will "not allow" the people who are hosting the next debate to tell the audience to behave themselves.

“We’re going to serve notice on future debates that we won’t tolerate — we’re just not going to allow that to happen,” Gingrich continued. “That’s wrong — the media doesn’t control free speech. People ought to be able to applaud if they want to. It was almost silly.”

What's interesting is that he seems to think that his debate effectiveness is based on audience response, and without it, he's got nothing. (He also doesn't get the concept of "free speech," or at least thinks his audience doesn't get it. The First Amendment has nothing to do with a TV network setting the rules for a debate.) Dog forbid that he should actually have to discuss substance as opposed to one-liners, vaudeville and waiting for an ovation.

Off the Cliff

2012-01-25T04:06:00.002-05:00

It looks as if Mitt Romney's inevitability and electability are taking a beating while President Obama's numbers are going up.

According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll President Obama has gained a net 11 points in favorability over the past month while Gingrich and Romney have lost 9 and 23 points respectively.

President Obama’s favorability rating has gone from a net negative one point (48%-49%), in the new ABC News/Washington Post poll to a net positive ten points (53%-43%). Two groups are powering the president’s positive swing. Obama has seen his favorability rating improve by six points with Independents, and unfavorable rating decline by five points. By a margin of 51%-45%, Independents now have a favorable view of the president. Obama has seen his favorability rating jump a net 21 points with moderates from 54%-42% to 66%-31%.

While Obama is benefiting from an improved economy and a focus on the middle class and jobs, the favorability of his top two Republican challengers is in free fall. The already nationally unpopular Newt Gingrich’s favorable rating has fallen to 29%. More than half of the country (51%) now holds an unfavorable view of Gingrich.

Polls are fickle things, and numbers change dramatically from week to week; vide Mr. Romney's huge lead in South Carolina. But if this trend continues, especially here in Florida where the primary is next week, you can expect a complete freak-out by the various camps in the GOP: the Establishments who realize that Newt Gingrich might have a shot and it's Oh-God-get-Mitch-Daniels; or the Tea Partiers who will see the attacks from the Establishment as proof that the fix is in and they'll just lose it even more.

Please keep your hands and feet inside until the ride has come to a complete stop.

State of the Union

2012-01-25T03:47:00.002-05:00

President Obama's third State of the Union speech was pretty much what I expected it to be: a lot of ideas and proposals with a lot of the soaring rhetoric that is required for such an event, but it was also the formal kick-off of his re-election campaign. He touted the successes of his administration, each one meant as a push-back to GOP campaign talking points, specifically those from Mitt Romney; they say he's failed to add jobs, he pointed out where the number of jobs have increased. For all their claims about how the president has "apologized" for America, he went on the American Exceptionalism sales pitch. He threw out a lot of challenges to Congress, but most of them were aimed at the voters and the remaining Republicans out on the campaign trail.

The biggest pitch was on taxes and, as he put it several times, leveling the playing field between the wealthy and the middle class.

Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.

And the timing was perfect; this was on the day that Mitt Romney released his tax returns for 2010 and revealed that he made $20 million dollars last year and paid less than 15% in taxes. Karma smiles.

I didn't hang around to watch the GOP response from Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) or the Tea Party two cents from Herman Cain. Before he got the gig in Indiana, Mr. Daniels was the Budget Director for George W. Bush, so right there you know his credibility on fiscal policy is shot to hell.

All in all, State of the Union speeches rarely make a lot of news, and last night's was no exception unless you were looking for the poignant moments like the president giving a bear hug to Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), who is resigning this week. The one thing that I did take away from the speech was the stark contrast between President Obama and the clown show that has been the GOP nomination process and the debates. The tone and the optimism from the president as compared to the hatred, anger, pettiness, childishness, and vitriol from the Republicans is stunning.

If the election was based on that alone, he'd win in a landslide.

Moving Up

2012-01-25T03:07:00.001-05:00

Congratulations to Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly's Political Animal; he's leaving there for a job as a producer for the Rachel Maddow Show.

Steve and I have exchanged e-mails over the years and shared stories about South Florida; he's from here. I think he's one of the best writers and observers of politics out there, and I wish him all the best.

Short Takes

2012-01-25T03:00:00.000-05:00

The Arab League is hoping for help from the U.N. in dealing with Syria.

Navy SEALs rescue hostages held in Somalia.

Connecticut police are accused of mistreating Latinos.

Democrats leave Indiana statehouse rather than vote on anti-union bill.

The GOP candidates -- Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich -- are coming to Miami to woo the Cuban-Americans.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) is recovering from surgery for a stroke.

A Little Night Music

2012-01-24T18:11:00.002-05:00

Welcome to Florida, GOP candidates and pundits.

A Very Bad Situation

2012-01-24T04:34:00.000-05:00

If you thought that Rick Santorum couldn't be any more lunatic fringed, notice his response to the question about abortions for rape victims.

As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn’t, it will always be her child. And she will always know that. And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time, I’ve always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can’t think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.

"Make the best out of a bad situation"? Are you kidding me?

Melissa says it best:

As always, I do dearly love (read: detest with the fiery passion of 10,000 suns) the fact that Rick Santorum is so catastrophically incapable of self-reflection that he is able to acknowledge that rape (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Terrible Thing, while simultaneously asserting that the denial of abortion (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Moral Imperative.

I'm really hard-pressed to see why I should be any less contemptuous of a man who sits at a big mahogany desk in Washington making decisions about my body without my consent than I should be of a man who used physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent.

Anti-choice advocates have said that women shouldn't be allowed to make a choice to have an abortion because if they were, they would do it without much more forethought than they would about getting their hair done: you know how women are. And yet here is Mr. Santorum, the most virulent "pro-life" candidate out there, making light of the fact that if someone gets raped, well, hey, when life hands you lemons, babe, just suck it up because the Baby Jesus wants you to make the best of a bad situation.

That's about the most anti-life view I can imagine.

Jon Stewart -- Newt The Destroyer

2012-01-24T04:17:00.000-05:00

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Romney's Taxes

2012-01-24T04:14:00.003-05:00

So the veil has been lifted off Mitt Romney's tax returns for last year.

Romney’s total wealth is estimated at $190 million to $250 million.

The returns also show that over 2010 and 2011 Romney donated more money to charity, $7 million, than he will pay in taxes, much of that going to the Mormon church. The campaign stressed that Romney’s low tax rate was based on the fact that much of his income comes from 15% tax rate on capital gains, rather than the 35% rate on earned income as well as charitable deductions. They also note that much of the money comes from interest from Romney’s blind trust.

Kind of takes the sting out of being "unemployed," doesn't it?

Lest you think I have some kind of grudge against people making a lot of money, forget it. I don't. I could not care less how much money he makes or how he chooses to spend it. I also think that if he and his accountants have figured out a way to game the system so that he pays as little in taxes as he can, then fine; isn't that what H&R Block and Turbo Tax are selling us, the average guy with a job and a mortgage and bills to pay... or not?

Whether or not it's fair is another matter. A totally fair tax system would not distinguish between income earned from working and income earned from investments. The criticism of Mr. Romney or anyone else who makes $33,048 in “less than a day” isn't a battle of capitalism versus communism; it's the difference between rewarding someone with a lower tax rate for making money in a way that is inaccessible to a majority of the people. Most Americans don't have the luxury of investing enough money to earn an income from it alone.

And then there's the disincentive to use that money for the greater good, and I don't mean giving it away to the poor or "spreading the wealth." The people who have $250 million are supposed to be the "job creators." If that's true, then where are the jobs that Mitt Romney has created? It sounds like he's kept a lot of CPA's busy, but unless his blind trust was the main force behind General Motors and Chrysler coming back (oh, the irony), it's not doing a hell of a lot of good for the job market. So I'm not so sure as to why people should be rewarded with a lower tax rate for basically doing nothing. Sounds kind of like European socialism to me.

People with more knowledge about taxes and the tax code will have more insight than I do on this matter, but in a way I can see why Mr. Romney was reluctant to release his tax returns: they make him look like what people already think he is.

Yet Another GOP Debate -- Ctd.

2012-01-24T03:39:00.000-05:00

I have a perfect record in not watching the GOP debates, so here's what other people are saying about the one last night over in Tampa.

Josh Marshall at TPM:

My basic read is that the debate all happened in the first 20 or 30 minutes. Romney was brutal and totally on message, hitting a series of key attack lines where Gingrich is just extremely vulnerable. But then Newt came back and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite as on his game as his was tonight. He didn’t get a chance to have one of those Newt explosion minutes. But just for rolling with the punches, finding openings to get right back in Mitt’s face and more than anything playing that frontrunner card which must have driven Mitt to distraction. Watching it I remember thinking, wow, this is a sort of an amazing moment just in terms of political theatrics because both of them really brought their A games, both of which are very different things.

By the end of the exchange, Romney started to get under Newt’s skin. There were a few moments where Newt almost seemed speechless. He had that moment when he grabbed on to the lifeline of defending Medicare in Florida, which is actually quite a lifeline. But that whole part of the debate ended just as Newt looked like he might be getting wobbly.

The other big part of the debate is that Brian Williams just played the whole thing so close to the vest and right that he didn’t give Gingrich any opportunity to have a newtplosion. But I’m not quite sure he wanted one. Or rather I get the sense his advisors told him he didn’t need or another or maybe it was time to pass on it. He’s the frontrunner now.

And polls are showing that Mr. Gingrich is up in Florida and nationally.

Andrew Sullivan:

So this is Newt on his best behavior. Even when Romney called him a "disgrace" three times.

