Pete Olson Files Bill to Lift Deepwater Drilling Moratorium

Coming to me as no surprise, my congressman, Pete Olson has filed a bill in the House to lift the 6-month Deepwater drilling moratorium that has been ordered by President Obama.

Really, nothing new here.

Co-sponsored by a covey of “oil-soaked” congressmen, the moratorium would reauthorize drilling in the Deepwater of the Gulf OCS. A move that is completely irresponsible given what we now know about industry readiness to handle undersea blowouts in the deepwater.

Their reasoning? The moratorium will cost the industry untold losses in terms of revenue, jobs and rigs.

Drilling rigs will move to overseas locations if they are not allowed to drill in the Deepwater.

And America depends on offshore Gulf of Mexico oil for 30% of its energy.

Oh, but wait. The moratorium is only for wells drilled in the Deepwater. You know, the parts of the Gulf where oil companies still don't have a handle on well control should a blow out occur.

So really, lumping all Gulf offshore oil drilling into the President’s Deepwater moratorium is just a little disingenuous isn’t it? After all, Deepwater exploration and production does not account for 30% of America’s total dependency on oil, or anything close to it. But Olson and his cadre of “oil-soaked” congressmen are willing to fight for those dozens of jobs that will be lost due to the moratorium.

But guess what. Knowing the oil industry they are going to use this event to their economic benefit and lose some employees anyway. That’s what working 22 years in oil and gas exploration has taught me.

But OK, I’ll concede that there is one way we can turn this abomination of a bill filed by Olson into a silk purse. A win-win for everyone. Want to open up the Deepwater for exploration and development before studies have been completed as to what happened in the Deepwater Horizon blowout and what remedial procedures need to be adopted?

Fine.

All Olson needs to do is insert an amendment in his bill to require, require any Deepwater well be drilled simultaneously with a relief well. No catch-up well drilling. The two wells spud on the same day and keep up with each other. Then if one blows out the other kills the first.

That should ease concerns, shouldn’t it? And as a matter of fact, that should be a boon to the offshore rig count and to employment of drillers and service company workers, casing and equipment suppliers. It’s a new day for the oil and gas industry.

Oh, but then you ask what would happen if both wells blow out simultaneously?

Well, by that time BP should have it all figured out.

Right?

“He’s Kind of Our Nightmare”

Rarely do you see a GOP operative so candid as Royal Masset, former political director of the Republican Party of Texas, was in answering questions on the likelihood that Governor Rick Perry will actually agree to debate former Mayor Bill White this fall.

In a word, Bill White is the GOP’s “nightmare.”

Said Masset (as quoted in The Chron):

“There’s a real probability we won’t have a debate. I just don’t think Rick sees it in his interest to have one. All he’d be doing is giving name ID to an opponent.”

Rare it is, he admitted, that Texas voters are able to see their candidates for executive offices respond to a debate moderator’s questions in a spontaneous manner. Said Masset:

“He (White) is plain-spoken. He is very specific-oriented. He’s kind of our nightmare ... Why give him a chance?”

A political and intellectual lightweight, Perry sees no reason to subject himself to a certain verbal pummeling aired on TV statewide. White is to Perry as George Foreman is to Oscar De La Hoya.

Like British Petroleum drilling in the Deepwater, Rick Perry is not well-equipped to deal with the blowout that would happen when he takes the stage alongside Bill White.

The Chron article goes on to quote UT political science Prof. Bruce Bachmann that the media will pressure Perry into a debate:

“It’ll be increasingly difficult for Perry to say ‘no’ unless the race is so far apart that nobody’s interested in it.”

I’m not so sure about that.

Debating Bill White is a lose-lose scenario for Rick Perry. Only in the unlikely case that Perry gets behind White in the polls would it serve Perry to debate White because it is only then that media criticism of Perry for not debating White will find purchase among the electorate in Texas.

Because in Texas, nobody likes a spineless, yellow-bellied, white-livered fraidy-cat.

Touchdown Jesus Gets a Touchdown

In 2004 the Solid Rock Church in Monroe, Ohio built a 62 foot tall statue of Jesus pictured at right. A rendering of Jesus from the waist up with his arms upraised over his head, reaching toward heaven, it would seem.

