Huck won't jump in

He likes his paycheck from Fox, the new big house he's building, and the opportunity to be kingmaker instead of king.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Saturday he won't seek the Republican presidential nomination, choosing to stick with a lucrative career as a television and radio personality over a race that would be both costly and caustic. ...

Had he chosen to run, Huckabee would have been forced to give up the lucrative media career he's enjoyed since his unsuccessful presidential bid four years ago. In addition to his TV show, Huckabee hosts a nationally syndicated radio program, gives paid speeches around the country and has even launched a series of animated videos for children on American history.

The talk show is the centerpiece of Huckabee's enterprises, which have made the one-time Baptist preacher from Hope, Ark., and 10-year governor a wealthy man with a $2.2 million beachfront home under construction in Florida. Huckabee, 55, and his wife moved their residency and voter registration to the state last year.

And don't forget the chicken fried steaks, mashed potatoes and gravy, and mmmmm, those triple-scoop banana splits.

“It’s been hard the last several months (keeping the weight from piling back on) because of the crazy schedule and I have had some issues with (my feet),” Huckabee said. “It’s a constant struggle to find decent things to eat on the road and not get terribly messed up with the same old habits.”

His feet. Or maybe his knee. It's important to note that none of these issues about portliness seem to be affecting Chris Christie's dithering. But let's focus on the thin people -- that doesn't necessarily exclude Newt -- going forward.

Huckabee’s decision not to run almost certainly guarantees a more wide-open contest as his vote share, which, in most polling was between 25 and 30 percent, is now up for grabs.

A Huckabee-less field also makes the Iowa caucuses far more competitive as the Arkansas Republican would have been a clear favorite in the state following his surprise victory there in 2008. That’s good news for people like Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn), former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — all of whom are expected to make a major push in the Hawkeye State.

The GOP race is now also without a well known social conservative candidate — a void that will be even more pronounced if former Alaska governor Sarah Palin decides against the race. (Palin has set no timetable to make a decision.)

With social conservative voters playing prominent roles in the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary — two of the first four nominating contests — the candidates who do run will position themselves to court this influential vote.

Since Huckabee was my pick for the nomination, I admit I'm crestfallen. Like so many others, picking from the remainder bin leaves me feeling a little empty.

But I do think Rick "Frothy Mixture" Santorum stands to surge.

Sunday Funnies

Osama bin strokin

Seriously though, you know why the pornos matter?

You're an evil SOB, murdering in the name of your religion? That's acceptable even if most people don't like it. That's the old "he's firm in his commitment" respect. "He's got strong principles and he sticks to 'em."

Just be certain you're actually sticking to your principles. You can't be a dishonest evil SOB.

If you're such a hypocrite that you cannot hold yourself to your own lofty moral standards, then that outrages people in a way nothing else does. And that's before we even get to the topic of pornography and Islam.

For that, simply contrast:

-- Can't see a woman's hair, or face, or ankles.
-- Can, however, see her get banged in a porno.

Like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker (and more recently John Ensign and Newt Gingrich and especially John Edwards), there's some things your followers just will NOT tolerate.

This news is much more destructive to the (relative) moral certitude of al-Qaeda's jihad against the West than the "martyring" of their leader, and is the strongest psy-ops blow yet struck by the United States against them.

Blogger hiccups

As Grits has noted ...

Google's Blogger service has been offline or unreliable for much of the day, with Blogger-hosted blogs changed to read-only mode, and posts and comments made after 7:37 a.m. PDT on May 11, 2011, removed.

In a post on the Blogger help forum, the product team said that it had rolled back a scheduled maintenance release from last night and that its "engineers are working hard to return Blogger to normal and restore your posts and comments."

Google's reply for a request for comment was, "The team is working on this." The company has posted some short updates to the Blogger Twitter account and Status blog, but hasn't yet explained what's happening, how widespread it is, or what will happen to users' content.

