Accidents will happen? Oops.

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"What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.' I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. . . .

"And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be somebody's fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen."

-- Tea-party asshat and GOP
Senate candidate Rand Paul

A-hole ideologue of the universe

"What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,'" Rand [Paul] said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America." ''I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."

Paul appeared two days after a landslide primary victory over the Republican establishment's candidate, Trey Grayson. He had spent most of the time since his win laboring to explain remarks suggesting businesses be allowed to deny service to blacks without fear of federal interference. On Friday said he wouldn't seek to repeal civil rights legislation.

On the oil spill, Paul, a libertarian and tea party darling, said he had heard nothing from BP indicating it wouldn't pay for the spill that threatens devastating environmental damage along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

"And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be somebody's fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen," Paul said.

The senate candidate referred to a Kentucky coal mine accident that killed two men, saying he had met with the families and he admired the coal miners' courage.

"We had a mining accident that was very tragic. ... Then we come in and it's always someone's fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen," he said.

-- The Associated Press

When nuts vote as a bloc. . . .

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Can we agree that basing an entire political "movement" on the mere fact that you're pissed is a supremely bad idea, and is likely to end with voters doing supremely stupid things?

Exhibit A is what happened Tuesday, when tea-party Republican voters sent Ron Paul's baby libertarian boy to the general election for U.S. Senate. As we all know, Satan is a libertarian, and it was probably him who told Rand Paul (Nut-Ky.) that there's a problem with the Civil Rights Act.

Thus, we have the spectacle of Paul telling Rachel Maddow that he hates racism, that segregation is wrong, but the federal government still has no business telling private businesses they cannot refuse, for example, to serve African-Americans.

THE THING IS, while Bubba's Lunch Counter is indeed a "private business," so is Exxon.

And if Exxon doesn't have to serve you, Exxon doesn't have to hire you. either. Neither does anybody except for -- at least one presumes in the weird, weird world of Rand Paul -- government agencies.


RAND PAUL can wrap himself in the First Amendment all he wants -- just as he can lament the all-powerful state's assault on liberty all he wants -- but despite all his protestations about how much he hates discrimination and racism, he's still in bed with people like those above.

See, the red necks and dark hearts of Poolesville, Md., in 1956 really wouldn't have cared much whether Rand Paul personally was a "nigger lover," just so long as he preserved their right to discriminate against them with impunity. Libertarian Satan would have been so proud.

When the subject is abortion, we know when a politician is trying to have it both ways -- he starts waxing eloquent about how he's personally opposed to abortion, but. . . . This is called, if one is feeling charitable, wanting to feel right without actually having to do right.

On his campaign website, Paul says he's "100% pro life." Or would that be 100-percent pro-life, except when a woman goes to a private abortion clinic, because God forbid the state infringe on the rights of private businesses?

After all, "we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that's one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized. . . ."

The 'Feel-Like-I'm-Fixing-to-Politically-Die Rag'

NOTE: Contains one F-bomb.

And it's one, two, three, what are we enlisting in the Marine Reserves to avoid fighting for?

Don't ask Richard Blumenthal, he don't give a damn, the Connecticut attorney general is too busy lying about serving in Vietnam.

SO SAYS The New York Times:

At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life.

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

The deferments allowed Mr. Blumenthal to complete his studies at Harvard; pursue a graduate fellowship in England; serve as a special assistant to The Washington Post’s publisher, Katharine Graham; and ultimately take a job in the Nixon White House.

In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. He joined a unit in Washington that conducted drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive.

Many politicians have faced questions over their decisions during the Vietnam War, and Mr. Blumenthal, who is seeking the seat being vacated by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, is not alone in staying out of the war.

But what is striking about Mr. Blumenthal’s record is the contrast between the many steps he took that allowed him to avoid Vietnam, and the misleading way he often speaks about that period of his life now, especially when he is speaking at veterans’ ceremonies or other patriotic events.

Sometimes his remarks have been plainly untrue, as in his speech to the group in Norwalk. At other times, he has used more ambiguous language, but the impression left on audiences can be similar.

In an interview on Monday, the attorney general said that he had misspoken about his service during the Norwalk event and might have misspoken on other occasions. “My intention has always been to be completely clear and accurate and straightforward, out of respect to the veterans who served in Vietnam,” he said.

But an examination of his remarks at the ceremonies shows that he does not volunteer that his service never took him overseas. And he describes the hostile reaction directed at veterans coming back from Vietnam, intimating that he was among them.

In 2003, he addressed a rally in Bridgeport, where about 100 military families gathered to express support for American troops overseas. “When we returned, we saw nothing like this,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “Let us do better by this generation of men and women.”

At a 2008 ceremony in front of the Veterans War Memorial Building in Shelton, he praised the audience for paying tribute to troops fighting abroad, noting that America had not always done so.

“I served during the Vietnam era,” he said. “I remember the taunts, the insults, sometimes even physical abuse.”

(snip)

In an interview, Jean Risley, the chairwoman of the Connecticut Vietnam Veterans Memorial Inc., recalled listening to an emotional Mr. Blumenthal offering remarks at the dedication of the memorial. She remembered him describing the indignities that he and other veterans faced when they returned from Vietnam.

“It was a sad moment,” she recalled. “He said, ‘When we came back, we were spat on; we couldn’t wear our uniforms.’ It looked like he was sad to me when he said it.”

Ms. Risley later telephoned the reporter to say she had checked into Mr. Blumenthal’s military background and learned that he had not, in fact, served in Vietnam.