Either that or signaling the scoring of a touchdown in a football game.

Earning the statue its nickname of “Touchdown Jesus.”

Well, it seems the Solid Rock Church should have taken its name more seriously and constructed this statue out of solid rock. Heck, even gunnite sprayed over chicken wire would have worked better than what they settled on.

They settled on constructing a steel frame that resembles a football goal posts that supported an outer shell of plastic foam and fiberglass.

Not a good idea.

 
Had they opened up their science books they would have seen that the posts that they used to support Jesus’ upraised hands were identical to a Benjamin Franklin invention that he called a lightning rod. Lightning rods are used to control where lightning is going to hit. They are erected in places that people want lightning to hit.

Preferably if lightning is going to touch down on Earth anyway, it hits the rods, and not buildings or people.

So the lightning that would have hit Earth somewhere in Monroe, Ohio last night, was drawn to Jesus’ upraised arms.

Upraised arms that supported highly flammable fiberglass and plastics.

I show the before and after photographs here for illustrative purposes. To see the video, go to this USA Today web page and scroll down for a 2 minute 33 second video of the flaming inferno that was the statue last night. Accompanying the video is a rather strange audio track. How it ties in with the subject I’ll leave to you to figure out.

My theory: What goes around comes around.

And in HD 102: Stefani “Barack Hussein Obama” Carter

HD 102, which is a slightly Democratic–dominated district in and around Dallas, Texas is currently being held by State Rep Carol Kent. It is being contested by Republican candidate Stefani Carter.

Carter has a political figure that she likes to emulate. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.

And if you don’t believe me take a look at the video that The Lone Star Project put together comparing pieces of Carter’s stump speech along with pause and cadence of her speech mentor Barack Obama.

Yes, I agree with Carter. Obama is a great speaker. That keynote speech he gave at the 2004 Democratic National Convention was a memorable one.

Too memorable.

Carter obviously is banking on the fact that her audience will little note, nor long remember what Obama said there.

Oops.

Oh well, a good line is a good line.

A New Look But the Same Old Blog

And blogger.

I finally decided to change the blog’s look after nearly 4 years with the same odd-looking background. I live 100 kilometers from the nearest seashore so it never made any sense for me to use it anyway. It featured a lighthouse and beachrock. Black is good.

Black is green.

I think it’s easier to read the blog with this color scheme.

Nothing is easy with Blogger though so I expect that there will be some tweaking going on from time to time.

If anyone has any suggestions leave it in the comments (if they still work).

Afghanistan has Minerals - - - Cha-Ching

What Americans know about Afghanistan can probably be written in wicked small handwriting on a grain of rice. They know that we are fighting a war there. They know that the Taliban is a very bad terrorist organization.

And they know, perhaps, that Afghanistan is a country that has some very difficult topography in which to fight a war.

Afghanistan, you see, has lots and lots of high craggy mountain ranges. Because Afghanistan, you see, is right in the middle of a stupendous tectonic plate collision that has uplifted and continued to uplift ancient rock formations. And associated with these uplifts are subsurface injections of all sorts of igneous material. So you see, the geologic scenario is perfect for mineralization in ancient metamorphic rocks, mineralization in injected igneous rocks, and mineralization at their boundaries.

Afghanistan, you see, has lots and lots of minerals.

This has been known since Alexander the Great, by the way.

But apparently the big news of the day is that Afghanistan has a trillion dollars worth of minerals.

Iron, copper, gold, lithium, beryllium. The list goes on and on.

Their mineral richness was first surveyed by Russians who liked what they saw so much that they decided to invade the country. Upon re-invading the country the US has added to the database and the inventory of their mineral wealth keeps going up. Here is an Excel spreadsheet of a 2002 inventory. The minerals are listed by chemical symbol (Au = gold, Cu = copper, Pb = lead, Zn = zinc, Li = lithium, Sn = Tin, etc.)

And yes, the Afghan government knows what they have. Take a look at the Afghanistan Geological Society Website. They even have brochures that hawk their wares. I have excepted text from their Aynak Copper prospect brochure.