Maybe Gingrich is trying to reassure the establishment that he is not the constant bomb-thrower and surprise agent. Maybe he realizes he needs to look more presidential. My own take is that this gambit cannot work for Newt. He is not a serene statesman. He's a ferocious demagogue. That's all he knows. I don't find the new Newt very appealing. But maybe tactically, it makes sense.

As for Romney, he was back on form, but also oddly Romney-esque. The crude and dumb attacks on Obama remained. The occasional weirdness - why is he so proud that Ted Kennedy took out a new mortgage? why brag that he'd pay no taxes under Newt's tax plan? - endured. The confidence returned, but still no character and no personality to engage with.

So if you were wondering when they would get around to talking about substance and issues that actually matter to voters here in Florida or anywhere else, you were watching the wrong channel. You would have been better off watching the voodoo lady on public access.

Short Takes

2012-01-24T03:00:00.000-05:00

Egypt -- Opening day of the new parliament was anything but calm.

Yet another GOP debate, this time in Tampa.

Not Too Shabby -- Mitt Romney releases his tax returns.

The Supreme Court rules that a GPS requires a search warrant.

Southeast Storms -- Hundreds of homes are damaged by heavy weather.

No VP for You -- Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) names a gay man and an Asian to New Jersey's Supreme Court.

More trouble for Miami's mayor.

Florida public school rankings by district are out.

A Little Night Music

2012-01-23T18:00:00.002-05:00

For Bobby and Donny.

Thanks For the Memory

2012-01-23T17:27:00.001-05:00

Four years ago tonight I was in New York City for a very special occasion.

I am now a New York-produced playwright.

I'll always remember that night, not just because I was able to add a New York credit to my resume, but because I met a group of people who only knew me through the words on a page, and they did a great job of making what I wrote and the characters I created come to life. It's every playwright's dream to have their work on the stage and be what you meant when your wrote it, and they did it.

Thanks again, Gary, Tom, Will, Mary, and especially Rachel as both Anna and the producer. Thanks also to Adam for for his spot-on direction, Debbie for the sound, and Tamas for sets and lights.

One of the reasons I'm remembering that night is that there stirrings for another production. I won't jinx it by going into detail, but it looks like it might happen. Here's hoping... and hoping the next time is as much of a thrill as the first time.

One Picture:Thousand Words

2012-01-23T17:00:00.001-05:00

Via Joe.

Slow Returns

2012-01-23T04:49:00.000-05:00

After a lot of pressure from just about everybody, Mitt Romney is finally caving on releasing his tax returns.

Romney said he’ll post his 2010 tax return and 2011 estimate online Tuesday, after he was hammered by his rivals and gave awkward debate answers last week as he said he would release his tax returns in April.

Notice he's only releasing just last year's and this year's estimate. That's it. Apparently he's afraid to go back any further because of what people might say on the internet and the invasion of his privacy. (By contrast, when Mitt's father ran for president in 1968, he released twelve years' worth of returns. But that was before the tubes.)

Well, as the folks who so blithely supported the invasion of privacy under the PATRIOT Act told us with maddening smugness, if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about. Right?

Neutral Jeb

2012-01-23T04:21:00.002-05:00

After a flurry of rumors that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush would endorse Mitt Romney, he's telling Bloomberg News that he's staying neutral in the primary next week.

The younger Bush described both Romney and Gingrich as “credible” candidates in a November contest with President Barack Obama. “I intend to help whoever wins the nomination,” the former governor said in the interview yesterday.

He also admonished the party not to form a circular firing squad and to please "start appealing to a broader audience." Okay, obviously Mr. Bush has not been paying attention for the last few years. What works now in the modern GOP is demonization, demagoguery, and fear-mongering. And that's just between the candidates.

If Jeb is sniffing around for a VP interview (see below), then he's not as smart as everyone says he is. (Of course, given his family, "smart" is a relative term.) He should know that his name is toxic -- how many times have you heard any GOP candidates align themselves with the policies of W? -- so adding a Bush to the ticket would be like introducing the 2012 Edsel at the Detroit Auto Show. But then, he's seeing Newt Gingrich, the thrice-married adulterous hypocrite who was tossed out of his own party for serial douchebaggery, soaring in the polls, so he must think the (R) behind his name stands for Redemption, not Ridiculous.

Christie For VP?

2012-01-23T04:02:00.001-05:00

Look who's showing a little VP ankle:

Romney surrogate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called Newt Gingrich an embarrassment to the Republican Party on Sunday, one day after the former House Speaker rode a late surge to victory in the South Carolina primary.

"I think Newt Gingrich has embarrassed the party, over time," Christie (R), who has endorsed Romney, said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "Gov. Romney never has."

When pressed on how Gingrich had embarrassed the Republican party, Christie mentioned said that Gingrich had been pressured to resign from the House of Representatives in 1998 and had been fined for House ethics violations.

"We all know the record," Christie added. "I mean he was run out of the speakership by his own party, he was fined $300,000 for ethics violations. This is a guy that's had a very difficult career at times and has been an embarrassment to the party."

This is how it's done; you do a good job being the surrogate, then when the convention rolls around, you're on the short list. But these things must be done delicately; you can't seem too eager to take the VP slot because then you come across as either an opportunist or a lackey.

In the same interview Christie shot down the possibility of joining Romney on the Republican presidential ticket if the former Massachusetts governor won the nomination. He said he would listen if Romney offered him the job but, as of now, he plans to stick in his current job.

Despite regularly making vice presidential —and even presidential— shortlists, Christie has shot down the possibility of running on the Republican presidential ticket in 2012.

"I absolutely believe that come November 2012 I’m going to be governor of New Jersey," Christie said.

The last part is true because even if he's on the ticket, he'll still be governor unless he resigns to run. But politically, Gov. Christie would be a bad choice for Mitt Romney as his vice president. Both of them are considered to be "moderate" in the GOP, which nowadays is like being the lonely little petunia in the onion patch: neither of them are full-tilt Teabaggers, and Gov. Christie riled up the base when he defended a Muslim-American judge. They're both from the Northeast, which is always grounds for suspicion among the True Believers, and if Mr. Romney is truly going to appeal to that crowd, he'll need to go with someone like Mike Huckabee. Now there's a marriage made in hell.

Ready or Newt, Here They Come...

2012-01-23T03:35:00.004-05:00

Florida is the next stop on the clown car that is the GOP nomination.

Benjy Sarlin of TPM reports Mitt Romney unloaded on Newt Gingrich after losing to him in South Carolina.

“We’re not choosing a talk show host, we’re choosing a leader,” Romney said, saying that their nominee should exhibit “integrity,” “sobriety,” and “ethics.”

He called Gingrich a “failed leader” as Speaker who “had to resign in disgrace” and criticized his work as a highly paid consultant for Freddie Mac in his years out of office. “He said he was just a historian there,” Romney said. “I’d like him to release his records there.”

For frustrated Romney fans, the Newt attacks couldn’t come soon enough.

“Tell it it to him in the debates!” one person shouted as Romney began his attack monologue.

“Take the gloves off, Mitt!” another hollered.

Romney drew big applause for his attacks on Obama as well, which mostly stuck to his usual stump speech warning of an “entitlement society” and contained plenty of pointed lines.

“I don’t think he understands the power of free people and free enterprise,” he said. “I think he would change, fundamentally, America.”

“Socialist!” an audience member yelled.

Said Romney: “I think it’s time we had someone in the White House who knows how to create jobs because he’s had a job.”

So it turns out that Mitt Romney, when desperate, can dog whistle to the base of the party as well. It'll be interesting to see if he can maintain that kind of energy of attack for any length of time. After all, he's been sailing along above the fray for so long, getting his hair mussed in the gutter might come across as phony and contrived. Which, in his case, would be right on track.

There's going to be yet another debate tonight, this time from Tampa, and we'll see if what Mr. Romney is doing on the stump translates onto the stage. Newt Gingrich already has that angry white race-baiting schtick going, so now we're going to see if two can play at that game. Being a pompous demagogue comes naturally to Mr. Gingrich, but I have a hard time believing that Mr. Romney can pull it off without making it look like it's just another flip-flop on his part.

Polls are showing that Newt Gingrich is either neck and neck here with Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich running nine points ahead.

[Cartoon by Jeff Danziger.]

Gabrielle Giffords to Resign

2012-01-23T03:09:00.000-05:00

We knew this was probably going to happen.

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will step down from Congress this week to focus on her recovery, her staff announced Sunday.

"I have more work to do on my recovery, so to do what is best for Arizona, I will step down this week," Giffords said in a video message.

Giffords, a third-generation Arizonan who served five years in the state Legislature before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2006, will not seek re-election this fall.

Giffords vowed to return public service.

"I will return and we will work together for Arizona and this great country," she said.

Best wishes, and I hope she has a full recovery.

Short Takes

2012-01-23T03:00:00.000-05:00

The Arab League has a plan for Syria.

Greek debt talks hit a snag.

Yet another body has been found in the Italian shipwreck.

Tornadoes hit Arkansas.

The big island of Hawai'i got a 5.0 earthquake.

Florida lawmakers agree to put at least $1 billion back into the public schools.

The Super Bowl will be between the New York Giants, who beat the 49'ers, and the Patriots, who beat the Ravens.

A Trip to the Everglades

2012-01-22T20:47:00.000-05:00

I got together with some friends from the local British car club -- they're very open-minded; they'll let anybody join, even if they don't have a British car -- and with my friend Bob at the wheel of his 1967 Austin Healey, we went down to Everglades National Park today, going all the way to Flamingo, which is at the very end of the mainland of the Florida peninsula. Here are some photos and a few notes from the trip.

Some of the cars, including a Morgan, a bug-eye Sprite, and a Triumph.

At one of the stops along the way outside of Homestead.