After Marc Zuckerberg's bullshit spats with Google of late, could the Facebook boy wonder be blamed? I hope so. More from ZDNet here, if you care, with implications to the cloud computing strategy Google is hawking. Since I only lost one post -- it was about this poll -- this outage didn't affect me much at all. Still, many of my blog bretheren and sisteren have long ago migrated to Wordpress for a reason.

Update: The missing post has returned.

Take a poll

Like others, I have been asked to bring your attention to this poll being conducted by UT research scholar Tom Johnson, who needs to get his data a little more 'fair and balanced' (I'm guessing some of those right-wing nuts posted it at Free Republic or Townhall or some such). So go and share your opinion, and then forward it to your sphere of influence. It's not quick; it may take you 15 minutes or longer to read the questions carefully and respond with your POV in the most accurate way, but your input is highly valued. They will assure confidentiality by removing your IP address after completing the survey. Below, Johnson's excerpted appeal:

(T)he vast majority of our survey respondents have been conservatives. We are embarrassed we can't convince more liberals to fill out our survey. Could you provide us a link to Brains and Eggs to help provide a liberal balance? We also include questions about how people found out about Osama Bin Laden’s death, what sources they used to get further information and how they shared information about his death.

The survey is online at http://survey.utk.edu/mrIWeb/mrIWeb.dll?I.Project=SOURCES2011 for your perusal.

Our survey has been approved by the Internal Review Board at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. As part of the permission process it is guaranteed that all submissions are anonymous and confidential. Any identifying information (i.e. IP address) will be deleted by the researchers upon receipt.

We all know that my regular right-tilted readers Matt Bramanti and Greg Aydt are going to see this and rush over to take the poll; why don't you do the same?

The Why of Newt

It's almost as if we never lost Trump.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will announce his plans to pursue the presidency in 2012 on Wednesday, according to spokesman Rick Tyler.

Gingrich will make the announcement first on Facebook and Twitter — a bow to the power of social media in politics — and then will sit down with conservative television personality Sean Hannity on Wednesday night for an interview.

Facebook today. Right alongside Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. Coinkydink? I think not.

Another bitter old white guy trying to cling onto his short fame from the nineties is back in the race. FOX News leads all networks in preparing candidates for office and Newt has benefited from his time on FOX News maybe the most, but it won't be enough for him. He's changed religions almost as much as he's changed wives and with the last game show FOX put on that masqueraded as a GOP debate, it's no wonder he's getting in now.

Let the drug testing for all Americans begin.



"I don't need to see your birth certificate; I DO need your urine in this cup." Ah, the party of smaller, less intrusive government. Look for Newt in another 'exclusive' this Sunday on Press the Meat with David Gregory.

Do you think he could take Herman Cain in a debate?

Update: Try to imagine a scenario where John Edwards appears -- in 2020 -- on "Meet the Press" to announce his candidacy for the presidency. Both Edwards and Gingrich had affairs and left their wives for another woman while their spouse was suffering from cancer. How is it that the So-Called Liberal Media can take Gingrich seriously -- and George Will doesn't? 

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance hopes everyone had a good Mother's Day as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff takes a look at the new House districts to see what opportunities exist for Democrats.

Nat-Wu of Three Wise Men has a post about local elections in Irving.

BossKitty at TruthHugger sees a divided America as easy pickings for anyone who is really organized. If the Tea Party succeeds, America becomes a loose federation of independent states, with all social programs and responsibility for regulation falling into individual state hands. Everyone in each state will foot the bill for services previously funded by the federal government. The Tea Party would replace big government with corporate governance ... they don't want funding for anything because their corporate buddies will be in charge. Federal Government in the crosshairs REDUX -- OpEd.

This week the GOP majority in the Texas Senate rammed through a partisan budget. Why did they do that? WCNews at Eye On Williamson tells why in Seed Corn & Koch money.

sccs over at TexasKaos notes with some sadness how few women we have in prominent offices here in Texas. Check it out: Women in Texas Politics.