Aynak is a world-class copper deposit which, but for the upheavals of the last 25 years in Afghanistan, would surely have become an operating mine. Its main features are:
● world-class stratabound ore deposit (240 Mt at 2.3 % Cu)
● simple sulphide mineralogy
● amenable to open-pitting
● easy access and close to Kabul with its infrastructure
● few environmental problems
● new minerals law (2005)
● government favourable to mining development

The challenge is for an enterprising company to develop this exciting deposit.

So the question is this: we’ve known about the mineral wealth of Afghanistan since 2002 at the latest. Eight years ago. Afghanistan has remained virtually undeveloped in mining for these minerals despite the fact that all of this stuff has been known for decades, mainly because of war and civil war.

The question is: why now?

Is this a new Pentagon brochure on “Why We Fight?”

Bring Back Reconstruction in Texas

Well that’s it. It’s now clear that the Texas GOP, curiously the Party of Lincoln, remains “unreconstructed.” That is, the same issues that caused Texas to join in the War of Northern Aggression on the side of The South continue to haunt the majority party in Texas.

Evidence? What about the recently passed 2010 Republican Party of Texas platform and its anti-immigrant frenzy? A frenzy that even goes so far as to challenge the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution as well as the 14th Amendment.

Not only does the language of the anti-immigrant platform take the same form as the recently passed Arizona “Papers, Please” Senate Bill 1070, it goes further.

Much further.

Not only do they demand that it be a Class A misdemeanor for an alien to be “intentionally or knowingly” in Texas without proper immigration documentation, they demand that the state “also seek an end to birthright citizenship – the policy that someone born in the U.S. is a citizen even if his parents are not – and asked the federal government to clarify laws on the issue.”

That is, if your parents are not citizens of the US when you are born within US borders, you are not automatically a US citizen. They want the federal government to “clarify” that point of settled law. A law, actually a part of the US Constitution, that was passed to prevent former slave states from not granting former slaves citizenship.

The pertinent words from the 14th Amendment:

“Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Seems pretty clear to me.

The Supremacy Clause pretty much nails it. States cannot pass laws that contravene the US Constitution.

Bringing me back around full circle. Texas Republicans, as evidenced by the platform that they just passed, are unrepentant members of the Confederacy. Obviously then, there is a question here over whether some people in Texas are actually citizens of the United States of America.

The thing is, I think there is a cloud over which group we are talking about here: the sons and daughters of illegal aliens born in Texas or Confederate Rebels.

Neocons Use BP Blowout to Attack Unions (Too)

In the face of an ecological disaster whose effects will be felt for years, the neoconservatives, beginning with those at Fox News, have fired two volleys, one in further criticism that Obama isn’t doing enough to clean up BP’s mess, and another to help anti-unionists and cost American jobs.

It came out a few days ago with Fox News reporting that some foreign owned companies are not being allowed to help in the clean-up because it violates the Jones Act. The Jones Act, better known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, was implemented to support the US merchant marine industry by allowing only US flag ships to move cargo between US ports. It largely protects jobs and ensures that America not also outsource its ability to conduct interstate commerce in its own waters. It maintains the US shipbuilding industry as well.

But the upshot is that while America can (and has) accepted help from foreign governments to clean this mess up, the material must be transferred to a US flag ship.

Neocons hate unions and believe that if a foreign government subsidizes its industries to enable them to undercut the prices that American business charges, then so be it. So now they are screaming at Obama to waive the Jones Act so foreign companies can help out. What has been the official White House response? I transcribed it from a video found on the White House blog featuring Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.

Question from a FaceBook user:

“And what about offers from foreign governments? Why [hasn’t] the Jones Act been waived to allow foreign offers with technology to help collect oil.”

Browner answers:

“There are a number of foreign offers that we have taken advantage of and the Coast Guard analyzes them and I think we have – help me here – we have taken from Belgium, The Netherlands, Canada there is one other country. If it becomes necessary to waive the Jones act then that will be taken care of but at this point it hasn’t been necessary.”

In other words they have no problem waiving the Jones Act but it’s not necessary right now.

But that’s not what you are going to hear from the Obama haters and the anti-unionists. It’s all about why Obama is against cleaning up BP’s mess.

Because that makes perfect sense.

Pity the Poor Republicans

Wayne Slater has a great piece up at the Dallas Morning News that summarizes how beset and besieged the Republicans are in, ironically, the Red State of Texas. Woe are they. Their values, their God, their money, their right to open carry firearms and shoot illegal border crossers, all of these things are being targeted by atheistic socialistic liberal Democrats.