THE TIMES has broken the story. Politico and The Washington Post will spew thousands of words about what this means for the Democrats' prospects in the Senate come November, and not so many about the cultural, social and moral dimensions of the story . . . not to mention how this very public man has gotten away with such a sick charade for decades.

As for me, I just want to know whether running for political office has become a prime indicator of narcissistic personality disorder and various other mental illnesses.

The Lincoln is weird. I do not like the Lincoln.

I likes sweet pertaters. I had me a hankerin' fer sweet pertaters when I gots off the Greyhound bus in this place called the Lincoln in this other place called Nebrasky, but it might be the other way around because this place is funny, because I ain't seen nothin' likes it before.

I never been out of Pumpkin Center before but I tol' Mama that they was a big world out there and I wanted to see it and I was 34 years old -- because Papa said I was bornded when Jerrald Forde was president and that was 1976 and Miss Hilda at the center said that was 34 years ago, and that's how old I am. That is old enough to go see the world, and I had some money saved up from delivering the Hammond Daily Star, so I tol' Mama I was going to see the world and maybe I would go to Omaha where Jerrald Forde was bornded, and that's in Nebrasky, too, you know, or maybe in Lincoln, because I sometimes get things backwards and get confuseded, so I packed my bag and rode my bicycle to Hammond and I got on the Greyhound that the man said would go to Nebrasky where Jerrald Forde was bornded.

THE BUS got to Lincoln today, and people said Lincoln was real close to Nebrasky, and you can walk to Omaha from there to see where Jerrald Forde was bornded. Anyways, I decided I would stay in the Lincoln for a while because it is interesting, and the people are real different here, and I ain't never seen nothing likes that before. They talk funny and everything, and they seem to be a lot more white but people looked at me funny and somebody with long hair and glasses like my grammaw and a little sack on his back -- or maybe it was a she because I get confuseded -- cussed me when I axed them where was all the nigras and did they know where I could get me some sweet pertaters.

Then a passed by this building that was way taller than anything in Pumpkin Center, and it might be as tall as the state capitol in Baton Rouge but I don't know because I ain't never been there, but I asked somebody and they said it was the state capitol and I said no it ain't because this ain't Baton Rouge, and they said yes it was, too, because this was Lincoln and it was the capitol building of Nebrasky. And then I said I thought it lookded likes a big dick, and they got all flustered and walked off, and I axed them what's the matter, ain't they seen a big dick before and they said they was going to call the police and I got scared and runded away. I sure wish I had me some sweet pertaters.

I kept walking but I would hide when I saw a police car because I didn't want to get throwded in jail, because Mama always said that was where they kept the nigras and the justice of the peace always said you didn't want to mess with them people. But I kept gettin' hungrier and hungrier, and I really wished I had me some sweet pertaters, and I forgot where the bus station was exactly but it was gettin' dark and I saw this building called the Chamber of Commercial, that's what the man I axed to read the sign told me it was, and it sounded like a fancy eatin' place Daddy told me about once that he went to in Baton Rouge, so I went in because I figgerd that if anyplace in the Lincoln had sweet pertaters, maybe this would be the place and I still had $3 left not counting my bus ticket and a savings bond I got for delivering the Hammond Daily Star to people in Pumpkin Center, and that ought to be enough to get me a nice mess of sweet pertaters. And maybe a RC Cola, too.

And I was right that it was a fancy eatin' place because they was all these people in there dressed all fancy and they was all eatin' them fancy little sammiches and them little weenies with toothpicks through 'em and they was drinkin fancy wine but they was all watchin' the TV but they wadn't no football game on, it was the news show and they was showin' numbers all across the bottom of the TV and some people was even lookin' at these little computer books on tables, and I axed where the waiter was and where was all the nigras but them people just looked at me funney like they just pooted in their pants a little bit and they walked away from me, but they ought not a did that because I didn't poot in my pants or nothin' and I tried to tell 'em that but then somebody said can't somebody do somethin' about the homeless people comin' in there, and I said I didn't see no nigras, what the hell was they talkin' about?

I think these people in the Lincoln are a little bit odd ducks and I for the life of me don't know how Jerrald Forde come from such a weirdo place because my Daddy said he was the last normal president we ever had except for President Raygun, because Bill Klinton would screw everything that wore a skirt and Bamack Obamer was a damn communiss Muslin. But it's true, these peoples in the Lincoln and I guess in Nebrasky too is all weirdos because they act likes they ain't seen no normal Americans before like we have in Louisiana.

I even seen the mayor of the Lincoln in the Chamber of Commercial restaurant place and he was the weirdest of all them weirdos because I think he was one a them hermorphadites what was dressed just like a damn woman, and his wife was dressed like a g**damn truck driver, that's what daddy woulda said about her back home, that she was dressed like a g**damn truck driver, only she looked like even more a he-she that the mayor did in his dress and long hair and lipstick, only a opposite he-she, maybe it is that the mayor Chris Biteler is a she-he and his wife is a he-she, I don't know, because I think that all the people in the Lincoln is a bunch of damn oddballs.


This is a picshure of Biteler the mayor.

This is a picshure of Mrs. Biteler his he-she wife.

They was happy about a arena passing but I said it didn't look like no ESPN was on the TV, and they all looked at me like I was stupid or somethin'. I never did get my sweet pertaters and I think I messed up coming to this Nebrasky place where all the peoples is freaks and he-shes and she-hes, and I can't understand where they hiding all their nigras, I guess it ain't no wonder a body can't get no damn sweet pertaters here.

