The hate never takes a break

... not even on Christmas:

-- "I'm a racist POS, so are all my commenters, and we lovin' every minute of it"

-- "Schadenfreude San Fran Style". An excerpt:

San Francisco, like many libtard outposts, has made it extremely difficult for large chain stores to operate in the city. Libtards think that they must put up barriers to successful businesses, in order to protect "Mom and Pop" businesses from actually having to compete in the marketplace. Well, this Christmas, the chickens came home to roost. Seems that San Franciscoans are having a hard time finding the popular toys this season, because none of the Mom and Pop stores carry them.

"San Franciscoans"? If the link wasn't broken we might be able to understand what this goon is trying to say. On the other hand, maybe not.

Some people need to recognize when they are just too stupid to blog. This is one of those people.

-- Still fighting the War on Christmas, even on Christmas. Maybe he's getting a jump on next year.

-- This poor fool consistently demonstrates the most twisted logic on the InnerTubes. Christmas Day's sample:

Evan's (sic) argument makes no sense. You can't even apply for welfare without an ID. So why would voting "skew" against Democrats. There is only one good reason. It skews against voter fraud and Democrats think they need it to succeed at the ballot box. The idea that requiring an ID would stop a valid voter is absurd and preposterous. It starts with the ludicrous premise that requiring an ID is exclusionary. There is no credible evidence that it is. To the extent that it might be, the laws permit affidavits. Anybody can get an ID card, even terrorist. The requirement just makes it inconvenient to vote more than once are vote for someone else without going to extra trouble. The only reason to oppose voter IDs is to facilitate election fraud.

A conclusion reached on the forests of evidence completely the opposite of all the experts (sort of like global warming, the casus belli for Iraq, etc.). No wonder this fellow is a "former general counsel". Between his active retirement building furniture and studying military history, Merv finds time for twenty posts a day, sampling the worst the Right has to offer and making observations of the pretzel logic variety. Occasional entertainment, mostly dross.

-- The most consistently noxious local rightie posted this frothing diatribe two days before Christmas (so we should be thankful he was able to empty his spleen on the Lord's day):

It seems the only thing the left despises more than Soldiers is Christians. So I can see why this picture would drive them insane.

Previously challenged Ezra Klein to a fight, also called out Rick Noriega for his Gold Star award (a theme initiated by this conservative blogger, and similarly rebuked in his comments). Those were actually two of Rob's least vile posts. He elicits considerably more in the way of mocking laughter than he does outrage, which likely makes him even more bitter.

Well, that's all the gall my bladder can process for a while. We're off to Lose-iana for a couple of days to watch the ponies and arm the bandits. Play nicely with your toys and don't bother Mommy and Daddy while they worry about how all this Christmas is going to be paid for.

Season's Greetings

Because Jesus never rode an elephant.

Back with a year-end Wrangle sometime after Christmas.

More Sunday Funnies

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, John Cornyn gave to me ...

... and you, and all the rest of us in Texas:

*deep inhale*

Twelve lapdog cronies, eleven forgotten military bases, ten (million) sick kids, nine fired US Attorneys, eight Children Left Behind, seven undetected WMDs, six hurricane-ravaged homes ...

Five Border Fence Lies ...

Four undisclosed earmarks, three disenfranchised voters, two abandoned veterans, and some partisanship and demogoguery.

And thanks to the TCD (hat tip BOR) we have additional verification that the Junior Senator is The Grinch:

Good Time Charlie's War

I never gave too much thought to Charlie Wilson, all those years growing up with him as my Congressman, even though it was about the same time I was doing all that partying of my own. My parties were good, just not as good as his:

In the summer of 1980, Wilson traveled to Las Vegas with a girlfriend, who happened to be a Playboy cover girl, and he somehow ended up in a hot tub at Caesars Palace with two naked showgirls.

"The girls had cocaine, and the music was loud," Wilson told the late George Crile, author of the 2003 book "Charlie Wilson's War," which inspired the movie. "It was total happiness. And both of them had 10 long, red fingernails with an endless supply of beautiful white powder. . . . The feds spent a million bucks trying to figure out whether, when those fingernails passed under my nose, did I inhale or exhale, and I ain't telling."

Those "feds" were led by Rudolph Giuliani, then a young Justice Department attorney, heading an investigation into drug use on Capitol Hill. When news of the probe leaked, Wilson denied that he'd used cocaine. Then he added a promise that was pure Wilson: "I won't blame booze and I won't suddenly find Jesus." ...