Most of the group lined up at the park's visitor center while we made the necessary pit stop.

A slash pine, one of the many trees that grows in the Everglades. (And you thought it was all swamp, didn'tcha?)

A view of the 'Glades as we headed south through the park.

When we arrived at Flamingo, we stopped at the Visitors Center. It had been hit hard by both Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Wilma in 2005, but it has been fully restored.

This was not my first visit to Flamingo. In 2001 my parents came to visit for Christmas, and we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at the motel next to the visitor's center. And it was at that motel that I began writing the first draft of the play Can't Live Without You, which, as you probably know, was done off-Broadway, opening four years ago tomorrow. Unfortunately, the motel was damaged beyond repair by the hurricanes of 2005, so the Park Service tore it down. It once stood at the end of that road.

The view from the end of the Florida peninsula.

On the way back we stopped for a picnic lunch at Nine Mile Lake. We brought along sandwiches, chips...

...and a few uninvited guests.

Lest you think that the Everglades and South Florida is just as flat as a tortilla, here's a picture that proves otherwise. You have to enlarge the picture, but the sign says "Rock Reef Pass - Elevation 3 feet." We had to stop and adjust to the altitude.

And no trip to the Everglades is complete without stopping at the famous Robert Is Here fruit stand. So we stopped... but only at the stop sign to turn to head for home.

A Little Night Music

2012-01-22T18:00:00.000-05:00

Sunday Reading

2012-01-22T07:00:00.009-05:00

The Real Primary -- Charlie Pierce on the meaning of the South Carolina primary.

There is going to be a lot of talk after the primary is over here about how Iowa and New Hampshire really didn't count, and why South Carolina was the real test, and people will not pursue that line of thinking anywhere near as far as they should. In reality, the Republican primary electorate down here differs very little from the Republican primary electorate in those other two places. All three of them are white, fairly old, and thoroughly reactionary. But the Republican primary electorate in South Carolina is far more serious about everything that goes into being a Republican primary electorate in 2012, after nearly five decades of work has gone into fashioning what a genuine Republican primary electorate in 2012 should be.

All three groups are white, but South Carolinians are more serious about being white. All three groups are heavily influenced by the conservative splinters of evangelical Protestantism, but South Carolinians are more serious about being Christian. All three groups talk loosely about rolling back the New Deal, about minimizing the permanent impact of the Civil Rights Movement, and about loosening the limits of theocracy that were previously a matter of common agreement, but South Carolinians expect the candidates down here to deliver on this stuff. This is the Nullification primary. This is the Massive Resistance primary. This is the primary of old unsettled grudges. This is the primary where nothing and nobody ever is truly disenthralled.

Opinions that are on the fringe everywhere else are in the mainstream here. Issues long since settled are reopened regularly with the prybars of ancient prejudices. (Ron Paul, of all people, comes down here and blames Roe vs. Wade on the 1960's, and quotes John Adams on why the Beatles sent the country to hell in a bucket. Willard Romney, that old smoothie, yells at a heckler while appearing to be channelling Joe McCarthy.) There is no scar tissue down here, only scabs that open, over and over again.

[...]

Now the Republican party must decide going forward if it is going to be defined by the unique circumstances of a South Carolina primary, if it will allow itself to be "disenthralled" from those things that are important to the national governing consensus elsewhere. It must decide if it will be the party of nullification, and not just in the Congress, but in the country as well. Early last evening, David Gregory on NBC speculated that a Gingrich win would prove that Republicans had decided that, "We need a really smart president."

If the rest of the country starts thinking like this, we might as well give Fort Sumter back. Nobody here is disenthralled, and they are so very proud of it.

The Republican Party has broken out into assholes and shit itself to death.

[Logo via Balloon Juice.]

Etta James -- Hilton Als of The New Yorker pays tribute to the lonely sound of the incomparable singer.

She was an accident, born to a fourteen-year-old black girl in Depression-era Los Angeles. She never knew her father, but thought that he might have been the famous white pool player, Rudolf “Minnesota Fats” Wanderone, whom she met in the nineteen-eighties. Like Marilyn Monroe, that other famous blonde Los Angeleno, James was more or less an orphan, spiritually anyway, abandoned by her mother who ran off to chase men (as a child James called her “the Mystery Lady”) and handed over to a number of caretakers in the meantime. And, again like Monroe, by the time James was a teen-ager, she was filled with ambition and confusion. One played off the other. A foster father would beat her until the girl with the powerful voice sang for his friends. Afterwards, she’d return to her cold, wet bed; James was a bed wetter.

By the time she was a teen-ager, James was reunited, if that is the word, with her mother, who took her to San Francisco, where James’s love of R.&B. saved her, to some extent—but is talent enough if one has been continually unloved by those unreliable specimens, other people? That was what her big sound was about—a deafening cry in the wilderness of her unconquerable loneliness. She was fat: with drugs, food, incredible technical skill. But nothing could fill her up. All she could do was try to expel—shake off—some of the evening’s exertions (looking for dope on a more or less daily basis amounts to a job in itself) in the recording studio, where she sang a kind of speeded up blues, which I do not associate with R.&B. so much as it being just James’s singing, a variation of a sound I’ve heard all my life: black mothers calling down from various tenement windows for their children to come on in and eat their supper, or take some kind of nourishment, emotional and otherwise.

I didn’t realize the extent of James’s gifts as a singularly butch performer until I saw an old YouTube clip of her singing “Precious Lord,” with Chaka Khan and Gladys Knight—a trio so powerful one would be frightened for one’s soul if they weren’t speaking directly about the soul. In it, James lead the choir with a rumble that supported Khan and Knight (particularly Khan) as they rose up to even greater heights of understanding vis-à-vis their respective gifts. As they did so, James stood back, nodding knowingly, a quintessential American artist in that she knew something about loneliness, and, from time to time, what to do with it.

[Photograph by Mary Ellen Mark]

Ian Ford is a friend (and a Friend) that I met through the Quaker meeting in Albuquerque. We've kept in touch on and off since I moved away, and today I found out that he writes a blog and has done so for a very long time. (Ian, being the humble and modest Quaker, never told me.) I'd like to share one post called Theater of the Oppressed that I found fascinating.

When I’m near people who are inspired and compassionate, I become more inspired and compassionate. Loose ends get completed; I see beyond immediate setbacks and tend towards health. But when I’m near people who are vain and wandering at a great distance from their souls, I become vain and wander too. This leads me to believe that we are not made to ground ourselves to withstand this world of vanity, and that we need each other to have the strength to do it.

The winds of vanity have carried the autism world (the industry, that is) to such remote realms that I can’t find common vocabulary to even discuss it. When I’m in a classroom, and asked what we should do with an autistic child who is having a tantrum, I’m at a loss for words; I’ve lost my ground. Somewhere inside, I know that I know a good answer, but it is blocked. I suggest consoling him or giving him time alone (or whatever trite thing that comes to mind), but what I really mean is the situation is absurd: why is controlling this child so urgent in the first place? I find myself so unglued from home, and so lonely when I’m surrounded by people churning up this hurricane of “help”. I’m pretty sure that it is the energy of vanity that drives the idea that We Must Do Something. Yet I’m caught like Dorothy and as I said in a poem once, my guideposts have all blown over in a storm. When I have no ally in the sea of vanity, I make no sense; I am ineffective, disabled.

I always liked theater – the unbounded space for creativity, the games, and the way it creates equality. So I’m naturally attracted to the idea of autism theater, which is a Big New Thing (try a web search if you like). However, I was immediately lost in it, just like in the classrooms – both in reading about it and in participating in a some programs. I couldn’t identify the inspiration, direction or reason for it, other than as a form of Behavior Therapy, may god save us from that. Then I read from Augusto Boal (author of Theater of the Oppressed), how theater is the grounding for turning awareness of ones own oppression into action. In his work, theater is the initiating action that leads to action outside the theater.

The games that Boal explains (he has hundreds of them) have seeped into many other people’s repertoire of games, but they can be twisted to suit any other agenda. In the extreme, a game whose original reason for being was to connect people together to empower them to take autonomous control of their lives could be twisted into a game of controlling the behavior of a disabled class! The irony of that had been festering without my conscious awareness. Now I at least have Boal as an inspirational ally, to help me find vocabulary when I’m swept into those distant realms.

Interestingly, the person who lent me the book volunteered that he could find no connection between the concepts of Theater of the Oppressed and working with autistic actors! Privilege dulls our minds.

Doonesbury -- Class clown.

Short Takes

2012-01-22T06:00:00.004-05:00

Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary, thus breaking the streak since 1980 that the winner there will be the GOP nominee. (Trust me.)

An attack by radicals in Nigeria has killed more than 100 people.

Police in Somalia report an American has been kidnapped by gunmen.

A 6.2 magnitude earthquake has hit off the Mexican coast.

Former Penn State Coach Joe Paterno has died.

A Little Night Music

2012-01-21T18:00:00.000-05:00

Sing It

2012-01-21T07:55:00.000-05:00

Can you imagine Mitt Romney doing this?

The Week in Review

2012-01-21T06:00:00.000-05:00

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Short Takes

2012-01-21T05:16:00.000-05:00

Puppet Masters -- The Syrian government got a bunch of people to rally in support of their president.

The search continues for cruise shipwreck survivors.

It's South Carolina primary day. Yip yah.

The Supreme Court orders a lower court to try again on the Texas redistricting.

Home prices are likely to keep falling this year.

A South Florida teen posed as a cop, now tries being a doctor.

The Miami Dolphins have hired Joe Philbin as their new head coach.

A Little Night Music

2012-01-20T18:00:00.001-05:00

Rest in peace, Etta James.