I want to go home to Pumpkin Center people are not weirdos there and I ain't never seed no he-shes and she-hes there. I will go back there as soon as I can find the Greyhound station, I do not like Jerrald Forde no more, and I miss home. The Lincoln can go to hell.

Kill the Man, cuz we wuz robbed!

Even in the patently whack, one can find kernels of truth. Welcome to the world of Angus X and the Landless Peasant Party.

As I've said before, if American tea partiers weren't such crypto-racist, whiny tossers, they'd be forming a U.S. branch of this.

After all, can you really totally hate an entertaining Scottish eccentric who blatantly steals from Patrick Henry and makes it his own right under the nose of the British monarchy?

If tea partiers had bollocks

See the bloke behind Gordon Brown at last night's vote count in the British prime minister's Scottish constituency?

Yeah, that one. The one with the upraised fist. Right on. Can you dig it?

That is Deek Jackson of the Landless Peasant Party. And he -- along with the Jesus Christ guy and the Monster Raving Loony Party -- is why British politics is far and away more entertaining than the colonial brand of democratic futility.

BELOW, enjoy a not-work-or-family-friendly advert for the Landless Peasant Party, featuring Mr. Jackson, whom we'll refer to as Angus X. This is what the tea partiers would be on this side of the Atlantic . . . if only they had . . . er, bollocks.


AND HERE is Scotland's No. 1 peasant, Angus X, on the campaign trail.

AYE, 'tis a bonnie thing to have a candidate tell a voter he thinks he's daft. Almost as good as when the BBC's Jeremy Paxman gets a hold of a politician who unwisely tries to "spin" him.

Bad night for Jesus in the UK

David Cameron may be hard pressed to win an outright majority for the Conservatives in the United Kingdom, but he had amazingly little trouble dispatching the King of King and the Lord of Lords in his Witney, Oxfordshire, constituency.

No wonder no one thinks it will go well for the British after the politicking is done and the attempts at governing begin.

Another disappointment was the poor showing of the Monster Raving Loony Party, though I believe it did come in ahead of the Almighty.

ALL IN ALL, you have to admit there is far greater entertainment value in British elections than in ours. Then again, I'm just geeky that way -- as you can see here.

A most pleasant surprise in the BBC coverage of the UK national balloting is the emergence of veteran Beeb presenter David Dimbleby as the most entertaining damn thing on network television since Dan Rather spun his last Election Night simile and mangled his last metaphor.

Dimbleby -- who has a refreshing lack of patience for any kind of television, or political, foolishness -- even came up with a Ratherism fine enough to warm a colonist's heart: "But behind the scenes, you know they're fighting like cats in a sack."

And then there was this question from someone on the BBC team to a Labour minister: "It's 20 past 3 in the morning, couldn't we please just have a straight answer?"

Hear! Hear!

Almost as good as nekkid blackmail pics

You'd almost think the Omaha cop union has nekkid pictures of somebody at city hall.

How else to explain the sweetheart deals the city's police officers get whenever contract time rolls around. Great deals when Omaha's municipal coffers are flush, outstanding deals whenever they're not.

Take the last time the city was flirting with red ink. That time, in exchange for a temporary pay concessions, Omaha cops came away with a contract allowing them to base pension benefits on their highest-paid year.

The result? The specter of "public servants" working every possible hour of overtime right before they retire at age 47 and start pulling down $100,000 a year -- or something in a nearby neighborhood.

This year -- with the city flat broke and the pension fund headed for insolvency -- Mayor Jim Suttle's administration has negotiated an austerity contract with the cops. This, of course, means Omaha taxpayers should buy soap on a rope from now on.

BECAUSE, OF COURSE, officers contributing equally to the pension fund (or retiring on "retirement" levels of compensation) would be a bridge too far for the police union, the Omaha World-Herald reported last week:

Officer Aaron Hanson, union president, said a new contract would be a tough sell with his members, “given the extremely difficult discussion and vote that we already went through.”

If the city and the union reach an impasse on new contract terms, the decision would fall to the Nebraska Commission of Industrial Relations.

Festersen, Stothert and Thompson say they hope to work with Suttle and the union on a new version of the police contract. They say the pension provisions are still too generous.

“I don't think it's enough to say no,” Festersen said. “I hope to work with the mayor and my colleagues on some of these issues, to resolve them expediently.”

Stothert and Thompson said officers need to do more than give up spiking to help the troubled pension system.

The proposed contract requires police to take benefit cuts, including the end of “spiking” overtime and other pay to boost pensions before retirement. Spiking has allowed some officers to retire with pensions that are much higher than their regular pay on the job.

Spiking was never intended to be a benefit, Stothert and Thompson said. Police should instead absorb the cost of spiking and give up more to boost their share of contributions into the pension fund.

Hanson said the idea of using an officer's highest-paid year to determine pension benefits was indeed a benefit.

“That's been a benefit in the pension plan for years,” he said. “Now we are eliminating that concept.”

Under the proposed contract, a career average of pay would be used to determine pensions, a change that some council members say could still allow officers to retire with pensions equal to or more than their salaries.

Thompson said Suttle should have demanded that officers contribute more into the fund.

Instead, he said, the city would be saddled with a nearly 34 percent contribution rate that would be financed in the form of a new garbage collection fee, property tax hike or city sales tax increase. Police would contribute nearly 15 percent.

OMAHANS are not amused. In fact, a KETV Channel 7 news crew came up empty looking for backers of the pact among the general public:

The opponents' message was that they're taxed high enough and paying their fair share. They want the council to send the contract back to the bargaining table.

