Secret ‘Tea Party’ Money Slushing in Wisconsin

We were talking about tea.

Ad in letter below shows up on Faux Nooz™

Glad to see that Bill Clinton is in Wisconsin.

Greg Sargent / Washington Post:
Bill Clinton hits a home run in Wisconsin.  Will it be enough?  —  Bill Clinton, in his speech in Wisconsin just now, framed the recall election as a stark choice between unity and division, between cooperation and conflict, and between shared prosperity and right wing winner-take-all economics…

But there are some other old acquaintances who are in Wisconsin this week, flying under the radar, as they have for years now.

So, am I being punked?

I have received the email appended below — sent by an anonymous tipster to myself, a Huffington Post reporter known for “Tea Party” coverage and someone named “neal rauhauser.”

BREAKING NEWS: The GOP is bothered by … BIAS?

She’s fainted! Thank goodness we have a couch designed for it!

Another day, another case of the vapors.

Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen/Politico:
To GOP, blatant bias in vetting  —  On the front page of its Sunday edition, the New York Times gave a big spread to Ann Romney spending lots of time and tons of money on an exotic genre of horse-riding.  The clear implication: The Romneys are silly rich, move in rarefied and exotic circles, and are perhaps a tad shady.

Only days earlier, news surfaced that author David Maraniss had unearthed new details about Barack Obama’s prolific, college-age dope-smoking for his new book, “Barack Obama: The Story” — and the Times made it a brief on A15….

Snake Oil and Snake Bit

whoops!

This post is doubly topical, since the “Mitt the Mormon” meme has inevitably entered the public arena, and this was written long before Romney became the GOP nominee (moving, last night, from “presumptive” to “presumptuous”). Thus, no “anti-Mormon” bias can be read into it, since there’s nothing about Mitt’s religion in this. But, more importantly:

Julia Duin • Washington Post • 29 May, 2012
Serpent-handling pastor profiled earlier in Washington Post dies from rattlesnake bite

Mack Wolford, a flamboyant Pentecostal pastor from West Virginia whose serpent-handling talents were profiled last November in The Washington Post Magazine , hoped the outdoor service he had planned for Sunday at an isolated state park would be a “homecoming like the old days,” full of folks speaking in tongues, handling snakes and having a “great time.” But it was not the sort of homecoming he foresaw.

Instead, Wolford, who turned 44 the previous day, was bitten by a rattlesnake he owned for years. He died late Sunday.

Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford was known all over Appalachia as a daring man of conviction. He believed that the Bible mandates that Christians handle serpents to test their faith in God — and that, if they are bitten, they trust in God alone to heal them.

He and other adherents cited Mark 16:17-18 as the reason for their practice …

Hoo boy.

The problem here is that not ALL questioning of religious precepts is out of bounds. When it gets practitioners killed and unleashes venomous serpents on the public, we DO have not merely a right, but an obligation to examine the Operating Systems by which those would would serve in public office operate.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President

Today, John F. Kennedy would have been 95 years old.

Speaking at the University of Wyoming fieldhouse

I heard him speak at the University of Wyoming when I was in second grade. Here is that speech, from 1963. He was assassinated fifty-eight days later in Dallas, Texas. I had met Senator Gale McGee on a few occasions, by that time. Here is what I heard:

Honoring the Fallen

Graves branded with Rove’s war marketing terms

Here’s how Gallup (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Time-Warner) decided to honor the nation’s war dead:

Frank Newport/Gallup: Veterans Give Romney Big Lead Over Obama  —  Veterans responsible for Romney’s advantage among men overall  —  PRINCETON, NJ — U.S. veterans, about 13% of the adult population and consisting mostly of older men, support Mitt Romney over Barack Obama for president by 58% to 34% …

Seriously: THIS had to be planned in advance, so that polling would be “relevant,” and, of course, meaningless May polls (as any political analyst worth their salt) manage to produce an entire cycle of meaningless “news” and bloviation.

Pictures (but not of Lily)

The title refers to a “Who” song written by Pete Townshend.  It has no bearing on this post hereinafter.

April was the cruellest month, at least in terms of artistic output. Issues resolved, muse back from vacation, here’s the new stuff. (Click pix for full size)

The Ghouls of May

Today, something unprecedented is happening. The Righties have banded together to destroy ONE person (a blogger claims he feels “threatened”). The entire front page of Memeorandum is dominated by this coordinated attack and smear. That OUGHT to scare hell out of everybody else, but I see virtually no commentary whatsoever. This is a dangerous precedent, the bloggy equivalent of Kristallnacht, perhaps. Beware.

Here is Patterico, taking a day off from the ongoing coordinated smear and personal destruction of Elizabeth Warren:

BREITBART TOLD THE STORY JUST BEFORE HE DIED

In the last radio interview Andrew Breitbart ever gave, on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, Breitbart talked about a new ruthless tactic used by thugs against political opponents:

[O]ne of the things they’ve done to people who have worked with me in the past, including an L.A. prosecutor, is to “SWAT.” That means that they’re spoofing phones, pretending to be somebody else’s phone, calling 911, and saying “I killed somebody” and then the person’s home is met with the guns drawn, the SWAT and the helicopters, in a horrifying act. It’s happened twice: once in New Jersey, once in Los Angeles, with an L.A. County . . . prosecutor who [is] associated with me.”

I am that L.A. County prosecutor. And in this post, you’ll hear the hoax call that sent police to my house, pointing loaded guns at me.

THE NIGHT I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED BECAUSE OF MY BLOGGING …

Ah, a coordinated act of personal destruction and blog terrorism claiming the selfsame projected qualities. “I know you are, but what am I?” as the noted pundit P.W. Herman is oft heard to say. And it’s always nice to see the ghoulish hand of Breitbart from beyond the grave …