MITCH McCONNELL IN TROUBLE BACK HOME-- AND THERE ISN'T EVEN A DEMOCRAT OPPONENT YET!

All these Inside the Beltway prognosticators are always putting up their predictions about which Senate and House are vulnerable and which are "safe." These folks are so conservative and out of touch that they are virtually always wrong. Normally they trail reality by several months. It drives me nuts when big DC organizations quote them when allocating funds to candidates. A few days ago I was reading one of the lists of safe Senate seats complied by one of these Einsteins. Mitch McConnell was rated as a sure hold for the Republicans. And McConnell may win his seat again in 2008-- but I wouldn't bet on it; and "safe" is far from what that race should be rated by anyone whose been awake in the last year.

Even today's Moonie Times recognizes that McConnell's base of support has all but eroded away as he played the role of Bush's chief obstructionist in the Senate. McConnell has managed to lead filibusters against every piece of progressive legislation passed in the House-- and then call the Congress a "Do Nothing Congress." The man has no shame. But the reasons he has less and less backing in Kentucky are for other things.

He and his wife, Bush's anti-labor Labor Secretary are practically lobbyists for China and are huge boosters for shipping American jobs-- even Kentucky jobs, like in the case of the Fruit of the Loom factory in Campbellsville-- and for the free importation of poisonous and deadly Chinese products into America. McConnell and his wife-of-convenience have become extremely wealthy since entering government service. Like so many Republican members of Congress, public service has been an absolute gold mine. Some, like Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Bob Ney are already in prison. It is likely that they will be followed by the entire Alaska congressional delegation, the former Republican House Majority Leader (Tom DeLay), John Doolittle (R-CA), Rick Renzi (R-AZ), Jerry Lewis (R-CA), and as many as a dozen other egregiously crooks GOP lawmakers.

But McConnell has plenty to worry about before his corruption comes to the fore. Everyone is always asking for proof he was thrown out of the military for fondling a private's privates. Looks like that will be available soon, something that is bound to be uncomfortable for a homophobic hypocrite like McConnell. You can rest assured the Washington Times doesn't bring that up. Instead they talk about the growing unpopularity of Bush's Iraq occupation, which is largely associated, as it should be, with McConnell (see video below). In fact, many Kentucky Republicans are urging Larry Forgy to challenge McConnell in the primary.
Forgy knows that McConnell's weakest point isn't so much that he's in bed with other men or with Bush, but that he's in bed with China.

"The average Kentuckian feels we are giving away this country with both hands-- jobs are going, essentially the primacy of the people who made this country great is going, and Mitch McConnell is lumped with the Washington types on this," Mr. Forgy said.

"And the war in Iraq is less troublesome in Kentucky than in many other places, but it is not popular here, and Republican voters see Mitch's views as too close to the president's on the war," said Mr. Forgy, a Lexington lawyer.

... McConnell registered a 48 percent approval rating last month in a SurveyUSA poll.

Not a single Republican Senator was re-elected last year with a SUSA approval below 50% a year before the election. Jim Talent (R-MO), Mike DeWine (R-OH), Rick Santorum (R-PA), Conrad Burns (R-MT), George Macacawitz Allen (R-VA) and Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) were all defeated, some with approval rating higher than McConnell's. And McConnell has been the ultimate Bush Regime rubber stamp, not just on Iraq and Bush's devastating trade policies, but also on immigration, a very unpopular stand among Republicans in Kentucky.

A county party chairman who supports Mr. McConnell but asked not to be identified said Mr. McConnell's re-election next year is uncertain -- despite the Capitol Hill clout he brings Kentucky -- unless he shows the folks back home he understands their distrust of Washington on enforcing immigration laws.

The chairman said he has tried to tell Mr. McConnell that he needs to assure the party's base that he opposes Mr. Bush's immigration bill.

The Kentucky Republican Party, torn by the immigration issue, was further fractured when critics claimed Mr. McConnell had acted behind the scenes to back an ultimately unsuccessful primary challenge by former Rep. Anne Northup against Gov. Ernie Fletcher earlier this year. The Fletcher faction of the state Republican Party is backing the "draft Forgy" campaign.

Mitch McConnell-- The Cocaine Connecton

Florida Republican Trey Radel, a former Hate Talk Radio host and former U.S. congressman, got kicked out of his House seat for dealing cocaine in Washington. The FBI is covering up their own drug abuse investigation of another GOP coke freak, Ohio's David Joyce. Staffers tell me that there are "over a dozen" prominent Republican congressmen who use cocaine regularly. "Peter Russo didn't have anything on these GOP hypocrites," one told me, referencing a Pennsylvania Democratic congressman who came to an untimely first season end in House of Cards.

No one has ever told me that Mitch McConnell, whose private life I have looked into a lot-- he's a closet case who was kicked out of the Army after a few days for fondling a private's privates-- is a cocaine user. That doesn't mean he isn't; it just means no one has told me that he is. In fact, McConnell plays the role of an anti-drug law-and-order Republicano; he sponsored a bill to increase the mandatory minimum sentencing for marijuana use. But the immense wealth he's accumulated since getting into the Senate-- he's the 11th richest senator with a net worth estimated at $11.97 million-- may have had more to do with drug smuggling than was previously understood.

This week one of America's top investigative journalists, Lee Fang, published the results of his work on McConnell's cocaine connection in The Nation. Turns out there was more of a reason why McConnell is so "pro-coal" than anyone ever suspected. His crooked in-laws, who have made him a multimillionaire, were using coal shipping as a front.

Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ship’s chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about 90 pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.

The seizure of the narcotics shipment in the Caribbean port occurred far away from Kentucky, the state in which Senator Mitch McConnell is now facing a career-defining election. But the Republican Senate minority leader has the closest of ties to the owner of the Ping May, the vessel containing the illicit materials: the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a firm founded and owned by McConnell's in-laws, the Chao family.

Though Foremost has played a pivotal role in McConnell's life, bestowing the senator with most of his personal wealth and generating thousands in donations to his campaign committees, the drug bust went unnoticed in Kentucky, where every bit of McConnell-related news has generated fodder for the campaign trail. That's because, like many international shipping companies, Chao's firm is shrouded from public view, concealing its identity and limiting its legal liability through an array of tax shelters and foreign registrations. Registered through a limited liability company in the Marshall Islands, the Ping May flies the Liberian flag.

McConnell's ties to the Chaos go back to the late 1980s, when James Chao began donating to the senator. In 1993, McConnell married James's daughter, Elaine Chao, a Republican activist and then-former Reagan administration official who would later serve as Secretary of Labor in the George W. Bush cabinet. James Chao emigrated to the United States from Taiwan, and founded the Foremost Maritime Corporation upon settling in New York. The company has grown significantly over the years, from acting as maritime agent during the Vietnam War to controlling a fleet of approximately 16 dry bulk cargo ships in operation today.

Foremost acts as a shipping agent, purchasing vessels made primarily in China and coordinating shipment of commodities. Records reviewed by The Nation reveal that Foremost transports corn, chemicals, and other goods to cities throughout the world. The company has offices in New York and Hong Kong.

Some of the goods shipped by Foremost echo themes of the McConnell campaign. At a Young Professionals Association of Louisville event this month, McConnell stressed his opposition to carbon dioxide limits imposed by the federal government that would impact the domestic coal market. He argued that such efforts would be fruitless given the role of coal in developing countries and the rising coal trade. Foremost ships routinely transport coal from ports in Australia and Colombia, countries with cheap coal, for export to Asia and Europe.

The firm, however, leaves a faint online trace. Foremost's website FMCNY.com is blank. 

Records and court documents obtained by The Nation show that the ownership of the company's vessels-- with names such as Ping May, Soya May, Fu May, and Grain May-- is obscured through a byzantine structure of tax entities. Most of Foremost's vessels are flagged in Liberia, which ensures that crew members of Foremost's ships work under Liberia's maritime labor laws, which critics note allow for intimidation in the workplace and few protections for labor unions. In addition, a Liberian "flag of convenience" allows ship owners to pay lower tonnage taxes than ships that fly the U.S. flag. Maritime companies have increasingly used the Marshall Islands to register their vessels. The jurisdiction boasts of “no taxation, lax regulation, and no requirements for disclosure of many corporate details-- even to the United States government,” according to a report in the World Policy Journal.