"It is absolutely obscene that somebody could retire in their mid-40s with a pension that exceeds his base salary and then expect the taxpayers to pay for that," said University of Nebraska-Omaha criminal justice professor Dr. Sam Walker.

Hanson said the new contract increases retirement age to 50, adding that officers face a penalty for retiring before 55 years of age.

"It's not surprising that some people are emotional about this issue," Hanson said. "But at the end of the day, it's not going to be emotion that's going to solve this problem. It's going to be finding the solution that complies with the law and achieves the savings necessary to balance."

Radio host Tom Becka, broadcasting live from City Hall, said police have gotten away with fat pensions in the past but now people are paying attention.

"You're seeing a lot of people with attitudes today, respecting police, respecting the firemen, but not respecting the contracts or the deals that have been made behind closed doors," Becka said.

SAM WALKER, the UNO professor, had better mind his 'P's and "Q's. In Omaha, it can be a dangerous thing to point out the obvious -- like, for example, very few among those paying cops' salaries have such a sweetheart deal as Omaha's finest.

The police union, you see, doesn't take to criticism, and it likes to play dirty.

Look what it did to a couple of now-former city councilmen who got on Aaron Hanson's bad side. Jim Vokal ran for mayor, only to have to cop union blanket the city with mailers portraying him as pedophiles' BFF at city hall.

It's not nekkid pictures, but it's almost as good. The fliers may not have been the reason Vokal didn't make the runoff, but they sure didn't help his cause.

Message delivered.

The bottom line in Omaha politics -- especially at the mayoral level -- is that nobody wants to piss off the police union. The union plays rough.

The union is highly political.

The union holds a grudge.

And the union will accuse an Omaha pol of being "soft on crime" faster than Glenn Beck will start blubbering in front of a TV camera.

VOTERS AIN'T EINSTEIN. For years, that has meant the Omaha electorate has been complicit in its own shakedown.

Hard times, though, can be a clarifying thing. As the fog of police-union mau-mauing begins to burn off under the burden of its own hot air, maybe the voters -- and the pols who answer to them -- are finally beginning to see the light.

Nelson's career: Another senseless death

This is a picture of what must be the most pissed-off man in America -- Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.

Don't let the smile fool you.

If you look closely, the senator kind of looks like he's gritting his teeth. That would be more like it for a man who just realized tonight -- with the election of a Republican to Massachusetts' "Kennedy seat" in the Senate -- that he pissed away his political career over health-care reform, and all he got was . . . well, nothing.

He thought he was getting the best deal he could get for Nebraska on the bill's proposed unfunded Medicaid mandates, but ended up getting roasted for the "Cornhusker kickback."

He thought he was getting the best deal he could for pro-lifers in an extremely hostile Senate, but his best deal turned out to be not good enough. Now all the state's pro-life activists hate his guts.

He thought he was looking out for all his boyz in the insurance industry by drawing a line in the sand over the "public option," but all the lobbyists' horses and all the lobbyists' men probably can't put Nelson's approval rating back together again.

Come on, the man can't even go out for a pizza now.

AND NELSON THOUGHT that, even if everything else went south, he at least could say his was the vote that gave the country health-care reform. Oops.

According to The New York Times, that's probably toast, too:

Scott Brown’s decisive Senate victory in Massachusetts imperiled the fate of the Democratic health care overhaul as House Democrats indicated they would not quickly approve a Senate-passed health care measure and send it to President Obama.

After a meeting of House Democratic leaders Tuesday night even as Mr. Brown’s victory was being declared, top lawmakers said they were weighing their options. But the prospect of passing the health care overhaul by pushing the Senate plan through the House appeared to significantly diminish.

Noting that the election in Massachusetts turned on a variety of different factors such as the economy and local issues, Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland and a top party campaign strategist, acknowledged that resistance to the emerging health legislation also factored in the outcome of the Massachusetts race.

“Health care was also part of the debate and the people of Massachusetts were right to be upset about provisions in the Senate bill,” Mr. Van Hollen said, referring to “special deals” included in the bill to win the votes of Democratic senators and round up 60 votes.

The comment was a clear indication that Democrats were recalibrating their approach on health care, leaving them a diminishing and politically difficult set of choices.

Pushing the Senate plan through the House was favored by some lawmakers and strategists as a way to quickly deliver the president a bill on a signature domestic achievement, since it would require just one final House vote. Remaining problems could be worked out with a subsequent piece of legislation.

But many House Democrats expressed deep reservations about the Senate bill. Those complaints, combined with the message sent by the Massachusetts electorate, apparently were sufficient to leave Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants reluctant by Tuesday night about moving in that direction.

WHO KNOWS? Maybe the Nebraska senator can pull it all back together before the 2012 election. Then again, maybe not.

In that case, Ben Nelson just would have to settle for being a cautionary tale. As in, "Never, never ever dive on a political hand grenade to save a bill you don't really believe in in the first place."

Especially after a long, tortuous process during which you helped to take a pretty decent House bill and turn it into something that everybody could hate.

Are you $#!&%*! me?

This bleepfest of a political ad is said to concern next February's New Orleans mayoral election, but I say why waste something this insane (and illustrative) on just Louisiana's largest city?

After all, there's a whole state out there begging the question "Are you s****ing me?"

OF COURSE, you have the never-ending follies in New Orleans, which have seen Mayor Ray Nagin perfect the concept of absurdity as performance art. But the city's mayoral wannabes are off to a good start, as documented Wednesday by the The Times-Picayune:

Stepping to the plate Wednesday during the first meeting of all seven announced candidates for New Orleans mayor, four participants swung and missed on the very first question.

