2012 GOPers A Panicked Herd of Elephants

The Republican field of 2012 presidential hopefuls continues to shift and reshape itself. Mike Huckabee appears to have met his Willie Horton for pardoning a convict while he was governor of Arkansas. The guy recently killed some police officers. Pope Billy O'Reilly has officially granted him clemency with a dispensation from on high: "It wasn't your fault, governor." I will say that at least Huckabee stands by his faith and isn't a mean-spirited, nasty sort like most of them--like the senators who remain silent on the gay-execution law in Uganda. (Rachel Maddow did a whole tihng on the connection between the Family on C Street and anti-AIDS money going to Uganda tonight, but I digress).

Mitt Romney--as some clever person called him on the Huffington Post--Guy Smiley (the mupper game show host on Sesame Street) continues to try to grab our attention with an editorial in USA Today advocating deregulating Wall Street because that worked out so well last time.

Lou Dobbs is apparently getting all soft on them foreigners and Dick Chaney just says forget it. Who's left? Oh yes, Sarah Palin. I came across a special magazine devoted to her at Wal Mart. She just wants low taxes, no government interference, and lots of military protection.

Racial Healing Through Bud Lite? and Other Observations

With the beer summit over and everyone enjoying their teachable moment, questions still remain about what really happened at Prof. Gates' home and why he was arrested in it. Officer Crowley stated there were no apologies from either side during the conversation but the meeting was cordial and constructive. Gates issued a statement thanking God for freedom of speech and for police to protect us. What I want to know is why Gates was arrested once he had established his identity. The charge was disorderly conduct. But what does that mean? Was he causing a danger to anyone or interfering with Crowley's duties? Isn't it a police officer's job to keep a cool head and not arrest someone just for answering back?

It may have been that Gates was arrogant and a little heated, but was he a threat? Crowley may have following procedure, but isn't it at the police officer's discretion to arrest someone and shouldn't he as a professional show restraint?

What a shame that all people falsely arrested can have the President settle the matter with a few brews at the White House.

Other recent observations: Glenn Beck is a lunatic. Surprise! "The president is a racist...but I'm not saying he doesn't like white people."

Lou Dobbs called Rachel Maddow a "teabagging queen." Huh? Does he even know what that means? If he means the political kind of teabagging, she would be the exact opposite since she's a liberal and has a working brain. If he means the sexual kind, it doesn't work because she a lesbian. So Dobbs has exposed himself as utterly clueless.

Birther Da Blues or I Don't Know Nothing 'bout No Birthers, Miss Scarlett!

The Birther movement may be dead before I had a chance to mock it--as so many others already have--but I doubt if it will go quietly. (A post on Huffington states that the news director at CNN told Lou Dobbs to kill the story since the proof was conclusive.) This insane conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama has no US birth cerificate and therefore is not legally our head of state has gained credence because seemingly normal conservatives such as Liz Chaney and some in Congress are saying stuff like, "Well, there are some questions here, there's room for doubt. Why can't you liberal media types listen to the other side?" Because there is conclusive proof of Obama's birth in Hawaii--like the birth certificate authenticated by the state's Republican govenor and contemporaneous birth announcements in the Honolulu papers. The fact that the state has produced only the short form rather than a long version has added fuel to the birthers' furor. What they don't see is that the State Dept. of records went paperless in 2001 and discarded all the longer forms of records including --probably--the original long version of Obama's certificate.

Some of these whack jobs have taken the tremendous leap from no original long form of birth certificate to Obama being really born in Kenya as that whacky lady in Delaware suggested. At least I think that's what she was getting at. She's the one who hijacked Rep. Castle's town hall meeting on health care to quiver in rage about her country being stolen from her by this foreign, socialist, Muslim guy. Maybe she meant that because the original long form had been destroyed by the Hawaii people in order to save paper, Obama's birth did not really happen or that he's really a Kenyan because that's his father's country of origin. What? She went on to scream about her father fighting in WWII and Americans sacrifising at Valley Forge only to have a non-American take over. I thought her head was going to explode. (This video is surely on YouTube. I first saw it on the Rachel Maddow Show. I'm too hungry right now to find you lazy people the link. It's pretty scary.) This woman needs help. I hope she is seeing someone for anger management.

Liz Chaney is the most disingenous of all the mainstream, non-whack job Repubs pushing this birther thing. Larry King asked her if she believed Obama was not the rightful president. She didn't answer but instead said the birthers had a right to express their displeasure with a president who was not protecting us from terrorism and palling around with our enemies and leading us down the socialist path to hell. (She later admited to Politico.com that Obama was the rightful President. Look it up yourselves, people, I'm still hungry.) Of course they have a right to state their opinions if they think Obama's the worst thing since mouldy old sliced bread. Go ahead, say he's the devil incarnate and have all the tea parties you want with the Mad Hatter (Rush), the March Hare (Joe the Plumber) and Alice (Sarah Palin) thrown in--hey, that would be a great political cartoon if I could draw. But don't pretend you really believe all this nonsense and expect us to take you seriously. The fact is these people just cannot stand to think an African-American with a broader world view than Dubya is their President so they cook up crazy schemes to explain that he's really not.

Remember when all the talk was about Obama being a Muslim, then he was too close to Rev. Wright, then Bill Ayers, not he's not really an American. Get over it, right wing flakes, you lost. Your image of America as an all-white country club has forever been changed and you'll just have to live with it.