“‘The fox is in the henhouse,’ said congressional candidate Stephen Broden of DeSoto of the myriad enemies bearing down on conservatives. ‘And they have one thing in mind — fried chicken salad.’”

Say what?

The fox is in the henhouse?

This coming from the party that controls every statewide office? This coming from the party that controls the political offices in the grand majority of county governments in the state?

Is that just too rich?

And what about what my junior senator, John Cornyn said to an auditorium filled with Republican activists?

“‘Liberals want to turn our state over to the trial lawyers,’ Cornyn said. ‘Liberals want to turn our state over to union bosses. Liberals want to turn our state over to intellectuals’”

One must surmise from this that Cornyn equates liberals with intellectuals. You know, smart people. Do I dare interpret that by extension conservatives should be equated with dim bulbs?

How does this all tie together? It’s easy. These poor Republicans are either delusional or they are very politically sharp, and I think it is the latter. What better way to unify a party or a nation than to identify a common enemy that they must fight off, and what better way to do it than to insinuate that this enemy is in charge and ruining the state when in fact they themselves are in charge (and are ruining the state).

It’s a brilliant tactic. To be both in charge of everything and blameless for anything because it’s the Democrats who are ruining things.

Another of My 644 Reasons Not to Be a Republican

The Texas Tribune, which is a great online resource by the way, has a live blog going on their site. A live blog of the Republican Party of Texas’ state convention in Dallas. I was scrolling on through it a few minutes ago when I came across this photograph taken of a Republican delegate all decked out in his party’s regalia.

Giving me yet another reason not to be a Republican.

I think that’s supposed to be an elephant – complete with its outstretched trunk – on his head.

At least I think that’s supposed to be a trunk.

It just looks uncircumcised, that’s all.

Al Greene: Is It Voter Fraud?

Well it’s worse than I thought. Having an ignorant electorate nominate a virtual unknown to face Jim DeMint in the general election this fall is actually a better and more hopeful scenario than what appears to be unfolding in the post-election investigation that is now ongoing in South Carolina.

Vic Rawl, the populist Democrat who actually did have a chance to take out Jim DeMint in the fall – DeMint was going to be painted as a DC Insider – has three teams looking at the ballots that resulted in Al Greene’s nomination.

And they are finding some suspicious trends.

Trends like Al Greene actually receiving more votes in 25 precincts than there are registered voters in those precincts.

Shades of Texas.

Trends like Al Greene doing significantly better than Rawl on paperless/electronic ballots cast on Election Day, and Rawl doing significantly better than Greene on paper ballots cast by absentee voters.

Significantly better. From Politico:

“In Lancaster County, Rawl won absentee ballots over Greene by a staggering 84 percent to 16 percent margin; but Greene easily led among Election Day voters by 17 percentage points.

Trends like cast votes disappearing off the face of the earth:

“In only two of 88 precincts, do the number of votes Greene got plus the number we got equal the total cast.”

Trends like an unknown candidate receiving huge majorities:

“Greene also racked up a 75 percent or greater margin in one-seventh of all precincts statewide, a mark that Ludwig notes is even difficult for an incumbent to reach.”

Trouble is, what do you do about it? There were so many documented cases of voter fraud in the 2000 and 2004 elections, but nothing came of it. Nothing came of it except that, with electronic voting machines more common than ever, it is easier than ever to commit vote fraud at the polls.

Republican operatives were highly successful in 2000 and 2004 and got their people elected with ease in two close elections. In 2008 there were just too many votes out there and the fraud that I still believe was attempted was unsuccessful in getting the desired result. What I fear, though, is that this primary in South Carolina was just a trial balloon to see just what they can get away with – how extensive can voter fraud be before someone cries foul?

A Small Spill on a Very Large Table

If I weren’t so angry at what British Petroleum was doing to the Gulf of Mexico this video would be funnier.

Pins for Pinheads

Seen at a vendor’s table at the Republican Party of Texas’ state convention this weekend is a pin pictured at right.

That is, all of this stuff about a post-racial America is just a little bit too premature, isn’t it? Especially here in The South where, while no former slaves or slave owners are alive anymore, apparently there are still fond memories of slavery being shared at the dinner table.