The faux pas unfolded as each candidate was asked to take a position on the Youth Study Center, the city-run juvenile detention site in Gentilly at which former inmates have alleged in a federal lawsuit they suffered inhumane treatment. The issue fit the youth-centered focus of the forum, which was sponsored by the nonprofit Afterschool Partnership.

First up was businessman Troy Henry, who apparently confused the "study center" reference with the generic notion of providing a safe place for kids to go after class. He said he favored the center but hoped it would be used "in collaboration with all the revised library systems that are also being built."

The next three candidates -- grocery distributor John Georges, insurance executive Leslie Jacobs and state Sen. Ed Murray  -- followed Henry's lead and also whiffed.

Georges said a new mayor would have to be "creative" in rebuilding ruined public buildings to include study centers, adding "it's also a budgetary issue."

Jacobs pointed out that with a $1.6 billion plan in place to rebuild local schools, "we need to look how to locate each of these youth studies centers inside of our school buildings."

And Murray, whose state Senate district includes the detention facility, said the next mayor should "somehow figure out a way to put (youth study centers) in schools and figure out how to just keep the schools open a little longer and also use library systems across the city" to bolster after-school programs.

By the time he took the microphone, nonprofit executive James Perry was ready to unload on what amounted to a hanging curveball.

"I want to be clear, because I think some folks misunderstood this issue," he said. "The Youth Studies Center is a jail. It is a prison, the subject of some very difficult litigation. Children have been imprisoned for long periods of time with no access to quality eduction [sic] at all."

UP IN BATON ROUGE, meanwhile, folks like to look disapprovingly at the Crescent City and its foibles, shaking their heads as they speak gravely about the "slums a Noo Orluns."

Perhaps they should rethink that. The hometown paper, The Advocate, serves up plenty of ironic food for thought:

A sister of Mayor-President Kip Holden pleaded guilty this afternoon to a bribery-related charge in an ongoing federal probe into the local criminal justice system.

Evelyn J. Holden, who worked in the property records section of the East Baton Rouge Parish Clerk of Court Office, admitted in federal court that she conspired with then-senior Baton Rouge City Court prosecutor Flitcher Bell and others to fix criminal and traffic matters in City Court.

Bell, who resigned last month, already has pleaded guilty in the case.

The government alleged that Holden and others “solicited and obtained cash and other things of value from individuals with criminal and traffic matters pending in (Baton Rouge City Court) with the promise that the charges would be dismissed, reduced, or otherwise ‘fixed’.”

In a factual stipulation read in court, prosecutor Corey Amundson said, “On numerous occasions, (Holden) paid a portion of the cash to Bell in exchange for Bell causing the charges to ‘go away’.”

THIS CASE -- this federal case, one must note, being that local authorities don't "do" corruption prosecutions -- has been going on for a while, though. The mayor's sister is hardly the only Baton Rouge official doing the "perp walk" here.

Three, including Holden, were charged just Thursday. That makes seven in all.

Baton Rougeans historically have had a problem taxing themselves enough to fund a First World infrastructure. Obviously, the city finds it can't afford an American judicial system either and is making do with a cheap Latin American import.

And no, I'm not s****ing you. Just ask the FBI.

GOP gets its John Wilkes Booth on

Richard Nixon should have known his "Southern strategy" would come to this.

Four decades ago, cynical men put the "party of Lincoln" in the bigoted hands of the old Confederacy for the sake of electoral success, and now the South has had its revenge against the Great Emancipator yet again. First John Wilkes Booth, Confederate sympathizer from Maryland, and now Audra Sigler Shay, Arkansas-born moonbat from Louisiana.

In 1865, Booth put a bullet in Abraham Lincoln's brain. In 2009, Shay put one in Abraham Lincoln's party.

In the latter case, it was a mercy killing.

Nevertheless, there is something deeply weird about Saturday's election of Shay as chairman of the Young Republicans, and I'm not referring to her age -- 38. It's that someone as openly callous toward the aspirations and humanity of a people once seen as glorified farm animals has risen to a leadership position of a party whose icon took a nation to war against itself to stop slavery's spread and then -- in 1863 -- began to dismantle slavery itself.

THAT WAS the party of Lincoln then.

The party of Lincoln now -- at least as envisioned by a Louisiana paranoiac and race-baiter -- busies itself laughing at rants against "the mad coons," musing about lynching effigies of black presidential candidates and asserting that the president of the United States is some sort of pinko commie who hates the nation he leads.

From an updated Friday blog post by John Avlon on The Daily Beast:

Now, The Daily Beast has obtained more troubling details about her online musings—despite clear attempts by Shay to scrub her social-networking pages clean. Specifically:

* In October 2008, in the wake of news that an effigy of Sarah Palin was being hung outside an affluent Hollywood home as an offensive Halloween decoration, Shay replied, returning to the “LOL” style that she employed after the “coons” comment: “What no ‘Obama in a noose? Come on now, its just freedome [sic] of speech, no one in Atlanta would take that wrong! Lol.”

She picked up the thread again the next morning with a clarification and a new insight. “Apparently I could not spell last night. I am wondering if the guys with the Palin noose would care if we had a bunch of homosexuals in a noose.”

* Posting and endorsing a conspiracy-theory video that attempts to prove that Obama believes he can only “ensure his own salvation” and “fate” if he helps African Americans above whites, complete with Barnum-esque captions (“LISTEN AS HE ATTACKS WHITE PEOPLE”).

* Numerous posts in which Shay says that President Obama is “anti-American” and has “disdain of this country.”