The recent seizure of cocaine on a Foremost coal ship came as authorities in Colombia have stepped up anti-drug trafficking enforcement in the region. The Nation spoke to Luis Gonzales, an official with the Colombian Coast Guard in Santa Marta, who told us that the Ping May's crew were questioned as part of an ongoing investigation, but that no charges have yet been filed. His team found the cocaine in forty separate packages.

Contacted by telephone, a representative of Foremost said he is “obviously going to have no comment on this one.”

McConnell has benefitted in many ways from his relationship with his in-laws.

The Republican Senate minority leader’s personal wealth grew seven-fold over the last ten years thanks in large part to a gift given to him and his wife in 2008 from James Chao worth between $5 million and $25 million (Senate ethics forms require personal finance disclosures in ranges of amounts, rather than specific figures). The gift helped the McConnells after their stock portfolio dipped in the wake of the financial crisis that year, and ensured they could pay off more than $100,000 in mortgage debt on their Washington home.

The generous gift made McConnell one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, with a net worth averaging around $22.8 million, according to the Washington Post’s review of his financial disclosures.

Following the gift, McConnell sent a letter of congratulations to an auditorium of Chinese officials in Shanghai who were gathered for an event honoring James Chao’s wife (McConnell’s mother-in-law, Ruth Mulan Chu Chao, who passed away in 2007). The Shanghai Mulan Education Foundation, created in her honor, regularly hosts students from the University of Louisville, where McConnell has a leadership academy bearing his name that sends students on trips to China.

The ties between McConnell and his in-laws have come under scrutiny before. In 2001, they were probed in depth by the New Republic in an article that charged that McConnell led an effort to soften his party’s criticism of China. Through James Chao, who was a classmate of Jiang Zemin, the president of China in the ’90s, McConnell and his wife met with Jiang several times, both in Beijing and in Washington. McConnell subsequently tempered his criticism of Chinese human rights abuses, and broke with hawks like Senator Jesse Helms to support Most Favored Nation trading status with China. As Foremost established closer ties with mainland China, McConnell endorsed the position that the United States should remain “ambiguous” about coming to the defense of Taiwan. In 1999, McConnell and his wife appeared at the University of Louisville with Chinese Ambassador Li Zhaoxing. Li used the opportunity to bash congressional leaders for rebuking China over its repression of the Falun Gong religious sect. “Any responsible government will not foster evil propensities of cults by being over-lenient,” Li reportedly said at the event with McConnell and Chao. Rather than distance himself from the remarks, McConnell reportedly spoke about his “good working relationship” with Li.

Last Friday, McConnell dipped into his personal fortune to lend his own campaign $1.8 million for the final week before the election. Members of the Chao family and employees of Foremost have also given over $90,000 in contributions to McConnell over the years.

Requests for comment to the McConnell team about the Ping May cocaine incident have gone unanswered.

McConnell has positioned himself over the years as a tough on drugs politician. In 1996, McConnell was the sole sponsor of the Enhanced Marijuana Penalties Act, a bill to increase the mandatory minimum sentencing for those caught with certain amounts of marijuana. A press release noted that his bill would make “penalties for selling marijuana comparable to those for selling heroin and cocaine.”

In recent weeks, McConnell has touted his role in calling for more federal money to be used for drug enforcement.

And then there's the stuff like this, which, hopefully, isn't over the heads of voters Tuesday:

MITCH McCONNELL: LIVING IN THE CLOSET HAS MADE HIM INTO A LIFELONG DECEIVER AND A PRACTICED LIAR

A couple of far right loons attacked DWT last week for making public what so many people in Washington already know, that homophobic Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell lives the secret life of a closet queen. I had to laugh since their indignation and outrage wasn't unlike the indignation and outrage directed towards us when we exposed other closeted Republican hypocrites like Mark Foley (R-FL), David Dreier (R-CA) and Jim West (R-WA Hell). And the "proof" McConnell is straight? He's married and has kids. I don't know if these guys are naive or just liars but they need a little lesson about what a closet queen is (especially since so many of the elite in their hate-filled-- and rapidly shrinking-- little party seem to reside in the closet).

Last November a national gay magazine, Out published a story by British author Miranda Carter, whose definitive work on closeted gay spy Anthony Blunt (Anthony Blunt: His Lives) won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Orwell Prize and was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the seven best books of 2002. Her article in Out, "From Russia With Love" is subtitled "An Authority on Britain's Biggest Espionage Scandal Debunks The Myth That Gays Make Good Spies." The sensational story of how 4 upper class Cambridge lads, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt-- 2 gays, a bisexual and a straight man-- were Soviet spies "helped to cement the other definitive stereotype of the British spy-- the apparent diametric opposite of the suave, super-heterosexual James Bond-- as, to quote the phrase much used by the always-delicate British tabloid press, the 'gay traitor.' ...That idea caught on. It was at one point intellectually fashionable to argue that there was some fundamental connection between homosexuality and, if not necessarily treachery, spying..."

What does this have to do with McConnell? He's from Kentucky-- well, he's from D.C.-- not London. Yes, but... "Something about the need for gay men to mask their sexuality that paralleled a spy's [or an outwardly homophobic Republican official's] need to hide his identity; something about gay men's pursuit of sex in dark places that suggested an innate appetite for danger, secrecy, and clandestiness. And what could be better training for leaving a letter in a dead drop than cruising public bathrooms?" Carter quickly debunks the absurdity of the argument that gays are prone to spy or that spies tend to be gays. However, she then hits upon something more applicable to GOP closet cases like McConnell:

But there is something in the idea that there's at least a partial affinity between some of the kinds of secrecy imposed by living a closeted life and the secrecy of spying. One of the most sophisticated proponents of this argument is the literary critic George Steiner, who has suggested that the account of gay sensibility given by Proust-- secret homosexuality as a system of codes, a secret language-- can be extended to the work of writers such as the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. To live as a closeted gay provides training in the practices of secrecy, codes, and interpretation... Another way of putting it would be to say that in a society [or an hysterically anti-gay political party] that criminalizes all homosexual activity, to be gay is already to be a kind of secret agent within one's own life.

A Freedom of Information Act suit will determine whether McConnell-- who has consistently prevented anyone from seeing his military discharge papers, but who claims he got out of the army in 1967-- after just 10 days-- for optic neuritis, was really discharged because he fondled a private's privates. (An alternative version is that Kentucky Senator John Sherman Cooper managed to get him out. Cooper's letter to the commanding officer at Fort Knox, where McConnell was stationed, is housed at the University of Kentucky Library with all of Cooper's official documents.)

That said, in greater detail than I had planned to go into, today's McConnell piece is not about his life in the closet per se but about how a practiced and expert liar, whose every single waking moment is lived in fear of exposure, tries to wiggle out of being caught dead to rights in a big fat lie. And who caught him? Get ready... Fox News!

Think Progress has the video and the story.

This morning on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace aired archived video of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) calling on the Clinton White House to testify before Congress under oath. Here’s what McConnell said on June 16, 1996:

"I think the testimony obviously ought to be sworn testimony. And we ought to go all the way into this and take as much time as we can to reassure the American people that this sort of thing’s not going to happen again in the future."

Challenged with this quote today, McConnell said, "With regard to White House officials, it will be up to the President to decide frankly whether and when and under what circumstances members of his [own White House staff] testify."

Wallace questioned why the same rules McConnell applied to the Clinton White House shouldn't apply to the Bush White House. McConnell offered that he was merely a Senator in 1996 and that the President made the ultimate decision. Wallace said, "But you're still a Senator so the question is: do you call on this President to do the same thing?" McConnell responded, "I'm calling on this President to do what he thinks is appropriate."