Rick Santorum Won!

2012-01-20T04:46:00.000-05:00

From the Washington Post:

Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucuses Thursday — 16 days after the last vote was cast — when the state Republican Party said a final count showed him 34 votes ahead of Mitt Romney.

That was a shift from the preliminary results the party announced after the Jan. 3 caucuses, which showed the former Massachusetts governor winning Iowa by eight votes. Iowa Republican leaders said that they had still not received results from eight of the state’s 1,774 precincts.

A couple of weeks too late and it doesn't mean anything, but hey.

Mitt the Grinder

2012-01-20T04:38:00.004-05:00

David Brooks laments, Don't hate Mitt Romney because he's rich.

All his life, Romney has been a worker and a grinder.

He's not a rich guy; he's a sandwich.

Oh, and it's not his fault that he's a Mormon, either. You see, we can't know about his family's struggle against persecution because of their faith because we can't remind the voters that he's one of those.

Mitt Romney can’t talk about his family history on the campaign trail. Mormonism is an uncomfortable subject. But he must have been affected by it.

It is a story of relentless effort, of recovery and of being despised (in their eyes) because of their own success. Romney himself experienced none of this hardship, of course, but Jews who didn’t live through the Exodus are still shaped by it.

And we can't talk of his ancestors fleeing to Mexico and his father's birth there because it calls into question the whole birther thing... oh, wait, that doesn't apply to Republicans.

The problem isn't Mitt Romney's money or how he got it. It's that he's clueless about how other people perceive him. And it doesn't help when he implies that people who knock him for being way the hell out of touch with the rest of us are either just jealous or Commies.

If Mitt Romney ever truly was "a worker and a grinder," he's forgotten what it's like... or he hated every minute of it and thinks anyone who still has to struggle to make ends meet is a chump. His faux-concern about the middle class and his weak jokes about being unemployed prove that not only doesn't he get it, he really wouldn't care if he did.

It's All About Him

2012-01-20T04:17:00.005-05:00

The big buzz today after last night's yet-another-GOP debate is how Newt Gingrich opened a can of whup-ass on John King of CNN for having the nerve -- the nerve, sir -- of asking a question about his ex-wife.

“I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.”

When Mr. King tried to explain the question, arguing that it was a major news subject of the moment, Mr. Gingrich had none of it.

“John, John,” he interjected. “It was repeated by your network, you chose to start the debate with it. Don’t try to blame somebody else.”

Mr. Gingrich added, his voice pitched in anger, “I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.” He received a standing ovation from the audience.

You can debate whether or not Mr. King should have brought up the question as the first one in the debate, and you can even debate whether or not it's a fair question to ask. Given the way the current crop of Republicans is intent on telling other people how to live their private lives and who they can or cannot marry or whether or not they can use contraception during sex, it seems like a legitimate question to ask them about their support of "traditional" marriage: one man, one woman, until death do you part, etc. But there's one thing that's breathtakingly clear: John King wouldn't have asked the question if Newt Gingrich hadn't been screwing around on his second wife in the first place. So for Mr. Gingrich to get on his high horse, act mortally offended, blame the media (and Barack Obama indirectly) and whip up the crowd to a standing-ovation frenzy, is defense, deflection, projection, and denial in its purest form and just the latest example of many that Newt Gingrich doesn't have the character or the maturity to be anywhere near the Oval Office.

When the news broke yesterday that the former Mrs. Gingrich was going on Nightline to tell the world that Newt Gingrich was a toad, his two daughters by his first marriage came out with a letter to defend their father:

Our father is running for President because of his grandchildren – so they can inherit the America he loves.

A noble sentiment, to be sure, but is that really the only reason he's running for president... for his grandchildren? I'm sure they meant it metaphorically -- we are all Newt's grandchildren -- but it does make the point pretty clear that the only reason he's in this race is because he's too ugly to be a movie star celebrity so he feeds his giant ego by running for president and getting a lot of gullible and easily-frightened white people to send him money and buy his snake oil. He doesn't really give a flying rat's ass about you or me or anyone else: it's all about him. In his mind, Newt Gingrich is the only person in the world with the judgment, brains, and awesome powers of Jesus and God's blessing to be the leader of the free world. We should all be on our knees and kissing the hem of his garment in abject worshipful thanks that he has deigned to come down from on high and bless us with his touch -- oh, we are so not worthy.

As much attention and applause that Mr. Gingrich might get for his righteous outrage at being asked an impertinent question by a lowly minion of the liberal media and his ex-wife for committing lese-majeste by revealing his views on traditional marriage as it applies to him only, the strong sense is that the rest of the voters in America are lying in wait for him to actually run in the general election so that once again they can express their disgust that such a person would think that they would fall in love with him and beat the metaphorical crap out of him and send him back to the exile that he so richly deserves.

I hear Elba is really nice this time of year.

*
By the way, Digby reminds us that back in 1998 when Newt Gingrich was the Speaker of the House and someone else was playing the horndog, he had a different view on whether or not it was anybody else's business.

The Speaker once again pledged to say during every public appearance that Americans have the right to know the truth about the Lewinsky matter and that the president is not above the law.

Those were the days, my friend.

Short Takes

2012-01-20T03:00:00.000-05:00

Six Marines were killed in a copter crash in Afghanistan.

Another drone attack kills another al-Qaida senior official.

Once again it's Americans to the rescue for Iranian sailors in distress.

President Obama visited Disney World to promote tourism.

Several homes have been destroyed in wildfires near Reno.

Friday Catblogging Classic

2012-01-20T00:00:00.000-05:00

Snowball takes tax advice from Mitt Romney.

"Cayman Islands, huh?"

A Little Night Music

2012-01-19T18:00:00.000-05:00

The bankruptcy of Eastman Kodak today reminded me of the Kodak exhibit at the 1964-1965 New York Worlds Fair: "It's A Small World." It was put together by Walt Disney, and the song is a terminal earwig, but it takes you back to the days when everybody had a Kodak camera.

Rick Perry Exits

2012-01-19T12:47:00.000-05:00

Via the New York Times:

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — Gov. Rick Perry of Texas dropped out of the Republican presidential race here on Thursday and announced his endorsement for the candidacy of Newt Gingrich, a man he called a “conservative visionary.”

[...]

Mr. Perry, who opened his bid for the Republican presidential nomination five months ago here in South Carolina, conceded that “there is no viable path forward for me.”

Oops.

Good For a Laugh

2012-01-19T05:29:00.000-05:00

Via TPM:

Gingrich: Palin will "play a major role" in my administration.

Assuming, of course, she sticks around long enough to do anything.

When Push Becomes Shove

2012-01-19T04:31:00.002-05:00

President Obama rejected the application for the Keystone XL pipeline yesterday. That gladdens the hearts of those of us who would rather not see oil gushing across the plains of Nebraska, and it also shows that Mr. Obama doesn't give in to some very intense pressure from the Republicans in Congress.

Earlier today, I received the Secretary of State’s recommendation on the pending application for the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. As the State Department made clear last month, the rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment. As a result, the Secretary of State has recommended that the application be denied. And after reviewing the State Department’s report, I agree.

This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people. I’m disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision, but it does not change my Administration’s commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil.

As you'll recall, part of the deal for extending the payroll tax cut was that the Obama administration had to make a decision on the pipeline right away. They thought, based on prior history, that the president would cave and grant the permission for the pipeline, thus handing them an election year gift for both the energy lobby and the wrath of the environmentalists. Well, oops.

The pipeline is not completely dead. The administration left the door open for another try via another route, but for the moment it is off the table. The GOP can rant, but they are the ones who bet on it as a way to box in the president, and they lost. Heh.

Tropical Paradise

2012-01-19T04:16:00.000-05:00

Mitt Romney, like a lot of very rich people, keeps a lot of his assets in a place only the average person can dream of...

Although it is not apparent on his financial disclosure form, Mitt Romney has millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven.

A spokesperson for the Romney campaign says Romney follows all tax laws and he would pay the same in taxes regardless of where the funds are based.

As the race for the Republican nomination heats up, Mitt Romney is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a shroud of secrecy around the details about his vast personal wealth, including, as ABC News has discovered, his investment in funds located offshore and his ability to pay a lower tax rate.

"His personal finances are a poster child of what's wrong with the American tax system," said Jack Blum, a Washington lawyer who is an authority on tax enforcement and offshore banking.

Yes, that 15% tax bracket is just crushing, isn't it? So it makes perfect sense to keep your money in a place where they have fifteen different words for "cocktail umbrella."

The Former Mrs. Gingrich

2012-01-19T04:02:00.006-05:00

Updated below.

According to several reports, including one from Drudge, ABC News has an interview with Newt Gingrich's second wife, Marianne, that could be damaging to his presidential campaign.

Marianne Gingrich has said she could end her ex-husband's career with a single interview.

Earlier this week, she sat before ABCNEWS [sic] cameras, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

She spoke to ABCNEWS reporter Brian Ross for two hours, and her explosive revelations are set to rock the trail.

But now a "civil war" has erupted inside of the network, an insider claims, on exactly when the confession will air!

ABCNEWS suits determined it would be "unethical" to run the Marianne Gingrich interview so close to the South Carolina Primary, a curious decision, one insider argued, since the network has aggressively been reporting on other candidates.

A decision was tentatively made to air the interview next Monday, after all votes have been counted.

According to other sources (the AP via Breitbart, so take it for what it's worth), ABC will air the interview tonight (Thursday) on Nightline.