Collectively her comments are products of an increasingly common GOP mind-set I call Obama Derangement Syndrome, the right-wingers’ version of a virulent strain of obsessive presidential hatred that many liberals exhibited during the Bush years. Symptoms include comparing the president to Hitler and ascribing to him every evil and unconstitutional intention imaginable. It is accompanied by the belief that such a partisan fever is patriotic.

AH . . . the trivial pursuits of small minds. Like that of the Young Republican chairwoman from New Orleans.

And locals thought a city councilwoman from the Crescent City, Stacy Head, was off her nut when, in an old E-mail of hers, she ranted "EVERY F****** THING IS ABOUT RACE IN THIS S***HOLE OF A CITY!"

Could be that Councilwoman Head was crazy like Jeremiah. Nobody wanted to hear what he had to say, either.

Be that as it may, it does appear that every f****** thing is about race with this s***head of a Republican official who, by the way, got her new gig with the backing of the Republican governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal. That Jindal, an Indian-American, didn't throw the apparatchik with the diarrheic keyboard under the streetcar says much about the cynicism of the GOP's erstwhile Boy Wonder -- it was Kathleen Blanco's playing to racial fears about the dark-skinned Jindal that likely sank his first bid for governor in 2003.

Then again, if you're from Louisiana, what's the fun in deviance if you can't take it viral? Here's Avlon once again, this time from a Sunday TDB post:

Perhaps less remarkable than the outcome–new Young Republicans Chairman Audra Shay bragged on her Facebook page that she had pledges from the majority of delegate going in–was how the vote played out. Yesterday’s election was closed to members of the press, but The Daily Beast has pulled together an account of the vote, and the runup to it, and the details are shocking. Some highlights:

* Shay’s opponent, Rachel Hoff, was the subject of an ugly sexual innuendo whisper campaign that questioned her reasons for supporting civil unions.

* Shay’s electoral slate, dubbed Team Renewal, battled desperately–some likened it to intimidation–and, ultimately, successfully to block a motion that would have allowed delegates to cast their votes by secret ballot, for fear they’d lose.

* Near-fistfights on the floor, and finally something of a boycott, as some of Hoff’s slate of candidates lower on the ticket chose to remove their names from the ballot after her defeat.

“They just took a vote that may have set the party back 30 years,” said the co-founder of HipHopRepublican.com, Lenny McAllister, speaking from the floor of the Hyatt convention hall. “They just voted for a candidate who has a demonstrated tolerance for racial intolerance. She has joked about lynching and then claimed to be a victim. As a black man, I still don’t see what’s funny about that.”

The Daily Beast’s revelations about the 38-year-old Shay over the past week–most notably, her positive response eight minutes after a friend likened the Obama administration to “a bunch of coons”–hovered over the convention, according to participants. "The convention was chaos because of the controversy," said one delegate. Her younger opponent, Rachel Hoff, became the reform alternative to Shay’s candidacy, but as Hoff got traction, an ugly online whisper campaign against her began. An anonymously built temporary Web site mentions Hoff’s alleged involvement in improperly notarized absentee ballots for South Dakota Senator John Thune, but quickly stoops lower. Hoff’s support for same-sex civil unions seems to be the real scandal, expressed in lil’ Lee Atwater tones:

Unfortunately, it doesn't end there with Hoff: As one of only a very few Young Republicans nationwide in favor of Civil Unions, Rachel Hoff attempted to convince the YRNF in 2007 to adopt a stance IN FAVOR OF CIVIL UNIONS. Although Rachel was not wearing a dress like her female counterparts, but her typical suite (sic), her attempt was met with ridicule and frustration. It was overwhelmingly shot down and left the idea in many delegates minds of: Why would Rachel Hoff support Civil Unions?

Note the all-caps for her stand IN FAVOR OF CIVIL UNIONS, a brave stance entirely consistent with the party’s stated belief in individual freedom (and well short of conservative icon Dick Cheney’s support for gay marriage). And then there’s the weird 1920’s-era anti-feminist dig at her for “not wearing a dress like her female counterparts.” And the last sentence, with all the subtlety of a Tom DeLay sledgehammer. It’s an exceptionally ugly piece of insinuation and propaganda.

WHEN IT COMES to politics, irony picks up where logic and positional consistency leave off. Gee, if only Shay's people could have portrayed Hoff as a lib'rul, dyke Negress, maybe their gal coulda scored a landslide.

Sometime around 1972, Nixon and the bosses of the GOP decided Honest Abe was for suckers, and they laid the party down with Bull Connor's police dogs to turn the "Solid South" from Democrat to Republican. It worked for a while.

But the fleas it picked up in Louisiana are going to be a killer.

The party of waterboarding and wingnuts

It takes a simple screenshot from Townhall.com to sum up what's wrong with the Republicans.

Here you have a story about the battle, culminating this weekend, for leadership of the Young Republican National Federation -- the group that supplies the GOP with much of its "up-and-coming" talent (for lack of a better word).

It describes the race pitting Rachel Hoff, a 26-year-old with a voter-fraud conviction on her rap sheet, against Audra Sigler Shay, a 38-year-old Louisiana GOP moonbat who's a current YR vice-chairman and has been known to cheer on racist commenters on her (now-deleted) Facebook page.

The story by Jillian Bandes, however, doesn't mention anything about voter fraud or racist outburts -- but there is a nice ad next to it for a T-shirt that says "I'd Rather Be Waterboarding."

Fraud, racism and torture -- pretty much everything the Republican Party has come to stand for. And party Whigs, er, bigs wonder why voters have run screaming into the night.