The Old Kentucky Homo isn't used to being called on his hypocrisy on national television-- especially not on the Republicans' own propaganda network. He tried filibustering Wallace and Wallace wasn't having it. I wonder if McConnell will get him fired.


UPDATE: WINGNUTS LOVE THAT CRUISIN'

Image soaking in a jacuzzi with Kate O'Beirne or seeing "a Las Vegas-style production" with the likes of Rich Lowry, Ramesh Ponnuru, Michael Steele and Jonah Goldberg. And the ice is free. Your idea of a fun-filled vacation?

GAYS IN THE MILITARY: NO PROBLEM-- CAN MITCH McCONNELL GET A SECOND CHANCE NOW?

some things never change

The far right's evangelical bigotry ministry's biggest fear about gays in the military has come true: there's nothing to it. Which makes these shamen, TV preachers, and self-proclaimed arbiters of their own psychotic vision of moral turpitude irrelevant. And that's bad for business which is, after all, the only thing any of them are all about.

"Since the British military began allowing homosexuals to serve in the armed forces in 2000, none of its fears-- about harassment, discord, blackmail, bullying or an erosion of unit cohesion or military effectiveness-- have come to pass, according to the Ministry of Defense, current and former members of the services and academics specializing in the military. The biggest news about the policy, they say, is that there is no news. It has for the most part become a nonissue."

If only they knew back in the day! Maybe Mitch McConnell could have gone on to be a military hero (rather than Bush's closeted Lord Chief Obstructionist in the U.S. Senate). Instead he was kicked out of the armed forces in 1967-- after a mere 10 days at Fort Knox. Since he refuses to allow public access to his discharge papers, the exact cause of his speedy departure from the military has always been shrouded in secrecy, although "groping a private's privates" has been bandied around for decades.

Of course, the thing is that's exactly what gay Republican closet cases could be expected to do. Maybe the U.S. should allow gays in and look a little more closely about allowing Republicans in. Oh, I forgot, most Republicans are just chicken-hawks and they don't volunteer anyway. Luckily, I guess.


UPDATE: NOT ALL KY REPUBLICANS SEEM THAT HAPPY WITH THE OLD KENTUCKY HOMO

With Miss McConnell's approval ratings in a nose-dive and a tailspin (like below 40% now, according to Frankfort rumors I'm hearing), some of the local wingnut bloggers are getting ready to back Larry Forgy for McConnell's senate seat next year.

Its time for Kentucky Republicans to nominate a US Senate candidate who can win in 2008. Mitch McConnell failed Kentucky's conservatives by undermining Governor Ernie Fletcher and backing former Louisville Rep. Anne Northup. Now his reelection numbers are well under 50 percent, and its time for the Republican Party to nominate a candidate who has a real chance to win in 2008. That candidate is Larry Forgy. Forgy is a Franklin County attorney and President of Health Kentucky, a non-profit that gives free health care to underprivileged patients in the Commonwealth. In 1995, he was the Republican nominee for Governor and received nearly 49 percent of the vote. Forgy can win in 2008. Kentucky Republicans need a nominee who will stand up for our conservative values, our veterans, our schools, and not just Anne Northup and George W. Bush.

McConnell never lifted a finger for Forgy and he let his campaign against Patton die on the vine-- and then 9 years later did the same thing to Forgy's sister when she ran against Rep. Chandler. The Forgy clan has long memories and they're hoping to do Miss McConnell some real damage-- maybe with a little help from the Club For Growth, whose Kentucky chapter has just one reason for existence: helping to rid Kentucky of Communist China's favorite senator.
 

Both The Public And The House Want Marrijuana Legalization— But Moscow Mitch Has Prohibited It

Mitch McConnell, with apprarent support from most Republicans, shut down bipartisan marijuana normalization bills this year. Several pieces of legislation passed the House as part of the must-pass spending bills. The most important of the riders would have allowed legal marijuana businesses to access banking services in the 10 states (11 next year when Illinois’ legalization law goes into effect) where marijuana is fully legal, allowing them to operate as normal businesses. Moscow Mitch found that unacceptable and won’t even permit a Senate debate.

Another crucial law McConnell-- who does nothing without the OK from Trump-- quashed an attempt to prevent federal law enforcement stopping states where marijuana is legal to implement their one laws authorizing distribution, cultivation and even possession.

McConnell, an elderly, sick and untreated closet queen, has decided on his own standard: medical marijuana is OK but recreational is not-- regardless of what voters in the states say. States rights? Not in the purview of MoscowMitch. One of the bills McConnell killed is targeted towards making life better for veterans, a group he has long detested-- ever since he was caught fondling a private’s privates and kicked out of the army.

A bill introduced in the Senate by Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Cory Gardner (R-CO) was silently sidelined by McConnell and a bill by Ed Perlmutter passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support, only to run into the Grim Reaper, as McConnell styles himself.

McConnell may run into problems in his own state when, already dramatically unpopular among Kentucky voters, he seeks reelection in November.

An eastern Kentucky lawmaker has proposed a bill to legalize the recreational use of marijuana and dedicate tax revenues from the industry to the state’s cash-strapped pension systems.

The proposal is a long-shot in the Republican-dominated Kentucky legislature, but Democratic Rep. Cluster Howard of Jackson says that citizens are more receptive to marijuana than they have been in the past.

“I think that a lot of people make this a moral issue. To me, we know as a society that times have changed. People are more apt to accept legalization of the product,” Howard said.

The bill would allow the state to regulate marijuana growers, processors, testers and retailers. It would also decriminalize possession of less than an ounce of marijuana and expunge the criminal records of those with marijuana-related misdemeanors.

Howard predicted the bill could bring in more than $200 million per year in tax revenue. The bill would dedicate revenues to the state’s struggling pension systems, which are short about $37 billion.

So far, 11 states have legalized marijuana use for adults over age 21 and 33 states have legalized it for medical use.

Howard said he doubts the bill will get a hearing in the Republican-dominated legislature, but encouraged citizens to call their lawmakers about the issue.

“I think it depends on how much people actually call their reps and their senators and insist that it be heard. I do think that the chance of the bill being heard is much greater this session than it was last session,” Howard said.

Newly-inaugurated Gov. Andy Beshear has signaled support for medical marijuana but says he doesn’t favor recreational use.

A medical marijuana bill passed out of a Kentucky legislative committee earlier this year, but never received a vote in the house. The bill would have not allowed patients to smoke marijuana.

Adult marijuana use will be legal in Kentucky’s northwestern neighbor Illinois starting on Jan 1, 2020. Officials there predict it will bring in about $375 million a year in tax revenue and create a path to clear 700,000 low-level marijuana convictions.

This is a losing battle for Republicans-- and it is sure to have electoral ramifications far beyond Kentucky. There are a lot of Democrats running for the two Georgia Senate seats. Teresa Tomlinson is there progressive one taking on Trump/McConnell lickspittle David Perdue. She has a far more enlightened approach to marijuana than Perdue. “Marijuana is now legal at some level in 33 states,” she said. “In Georgia, 77% of those polled support medical marijuana and 50% support recreational marijuana. Accordingly, it is time we address at the federal level the decriminalization, legalization, and regulation of marijuana as a medicinal and recreational substance. Our state and federal laws should not be in conflict. We are informed by a post-Prohibition legislative model of states and the federal government working together. For instance, we can provide federal market guidance to prevent abuses, ensure regulated access to the market for all adults and alleviate the impact of harsh and racially disparate criminal sentences for minor marijuana offenses.”

Cristina Ramirez has a very different perspective on this than drug warrior John Cornyn, the incumbent Texas senator, she’s running to replace. “Mitch McConnell,” she told us today, “won’t permit a debate on marijuana issues because he knows that public opinion favors the legalization of marijuana. The only thing that the criminalization of marijuana has done is create the largest prison population in the world, composed disproportionately of black and brown people. We must stand up to the for-profit prison system that makes millions of keeping Americans imprisoned and end the failed Drug War by legalizing marijuana and expunging the records of those who were locked up for low-level drug offenses.”