I'm not sure what the former Mrs. Gingrich could reveal about her former husband that the world doesn't already know: he's a pompous, arrogant, hypocritical misogynist racist blowhard with delusions of grandeur and dreams of being a dictator on a scale that would shame Robert Mugabe. The most devastating news that she could reveal is that in secret he's really a pro-choice secular humanist who collects Glee memorabilia and has friended Noam Chomsky on Facebook. Letting that cat out of the bag could kill off his chances with the knuckle-dragging Rascal-riders.

Update: According to ABC News, the "big story" from the former Mrs. Gingrich is that Newt wanted to have an open marriage wherein he could still be married to her in public but also have sex with other women. She said no, and that ended the marriage. Well, that's not really news, because if you read the profile of Newt Gingrich in Esquire last year, you would have known that.

And frankly, how two people conduct their marriage isn't anyone's business, as those of us who are trying to make marriage equality the law of the land have been telling the blue-noses for years. So the blockbuster news here is that we have yet more evidence that Newt Gingrich, who signed the "sanctity of marriage" pledge for the Jesus-shouters, is a hypocrite of epic proportions. But that's not exactly news either.

Going Dark -- Ctd

2012-01-19T03:27:00.000-05:00

Apparently yesterday's message from the internet got through to some people.

More than 4.5 million people signed their names to the Google petition and 300,000 people emailed or called their lawmakers, according to the protest organizers. In New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas, protesters held rallies to draw attention to the bills. The Library of Congress said late Wednesday that it had been hit with a denial of service attack by “a group opposed to the online piracy legislation.”

By the evening, a number of lawmakers had done an about-face on the legislation.

The Senate version of the bill lost four of its co-sponsors, including Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

“It is simply not ready for prime time and both sides must continue working together to find a better path forward,” Hatch said in a statement about the Protect Intellectual Property Act.

Sens. John Boozman (R-Ark.), Mark Rubio (R-Fla.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) also released statements Wednesday saying that they had reservations and would not vote for the bill if it came up for a floor vote.

Way to go, people. Good job.

Short Takes

2012-01-19T03:21:00.000-05:00

Cruise ship death toll: eleven dead, 21 missing.

Euro-debt: The IMF is seeking funds to help the countries.

The Pentagon says thousands of sexual assault cases are not reported.

President Obama says no to the Keystone XL pipeline for now.

The polls show a tightening race in South Carolina.

As expected, Eastman Kodak has filed for bankruptcy.

A Little Night Music

2012-01-18T20:00:00.002-05:00

Going Dark

2012-01-18T08:00:00.006-05:00

A lot of prominent internet sites such as Wikipedia and Google -- along with a number of blogs as well -- are going dark or changing their home page today in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) that are under consideration by the Senate.

“Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet,” a Google spokesperson told TPM in an emailed statement. “So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our US home page.”

If you like, you can lend your voice to the protest here, and if you're in the U.S., you can contact your representative.

Bark Bark Woof Woof will observe the blackout today from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. See you tonight.

Southern Strategy

2012-01-18T05:23:00.003-05:00

If you are over the age of 50, you probably remember Gov. George Wallace of Alabama. Virulently opposed to the civil rights movement, he made his name during the early 1960's by famously standing in front of the schoolhouse door to prevent integration, and in his inaugural address as governor in 1963, he proclaimed, "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." He ran for president in 1968 riding the wave of white resentment against the progress of civil rights and got 13% of the vote, and again in 1972 until he was shot and paralyzed in an assassination attempt.

Mr. Wallace knew how to whip up a crowd, tempering his rhetoric slightly so that he didn't come right out and use the n-word, but you knew who he was talking about when he railed against the welfare queens in their Cadillacs and strong young men who bought t-bone steaks with their food stamps. His slogan of "Stand Up For America" left little doubt who he was standing up against, and the Republican Party knew it too. When Richard Nixon ran on the Southern Strategy, he was ripping off George Wallace, and Ronald Reagan followed along, putting the nice Disney polish on the ugly old formula. The late Lee Atwater, the Republican strategist, laid it out:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

So when Newt Gingrich stands up in a debate in South Carolina and says that Barack Obama is the "food stamp president," he's following Mr. Atwater's scenario to the letter.

There's no doubt that what Mr. Gingrich is doing here; as I noted yesterday, this isn't a dog whistle, it's an air-raid siren.

Later in life, Gov. Wallace acknowledged he had been wrong and expressed regret for his ways, saying that he was mistaken, as did Mr. Atwater. Don't expect any such epiphany from Newt Gingrich, especially if he keeps getting a standing ovation for the "food stamp president" line. He knows what sells.

Chump Change

2012-01-18T03:43:00.002-05:00

In talking about his taxes, Mitt Romney said that he makes money on the side with speaking fees, "but not very much."

In fact, in the most recent year, Mr. Romney made $374,327.62 in speaker’s fees, at an average of $41,592 per speech, according to his public financial disclosure reports.

To be fair, that isn't a lot of money compared to his net worth of $250 million, but if the speaking fees alone were his only income, he makes it into the 1% just on that.

Hey, if he can rake it in like that just for talking, great. But please don't tell me -- or the average American voter -- that he's just your average guy. What he makes on one speech alone could power a family for a year.

He just doesn't get it.

*
Like all candidates, John McCain and his staff did research on his opponents when he ran for president in 2008, including Mitt Romney. The report on Mr. Romney is two hundred pages and it covers everything from his life story to his stands on social issues, the economy, and foreign and domestic policy.

How do we know this? Because someone found it and posted it on the internet.

What a Turkey

2012-01-18T03:27:00.000-05:00

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is causing a diplomatic flap because he told the crowd at the debate the other night that Turkey is run by "Islamic terrorists."

In response to a question about whether or not Turkey should still be a part of NATO, Rick Perry suggested some consider the country to be ruled by “Islamic terrorists.”

“Obviously when you have a country that is being ruled by what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists,” Perry said during the debate.

Victoria Coates, foreign policy advisor to Perry, further explained the governor’s remarks, saying that some view the leaders of Turkey as Islamic terrorists due to their support of Hamas and the flotilla against Israel.

Nice try. I think Mr. Perry said that because he doesn't know anything about Turkey other than he probably shot one at his ranch in Texas and they're good with cranberry sauce.

Turkey -- the country and one of NATO's oldest members -- was not pleased.

Some members of the Turkish press managed to brush the statement off in a sentence. Hurriyet Daily News columnist Mustafa Akyol tweeted: "Rick Perry: What an idiot"

The Turkish Foreign Ministry's statement was a little more scathing: "It is expected of people aiming for a responsible position like the United States presidency to know more about the world and to be careful about what they say," the statement read.

"Turkey became a member of NATO when the governor was 2 years old and has been among the front line countries in the fight against terrorism, " Foreign Ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal noted.

At any rate, I think Mr. Perry's time is up. He's not doing so well in the race anyway; he's running third...in Texas.

Short Takes

2012-01-18T03:03:00.000-05:00

Iran tightens security for its scientists.

Transcripts of radio conversations between the shipwrecked captain and the Italian authorities have been released.

One Million Strong -- More than a million signatures have been turned in on petitions to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

Mitt Romney thinks his tax rate is about 15%.

The U.S. is banning the import of certain snakes, including the Burmese python, that have invaded the Everglades.

Florida is unlikely to ban guns in hospitals.

Seattle braces for a major snowstorm.

A Little Night Music

2012-01-17T18:00:00.001-05:00

Happy 90th birthday, Betty White!

Quite an Honor

2012-01-17T17:36:00.000-05:00

Miami New Times' Riptide blog is ranking the top ten political blogs in South Florida. The list will be made public tomorrow...

But first, we wanted to recognize ten other blogs that deserve honorable mention for the public service they provide. While they don't aggressively confront subjects like our top ten picks, these bloggers still make time to criticize boneheaded decisions by local government and shine a light on the ugly side of political candidates.

And thanks to being in alphabetical order, look who's first.

Bark Bark Woof Woof
Started in 2003 by a moderate-to-liberal gay man with a background in theater, Bark Bark Woof Woof puts a farcical spin on right-wing conservative values and candidates. The author operates under the nom de plume "Mustang Bobby" and calls the bullshit streaming out of GOP presidential contenders.

Thanks. It's nice to be recognized for the work.

Go Away, Kid, Ya Bother Me

2012-01-17T05:27:00.001-05:00

David Brooks took his 12-year-old son along with him on the campaign trail in South Carolina.

My rule is that if a candidate can’t relate well to a 12-year-old, they’ll never win a general election. He approached all the candidates, and they were all wonderful except Gingrich. But that wasn’t Gingrich’s fault. My son, whose heroes include John Boehner and Tupac Shakur, picked an argument about gay marriage. Gingrich engaged, but after 10 seconds signaled security to brush my kid away.

Good; the kid's already learning that politicians are sphincters.

Wait... John Boehner is one of his heroes? Sheesh.

Karen's Story

2012-01-17T05:26:00.002-05:00

According to this story in the Daily Beast, Karen Santorum had an interesting life before she met and married Rick Santorum.

Karen Santorum, the ultra-pro-life wife and mother of seven home-schooled children, has been the perfect complement to her husband, Rick, as he chases the Republican presidential nomination. On the campaign trail, the candidate often refers to her book, Letters to Gabriel, the story of the devoutly Catholic couple’s traumatic late-term 1997 miscarriage (the 20-week-old fetus lived two hours outside the womb). The couple opposes birth control as well as abortion, even in cases of rape.

But Mrs. Santorum, 51, apparently wasn’t always committed to the cause. In fact, her live-in partner through most of her 20s was Tom Allen, a Pittsburgh obstetrician and abortion provider 40 years older than she, who remains an outspoken crusader for reproductive rights and liberal ideals. Dr. Allen has known Mrs. Santorum, born Karen Garver, her entire life: he delivered her in 1960.