But his troubles weren't over. A month later, driving in a condition he later described as "drunker than [bleep]," Wilson lost control of his Lincoln Continental on the Key Bridge, smacked into a Mazda, then drove away. A witness reported his license number to the police, and he was busted for hit-and-run driving.

Divorce, dope, drunk driving: As the 1984 election approached, the experts figured the voters of East Texas might decide to replace Wilson with someone a bit less, um, colorful.

But the experts were wrong, as they often are, and the God-fearing people of East Texas reelected Wilson in 1984 -- and five times after that.

Yeah, ol' Good Time Charlie didn't leave Congress until 1996, after the Newties came into power. Hollywood has made a pretty good movie about him, a satirical comedy mostly. As such it's still too bad the movie is missing -- as with most Hollywood productions -- a couple of elements of accuracy:

In the latter half of the movie, there is one big lie and one item of anti-Afghan propaganda. The lie is that U.S. support to the mujahiddin went only to the faction led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Afghan leader who was assassinated on Sept. 9, 2001. I spoke with Rep. Charlie Wilson, D-Texas, in 2002, at which time he called Massoud "a Russian collaborator." I find it disingenuous that Wilson and his Hollywood biographers now want to throw their arms around him. (Note: George Crile's book does not make this false claim.) Moreover, if this movie succeeds in convincing Americans that the U.S. support went to Ahmad Shah Massoud alone, it will have effectively let the CIA and Wilson off the hook for their contribution to the circumstances leading up to 9/11. During the 1980s, Wilson engineered the appropriation of approximately $3.5 billion to help the Afghans fight the Soviets. According to Milt Bearden, CIA chief of station to Pakistan, Massoud received less than 1 percent of it.

More explanation here. Continuing:

In the same scene in the movie as the misinformation about Massoud is a propagandistic joke deeply offensive to Afghans. This joke (coupled with the Massoud "inaccuracy") is the reason that the Afghan Embassy is boycotting Charlie Wilson's War.

The joke is: "When a Tajik man wants to make love to a woman, his first choice is a Pashtun man."

Why is this propagandistic? Because it supports the idea that Afghans are just too tribal to get along. They've always fought each other. As Wilson once said to me, "You put two Afghans in a room, you end up with seven factions." The trouble with this idea is that Afghanistan has been a cohesive nation for several hundred years.

So who wants the world to believe that Afghans can't get along? Pakistan. The reason for this is the Durrand Line. The Durrand Line is the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and it is not very stable. There are Pashtun tribal regions on both sides of the border, and at some point since the establishment of Pakistan (about 60 years ago), it was suggested that the Pashtuns on both sides of the border should unite to create Pashtunistan. This idea makes the government of Pakistan very nervous. In response, they threw their support to Gulbaddin Hekmatyar in the 1980s, because he agreed not to dispute the border, but also because he was deeply feared and disliked by Afghans, and would thus continue to be reliant on Pakistan as his source of power. Pakistan then convinced the CIA, to the cumulative tune of about $1.5 billion, that Gulbaddin was the guy best suited to whoop-ass against the Soviet Union. Later, during the mid 1990s, when he failed to control Afghanistan on their behalf, Pakistan nurtured the Taliban into power.

So why were these two offenses included in this movie?

1. The Massoud "inaccuracy" was included because Tom Hanks "just can't deal with this 9/11 thing"; and because Wilson and Joanne Herring (played by Julia Roberts in the movie) threatened legal action after reading an earlier, more honest, draft of the screenplay by Aaron Sorkin. Herring was Pakistan's honorary consul to the United States in the 1980s, and as such, enlisted Wilson into supporting the cause of the Afghans. Neither Wilson nor Herring wants history to remember them for their contribution to the events that culminated in 9/11.

2. The really bad joke was included because, when Wilson retired from the House of Representatives, he was so copasetic to Pakistani views that he went to work for Pakistan as their lobbyist -- at the rate of $360,000 per year. Not bad for an old skirt-chasin' boozer.

Sunday Funnies

The GOP's fissures (and a possible brokered convention)

I would really like to be blogging more about the Democratic's presidential candidates, but the Repukes are just too entertaining to ignore.

This is the kind of fantastical speculation I enjoy making, as well as reading -- and it's certainly on the minds of quite a few conservatives, you can bet. First, BooMan, and the backstory has to do with John McCain's lawyering up over his relationship with that Washington lobbyist (no, it's not sexual; just click over for the explanation then pick it back up here):

If John McCain does not emerge as the Republican nominee, there's a good likelihood that the GOP is going to be in for a long, strange ride. Let's walk though this.