WHAT DO HIS REPUBLICAN COLLEAGUES THINK OF MISS McCONNELL NOW?

The one on the right would like to be Minority Leader post-Bush

Robert Novak, a GOP propagandist, is a little circumspect about it, but Capitol Hill is seething with discontent over Kentucky's slimy senior senator, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. In this yesterday's Washington Post Novak reports that one of Bush's few allies on immigration-- Trent Lott, but he doesn't name him-- described McConnell's cowardly handling of the immigration bill like this:

"If this were a war, Sen. McConnell should be relieved of command for dereliction of duty."

Anyone familiar with the reason, hidden from the public but widely known in DC, that McConnell was kicked out of the Army after a week-- fondling a private's privates-- knows what a stinging rebuke Lott dealt him. As Novak points out, "Not only did the minority leader end up voting against an immigration bill that he said was better than the 2006 version he supported, he abandoned his post, staying off the floor during final stages of the debate."

McConnell's tenure as Minority Leader has been to bring the Senate and especially Senate Republicans into general disrepute for his grotesquely obstructionist tactics of virtually everything. He then turns around and publicly accuses the Democrats of being unable to get anything done. If he is defeated in 2008, the Senate will be a far better place-- for everyone but his business partners, the Chinese Communists.

It is unlikely that McConnell will be kicked out of his leadership role. The Republicans don't have the stomach for that kind of fight.and, as Novak points out, "McConnell's non-performance on immigration derived from general Republican malaise going well beyond a single issue." The Republicans are depressed, disheartened and aware that their minority status is on the verge of losing even the clout to effectively obstruct. Imperiled Republican senators include Norm Coleman (MN), Susan Collins (ME), John Sununu (NH), Gordon Smith (OR), Pete "Sneaky Pete" Domenici (NM), John Warner (AZ), Chuck Hagel (NE), Lindsey Graham (SC), Miss McConnell himself, and perhaps even Cornyn (TX) and Chamberpot (GA). Some have already been making subtle inquiries about jobs on K Street in 2009.

Mitch McConnell's Kentucky: "A Place Where Ideals Go To Die"

Kentucky is a very red state, more so in national politics than local politics. Trump beat Hillary there 1,202,971 (62.5%) to 628,854 (32.7%), one of Trump's best performances anywhere. He lost only two counties (out of Kentucky's 120)-- Jefferson (Louisville in the 3rd congressional district) and Fayette (Lexington in the 6th congressional district). The state's PVI is a daunting R+15.

In 2018, Amy McGrath won a tough Democratic primary in the 6th district and took on Republican incumbent Andy Barr. The PVI of the 6th is R+9. McGrath did extremely well... for a Democrat. In 2014 Barr won with 60% of the vote and in 2016 with 61%. McGrath held him down to 51%. She took Fayette County in a landslide and won Franklin County as well. But in the 17 smaller more rural counties, Barr wracked up gigantic margins.

This morning, as expected, McGrath announced her candidacy for McConnell's Senate seat. People wondered how she can expect to win statewide when she couldn't win in one of the least Republican areas of the state. McConnell is the answer. The the single most hated senator-- by his state's voters-- of any of the 100 U.S. senators. Kentucky voters say they want him out. But they always say that... and he always wins reelection anyway.

She will play up her status as a Marine fighter pilot, in contrast to his scary military record, which lasted a few weeks when he was discharged for fondling the privates of a private, something that was covered up but has been circulating beyond the Louisville "fruit loop" for decades.

Can Trump protect McConnell's reelection bid?

Yesterday, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that McGrath would make her case by contrasting herself with McConnell. McGrath: "Everything that’s wrong in Washington had to start someplace. How did it come to this, that even within our own families, we can’t talk to each other about the leaders of our country anymore without anger and blame? Well it started with this man, who was elected a lifetime ago and who has, bit by bit, year by year, turned Washington into something we all despise."

With the announcement, McGrath is shrugging off a three-point loss in her first attempt to obtain political office. She becomes the first major Democrat in 2020 to challenge the architect of Kentucky’s modern Republican Party. While Kentucky Sports Radio host Matt Jones and House Minority Floor Leader Rocky Adkins have indicated they are considering running, McGrath’s wide fundraising network-- she raised more than $8.6 million against Barr-- and a courtship by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee make her a formidable opponent in a primary.

The race will be an uphill battle for any Democrat. While McConnell has long had low approval ratings in the state, he’s bulldozed his opponents and beat Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes by 15 points in 2014. His political machine will likely be aided by President Donald Trump’s name at the top of the ticket in 2020. Trump won Kentucky by a larger margin than he won Alabama in 2016.

McGrath, 44, with her made-for-Hollywood military background, attempted to bridge the divide between rural and urban voters in her bid for Congress, only to come up short in the rural counties of the district by wide margins on election day. But after spending a year appearing at events throughout the state, she appears intent on capitalizing on the perpetual stalemate in Washington D.C.-- and the perceived unpopularity of the man who has gleefully become the face of it.

McConnell’s campaign responded on Twitter with a highlight reel of the attack ads Barr’s campaign used against McGrath in 2018. It included clips of her saying she would support single-payer healthcare if the country were starting from scratch, that she supports abortion rights and a clip of her saying she isn’t very different from the national Democratic Party. [Below]


McGrath launched onto the political scene a little less than two years ago with a similar video, that time standing on a runway while she told her story of accomplishing her childhood dream by becoming the first woman in the Marine Corps to fly in an F-18 into combat. The video quickly brought in both national attention and money as the Democrats attempted to win back control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

After upsetting Lexington Mayor Jim Gray in the primary, McGrath was met with a barrage of ads from Barr and the Republicans defining her as “too liberal for Kentucky.” They were aided by a McGrath comment at a fundraiser in Massachusetts where she said “ I am further left, I am more progressive than anybody in the state of Kentucky.”

The clip played on repeat in the buildup to the election and the narrative stuck. While McGrath talked about putting country over party and taunted Barr, her campaign refused to run traditional attack ads.

That appears to have changed in the Senate race. McGrath went straight for McConnell in her announcement video, blaming him for a congress where “dysfunction and chaos are political weapons, where budgets and healthcare and the Supreme Court are held hostage, a place where ideals go to die” as images of McConnell flash across the screen.

McConnell, 78, has not backed away from his reputation as the killer of bills in the Senate. When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-California, called him the “grim reaper” in the Senate, McConnell’s campaign openly embraced the moniker. They even started selling t-shirts.

McConnell was ready and released this video, Welcome to the race, Amy, moments after she released hers. It may look pretty good to us, but in a state utterly brainwashed by Fox, it will probably have the opposite effect than it would in a normal state:

Honeymoon's Over-- Reactionaries On The Attack

Mitch McConnell out of the closet as a full bore Limbaughesque obstructionist

The forces of reaction seem to be on the attack. I just woke up; it's around 5AM. There was no light so I turned on the TV. CNN came on. I watched for 5 minutes and it was 5 minutes of pure and unadulterated attack on Obama. When the picture came on, it was the ugly face of former Louisiana neo-Nazi politician Tony Perkins, now a propagandist for some kooky right-wing religionist front, hammering Obama as an abortionist's best friend and someone who would make the nation's economy worse by not promoting more of the same failed policies that caused it to implode. But no sooner had they swept that still steaming pile off the studio floor than some talking head was on yammering about Obama's illegal alien aunt from Kenya and how abandoning the Republican's beloved torture procedures would make us less safe-- with no less a figure than Mitch McConnell saying how the Army Field Manual wasn't good enough to prevent another 9/11. (No mention that McConnell was only in the Army himself for 10 days, being discharged from that organization under shady circumstances, most likely for grabbing a private's privates at Ft. Knox, hoping for a different sort of discharge.)