The only reason I'm bringing this up and giving it any time at all is because unlike some people I know, I am not going to sit in judgment on Mrs. Santorum and her life choices in the past or the present. And while she has not made any effort to hide her past, it's really not relevant that she made choices as an adult that might seem to be at odds with the life she lives now. Whatever. People grow and change, and Mrs. Santorum has obviously made a change in her life.

What is telling is the inevitable outrage that will come from Mrs. Santorum's defenders who call this a smear against her. That's based on the assumption that there is something wrong with a woman living with a man who happens to be a few years older than she and who was an abortion provider. It's the same kind of outrage that pops up when an anti-gay campaigner comes out of the closet. It may not be to their liking, but they're assuming there is something wrong with it.

Besides, this kind of redemption story is exactly what the evangelicals love. It would make a perfectly wonderful saccharin-rich movie of the week on CBN about the wanton girl who came to Jesus. Call it something like Karen's Story, sign up Glynnis O'Connor and Robby Benson, and you've got a tale worth running during Easter week. Pure ratings gold, and the residuals might make a dent in the campaign debt.

The Evangelical Vote

2012-01-17T04:23:00.001-05:00

The weekend gathering of evangelical leaders in Texas to find their Not-Romney announced that they were all backing Rick Santorum as their Christian soldier.

The move represents an eleventh-hour effort by social conservatives one week out from the crucial South Carolina primary to unify around a single candidate and blunt the momentum of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, whom many evangelicals consider insufficiently conservative.

Except they were not all unified on the selection.

Specifically, they say, a number of supporters of former House speaker and GOP presidential rival Newt Gingrich (Ga.) had actually left the gathering before the final ballot. It was running late, they say, and some of the leaders had to catch airplanes so they could make Saturday night services and other obligations.

There are now accusations of rigged voting, ballot-box stuffing, and other tricks in order to come up with the "consensus."

In an evolving power struggle, religious conservatives are feuding about whether a weekend meeting in Texas yielded a consensus that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is the best bet to stop Mitt Romney’s drive for the Republican presidential nomination.

A leading evangelical and former aide to President George H.W. Bush said he agreed with suspicions voiced by others at the meeting of evangelical and conservative Catholic activists that organizers “manipulated” the gathering and may even have stuffed the ballot to produce an endorsement of Mr. Santorum over former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Mr. Santorum, who nearly upset Mr. Romney in the Iowa caucuses, won the first ballot ahead of Mr. Gingrich in Saturday’s Texas meeting but the margin was too slim for organizers to claim a consensus. It was not until the third ballot, taken after many people had left to catch flights back home, that Mr. Santorum won more than 70 percent of those still in attendance and claimed the endorsement.

Former White House evangelical-outreach official Doug Wead, who represented GOP presidential hopeful Texas Rep. Ron Paul at the event, said it appeared the outcome obviously was determined in advance by the choice of the people invited.

Wait; aren't these the folks who are supposed to be so diligent about voter fraud? Did James Dobson have to show a photo ID?

Yet Another GOP Debate -- Ctd.

2012-01-17T03:57:00.002-05:00

Darn, I missed yet another GOP debate last night. Oh well. If you want to get a good re-cap, check out Andrew Sullivan's live-blogging thread. I'm more inclined to listen to what Sully has to say because he is, ostensibly, a conservative and therefore isn't programmed to automatically react negatively to a Republican. So his summation is worth noting.

I'm not sure what to say about this evening, except I want to take a shower. I've rarely been repulsed by the atmosphere of a debate as I was tonight. But this is the Republican core of South Carolina. One of the biggest applause lines was about waging war on the federal government.

Well, this is South Carolina, and this was where the Civil War began, so this kind of noise is to be expected. Giving Newt Gingrich a standing ovation for calling President Obama the "food stamp president" was typical; the dog whistles have been replaced by air-raid sirens and it's only a matter of time before he or someone in this crowd comes out and calls Mr. Obama that word that you know they just want to say. Oh, and this happened on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Really.

Jon Huntsman did us a favor by dropping out; he was supposedly the last bastion of rational thought and moderation in the race, but he never had a chance with his dry humor and refusal to hang out with the bat-shit crazies. Now what's left is this collection of candidates who each in their own way represents a constituency in today's Republican party: Mitt Romney, the corporate grifter; Newt Gingrich, the moral reprobate and shameless hypocrite; Rick Santorum, the kinky sex prude; and Rick Perry, the mental midget who cannot even rise to the level of a bad caricature of George W. Bush. Ron Paul is a world unto his own.

These debates -- all 14,000 of them -- have served as a combination of those MSNBC "documentaries" about prison lock-ups that fill their weekend schedule and WWF: designed to horrify and titillate with their mixture of staged violence and a peek at the underbelly of humanity caught in the grips of raw survival instinct. The idea that any one of the rich white guys on stage at a GOP debate could end up in the White House is enough to scare the crap out of any rational person.

Knowing the attention span of the American electorate, all of these shows will be a distant memory by the time the real hard-core campaigning begins this summer. In a way, that's too bad; the scripted performances of the campaign aren't half as much fun to watch as the improvised grand guignol and freak show that we're getting now.

Short Takes

2012-01-17T03:00:00.000-05:00

The cruise line is blaming the captain for the grounding of the Costa Concordia.

The euro's instability could hit U.S. markets.

There was yet another GOP debate last night.

Wikipedia will black out on Wednesday to protest SOPA.

Iced-in Nome will finally get its fuel delivery.

Florida's redistricting is heading for the courts.

A Little Night Music

2012-01-16T18:00:00.002-05:00

Martin Luther King, Jr.

2012-01-16T06:52:00.002-05:00

Today is the federal holiday set aside to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's birthday.

For me, growing up as a white kid in a middle-class suburb in the Midwest in the 1960's, Dr. King's legacy would seem to have a minimum impact; after all, what he was fighting for didn't affect me directly in any way. But my parents always taught me that anyone oppressed in our society was wrong, and that in some way it did affect me. This became much more apparent as I grew up and saw how the nation treated its black citizens; those grainy images on TV and in the paper of water-hoses turned on the Freedom Marchers in Alabama showed me how much hatred could be turned on people who were simply asking for their due in a country that promised it to them. And when I came out as a gay man, I became much more aware of it when I applied the same standards to society in their treatment of gays and lesbians.

Perhaps the greatest impression that Dr. King had on me was his unswerving dedication to non-violence in his pursuit of civil rights. He withstood taunts, provocations, and rank invasions of his privacy and his life at the hands of racists, hate-mongers, and the federal government, yet he never raised a hand in anger against anyone. He deplored the idea of an eye for an eye, and he knew that responding in kind would only set back the cause. I was also impressed that his spirituality and faith were his armor and his shield, not his weapon, and he never tried to force his religion on anyone else. The supreme irony was that he died at the hands of violence, much like his role model, Mahatma Gandhi.

So here we now celebrate and honor the birthday of Dr. King three years into the presidency of the first African-American elected as president. And yet, the campaign to find a Republican candidate to run against Barack Obama's re-election has been colored, so to speak, with racial issues, including overt appeals on the part of some candidates to the old fears about "us" vs. "them" and the re-telling of myths and lies about welfare and African-Americans. And they haven't been subtle about it. Dr. King's admonition about judging us by the content of our character has been lacking in a lot of people who know that racism is still a specter in this nation and are willing to use it and exploit it.

There's a question in the minds of a lot of people of how to celebrate a federal holiday for a civil rights leader. Isn't there supposed to be a ritual or a ceremony we're supposed to perform to mark the occasion? But how do you signify in one day or in one action what Dr. King stood for, lived for, and died for? For me, it's having the memories of what it used to be like and seeing what it has become for all of us that don't take our civil rights for granted, which should be all of us, and being both grateful that we have come as far as we have and humbled to know how much further we still have to go.

Art Deco Weekend 2012 - Day Two

2012-01-16T06:45:00.002-05:00

The weather was perfect for the second day of the 35th annual Art Deco Festival on Ocean Drive on Miami Beach. We had a lot more cars show up for the show than had pre-registered. In fact, by the time I got there to start checking cars in, there were 15 waiting, causing a bit of a traffic jam. As usual, the good men and women of the Miami Beach Police Department were there to help make it a great event.

I ended up taking almost 100 pictures, but don't worry; I won't post all of them. Here are just a few to give you a taste of it.

Some of the best things on classic cars are the logos and style points.

1939 LaSalle

1948 Mercury

Chevrolet Corvette

Ford Thunderbird

1958 Mercury

1965 Pontiac GTO*

1966 Dodge Charger

1968 Ford Torino

1988 Pontiac

Oh, and Billy Joel and his friends showed up with their motorcycles, but they were too late to get into the show. He shows up almost every year now.

*One of the reasons Pontiac had trouble meeting the demand for the GTO in 1964 is because, according to legend, the red background on each of those fender badges was hand-painted. That slowed the production of the badges and the car. It may be an urban legend, but it does make a great story.

Short Takes

2012-01-16T06:28:00.000-05:00

Iraq -- The new government is cracking down on U.S. contractors.

Death toll rises from the Italian cruise shipwreck.

Nigeria rolls back gasoline price increases to stem the riots.

Jon Huntsman will drop out of the race today and endorse Mitt Romney.

Results of the Golden Globes here.

The New York Giants beat the Green Bay Packers; the Baltimore Ravens beat the Houston Texans.

A Little Night Music

2012-01-15T19:51:00.000-05:00

I've loved her voice since I saw her in Hallelujah, Baby! in 1967.