If Mike Huckabee wins in Iowa, I expect McCain to surge ahead of Romney in New Hampshire and win that state. This will set up a death match between McCain and Huckabee that will go down to the wire. Giuliani could conceivably get into the mix by winning Florida, but he seems too damaged by recent scandals to have much hope. Fred Thompson will go nowhere.

But if McCain has some bad news in the next three weeks that prevents him from capitalizing on a Huckabee win in Iowa, then Romney will likely prevail in the Granite State. We could easily see McCain, Thompson, and Duncan Hunter drop out after New Hampshire or South Carolina. We could see Giuliani drop out after Florida. And we'll be left with Huckabee, Romney, and Ron Paul. And Ron Paul will have enough money to compete everywhere on Super Duper Tuesday, while Huckabee will not, and Romney will have to spend his own fortune.

Even in this scenario, I do not expect Ron Paul to win the nomination, or even any states (although he could win a couple). But he could easily rack up a fifth of the available delegates in a three-way race. Imagine the Republican convention if Ron Paul has the third biggest block of delegates.

Let's go even further here. Assuming that Romney's delegates are more Mormon than his overall universe of support and that Huckabee's delegates are more Southern Baptist than his overall universe of support, and that Ron Paul's delegates are... well... the most enthusiastic and dedicated of Ron Paul's supporters... the Minneapolis convention is going to be a assembly of the cultural fringe. It's hard to picture your average Martha's Vineyard Republican fitting in, exactly.

The Democratic competition is no less fluid, but all the candidates are at least culturally acceptable to the whole range of the Democratic electorate. Our convention will be one big inclusive feel-good party no matter who wins the nomination.

I guess my question is: what will it mean for the GOP over the short to medium term if their convention is completely dominated by Huckabee, Romney, and Paul supporters?

Why, it could mean a brokered convention and perhaps a Newt Gingrich nomination. That kind of deal precludes Paul running third party, especially if he gets promised some plum Cabinet job like Secretary of Commerce. Romney becomes the vice-presidential nominee strictly on the basis of his money, and Huckabee gets to be Secretary of Christianity Implementation.

Maybe Dubya could be a uniter and not a divider after all.

As one of BT's commenters notes, our worst-case November scenario is Hillary Clinton vs. John McCain, and I would add 'with no third-party conservative candidate'. Our generic best-case is anybody vs. Huckabee.

And since this post is about the Repugs, I'm sure I forgot to mention that John Edwards is surging in Iowa while Hillary and Obama beat each other up.

Tancredo self-deports

Ha Ha Ha Ha.

Run third party, you lunatic, and let's see exactly how much support your one-issue candidacy actually has.

It has been demonstrated repeatedly, most recently this week in the suburbs of Fort Worth, that immigration is wedging the Republican base. Even Karl Rove and Dubya know it's a loser, yet still the Nativists wail and gnash their teeth.

Keep at it for at least another year, please. Make illegal immigration the core issue in every single statehouse, Congressional, and Senate and judicial race on the ballot.

Pretty please. Morons.

Update: (12/22): Welcome Lone Star Diary click-overs (all three of you)! You're exactly who I'm talking to -- but only if you completely agree with the moron who runs that one-note blog. Happy Holidays!

Last-minute Christmas shopping postpourri

-- at last night's HCDP Holiday Party, I met Dan Grant and Michael Skelly and Bert Moser (another of our highly qualified candidates for justice on the 14th Court of Appeals) and Dale Henry, whose campaign has this pretty excellent video up:



Unfortunately I also got word that one of my favorite judicial candidates from the last cycle, Chuck Silverman, was not going to make the race this time.

-- We have a candidate for Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court: Jim Jordan of Dallas.

Update (12/21): Jordan's bio (courtesy Quorum Report's Daily Buzz, their emphasis):

Jordan, a veteran civil defense attorney and past member of the Texas Association of Defense Counsel, noted a serious backlog in cases at the state’s highest court. "They are failing to do their work as the backlog in cases has reached record levels."

Jordan, who currently presides over the 160^th District Court in Dallas, is Board Certified in Civil Trial Law — a certification earned by less than 2% of Texas Lawyers.