I gather that this explosion of reaction on CNN is just part of a right-wing push back against Obama, in the hope of driving his approval ratings down in front of the Stimulus Package debate. All the most devoted enemies of working families, the most faithful corporate shills serving the interests of Big Business are out in full force. NY Times resident imbecile, Irving Kristol's unfortunate son, started out regurgitating the same column he writes everyday-- "Conservative policies have on the whole worked" and "liberalism has become hardly more than a trembling in the presence of illiberalism. ... Who today is called a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?”-- and then swiftly went down the Rush Limbaugh road of hoping that Obama fail... for the good of the country, of course; or that he's actually a secret conservative. Take your pick.

We don’t really know how Barack Obama will govern. What we have so far, mainly, is an Inaugural Address, and it suggests that he may have learned more from Reagan than he has sometimes let on. Obama’s speech was unabashedly pro-American and implicitly conservative.

I forgot to mention, that was Irving's ridiculous son's last ever Times column. Elsewhere in the paper the Times warns about the dangers of nationalizing our beloved banksters, who are gobbling up more and more taxpayer dollars, stealing more and more of it as "bonuses" and goodies for themselves, and somehow forgetting the money is being lent to them to get the credit markets moving again. The Wall Street Journal reports that the banksters are loaning less money (1.4% less) than they were before Bush dumped over $200 billion in TARP funds down their unaccountable maws. The program has been another colossal failure of Republican Party kowtowing to Big Business, a betrayal of both "conservatism" and American working families-- quite a stunt! From the WSJ:

“It has failed,” said Campbell Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University’s business school. “Basically we have dropped a huge amount of money … and we have nothing to show for what we actually wanted to happen.”

...The fact that loan portfolios are shrinking at many of the largest TARP recipients underscores how few strings Treasury Department officials attached to the infusions. That has made it hard to prevent banks from using the money to pay dividends, make acquisitions and fund bonuses for top executives.

The solution is not giving them more; it's nationalizing them... now.

As for the bad faith with which Republican congressional leaders are dealing and Rush Limbaugh's infamous statement that he hopes Obama will fail (watch the video below), I spoke with a number of congressmen yesterday about it. You probably remember Admiral Joe Sestak from 2006 when he was a Blue America-endorsed candidate against a corrupt and reactionary GOP crook, Curt Weldon. Sestak beat him in 2006 (56-44%), increased his margin of victory in November to a solid 60% (far better than any of Pennsylvania's freshmen) and is now being assiduously courted to run against vulnerable Senator Arlen Specter. I couldn't get a word out of anyone on Rep. Sestak's staff about the Senate race, but this is what the congressman had to say about the reactionaries who are "rooting" for President Obama's failure:

“The future of America is about all Americans succeeding. In a time of crisis, no patriotic American wanted President Roosevelt to fail; in the Cuban Missile crisis, no patriotic American wanted President Kennedy to fail; in Afghanistan, no patriot wanted President Bush to fail. How can anyone who cares about America want President Obama to fail? Should our Commander-in-Chief fail, our nation fails. My constituents are struggling to pay their mortgages, keep their businesses afloat, save for their children’s education, and pay for their medical care and insurance as a result of a perversion of our economic system, a wrong that must be righted. It is outrageous to think that anyone would want our nation to fail at this particular time in our history.

"The success of America in our two wars overseas, as well as our economic war at home, is not about one man, and most definitely not about one party, but it is about striving, exhorting all Americans and their leaders to succeed by rising above individual interests and partisanship-- while debating about the right course to take-- wanting the course finally chosen to be a successful one for all of us in terms of peace and prosperity for Americans and the world.”

The Republican Party's loudest spokesman on the same topic:

Mystery GOP Senator Gropes David Brooks At Dinner-- But It Wasn't Lindsey Graham

NY Times right-wing columnist David Brooks won't tell which Republican senator fondled him under a table. Presumably they'll try to blame it on ex-Senator Larry Craig, in order to protect current Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who insiders claim is the actual groper. Many years ago, McConnell was kicked out of the military-- after just a few days-- for inappropriately touching a private's privates. He's been very successful at covering that up for decades although Inside the Beltway it's well known that McConnell is an active closet queen with a make believe marriage similar to Craig's.

Right wing propagandist Ann Althouse, of course, blames the victim. Her readers are betting on Lindsey Graham. Now Graham is the other high profile hypocritical right-wing closet queen and he likes being billed as a "life-long committed bachelor." Although it isn't just Althouse's readers who are speculating that he was the one responsible for Brooks' dirty grab, folks who actually know Graham also know he is a prissy little queen from South Carolina, and in a committed relationship with a young man; he doesn't grope strangers under tables.




UPDATE: Or Maybe It Was Bruno

He may not be in the closet but Bruno is a gay Republican groper too. And he had a really good weekend. In fact the $14.2 million Bruno took in over the weekend was more than Grassley, McCain, McConnell, Lincoln, DeMint, Kyl, and Ben Nelson all got in bribes-- combined-- this quarter from the Medical-Industrial Complex to deep six Obama's health care reform plans.

Life In The Closet-- Miss McConnell Is Very Sick And Very Dangerous Person

I'm lucky I figured out I was gay at a relatively early age-- and I'm lucky to have had a loving, accepting, supportive family. Otherwise I could have wound up like Miss McConnell-- a slimy closet queen cowering in the darkness, creeping around in fear and self-loathing, living a life in denial and a life premised on deception. Closet queens are mentally ill-- all of them... and severely so. It's not a matter of how painful it is to have to crawl around in public toilets looking for "love" (like so many "conservatives" do); it's a matter of how a life in the closet rots the mind and turns the sick person into a demon. Normal people don't become child molesters; closeted conservatives with twisted minds do. Or they marry some harridan like Michele Bachmann and consign themselves to hell on earth as a self-inflicted punishment. When far right-wing homophobic state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-CA) was caught, drunk, with a young male prostitute, he had an epiphany. I respect him for it. He now talks about how a tawdry and fearful existence in the closet ruined his life (watch the video here) and forced him into an existence predicated on hypocrisy and deceit. Ashburn, when asked if he's been a hypocrite, said, flatly, YES! "I was in hiding." Watch that video, he talks about how he was terrified and paralyzed. It's what every Republican says when they eventually get outed, although he's more honest and forthright a lot faster than most.

Former GOP Congressman (and the vitriolic homophobic founder of the American Conservative Union and Young Americans For Freedom) Bob Bauman was also living a double life in a frightening closet of his own making and came to personal and political ruin when he was also caught with an underage boy. His book The Gentleman From Maryland: The Conscience Of A Gay Conservative also makes it crystal clear that living in the closet is a life sentence unworthy of any human being regardless of political persuasion. But we're not here today to talk about Roy Ashburn or Bob Bauman, nor about the current crop of slimy, mentally distrurbed closet cases like Aaron Schock (R-IL), Trent Franks (R-AZ), David Dreier (R-CA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) or even about Patrick McHenry. We're here to talk about the Republican Party's severely psychologically handicapped Senate Minority Leader, Mitch "Miss" McConnell (R-KY).

Historically, gays were kept out of jobs where they could give away secrets because of blackmail. Obviously, an openly gay person who isn't in the closet, can't be blackmailed any sooner than a straight person. Miss McConnell, however, has created an entire life for himself in the closet and really is unfit for any kind of a job that requires even a modicum of trust. Every calculation he makes, everything he does is centered around not being exposed and not seeing his carefully constructed fairy castle in the sky come tumbling back down to earth. Yesterday Greg Sargent covered the newest McConnell scandal-- no not about him fondling a private's privates again... this one is about undermining the United States of America. Sargent has just finished reading a review copy of Michael Grunwald's new book, The New New Deal and he's writing about the GOP's decision to deny Obama all cooperation for the explicit purpose of rendering his presidency a failure-- making it easier for them to mount a political comeback after their disastrous 2008 losses. Forget partisan bickering; this is nothing short of treason to the American people, something you could expect from a deranged and mentally unbalanced freak-- like a McConnell kind of closet case. Straight from the book:

Biden says that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any cooperation on many votes. “I spoke to seven different Republican Senators, who said, `Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ he recalls. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. “The way it was characterized to me was: `For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,’” Biden says.

