More Funnies - Climate Deniers edition

TeaBaggers are to "moderate" Republicans as the scorpion is to the frog

You know the story, right? Here's this week's round-up of backbiting schadenfreude.

-- South Carolina Teabaggin' Sen. Jim DeMint has endorsed Michael Williams for Texas' vacancy (?) in the US Senate. Wait, it gets weirder: DeMint is lining up his own 2012 White House bid. Does he really think he can out-crazy Sarah Palin? Why yes. Yes he does ...

DeMint, who is positioning himself for a presidential run, has a PAC, the Senate Conservatives Fund, which will give Williams the maximum $10,000 and bundle more money for his race. "Michael Williams is the Democrat Party's worst nightmare," said DeMint.

Note: I'll stop calling these lunatics TeaBaggers when they stop saying "Democrat Party".

-- Comptroller Susan Combs was accused last month of giving state grant money to "radical left-leaning groups" by 'conservative crusader' Peter Morrison, and the cudgel has been picked up by Tom Pauken, current chair of the Texas Workforce Commission and former Texas Republican Party chair. This donnybrook works in the code words "community organizers", ACORN, and Saul Alinsky in a creative-yet-typical swirl of a smear. More from the Lone Star (Right Wing) Report.

-- Can't leave out the latest Kay v. Rick dustup, this one involving a video of his goon blocking a KBH videocam operator as the governor was entering a fundraiser hosted by Jose Cuevas, the Perry-appointed head of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, and attended by Texas bar owners and restauranteurs (the people whose businesses Cuevas oversees in his post). More from the anonymous Republican consultant blogger:

This is a good example of how sometimes in campaigns you can try to fix a bad situation, and instead end up making it worse. Rick – for obvious reasons – didn’t want the Hutchison campaign to get video of him walking into a controversial fundraiser. But by blocking the Kay videographer’s camera, the Perry campaign provided Hutchison’s people with an even more interesting video of Rick entering the event. That, in turn, led to posts about the fundraiser in the Austin American-Statesman, The Dallas Morning News and The Texas Tribune, who probably wouldn’t have picked up the story otherwise.

Sunday *heavy sigh* Funnies

Madam Mayor: reactions

“Tonight the voters of Houston have opened the doors to history,” she said. “I acknowledge that. I embrace that. I know what this win means to many of us who thought we could never achieve high office. I know what it means. I understand, because I feel it, too. But now, from this moment, let us join as one community. We are united in one goal in making this city the city that it can be, should be, might be, will be.”

-- Annise Parker, in her victory speech

Here's the bottom line, or maybe the punch line:

In Houston, it is now harder for a lawyer to be elected mayor than a lesbian.

...

He was anointed as the business establishment's candidate by old-time leaders such as Ned Holmes (Locke's finance chairman) and former Mayor Bob Lanier, who effectively discouraged conservatives such as Metro critic Bill King from making the race.

Their analysis of Locke's route to victory, however, turned out to be fundamentally flawed.

...

His backers had nothing against Parker but did not believe she could overcome the lesbian label.

They believed Locke could win by combining the black vote with a substantial portion of Republicans who would vote against Parker because of her sexual orientation.

That turned out to be wrong. For one thing, as the low turnout indicates, neither candidate had the star power to boost voter participation.

More important for Locke, his appeals to Republicans, particularly as a law-and-order candidate, didn't stick, and the anti-lesbian vote turned out to be smaller than expected.

Greg Wythe, a bright political analyst and blogger (www.gregsopinion.com) who has joined Mayor Bill White's gubernatorial campaign, did a precinct-by-precinct analysis of the first-round of votes.

It showed Parker coming in first or second in such Republican areas as the West Side, Kingwood and Friendswood.

Locke came in a poor fourth in those areas.

I believe it was Locke's performance in those areas that led his finance team members to take the desperate step of aligning the campaign with gay-bashing Steve Hotze — thereby pushing undecided white liberals and moderates into Parker's well-run campaign without turning out enough anti-gay votes to win.

-- Rick Casey, "Advisers gave Locke wrong key"

Throughout the campaign, Ms. Parker tried to avoid making an issue of her sexual orientation and emphasized her experience in overseeing the city’s finances. But she began her career as an advocate for gay rights in the 1980s, and it was lost on no one in Houston, a city of 2.2 million people, that her election marked a milestone for gay men and lesbians around the country.

Several smaller cities in other regions have chosen openly gay mayors, among them Providence, R.I., Portland, Ore., and Cambridge, Mass. But Ms. Parker’s success came in a conservative state where voters have outlawed gay marriage and a city where a referendum on granting benefits to same-sex partners of city employees was soundly defeated.

-- New York Times