"When the system is broken, the responsibility must fall on the leader," Jordan noted, explaining his decision to seek the Chief Justice position. "I am running for Chief Justice because this Court has lost its way. Instead of upholding the law, it is advancing an ideology," Jordan added, referring to a recent study released by a University of Texas law professor that criticized the court for routinely exceeding its Constitutional authority, ignoring the role of juries, and using the bench to make policy instead of deciding questions of law.

Jordan, who first presided over the 44^th District Court in Dallas, was a partner with the firm Shannon, Gracey, Ratliff & Miller before returning to the bench. In 2006, he won election to the 160^th District Court.

Jordan caught the Dallas County blue wave in 2006 and hopes to repeat the feat statewide next year. I of course think he's onto something.

-- Pooty Poot is TIME's Man. Well, "I" can't win every year (and neither can "you").

-- Nope, nobody cares what Joe Lieberman does any more. And I mean Nooooobody.

-- How the Iowa caucuses work, and why John Edwards will win: because he's almost everybody's second choice (and why Hillary will trail -- because she is nearly no one's).

-- A Mafia museum in Vegas. Can't wait to see it.

-- The NSA has real-time access to your e-mail. Yes, yours. In my case they probably think I have both ED and a small penis, not to mention being a Wall Street penny stock tycoon and an important business associate of several Nigerian concerns.

A master's degree in Creation Science

When it comes to the Texas Education Agency, you CAN make this shit up (and, sadly, it will be accurate):

A Texas higher education panel has recommended allowing a Bible-based group called the Institute for Creation Research to offer online master’s degrees in science education.

The "Institute for Creation Research". Their library and archives consist of one book.

The state’s commissioner of higher education, Raymund A. Paredes, said late Monday that he was aware of the institute’s opposition to evolution but was withholding judgment until the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board meets Jan. 24 to rule on the recommendation, made last Friday, by the board’s certification advisory council.

Henry Morris III, the chief executive of the Institute for Creation Research, said Tuesday that the proposed curriculum, taught in California, used faculty and textbooks “from all the top schools” along with, he said, the “value added” of challenges to standard teachings of evolution.

“Where the difference is, we provide both sides of the story,” Mr. Morris said. On its Web site, the institute declares, “All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the creation week” and says it “equips believers with evidences of the Bible’s accuracy and authority through scientific research, educational programs, and media presentations, all conducted within a thoroughly biblical framework.”

It also says “the harmful consequences of evolutionary thinking on families and society (abortion, promiscuity, drug abuse, homosexuality and many others) are evident all around us.”

"Both sides of the story". Aha. Fair and balanced. Note that the critical thinking comes in when they survey the evidence "all around us". Wait, it gets better:

Asked how the institute could educate students to teach science, Dr. Paredes, who holds a doctorate in American civilization from the University of Texas and served 10 years as vice chancellor for academic development at the University of California, said, “I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.”

He said he had no ready explanation for the panel’s recommendation. “I asked about the decision,” Dr. Paredes said Monday in a phone interview from Austin. “I got a three-inch-thick folder an hour ago. We’re going to give it a full review.” But, he said, “If it’s approved, we’ll make sure it’s of high quality.”

Approval would allow the institute, which moved to Dallas this year from near San Diego, to offer the online graduate program almost immediately while seeking accreditation from national academic authorities like the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges within two years.

This comes, as you may recall, on the heels of this:

The action comes weeks after the Texas Education Agency’s director of science, Christine Castillo Comer, lost her job after superiors accused her of displaying bias against creationism and failing to be “neutral” over the teaching of evolution. ...

Last month, in a sign that Texas was being drawn deeper into creationism controversy, Ms. Comer, 57, was put under pressure to resign as science director after forwarding an e-mail message about a talk by a creationism critic, Barbara Forrest, a professor at Southeastern Louisiana State University.

Lizzette Reynolds, a deputy commissioner who called for Ms. Comer’s dismissal, later told The Austin American-Statesman she was surprised she resigned. Ms. Reynolds did not respond to a message left at her office.

The Texas Education commissioner, Robert Scott, told The Dallas Morning News that Ms. Comer was not forced out over the message, adding, “You can be in favor of science without bashing people’s faith.” He did not return phone calls to his office.

Ms. Comer said the commissioner should show her where she was bashing anyone’s faith. “He just doesn’t get it,” she said.

Res ipsa loquitur. And rather than add any editorial comment to the news above, let me simply say that I believe it's time Texas had a post-baccalaureate degree program in Pastafarianism. Who's with me?