The vice president says he hasn’t even told Obama who his sources were, but Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania both confirmed they had conversations with Biden along these lines.

Former Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich also goes on record telling Grunwald that Republican marching orders were to oppose everything the Obama administration proposed. “If he was for it, we had to be against it,” Voinovich tells Grunwald. And at another point, characterizing a strategy session Republicans and McConnell had held in early January of 2009, Voinovich said: “He wanted everyone to hold the fort. All he cared about was making sure Obama could never have a clean victory.” This is the kind of garbage Kentucky voters send to the U.S. Senate. Everyone who has ever cast a ballot for him should be ashamed.

HOW THE REPUBLICANS LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND DEVELOP A GAY BOMB

Seymour Stein hired me to help him run Sire Records. Man, was that the gayest label ever! I don't even mean that we had tons of gay and bi artists-- which we did-- or that the two top executives were gay-- which we were-- I mean the music just had this huge gay following. The Ramones-- despite Dee Dee's little experiment on the corner of 53rd and 3rd-- were a straight rock band but the kind of outlaw gays rebelling against the status quo flocked to them. Same with Talking Heads, Aphex Twin and Ministry.


And then there were Erasure, the Pet Shop Boys, Yaz and Yazoo, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell and Marc Almond, The Smiths and Morrissey, The Cure, k.d. lang, Plastic Bertrand, Book of Love, Everything But the Girl, Dangerous Muse, B-Movie. Madonna.


Seymour always talked to me about relatives and associates in high places in the military. I didn't pay much attention. I was too busy trying to figure out how to get videos made for Giovanni and Michael Davidson and other young singers he had met the weekend before and signed to 12" deals. But now it turns out that Seymour's relatives at the Department of Defense were devoting a great deal of energy and resources to Sire marketing plans. I kid you not. I was shocked today to read that the Pentagon was working to develop chemical "weapons" that would turn people gay.


Sure, Seymour's little helpers were smart enough to couch their work as weapons developments, the development, to be precise of the "Gay Bomb... a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting." But don't fall over laughing just yet. It may have been tested out-- and there are incredible and otherwise inexplicable spikes in Erasure sales to prove it. And then there's the little matter of Mitch McConnell, now a closeted U.S. Senator from Kentucky, but once a hapless recruit who may have been a victim of one of these experiments gone awry. How else can you account for McConnell's 10 day stay in the army, precipitously terminated after some unapproved activities with several privates' privates?

And Lindsey Graham? You want to explain that one? And this could never have happened without a gay bomb, right? Senator Mike Gravel's gay/military story is a lot more inspiring.


Apparently Muslim scientists have already developed the gay bomb and have been threatening to deploy it. Who knows-- maybe they already did. Looks like Seymour may have gotten his friends at NASA to come up with one too:




UPDATE: ON THE OTHER HAND, BUSH'S NOMINEE FOR SURGEON GENERAL IS NOT THE BOMB

Bush nominated some superstition-bound wingnut from Kentucky, Jimmy Holsinger, Jr-- a notorious gay hater-- to be Surgeon General. Both John Edwards and Hillary Clinton have called the nomination innapropriate-- a nomination that will be, as most Bush nominations are, divisive and narrowly partisan. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has been leading the opposition against Holsinger because of his homophobic rantings and ravings as a member of a religionist hierarchy. In 1991 he presented a paper for a church committee studying homosexuality. "In it, he argued that anatomy suggests human beings were meant to be heterosexual. Sex between people of the same gender-- especially men-- could lead to many serious health problems, he wrote. 'When the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur,' he concluded. Holsinger also serves as president of the Methodists' judicial council, which adjudicates disputes over church rules and policies. Last year, he voted to support a pastor who blocked a gay man from joining his congregation, the Associated Press reported. In 2004, he voted to expel a lesbian from the clergy, according to the AP."

Anything Worthwhile To Learn From Nixon And Midterm Elections? What About TV Cooking Shows?

Pamela Geller, the new Phyllis Schlafly

"The new approach in violence requires men in Congress who will work for and fight for laws that will put the terrorists where they belong-- not roaming around civil society, but behind bars."

Sound familiar? It's not Bush or Boehner or Miss McConnell. That was Richard Nixon in the run-up to the 1970 midterm congressional elections. He had Agnew crisscrossing the country like a chicken without a head attacking liberal Republicans and all Democrats. Nixon hated all his "enemies" equally, but sometimes it seemed like his Republican enemies got even more attention than Democrats. 

Notice how I referred to Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell as "Miss McConnell"? That's because he's a homophobic closet queen who was tossed out of the Army for fondling a private's privates. Republican Sen. Charles Goodell wasn't a closet case, wasn't homophobic, wasn't tossed out of the Army and wasn't gay at all. But Spiro Agnew equated this New York Republican senator to then-infamous male-to-female transgender former soldier Christine Jorgensen by calling him "the Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party," implying Goodell had surrendered his manhood (by not backing Nixon's aggression and war crimes against Cambodia).

Nixon was certain the Republicans would rock the midterms. He and Agnew weren't just campaigning against liberal Republicans, they were on a jihad against Democrats, and were horrified when their efforts largely backfired. They did manage to unseat Goodell and replace him with one-term extremist James Buckley (who ran on the Conservative Party line, a kind of teabagger ahead of his time; Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan routed him in the next election). But Ralph Smith, the far right Illinois Republican they were so determined to keep in office, lost to Adlai Stevenson III and the far right Republican tap dancer in California, Georgia Murphy, was slaughtered by John Tunney. Nixon's handpicked wingnut candidates in Florida and New Jersey didn't even come close, and George Bush I lost his second consecutive Senate race in Texas.

Democrats targeted by Nixon for smears and dirty tricks won reelection in almost every state where Agnew set foot, from Wisconsin-- where the Nixon candidate only managed 28% against William Proxmire-- to Nevada, Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota and Utah. Mitt Romney's mother Lenore was Nixon's big hope in Michigan, but the voters there were smart enough to send her away with less than a third of the vote and reelect Phil Hart. Hubert Humphrey won back his Senate seat in Minnesota, and so did Ted Kennedy (MA), Edmund Muskie (ME), Mike Mansfield (MT), Joseph Montoya (NM) and Gale McGee (WY), all equated with terrorists by Nixon hatchetmen.

The House, which Nixon never understood and never cared about anyway, went even worse for the GOP. They showed a net loss of a dozen seats, and many of the kooks Agnew backed as challengers to Democratic incumbents-- like John Bircher Phyllis Schlafly-- were badly defeated.

Tonight Digby and I are going to be talking politics on a cooking show, a cooking show that will demonstrate how to prepare a vegan Thanksgiving dinner, a cooking show that will presumably be broadcast after the November elections. The cook will be cooking, and we'll be babbling about the ingredients and the aromas... and electoral politics. I guess I'd be safe in saying something like "Pamela Geller, currently the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has just offended over a billion Muslims with her latest psychotic outburst." But what we don't know yet is if the rejiggering of the campaign finance system by the conservatives on the Supreme Court will have allowed corporate boards to buy congressional power back.

What we don't know yet is whether or not Americans will fall for Boehner's question, "Where are the jobs?" without realizing the trade, tax, economic and fiscal policies pushed by conservatives like himself are responsible for the collapse of the American middle class and the hollowing out of our entire economy. Obstructing Obama every step of the way as he attempted-- even if without the requisite sense of steely, Rooseveltian determination-- only added to the disaster.

Alas, Digby and I won't be joined by our old pal Rick Perlstein, to whose book, Nixonland, I turned for some answers this morning. How did Democrats turn the Nixon-Agnew onslaught around? Reagan and the two Bushes hadn't yet stacked the Supreme Court with a gaggle of dangerous corporate hacks like Alito, Scalia, Roberts and Thomas, and the Fairness Doctrine was still in place. When Nixon bought airtime for a 30-minute speech on all the networks the night before election, the FEC made him split the time with the Democrats (who had to pay their share). Nixon's speech was chopped down from 30 minutes to 15 and made no sense; it looked and sounded horrible. The Democrats recruited a relaxed and sane-sounding Sen. Edmund Muskie (ME) to make their case. It cost the GOP their victory.