Still and all, it’s nice that bigoted Americans are still willing to show their true colors so we know who they are and what monochromatic political party with which they affiliate themselves.

Voter Responsibility in Vetting Our Democratic Candidates

South Carolina has now joined an ever-widening circle of political districts whose voters are helplessly incompetent, because like TX-22, my congressional precinct, South Carolina Democratic voters have nominated a political disaster as their candidate of choice to run against Jim DeMint this fall.

Alvin M. Greene, unemployed, former soldier in the US Army, filed to run for the nomination for US Senate, paid a $10,400 filing fee, and apparently did nothing since that (no campaign, no website, no state convention).

His opponent on the ballot was Vic Rawl, a former judge who had a campaign website, campaign fundraisers and spent real money to get his name out there.

By the numbers, this is how it went down.

Alvin Greene 100,362 votes (58.96%) Vic Rawl 69,853 (41.04%). Voter turnout for the South Carolina primary: 24.08%. Total Democratic ballots cast: 197,380. Total votes cast in the Senate race 170,215. That is, 27,165 voters (or 13% of those who voted) did not vote in the senate race.

South Carolina has 46 counties, 42 of the 46 went for Greene.

Everybody asks this one question: how did he do it? Keith Olbermann asked it in a live TV interview last night and the answer came back: “good old fashioned campaigning” and “word of mouth.”

I beg to differ.

In March TX-22 Democrats nominated a batguano crazy LaRouche Democrat to run against Pete Olson this fall. In my county by county analysis of the vote the only clear trend that I could see was that where Kesha Rogers won, she was 1st listed on the ballot. Where Doug Blatt (the only real Democrat in the race) won, he was listed 1st.

And where do you think Alvin Greene’s name appeared on the South Carolina ballot?

Three guesses.

This took me almost 3 hours to discover today. Trying to log on to the South Carolina elections commission website to get that information was a trial that brought my PC’s web browser crashing down 3 times as apparently everyone in the country also wanted information from that website.

But when I finally verified that Greene’s name was indeed 1st it confirmed my suspicion that voters in South Carolina, rather than pass when they don’t know the candidates (like that 13% did) pick the first name on the list.

And it’s not just me, this guy thinks that’s what happened, too.

And there are those among us who think that Kesha Rogers won because black voters wanted to vote for a black person. The same theory has been offered about Greene with the postulation that white people spell the name Green and black people, spell it Greene.

I find all of that just a little offensive.

And the guy that I cited above doesn’t think that happened in the case of the Greene/Rawl race and has a graphic to back it up (cut and pasted below). That line of best fit shows a slight positive trend but I would want to see the correlation coefficient of that line because when you ignore the line all you see is a shotgun pattern.
Race was not a factor.

So I have a modest proposal. These days ballots are more and more electronic and less and less paper. In times past randomizing a candidate’s ballot position to solve this really awful voting trend was prohibitively expensive in terms of printing costs. Now, however, what is stopping us from randomizing a name on what is effectively a computer screen?

Because if just any guy with the filing fee can get on a ballot and win an election, just based on their ballot position, that makes it not an election. It isn’t even a beauty pageant.

It’s just insanity.

Carly Fiorina’s Open Mouth

How does Barbara Boxer do it? This woman is just about the luckiest politician I have ever seen or heard of.

In her 1992 contest to succeed Alan Cranston as US Senator from California, Boxer faced political commentator Bruce Herschensohn. Herschensohn, being a local TV personality that I remember well, had strong name recognition. Boxer had bupkis. But just days before the election Herschensohn was seen entertaining himself at a Hollywood strip club. A political operative embarrassed Herschenson with a sign at one of his campaign rallies advertising the strip club shouting the words “Should the voters of California elect someone who frequently travels the strip joints of Hollywood?”

Herschenson lost to Boxer by 4.9%.

In 1998 Boxer was again behind in the polls, even against a relatively unknown appointed State Treasurer, Matt Fong. But then Fong went on the offense and criticized Boxer for not condemning Bill Clinton in the Lewinsky affair, as she had in the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill story. An offense that blew up in his face when Clinton got a major Middle East peace accord signed and Boxer was caught on tape embracing President Clinton for this bold action.