Art Deco Weekend 2012 - Day One

2012-01-15T06:38:00.003-05:00

It was a cool but clear morning yesterday as we gathered on Ocean Drive on Miami Beach for the weekend days of the 35th annual Art Deco Festival. The celebration takes place in the part of Miami Beach that is home to some classic 1920's and 30's architecture.

When I got there the street was empty and ready for the throngs of people, vendors, and classic cars for the parade.

The parade was open to antiques and modern convertibles, so we had a good selection of some beautiful open-top cars, including a pair of 1931 Ford Model A's -- a phaeton and a roadster.

Some of the details on these cars are works of art.

My contribution to the parade was my 2007 Mustang, freshly washed and polished.

And as has become tradition, I drove Mustang in the parade, carrying the South Florida Firefighters Calendar men who raise money for charity through the sales of the calendar. Here's this year's crew; a nice bunch of guys, and not bad to look at, either.

(Now you know where I got the idea for last night's A Little Night Music.)

Those were about all the pictures I was able to take; I was too busy with registration and enjoying the fine weather. I also noticed that a lot of people where admiring the Mustang and taking pictures of it, even though it's just my daily driver and nothing exotic. It turns out that many of them were tourists from other parts of the world where the Mustang is an icon of American automotive lore. I can't wait to hear what they say today about the Pontiac station wagon.

Sunday Reading

2012-01-15T06:06:00.000-05:00

America's Everlasting War -- On the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Charlies Pierce reflects on race and racism.

In 1963, I was 10 years old, starting to become aware of the world beyond my neighborhood, starting to listen to the strange sounds from a transistor radio under my pillow, never feeling the change through which I would live. never noticing the change until I'd lived it for decades.

We were not ready for that change. We fought it. We struggled against what we knew was right in defense of what we knew was comfortable. We were mystified by the hate and the murder and the bombs and the dogs because that was easier than understanding them. By this time, it was eight years since Martin Luther King, Jr., had led the boycott of the buses in Montgomery, Alabama, and still we were mystified. The Freedom Rides had been two years earlier, and the open insurrection at the University of Mississippi over the enrollment of James Meredith had erupted the previous year. In 1963, John Kennedy finally began to move on civil rights and, on the same night in June that he delivered his only great speech on the subject, a back-shooting coward named Byron De La Beckwith murdered Medgar Evers in his own driveway in Jackson, Mississippi. Martin King came to Washington and gave a great speech. By the end of 1963, Kennedy was dead, and Beckwith was still free. It would take three trials and 31 years before he was convicted of a murder than many people long had forgotten. As a nation, we were very good at being mystified even after all of that.

Lyndon Johnson, of all people, called the last bluff. In March of 1965, he appeared before Congress to urge the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and he delivered the greatest speech an American president has delivered in my lifetime. He was an operator, far more than half-corrupt, and a Texan besides, but the one thing he wasn't was mystified. He knew power and he knew that power had no inherent mystery to it. It was raw. It was elemental. And it was power in this country that was changing. He looked the angry South and the comfortable North right in the eye and said it plain:

But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, or our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, and should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For, with a country as with a person, "what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem.

And then:

But even if we pass this bill the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

And we shall overcome.

[...]

We are all children of the civil-rights movement, whether we want to be or not, whether we are its direct descendants or whether we were adopted into it through the profound changes that movement wrought in the definition of what an American is. We are all children of the civil-rights movement, and this weekend is our national holiday. There is nothing mysterious about that. We make ourselves mysteries to each other because the cost of knowing our solution may be too ugly to bear.

We're All Guilty -- Sebastian Junger on the desecration of the dead and the dehumanization of war.

As a society, we may be disgusted by seeing U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters, but we remain oddly unfazed by the fact that, presumably, those same Marines just put high-caliber rounds through the fighters’ chests. American troops are not blind to this irony. They are very clear about the fact that society trains them to kill, orders them to kill and then balks at anything that suggests they have dehumanized the enemy they have killed.

But of course they have dehumanized the enemy — otherwise they would have to face the enormous guilt and anguish of killing other human beings. Rather than demonstrate a callous disregard for the enemy, this awful incident might reveal something else: a desperate attempt by confused young men to convince themselves that they haven’t just committed their first murder — that they have simply shot some coyotes on the back 40.

It doesn’t work, of course, but it gets them through the moment; it gets them through the rest of the patrol.

There is a final context for this act in which we are all responsible, all guilty. A 19-year-old Marine has a very hard time reconciling the fact that it’s okay to waterboard a live Taliban fighter but not okay to urinate on a dead one.

When the war on terror started, the Marines in that video were probably 9 or 10 years old. As children they heard adults — and political leaders — talk about our enemies in the most inhuman terms. The Internet and the news media are filled with self-important men and women referring to our enemies as animals that deserve little legal or moral consideration. We have sent enemy fighters to countries like Syria and Libya to be tortured by the very regimes that we have recently condemned for engaging in war crimes and torture. They have been tortured into confessing their crimes and then locked up indefinitely without trial because their confessions — achieved through torture — will not stand up in court.

For the past 10 years, American children have absorbed these moral contradictions, and now they are fighting our wars. The video doesn’t surprise me, but it makes me incredibly sad — not just for them, but also for us. We may prosecute these men for desecrating the dead while maintaining that it is okay to torture the living.

I hope someone else knows how to explain that to our soldiers, because I don’t have the faintest idea.

That's Rich -- Frank Bruni on wealth, politics, and the common touch.

There’s no simple relationship between privilege and policy. The Roosevelts and Kennedys, both spectacularly rich families, produced leaders known for their populism and protection of the less fortunate. Nancy Pelosi, a staunch defender of government aid, is thought to be worth as much as $196 million. John Boehner? Just $1.8 million, according to figures from 2010.

Wealth in politics makes a certain sense. The same drive, vanity, accomplishment and ingenuity that fuel a successful political career often fuel high earnings beforehand. And those earnings in some instances win voters’ confidence.

Paul Friedman, 32, an undecided voter who showed up at Romney’s event in Columbia, said, “If we’re talking about jobs, and his businesses are successful, then maybe he’d run the country in a way that brings jobs back.” That’s Romney’s pitch.

But he walks a tightrope, wanting to broadcast his success without seeming out of touch. A wealthy candidate’s aides guard against tone-deaf admissions of privilege while opponents itch to pounce, as the first President Bush’s did in 1992, when he seemed unfamiliar with a grocery store’s electronic price scanner.

I doubt many politicians at that stage of the game are spending much time in the checkout line or know the price of milk without seeing it on a briefing paper. But the charade persists. The second President Bush learned from his father’s mistakes and seemed to develop an entire folksy persona in response. He spent vacations clearing brush, and though done on a vast Texas ranch purchased with his considerable wealth, it yielded optics preferable to those of John Kerry windsurfing.

Romney recalls the Naugahyde chair in an office past and tweets about breakfast at Subway and a flight on Southwest Airlines. But inevitably he muffs the script. During last Sunday’s debate he said a man shouldn’t run for office if he needed to win to pay the mortgage.

It wasn’t a $10,000 flub. But it was rich.

Doonesbury -- The Newtism collection.

Short Takes

2012-01-15T05:00:00.001-05:00

Three survivors have been found on the capsized cruise ship off Italy.

Evangelical leaders decide on Rick Santorum to be their Not-Romney.

Look Out -- A failed Russian spacecraft is expected to fall to Earth today.

The White House is not happy with the proposed SOPA legislation.

The 49'ers beat the Saints in a wild finish; the Patriots beat the daylights out of the Broncos.

A Little Night Music

2012-01-14T18:06:00.000-05:00

After Art Deco and before Miami Vice, there was this little bit of private-eye candy.

SUrfside 6 was also the telephone exchange in the days before all-digital phone numbers. After Ma Bell switched to all-digital, SUrfside 6 became 786. 786 is also one of Miami's area codes. Coincidence?

PS: Seeing this reminds me of the line from A Chorus Line: "If Troy Donahue can be a movie star, then I can be a movie star."

Art Deco Weekend

2012-01-14T06:14:00.001-05:00

The 35th annual Art Deco Festival is underway on Miami Beach. It takes place on Ocean Drive. The events include a parade today with antique and modern convertibles carrying the celebrities, and tomorrow there will be a judged antique car show. The weather promises to be cool and clear, so come on over to the Beach. As usual, I'll be there, so if you see me, stop by and say hello.

There are some pictures here and here from last year's festival.

Jon Stewart -- Black to the Future

2012-01-14T06:02:00.000-05:00

Daily Show reporter Wyatt Cenac wants to know when Newt Gingrich will get around to insulting black people.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Birthday Greetings

2012-01-14T05:55:00.000-05:00

To my sister, the first of us.

Short Takes

2012-01-14T05:52:00.000-05:00

Iraq -- Another bombing, more deaths.

A cruise ship ran aground and tipped over off the coast of Italy; several deaths have been reported.

Europe -- Their debt being downgraded isn't helping.

The U.S. is renewing ties with Burma/Myanmar.

Cynical Ploy? -- Newt Gingrich is telling his SuperPAC to pull their ads in South Carolina. They won't.

"Friends" with Big Brother -- A federal security contractor monitored social networks.

Slipped a Mickey? -- A South Florida TV weatherman claims he was drugged and robbed by women from the Russian mob.

R.I.P. Richard Threlkeld, 74, reporter and correspondent for CBS and ABC.

A Little Night Music

2012-01-13T18:00:00.001-05:00

See you at the Art Deco Festival on Miami Beach this weekend.