They know nothing. Know-Nothing at all.

ACCORDING TO John Avlon at The Daily Beast, this is what happened July 1:

Shay—a 38-year-old Army veteran, mother, and event planner from Louisiana who has been endorsed by her governor, Bobby Jindal—was holding court on her Facebook page, initiating a political conversation by posting that “WalMart just signed a death warrant” by “endorsing Obama’s healthcare plan.” At 1:52, a friend named listed as Eric S. Piker, but whose personal page says his actual name is Eric Pike, wrote “It’s the government making us commies… can’t even smoke in my damn car… whats next they going to issue toilet paper once a month… tell us how to wipe our asses…”

Two minutes later, Piker posted again saying “Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist… Muslim is on there side [sic]… need to take this country back from all of these mad coons… and illegals.”

Eight minutes after that, at 2:02, Shay weighed in on Piker’s comments: “You tell em Eric! lol.”

Shay now claims that she was only responding to Piker’s first comments, not having noticed the second. The eight-minute gap between the second post and her response strains the credibility of this defense.

It didn’t take long for other posters on Shay’s page to do the math. First, Derek Moss wrote “What’s disheartening is the use of the word 'coon' in 2009. Wow… I’m usually outnumbered about 500-to-1 on Audra’s threads so go ahead, lemme have it, I deserve it.” He apparently expected to be criticized as among this crowd for calling out the racist comment.

Cassie Wallender, a national committeewoman from the Washington Young Republican Federation, then wrote: “Someone please help a naïve Seattle girl out, is Eric’s comment a racist slur?” She answered her own question one minute later: “Okay, why is this okay? I just looked it up. ‘It comes from a term baracoons (a cage) where they used to place Africans who were waiting to be sent to America to be slaves.’ THIS IS NOT OKAY AND IT’S NOT FUNNY.”

AND THEN . . . more fireworks on Shay's Facebook page from the subliterate George Wallace wannabe some nine hours after his "coon" comment -- and 8 1/2 hours after Shay's "You tell 'em" response. Again, from Avlon on TDB:

Shay was silent on this exchange, but soon word started spreading throughout the Young Republican circuit, open to GOP members under 40. Significantly, Shay then “de-friended” Wallender and Conner—in the world of Facebook, that means cutting off relations—after calling her out, but kept Piker as a “friend” (subsequently, it appears their profiles are no longer linked).

“If Audra really did find these remarks to be 'outright disgusting,' then why was her response to immediately de-friend those who made statements against Eric's blatant racism?” Wallender wrote yesterday in a letter to the Young Republican National Committee. “I was blocked for stating that Eric's racist comment was "NOT OKAY. And it is not funny." Please take a moment look at the entire screenshot linked above, and ask yourself: which comment would lead you to de-friend someone, mine, or Eric's?”

In the face of the “coons” comment, Shay’s main concern seems to have been damage control. She deleted the controversial exchanges from her page (but not before screenshots were taken) and tried to tamp down the fire internally. Almost eight hours after Piker’s comments, and Shay’s ensuing “LOL”, Shay posted a Facebook status update stating that neither she—nor her Young Republican political slate—“condones the use of racial slurs on my wall…. It is not right to nor appropriate to talk that way and will not be accepted!”

At 10:31 p.m., a friend named Dale Lawson raised the P.C. defense, writing “the over reaction to it was a little amusing.” Then her friend Piker came roaring back: “I agree with dale… this is still America… freedom of speech and thought is still allowed… for now any ways… and the last time i checked I was a good ole southern boy… and if yur ass is black don’t let the sun set on it in a southern town…”

SHAY, SADLY, is pretty par for the course when it comes to the stripped gears and unbalanced cogs that comprise the Louisiana Republican machine.

In the 1980s, it specialized in trying to get blacks purged from parish voter rolls. Now, it's pretty much reduced to snickering at morons' rants and playing in the tar pits of racial paranoia and political resentment.

Of course, in Louisiana, this kind of thing can draw an approving audience -- note the conspicuous silence about his gal's Facebook faux pas from the head of the state GOP, the Indian-American Jindal. Is he LOL at the "coon" cracks, while trying to make sure the "sun don't set" on black asses in the Southern towns under his jurisdiction?

Obviously, decency and decorum are outmoded concepts in the Louisiana Republican Party. So much so that the party's head -- and governor of Louisiana -- can't be bothered to denounce what was -- at a minimum -- tolerance by one of his cadre of the worse sort of racist rantings.

And not only that, but tolerance by a campaign aide who had stuck her keyboard in her mouth before, as noted by Marc Ambinder on The Atlantic's politics blog:

Subsequent to that, it's discovered that candidate "A" commented beneath a picture of a Halloween festival, "What, no Obama in a noose?" and then wondered whether liberals would get mad if Republicans posted a picture of "homosexuals in a noose," as a counterweight to a picture she'd seen of Sarah Palin in a noose.

Here's why Republicans should take this seriously. A double standard exists in American politics. Republicans have much less of a margin for error when it comes to making racially insensitive remarks. That may be fair, given the party's recent history (not its most recent history, but its Southern strategy history), or it may not be, but it exists, and it's a given, and Republicans who feel they ought not be judged by a different standard might as well move to a different country.

The Young Republican National Federation is little known outside the Republican world, but it is a fertile source of activists for the party; with the absence of young and dynamic party voices, YRNF officials go on to bigger and better things; the organization, while much attenuated (and scandal-plagued) in recent years, is the largest collection of professional young Republicans in the country. The RNC needs younger voices; the YRNF provides them.