Calmly, he said the charge Democrats appeased thugs as "a lie, and the American people know it is a lie-- a lie about the party "which led us out of depression and victory over international barbarism; the party of John Kennedy, who was slain in the service of the country he inspired; the party of Lyndon Johnson, who withstood the fury of countless demonstrations in order to pursue a course he believed in; the party of Robert Kennedy, murdered on the eve of his greatest triumph. How dare they tell us that this party is less devoted or less courageous in maintaining American principles and values than they are themselves?"

His voice rose slightly; some passion was called for.

Occasionally the camera closed in on his chiseled face. The word Lincolnesque appeared in the press reports. His tone turned rueful: "This attack is not simply the overzealousness of a few local leaders. It has been led, inspired, and guided from the highest offices in the land...

"Let me try to bring some clarity to this deliberate confusion," he said. Democrats wanted security against lawlessness, too, but Democrats also thought you deserved economic security. The Republicans? "They oppose your interests" and "really believe that if they can make you afraid enough or angry enough, you can be tricked into voting against yourself. It is all part of the same contempt, and tomorrow you can show them the mistake they have made." The debate wasn't between left or right, but between "the politics of fear and the politics of trust. One says: you are encircled by monstrous dangers. Give us power over your freedom so we may protect you. The other says: the world is a baffling and hazardous place, but it can be shaped to the will of men... In voting for the Democratic Party tomorrow, you cast your vote for trust, not just in leaders of policies, but trusting your fellow citizens, in the ancient tradition of this home for freedom and, most of all, for trust in yourself."

...The New York Times found a typical blue-collar swing voter to quote in Akron, Teamster Mike Mangione. He said the National Guardsmen were "one hundred percent right in Kent State." But his wife was taking a job for the first time because he had lost his overtime and they wanted to keep three kids in Catholic school. He was voting Democratic. "This summer only ten out of forty guys were working because of the slowdown in the construction industry."

Boehner and his cronies keep asking, "Where are the jobs?" Were the Democrats-- even beyond Clinton and Rahm Emanuel-- too complicit in sending them overseas to shove that question, the pivotal one, in my opinion, right up their asses?

GAY REPUBLICANS ARE PUSHING AN AUTHORITARIAN TRANSVESTITE FOR THE PRESIDENCY

I'm not necessarily talking about most Republican homosexuals; they're all in the closet, loathing themselves and slowly, inexorably going insane-- you know, the Larry Craigs (R-ID), Mitch McConnells (R-KY), David Dreiers (R-CA), Mark Foleys (R-FL), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), et. al. I'm talking about the out ones, the ones who may still be self loathing but aren't hiding in closets-- the Log Cabin Repugs who normally-- and for good reason-- are likened to a small handful of demented law and order Jews in early 1930s Germany who favored the Nazi Party.

Friday the tiny handful of kooks and loons who make up the Republican Party's biggest gay group, the Log Cabin Republicans, had their annual convention in Denver. Needless to say, none of the GOP presidential contenders bothered to attend-- or even send staffers... or flowers. They may be the only Republicans who love the fact that Rudy has a lifelong obsession with mimicking and dressing like women.



But some of them are getting a little wary of their Rudy, especially as he offers to throw them under any far right bus that comes tooling down the road in his quest for the psychotic extremist vote (i.e.- the Republican base that thoroughly controls their party's nominating process). Pam over at Pam's House Blend covered it better than the mainstream media. But with all the news about the Log Cabin doing the rah rah thing for Rudy, and one of the Thompsons (not the lobbyist/actor one, the ex-Wisconsin governor one) changing his mind during the Republican presidential debate about whether or not being gay was a fireable offense-- he said it was during the debate and changed his mind the next morning-- and all this talk about Democrats and moderates trying to pass a hate crimes bill that would help protect gay men and women from Republican bigotry and hatred, no one wants to talk about Butters.


Butters? Yes, Butters Stotch-- the Southpark character whose birthday is 9/11. And although Butters has always seemed a little "gay," and has even imitated the hero of 9/11 by dressing up like a woman, it wasn't until this week that his homosexuality was more fully explored on the TV show in a way that Mitch McConnell's ought to be examined before November, 2008. Even though McConnell was reportedly-- he refuses to release the records of why he was discharged-- thrown out of the army after just a few days for fondling the privates of a private, perhaps he could be cured in the same evangelical camp Butters was sent to last week.


UPDATE: AND IT ISN'T ONLY REPUBLICANS WHO WANT TO ENCOURAGE MORE GAYS TO BE MURDERED AND ABUSED

14 Democratic House members voted with the Republicans against H.R. 1592, anti-hate crimes legislation. The bill passed 237-180 (with 25 Republicans joining 212 Democrats in favor). So who were the Democrats who abandoned their party to give the signal that more Matthew Shepherd atrocities are fine with them? Well, there are a few of the regular suspects, of course, the reactionaries who vote against as much progressive legislation across the board as they can, near-Republicans like Dan Boren, Bud Cramer, Gene Taylor, Charlie Melancon, Lincoln Davis... But now some of the freshmen have come out to show their true colors-- including one, Chris Carney (PA)-- who lied to me about being in favor of gay equality. Blue America endorsed him and raised over $8,000 for him last year. The full list of the worst homophobic Democrats in the 110th Congress:

* Marion Berry (AR)
* Dan Boren (OK)
* Chris Carney (PA)
* Bud Cramer (AL)
* Lincoln Davis (TN)
* Joe Donnelly (IN)
* Brad Ellsworth (IN)
* Bart Gordon (TN)
* Mike McIntyre (NC)
* Charlie Melancon (LA)
* Collin Peterson (MN)
* Mike Ross (AR)
* Rahm Emanuel's Heath Shuler (NC)
* Gene Taylor (MS)

Interestingly, several closeted Republicans refused to oppose the bill-- Phil English (PA) and Jim McCrery (LA) actually voting with the Democrats and Denny Hastert abstaining. Dreier, the best known of the Republican closet queens in the House, voted against the Hate Crimes bill. The Republicans who voted yes were a strange combination of Northeast moderates (relative moderates) like Rodney Frelinghuysen, Michael Castle and Chris Shays and Republicans thought to be in serious jeopardy of losing their seats next year due to extreme wingnut voting records, like David Reichert (WA), Deborah Pryce (OH), Jon Porter (NV), Mark Kirk (IL), Mike Ferguson (NJ), etc.

WHO WILL BE THE NEXT REPUBLICAN SENATOR EXPOSED IN A LURID SEX SCANDAL?

Vitter & Wendy (Wendy the wife, not Wendy the hooker)

Larry Craig (R-ID), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) must be crapping their pants. Maybe they should go borrow some diapers from Lieberman or from David Vitter, who liked wearing them while hookers in stiletto heels walked on his ass. Today the FBI released a lurid account of GOP slimeballs in paradise, with Republican briber Brent Wilkes and Republican bribee, former Congressman Randy "The Wrong Stuff" Cunningham (R-CA) bartering tax dollars for prostitutes in Hawaii.

But last night CNN's Larry King-- whose pablum-like show is not exactly where one goes for breaking news-- interviewed Hustler's Larry Flynt. Flynt says he's got the goods on 30 more members of Congress and the Bush Regime. He was particularly worked up over one particular Republican senator. Rumors are rampant that the private whose privates McConnell got kicked out of the Army for diddling has come forward. But there is also speculation that one of the fellas Larry Craig encountered-- closely-- in the Union Station men's room has decided to tell his story. I thought you might enjoy the CNN transcript:

SEN. DAVID VITTER (R), LOUISIANA: I want to again offer my deep, sincere apologies to all those I have let down and disappointed with these actions from my past. I am completely responsible and I'm so very, very sorry. No matter how long ago it was, I know this has hurt the relationship of trust I've enjoyed with so many of you and that I have a lot of work to do to rebuild that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Hypocrisy running rampant on Capitol Hill. Senator Vitter was an outspoken of all things wrong, including prostitution and the like.