Ancient Technology

2012-01-13T15:59:00.001-05:00

I was at FedEx Kinko’s this afternoon getting some copies made. While I was waiting I saw a college-aged kid trying to send a fax. He was completely flummoxed. First, he wasn’t sure how to feed the paper into the tray. Then he kept getting a message through the little speaker, but he couldn’t figure out what it meant by “you must first dial a one.” It turns out the number he was calling was in Fort Lauderdale, which is long distance, and on a land-line you need to dial 1-954-XXX-XXXX. When we finally got that cleared up, the fax machine on the other end kept squawking but not picking up. “Maybe it takes longer because it’s so far away,” he said with complete earnestness. After a couple of more tries, I told him that the fax machine on the other end wasn’t turned on, which seemed to amaze him.

By that time, my copies were done and I had to leave, so I’ll never know if he got through.

Add the fax machine to the list that includes the tape recorder, the phonograph, the rotary telephone*, the VCR, and the mimeograph that are now ancient technology.

*When I moved into my apartment in Miami in 2001, one of the moving men asked if he could use my phone to order a pizza. I said sure and pointed him to the one in the kitchen: a black 1959 wall phone. He stared at the dial for a moment before I showed him how to use it.

Shrink Rap

2012-01-13T05:38:00.002-05:00

David Brooks puts presidents on the couch and decides that "great presidents are often aristocrats and experienced political insiders. They experience great setbacks. They feel the presence of God’s hand on their every move."

Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to talk about these things openly these days. We disdain elitism, political experience and explicit God-talk. Great failure is considered “baggage” in today’s campaign lingo.

I suppose there's a quota in the Columnists Credo for going Dr. Phil every so often, but if so, at least make it plausible. The disdain for "elitism" and political experience is Tea Party blather (and they only object to those qualities when it's the other guy) and explicit God-talk is only objectionable when it becomes "I was talking to Jesus the other day...."

For what it's worth, I'd rather not have a president whose life and experience can be summed up in a Lifetime Movie of the Week starring Treat Williams and Markie Post, but it's better than one who channels either Dr. Stranglove or Elmer Gantry.

Left Wing Propaganda

2012-01-13T04:34:00.000-05:00

I sat through the whole Newt Gingrich attack ad up in South Carolina.

If I didn't know better, I'd say this was put together by Michael Moore, except it has very little humor. It completely demonizes everything that the modern Republican Party stands for in economic terms: bootstrapism, rugged individualism, I-got-mine-screw-you-ism; you'd think at the end you'd hear a bunch of workers marching across Red Square singing the Internationale.

Annals of Journalism

2012-01-13T03:59:00.001-05:00

Arthur Brisbane, the New York Times Public Editor -- i.e. ombudsman -- asked this question of his readers the other day:

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

One example mentioned recently by a reader: As cited in an Adam Liptak article on the Supreme Court, a court spokeswoman said Clarence Thomas had “misunderstood” a financial disclosure form when he failed to report his wife’s earnings from the Heritage Foundation. The reader thought it not likely that Mr. Thomas “misunderstood,” and instead that he simply chose not to report the information.

Another example: on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches “apologizing for America,” a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the “post-truth” stage.

As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?

Is that a trick question?

Many years ago I had a brief stint as a reporter for a radio station. I learned very quickly that there's a delicate balance between reporting what someone says as fact and dutifully printing it without challenge or context, but there's also the duty as a reporter or an editor to go beyond being a stenographer. You don't have to call someone a liar, but when you are presented with a statement from someone like Mitt Romney who says, for example, that President Obama has "apologized for America," all you have to do is cite the fact that there is no evidence that he has done any such thing and let the reader come to the obvious conclusion that Mr. Romney is, to be charitable, making shit up.

If a $7,000-a-year reporter for a little radio station in Northern Michigan could figure that out in 1979, surely the same thing must occur to the mighty New York Times.

Complicating Matters

2012-01-13T03:44:00.000-05:00

As if things weren't dicey enough with the our relations with and extrication from Afghanistan:

A video showing four United States Marines urinating on three dead Taliban fighters provoked anger and condemnation on Thursday in Afghanistan and around the world, raising fears in Washington that the images could incite anti-American sentiment at a particularly delicate moment in the decade-old Afghan war.

The Obama administration is struggling to keep the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, on its side as it carefully tries to open talks with the Taliban. Yet the video showing such a desecration — a possible war crime — is likely to weaken the American position with both. The Taliban and Mr. Karzai each pointed to the images as evidence of American brutality, a message with broad appeal in Afghanistan, where word of the video was slowly spreading on Thursday.

One Picture:Thousand Words

2012-01-13T03:32:00.002-05:00

Mitt Romney gets a ~~shoeshine~~ TSA wanding on the tarmac in front of his corporate jet.

Correction: According to Rachel Maddow, Mr. Romney is not getting a shoe-shine. He's getting a security wanding before getting on a plane.

HT Ed Schultz.

Short Takes

2012-01-13T03:16:00.000-05:00

The U.S. warns Iran not to block the Straits of Hormuz.

Myanmar frees political prisoners.

Europe gets some reassurance at their debt auctions.

A tornado hit western North Carolina, injuring 15.

Jobless claims went up after the holiday hiring season ended.

Foreclosures fell to their lowest level since 2007 last year.

Bad Idea -- Mercedes-Benz used an image of Che Guevara to sell cars.

Friday Catblogging Classic

2012-01-13T00:00:00.002-05:00

It's Art Deco weekend on Miami Beach, and that means car shows!

A Little Night Music

2012-01-12T18:29:00.000-05:00

Why would you name your dog "Boo"?

Quote of the Day

2012-01-12T05:50:00.000-05:00

Mitt Romney to Matt Lauer on Today talking about "envy" and bringing up income inequality as a campaign issue:

LAUER: Yeah but envy? Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as ‘envy,’ though?

ROMNEY: I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail.

Translation: "Don't talk about it in front of The Help; you might give them ideas about wealth, and you know how uppity that makes them. More brandy?"

Culture of Victimhood -- Ctd.

2012-01-12T04:22:00.000-05:00

Not content to just trash Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich is also going for the bully-as-victim trope again, claiming that anti-Christian bigotry is running rampant through the land.

The challenge we have is anti-Christian bigotry that has forced the Catholic Church to close its adoption service in Massachusetts because it actually wanted to follow the tenets of Christianity. And you look all all around this country and you see again and again, whether its a judge knocking down a cross… I am your President, if you help me win this election, we will not tolerate a speech dictatorship in this country against Christianity.

Yeah, except it's a crock that the Catholic Church was "forced" to shut down their adoption services in Massachusetts. The law required them to treat all people equally, including gay and lesbian couples, and they didn't want to comply with the law.

HT to Joe.

We've Seen This Movie Before

2012-01-12T04:02:00.001-05:00

Dave Weigel at Slate notes the similarity between the GOP primaries last time:

I'm thinking of a Republican primary. It starts with a candidate (John McCain/Mitt Romney) who ran once before, came in second place, and won over the party's elite class without winning over its base. Other candidates, understandably unwilling to accept this, line up: An under-funded social conservative (Mike Huckabee/Rick Santorum), an elder statesman who's walked to the altar three times (Rudy Giuliani/Newt Gingrich), a libertarian who wants to bring back the gold standard (Ron Paul/Ron Paul).

The conservative base is displeased. In the year before the primary, it pines for a perfect candidate. At the end of summer, on (September 5/August 13), it gets him: (Fred Thompson/Rick Perry). The dream candidate immediately rises to the top of national polls, but collapses after lazy, distaff debate performances. When the primaries arrive, he's in single digits and reduced to attacking the front-runners. But in Iowa, he does just well enough to justify staying in the race.

[...]

The Republican base looks at the wreckage and shudders. It can never allow this to happen ever again.

And there you have the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Rachel Maddow does the video version.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Suing For the Freedom To Hate

2012-01-12T03:39:00.002-05:00

God is making them do it.

A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati is taking up the claim of three Michigan ministers that a federal hate crime law infringes on their First Amendment rights and should be declared unconstitutional.

[...]

The law expands federal hate crimes to those committed against people because of sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

The ministers say they could be targeted for their sermons against gay behavior. The law's supporters say it's aimed at acts of violence, not speech by clergy. A lower court judge dismissed the lawsuit last year.

Here's a thought: if your religious practices run afoul of hate crimes, the problem just might be your religion and not the law. Think about it.

Caught On Tape

2012-01-12T03:28:00.000-05:00

James O'Keefe, the right-wing merry prankster of ACORN video fame, tried to prove with a hidden video that there was voter fraud in the New Hampshire primary by committing voter fraud.

The undercover video shows unnamed individuals working at O’Keefe’s behest approaching polling stations throughout New Hampshire. After poll workers asked for the person’s name, O’Keefe’s agents gave the name of a voter who died within the past few weeks, before then receiving a ballot to vote. The individuals asked the poll workers if they needed ID to prove their identity, and when poll workers confirmed that they did not, O’Keefe’s men insisted on returning to their car to retrieve their ID and returned the ballot.

However, in highlighting the non-problem of voter fraud in New Hampshire and elsewhere, O’Keefe’s agents appear to have committed voter fraud themselves.

Mr. O'Keefe's defense will be that no one actually voted, therefore there was no fraud. However, the New Hampshire law (as well as the federal law) is clear about people fraudulently obtaining a ballot to vote, not actually voting. And, as Think Progress points out, there's also a law against videotaping people without their knowledge or consent.

By the way, you have a better chance of being struck by lightning than being the victim of voter fraud.

Short Takes

2012-01-12T03:00:00.000-05:00

Iran's Turn? -- Adversaries to the regime are marshaling their forces.

An Iranian nuclear scientist was killed in a bombing in Tehran.

Things look possible for U.S.-Taliban peace talks.

Austerity isn't working in Europe.

The gloves are off in South Carolina.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of some exceptions to religious workplace discrimination rules.