Fong lost to Boxer by just under 10%.

In 2004 California Republicans nominated former Secretary of State Bill Jones to run against Boxer. The choice couldn’t have been worse. Jones was a lackluster campaigner who lost national Republican support over his endorsement of John McCain in 2000 over Dubya. Jones ran out of money before the election was over and had GOTV phone bankers calling for him, phone bankers who neglected to say the words “Bill” and “Jones.” That the state turned against the Bush/Cheney ticket in 2004 in a big way probably also had something to do with it.

Jones lost to Boxer by 17%.

So now, the day after Carly Fiorina won the Republican Party’s nomination to run against Boxer this year, Fiorina spends 4 minutes in conversation with an off camera TV journalist trash talking not only the new GOP nominee for California Governor, Meg Whitman, but also Fox’s Sean Hannity. Then, out of the blue she brings up Barbara Boxer’s “so yesterday” hairstyle.

Here are the 4 golden minutes.



See that at realization moment right at the end of the clip? It took her 4 minutes to realize that the mike was on and her words were being recorded.

I have often wondered how “Catty” Fiorina was run out of her top executive position at Hewlett-Packard. No one is talking. But maybe now we have an idea of just the kind of petty person she is.

Guaranteed that long after this event leaves the memory of most Americans the clip will be played and replayed in California up to Election Day.

Getting an Angle on Sharron

Well it looks like Harry Reid’s ship came in last night as Teabagger Sharron Angle took out Susan Lowden in the Nevada Republican primary. Amazing how one (or was it seven) little comment on bartering with your physician using chickens can really cook your goose.

Reid still has a battle ahead of him because for some reasons he is a hated man in his home state. But the past remarks of his opponent should help convince even moderate Republicans that they really have no alternative to Reid. Not this year.

Susan Lowden had her “chicken moment” and that brought her down. Sharron Angle’s past remarks makes Susan Lowden’s lame brain idea to solve the high cost of healthcare seem absolutely reasonable.

Sharron Angle has criticized the notion of adding fluoride into drinking water

Sharron Angle is in favor of outlawing the consumption of alcohol.

Sharron Angle, who is very anti-choice, once proposed a bill requiring doctors to inform potential abortion patients of the link between getting an abortion and getting breast cancer (a complete fabrication meant to discourage women from getting abortions.)

Sharron Angle doesn’t think it is right for parents to hold jobs simultaneously.

Sharron Angle entertains such third rail notions as dumping Social Security

Sharron Angle thinks the Department of Education should be eliminated.

But unlike Rand Paul, the Kentucky crackpot who went on record as being against civil rights after his primary win, it looks like Sharron Angle isn’t going to be opening up in front of the national media. It is going to be things like what she has said in the past as well as who goes on record to support her because of her views that will more likely of use to the Reid campaign.

But one can only hope that Katie Couric will be able to get an interview with Angle in the next 5 months and get her to speak (what passes for) her mind.

The June Primary is Here

To political wonks like me, today, June 8th, with primary elections in 11 states, it’s like Christmas. And just like on Christmas you get to find out what is inside that really bulky present under the tree, today you get to find out who actually wins and who loses.

I am keenly interested in the US Senatorial races for obvious reasons. The Democrats’ loss of the 60-votes in the Senate has put the skids on the Democratic agenda. Pundits promise that there will be further losses, although not a loss of the majority in the Senate. Still, what I want to know is how bad will it be. The primaries give you a preview of the possibles.

Everyone is watching Arkansas whose centrist senator Blanche Lincoln is going through a run off against Lt. Governor Bill Halter. I think that one is a toss-up. The trouble is middle of the road type voters generally don’t vote in primaries, letting those of us who are a little more politically aware decide who runs in the fall. Particularly when we are talking a run off election. Light turnout favors Halter, I think.

Chances are though, if nothing changes Arkansas will send a Republican to DC.

We’re also interested in the Nevada race. The Republican leader to face Harry Reid in the fall, Sue Lowden, has been paying a heavy price for her “chickens for healthcare” remark. Especially when she wouldn’t backpedal on it. So taking the lead in the polling for the Republican primary is the Teabagger Sharron Angle. Angle is being backed by the Club For Growth, the same group that got a Democrat elected to congress in New York by backing yet another Teabagger.