For years now, South Texas Chisme has been watching the battles between the racist republicans and the greedy corporate republicans over immigration. Symbolic hate that allows workers to be exploited still appears to be the winning solution.

Planned Parenthood of South Texas' annual luncheon in Houston -- attended by PDiddie at Brains and Eggs -- featured pollster Celinda Lake and some revealing statistics regarding the birth of the death of Republican overreach.

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote this week about the forced sonogram bill that will soon be law in Texas. If the state of Texas can compel one type of unwanted medical procedure, what stops Texas from mandating other unwanted medical procedures?

At WhosPlayin, BCooper addresses the frequent and erroneous usage of the term "sanctuary city" to describe Lewisville by radical right-wing city council candidates running on anti-immigration platforms.

Class actions? Not so much any more, according to the United States Supreme Court. Harry Balczak takes a look at yet another decision from the Great Red Justices on the SCOTUS that weakens consumers and strengthens corporations.

Mom's Funnies

“Why can’t you just admit that Barack Obama is one efficient, steely-nerved, multitasking, black ninja gangsta president?”

Voter fraud, sanctuary cities, and unicorns

The Texas House is debating whether or not to require local police to enforce federal immigration law.

Gov. Rick Perry declared the ban on so-called sanctuary cities an emergency matter. He says all Texas law enforcement agencies should tackle the problem of illegal immigration.

Police chiefs across the state oppose the bill because they say it will make their jobs more difficult. Illegal immigrants will not report crimes if they think police will check their immigration status, and police say they already have a full plate without adding immigration enforcement.

The following excerpt is from the March 2, 2011 House State Affairs Committee meeting. The exchange can be found from the committee’s broadcast archives, at the 44:11 point of the video.

(Rene) Oliveira is a Democrat. (Burt) Solomons is one of the top Republicans in the Texas House, and also chairs the House committee on redistricting. Bold emphasis is mine.

Rep. Oliveira: I will be crystal clear with you, too. I am opposed to sanctuary cities, but I still don’t know if one exists. If you find one that exists, I’d love to hear it.

Rep. Solomons: Based on what I’ve read, we don’t have any, so I don’t know what the big deal is.

Rep. Oliveira: Then we don’t need the bill, I guess.

Rep. Solomons: No, I think we need the bill because enough people perceive that this is a problem, and so in context, we probably ought to ensure that we have a uniform consistent policy in the state of Texas about this.

"Sanctuary cities" -- which legions of Texas conservatives wailed and thrashed about during the gubernatorial campaign of 2010 -- don't exist, according to one of the leading Republicans in the Texas House.

I'd like to repeat that so it sinks in: "Sanctuary cities" DO NOT EXIST.

Next "emergency" for the Texas GOP: outlawing unicorns. But only if  "enough people" object to their non-existence, like they do voter "fraud" and "sanctuary cities".

There's also monsters under your bed, conservatives. Shouldn't there be a law against those?

Update: Oops. I was mistaken. Rick Perry's next emergency is corporate immunity from the consumers they injure or damage. What a country (if you're corporation, and not a person). Harvey Kronberg wrote "How To Blow Up a Session" just before 1 a.m. Saturday morning.

Apparently the inmates are running the asylum and they are being bullied by a half million or so hard right Republican primary voters in a state of twenty five million.

Yesterday, with the Senate capitulation, it looked like the budget was all but done and the only possible special session might be over congressional redistricting.

Since then (Rick) Perry has decided “loser pays” is an emergency item the House must take up in its final five days of hearing bills on second reading. Dewhurst has told Associated Press that he is abandoning the 2/3s rule, which he may or may not realize undermines his own power going forward. Meanwhile, the House is tied up in knots over points of order on such silliness as sanctuary cities as the clock keeps ticking.

To date, the Governor has failed to identify a single sanctuary city in Texas.

Here is where we are as the must-pass HB400 melted down tonight on what appears to be a fatal point of order. (HB400 is the school district bill that allows flexibility in hiring, firing and compliance with mandates and is reportedly worth billions in the budget) ...