His wife also spoke at that press conference.

WENDY VITTER, WIFE OF SEN. DAVID VITTER (R-LA): To forgive is not always the easy choice. But it was and is the right choice for me. David is my best friend.

Last week, some people very sympathetically said to me I wouldn't want to be in your shoes right now. I stand before you to tell you very proudly I am proud to be Wendy Vitter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Joining us now in San Francisco is Jeane Palfrey, the alleged madam of Washington, D.C. In Miami is her attorney, Montgomery Sibley; and her in Los Angeles, Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, who -- you broke this whole thing, right?

LARRY FLYNT, PUBLISHER, HUSTLER MAGAZINE: Yes. A lot of people are confused on that. The madam deserves the credit. My chief investigator was working on the ad he took out in the Post. And he had already had a relationship with her and...

KING: That ad is where you say you'll looking for who will give rewards?

FLYNT: Yes. And he got a phone number from her and he just dialed it up at random.

KING: And up came Vitter.

FLYNT: And up came Vitter.

KING: Jeane, first of all, what do you make of everything that's happened since this broke?

JEANE PALFREY, ALLEGED D.C. MADAM: Since the Vitter revelation broke?

KING: Yes.

PALFREY: Well, it's been quite crazy for me personally. I think it has played out somewhat the way I would have imagined. Senator Vitter was rather quiet for the last week or so. I was rather surprised that he did not resign but-- and came back to D.C. but then again that's his decision to do so.

KING: Mr. Sibley, where is the current legal status of your client?

MONTGOMERY SIBLEY, ATTORNEY FOR ALLEGED D.C. MADAM JEANE PALFREY: Well, greetings again from Miami, Larry. And...

KING: Hi.

SIBLEY: ...basically we're working on the legal issues before the judge which has to be resolved before the matter can go forward to trial. And we're hoping to have it dismissed before it ever gets there.

KING: Mr. Flynt, you recently told CNN that you function at a higher standard than the mainstream media when it comes to exposing scandal. What do you mean?

FLYNT: Well, absolutely. They-- the mainstream media holds me at a higher standard.

KING: They hold you higher?

FLYNT: Yes. If I release information like this on there, I've got to be right. Larry, if I'm wrong, they you step on me like a bug, you know.

KING: How many, Jeane-- true.

Jeane, how many people-- how many well-known people are in your book? PALFREY: Well, Larry, I absolutely have no idea. We estimate statistically there are approximately 20 to 30 to 100 possibilities. And this is based upon a rough estimate of 10,000 clients who used the service over the past 13 or so years from 1993 to 2006.

KING: You were providing the women, right? You weren't one yourself, or am I wrong?

PALFREY: No, that's correct. I ran the business long distance from San Francisco, the Bay Area.

KING: And were most of the clients in Washington?

PALFREY: They were all in Washington and some in Baltimore, the Washington, D.C./Baltimore Corridor and surrounding areas.

KING: Larry, without naming them, because we stand under legal protection here, are others coming?

FLYNT: Oh, yes. We've gotten 10 times more leads from the recent ad in the Post than we got during the Clinton impeachment. Unbelievable. We've got...

KING: Ten times more leads?

FLYNT: Yes.

KING: Does that mean you have phone numbers that you're following up?

FLYNT: Not just phone numbers.

KING: Names?

FLYNT: We've got good leads. We've got over 300 initially. And they're down to about 30 now which is solid.

KING: When are you going to print?

FLYNT: Well, the last thing now is we don't know if we want to let it to drip, drip, drip or we want to go with everything at once.

KING: You mean you might release 30 names at once?

FLYNT: A good possibility.

KING: Will we be-- I don't want to get into names yet. Will we be shocked?

FLYNT: Yes.

KING: Were you shocked?

FLYNT: I was shocked, especially at one senator but...

KING: One senator especially? FLYNT: Yes.

KING: Montgomery, are you shocked?

SIBLEY: Well, I'm shocked about two things, if I might, Larry. Please understand that this is one escort service out of approximately 60 in the Metro D.C. area. And indeed there are more escort services than there are McDonald's in D.C.

Now what's happened here is one service by the coincidence of Jeane being in California had all the calls recorded in the telephone records, and therefore were able to track the customers back through the record numbers. As the other escort services may or may not coming forward, we're going to get a real full picture of what have goes on in the District of Columbia environments.

KING: Do you know the names that Larry Flynt appears to know, Montgomery?

SIBLEY: Larry, I'm the custodian of the telephone records. And I've given probably three-quarters of them to Larry's agents. There's another set of records that are still being scanned and are going to be released in the next couple of days as well. I don't know the names and that's one of the reasons we released the list. Jeane needs the names for her defense because we have to bring these people in to testify as to the legal sexual behavior that was contracted and provided for.

KING: Are you going to give her the names, Larry?

FLYNT: We'll cooperate with Jeane in any way we possibly can. But I want to point something out very important. (inaudible) lied on TV when he apologized to the nation. He...

KING: Lied how?

FLYNT: ... well, he's using his wife and kids as a shield and said what happened. Those rumors out of Louisiana where he had a small brothel of hookers. That was not true. Well, it is true. I'm working with the major Louisiana media down there.

KING: You say he had a brothel of hookers in Louisiana?

FLYNT: There's been about five we've been able to track down so far. So you see what happens when you're a guy like him and you're not completely honest, see, he didn't even have to bring that up. And now that he's brought it up, everybody is all over it, including us.

KING: What bothers you the most is the hypocrisy, right?

(CROSSTALK)

FLYNT: It's the biggest threat to democracy.

KING: Speaking out on morals?

FLYNT: Yes.

KING: Jeane, does that bother you, when people speak out on morality and then act immorally?

PALFREY: It bothers me considerably. And the reason that I ultimately released the phone records, as I did, was this very point, the hypocrisy.

There's another point that needs to be mentioned as well, perhaps even more important, and that is the susceptibility of blackmail of certain clients having used the service over the years. Most people at the moment for obvious reasons are focusing upon the hypocrisy angle. However, intellectualize a bit, think about it a bit, and you'll come to the conclusion that we've come to, that there are possible people who have used the service who have become subjects and targets of blackmail. And many of these people being in D.C. most likely have security clearances.

KING: Thank you all very much. We'll be doing a lot more on this -- Jeane Palfrey, Montgomery Sibley, and Larry Flynt.

H/T: Taegan Goddard


UPDATE: SLAYING THE "PRIVATE MATTER" SHIBBOLETH-- RUDY, VITTER AND REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY

As hard it is for me to imagine agreeing with Ruth Marcus over E.J. Dionne, she's completely right in calling for the political beheading of David Diapers Vitter and Dionne's defense is sexist cant. Marcus describes the Vitter affair accurately: "the sanctimonious family-values politician caught with his hypocrisy showing. Vitter-- the man who called for President Bill Clinton to resign because he was "morally unfit to govern"-- was back at work yesterday, a week after he was linked to a D.C. escort service."

What Marcus gets and her male colleagues overlook is that Vitter isn't just an adulterer-- something between him and the two Wendys (and all his other gals)-- but a criminal.

But Vitter didn't just cop to a "very serious sin." It's a fair inference that he committed a crime. Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the "D.C. Madam" in whose phone records Vitter's number turned up, is facing federal charges of running a prostitution ring.

Do my colleagues bemoaning the loss of privacy think those charges should be dropped? Dionne says we should "grant Vitter our collective absolution and move on." Does he want to do the same for Palfrey? What makes Palfrey "fair game" for prosecutors, in Ignatius's words, but puts her client list off-limits?

At the end of her column, Marcus brings up Rudy Giuliani, who made such a big loud noise, when he was mayor, about busting not just hookers but also their johns. And now that the admitted law breaking john is Giuliani's Southern capo? "It's a personal issue." Rudy Giuliani: another 4 years of George Bush.