WHEN I TOLD my wife about all these goings-on today, she was speechless. Literally.

Did I mention she's a Republican?

It seems to me that when you have Republicans engaging in behavior -- and displaying attitudes -- that leave even other Republicans at a loss for words . . . out of sheer horror . . . you have a party well on the way to having absolutely nothing to add to the national conversation.

Absolutely nothing.

You have a party trying to rebuild itself upon a rotten foundation. You have a party -- or at least a good half of a party -- conflating bigotry, hatred and abject paranoia with "principles."

And if that's how the Republicans decide they're going to roll, they will have earned their soon-to-come place alongside the Whigs and the Know-Nothings in American history's trash heap. Tune in Saturday in Indianapolis to see whether the Young Republicans elect the Beltway election cheat or the racially insensitive Louisiana moonbat.

I'm not a Republican, but I think I can give the YR delegates a bit of advice from once upon a time down on the bayou.

Vote for the crook. It's important.

The Revolution will not be tweeted

Ultimately, the Revolution will not be tweeted.

That's because even though much has been made of the use of Twitter -- and Facebook -- as a means of communication and organization in the ongoing Iranian election uprising, it's Twitter's same ubiquitous and open nature that can allow the Empire to strike back. Or the theocracy of goons, as the case may be.

IN OTHER WORDS, if I'm looking in and the American media is looking in, you know that the Iranian government is looking in, too. And it is, as reported on MSNBC:

Social media’s short messages aren’t as comprehensive as an Associated Press report, and the photos aren’t magazine quality. And while much of the material could not be independently verified, at least it was real-time — for many incidents, it was the only news available.

Tuesday afternoon, messages from people claiming to be witnesses to the demonstrations flowed into Twitter at the rate of hundreds a minute. Posts would flood in, only to slow to a trickle for a minute or two as Iranian censors sought to stanch the flow of information. Then posts would resume in a torrent as users found ways around the censorship.

(snip)

One Twitter user called the communications battle “cyberwarfare at its best,” and there were unconfirmed reports that Iranian security forces were fighting back by creating their own Twitter accounts to spread their version of events.

I'D BE SURPRISED if public relations -- to put it mildly -- were the only use Iranian security forces were making of Twitter and Facebook.

If ordinary Iranians can spread information via tweets, the government likewise can spread misinformation the same way. It can tweet to meet at such and so place for a demonstration, thus leading people into an ambush and making evil use of sites such as Anonymous in Iran to disguise its efforts.

The site says it's screening out tweets from Iranian government IP addresses, but do you really think the Ahmadinejad regime is dumb enough to be using official IP addresses?

If the Iranians want to throw themselves a proper revolution -- or run a proper resistance -- I imagine they're just going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. They'll have to organize in cells, devise a proper code for secret communications via open sources . . . then hit the bloody bastards where they ain't expecting it.

What the hell's so complicated about 'Don Ho'?

A nawth Tejas pol thinks Amurcans is so thowed by Asian names thet voters whut come fum thar oughta change unpronounceateable names like "Ho" and "Chen" to sumthin' Texicans can say, like "Yeller" and "Chop Chop."

It all started in a Texas House committee hearing when a representative from the Organization of Chinese Americans tried to explain to Rep. Betty Brown, R-Bugtussle Terrell, that Asians have problems voting because they often use an anglicized name on driver's licenses and other documents rather than the transliteration of their legal, given name.

AT THAT POINT, according to the Houston Chronicle, Brown told Ramey Ko that his fellow Asians wouldn't have no trouble no mo' if they would just change their names to something easier to pronounce than, say, "Ko."

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” the legislator asked.

Later on -- apparently sensing the hole she'd dug for herself wasn't nearly deep enough -- Brown decided to make herself absolutely clear to the Chinese-American rep.

“Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

THE WOMAN has a point. Imagine how much bigger of a career the late Don Ho could have had if he'd recorded "Tiny Bubbles" under the name "Don Wojciehowicz."

Ditto for Japanese singing star Kyu Sakamoto, of "Sukiyaki" fame. If he'd had the sense God gave Americans and called himself "K. Hackysack," the man could have been bigger than the Beatles.

At least with the Beatles, you had you a Limey name whut Texicans could deal with. Even if them Anglish people spelt it funny 'n' all.

The next police union mailer?

Given the Omaha police union's "dedication" to truth, justice and the American Way, I think this might be the only place left for it to go in the quest to pare down its enemies list through political assassination.

And if Hal Daub happens to get elected amid the fallout . . . hey, it's a wonderful life, right?

YEAH, a wonderful life. In a city where the police union bullies politicians, then unleashes all demagogic hell upon them if the pols don't toe the security forces' political line.

From the Omaha World-Herald's story on the latest Omaha Police Officers' Association smear job:

The union mailed another political flier this week that shows a creepy sex offender on its cover and takes Vokal and Brown to task for voting against an amendment that would have allowed officers to monitor sex offenders.

Vokal and Brown have both criticized the mailers as "dirty politics," saying they are misleading and that they are political payback for other police issues before the Omaha City Council.

Vokal and Brown have said the mailers are political retribution for his attempt to to limit police pensions during contract negotiations last year.

The mailers are expected to land in mailboxes today.

The dispute centers on a 2006 proposal to allow police to do compliance checks on sex offenders, making sure they were properly registered under state law. It was part of a debate on an ordinance to prohibit high-risk sex offenders from living within 500 feet of schools.

The amendment failed on a 5-2 vote, with Vokal and Brown joining the majority. The ordinance passed on a 7-0 vote.