Her Libertarianesque views are extreme in nature, and are sure to give moderates and Independents pause in November.

Look for Angle to win tonight and then snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory come the fall. America is a crazy place to be sometimes, but the Teabagger Movement is still not mainstream - - - yet.

In California former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and former congressman Tom Campbell have been slashing at each other with abandon. There is a third Republican in the race but he’s another Teabagger. California is not a TEA Party state - - - yet. The winner will face an amazing US Senator named Barbara Boxer.

Neither have a chance. But do this. If you want to send a little help Senator Boxer’s way go here and order yourself a pair of “Boxer Shorts.” What a clever idea.

Getting Green to the Greens

I like the Green Party. I really do. In many respects the Green Party is more aligned with my lefty politics than the Democratic Party is. But the Greens will never take hold in America like it has in other places around the world. America is way too conservative for the Greens.

So when I read in the Dallas Morning News that the Greens were going to have a candidate for Texas governor on the ballot this November, my eyes clicked back into their orbits. Because unlike the Libertarians which siphon off votes for both Democratic and Republican candidates alike, no self-respecting Republican would ever vote for a Green candidate.

When Greens run, Republicans win, especially in a close race.

Just ask John Kerry.

Then we come to find that the Greens got some help from an unlikely part of the universe. A Republican consultant, Arizonan Tim Mooney got a bunch of money fronted by a Missouri-based corporation called Take Initiative America which in turn paid another out-of-state company called Free and Equal, Inc. to collect a reported 92,000 signatures (at $4 a signature) in Texas in order for the Green Party to qualify to get on the ballot this fall.

Well not so unlikely it seems. This is just a scheme to split Democratic votes and allow Rick Perry another term in office.

The Greens and the Republicans couldn’t be more pleased.

TDP Chairman Boyd Richie couldn’t be more displeased. Said he:

“The Green Party has become just another arm of the Republican Party, and Gov. Rick Perry's re-election effort and the Republican/Green Party coordination is a blow to the integrity of our election system.”

But as it turns out, the whole process, which smells to high heaven, may just be illegal. This according to Buck Wood, an Austin lawyer:

“‘That corporation cannot make contributions to political parties in Texas. And to do so is a felony,’ he said. ‘It is also a felony for a political party to accept a corporate contribution.’”

And yes, that may well be, but we should all keep in mind who is in charge here. When you are in charge, you get to make a lot of the rules. And when you are in charge, you get to bend a few. Especially if by doing so you get to stay in charge.

Rush Limbaugh: Guns, God and Gays?

I don’t know which of these two is harder to believe: that Sir Elton John would lower himself to sing at the wedding reception of longtime homophobe Rush Limbaugh, or that Rush Limbaugh would elevate himself enough to ask the openly gay rock star to sing at the celebration of his 4th marriage.

Both notions absolutely floor me.

That notwithstanding the fact that Sir Elton got a cool million dollars for his one night performance.

But I haven’t paid much attention so I don’t know how Sir Elton is fixed financially. Maybe like his fellow semi-famous compatriot, Fergie, who solicits cash to arrange a sit down with her ex, he’s got a few too many bills to pay.

Or it could be that since he has announced to the world last February in Parade magazine that Jesus Christ was a “super-intelligent gay man” there has been some backlash. For example because of that statement Elton John’s previously scheduled performance in Egypt – a country with wall-to-wall homophobes in it – was cancelled.

So maybe he has to entertain the notion of not being too picky about who wants to hire him to perform. But then what about Rush Limbaugh? Isn’t he also offended at having his Savior being labeled gay?

Or any of the other guests at the reception? Karl Rove? Clarence Thomas? Sean Hannity? Rudy Giuliani?

Well, OK, on that last one, granted Rudy Giuliani is famously known for his cross-dressing so who knows what he thinks about gays.

Or maybe, just maybe, the whole neoconservative thing is just a clever way for Rush Limbaugh to make lots and lots of money because God knows there is no money in being a principled opponent of the right wing.

I can personally attest to that.

BP: Boundless Prescience

I got this over the internet tubes this morning.

Ever say something one day and regret having said it the next?

Thanks Suzy.