UPDATED: The New York Times’ star columnist Frank Rich agrees with me that Sarah Palin may get the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. With 80-percent of Republicans holding a favorable opinion, it seems Sarah Palin is the only person who can stop Sarah Palin. This may lead to a cake-walk for Obama….or maybe it won’t as the economy continues to have problems.

If we get President Palin, how many of you will move to Canada, Europe, South America or elsewhere? I’m opting for Vancouver….

Updated: GOPander’s Chris Baron writes on Twitter

ChrisRBarron

Pissing off the angry gay left is so easy and fun. I honestly never get tired of it.

It is good to know that Barron’s GOProud has lined up so many GOP votes on Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell and other LGBT issues that he has the idle time to needle the left.

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The pathetic toadies at GOProud had this to say about Willow Palin using the word ‘faggot’ in a series of loutish FaceBook messages:

“Willow Palin is a 16 year old girl who, like all 16 year olds is going to make mistakes and say things she shouldn’t have. This, however, has nothing to do with Willow Palin or the substance of what she said on Facebook. The ‘slur’ used here is one you could hear on the streets of West Hollywood or Chelsea every day of the week.  Apparently, it’s only a ‘homophobic slur’ when it comes from the daughter of a conservative female leader.  Make no mistake; this is all about destroying Sarah Palin by any means necessary.

“The angry misogynistic left and their accomplices in the main stream media have been unable to take down Governor Palin – no matter how hard they have tried. Unable to take her down directly they now have decided to try to hurt her by attacking the most important thing in her life – her family. “Any person, gay or straight, who participates in this cheap political smear should be ashamed of themselves”

What GOProud is doing is called “projection”. The simple fact is that they are the ones defending the Palin family based on partisanship. The idea is that if you suck up to your enemies, they will admire you and decide you are worthy of support. Unfortunately, this strategy has been a dismal failure. Gay Republicans have been kissing ass on bended knee as long as I have been in the movement and the party has veered further right. Indeed WAY FAR RIGHT.

So apparently this happened during the premiere of Sarah Palin’s silly new television program, and it is approximately what I would expect from the spawn of the Snowbilly Grifter.  Pay particular attention to the replies from “Willow” and “Bristol”:

Their moron mother wants the nuclear codes. Always remember.

Also, I am far less concerned with the fact that Willow’s using the word “faggot” [did you expect civilized behavior from them?], but more alarmed that the Palin brood has no concept of the difference between “your” and “you’re.”  Note that I didn’t say I’m surprised, just alarmed.  But, you know, a real respect for grammar and syntax tends to be learned at home, so…

America’s Best Christian, Betty Bowers, had this to say on Facebook, about this little “incident”:

One of Sarah Palin’s charming daughters responded to criticism on Facebook by writing “Your [sic] such a faggot.” Her small-town hillbilly bigotry is only outshone by her familial illiteracy. I’d be tempted to blame the pernicious influence of her vulgar, attention-whore mother, but from all accounts Sarah spends almost no time with her children.

Kindly refresh my memory: Is Bristol the Palin child who broke into homes to have underage-booze/sex parties, the Palin child who did drugs and had a child out of wedlock or the Palin child who snorted cocaine, stole a bottle of vodka from a liquor store and cut the brakes on scores of school buses? Forgive me; it is so difficult to keep the neglected offspring of trashy, narcissistic, adulterous liars straight.

[Screenshots via Gawker]

(Weekly Column)

In a few hours elections will be held that will likely degrade our quality of life and send the country hurtling on a downward spiral. If polling projections are correct, America will bring the very people who trashed the economy back into power to finish their unfinished business of destroying our way of life. I fear that this election will mark the end of America as a superpower, and a magical land where people dream of coming to find fortune, fame, and freedom.

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected on a platform of hope and change, but his grandiose words were quickly devoured by the thankless task of cleaning up the mess left by George W. Bush. The president’s efforts to put Humpty Dumpty back together were hobbled by his naïve idea that Republicans wanted to fix America’s problems. Each time he scooped dirt to dig us out of ditch, the GOP would take a steam shovel and pour mud into the abyss.

The strategy from Day 1 was to sabotage Obama at the expense of the country. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell summed up his post-midterm election strategy by saying, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

And what about our country?

The Democrats, as is often the case, were timid and failed to fight back against this onslaught of intransigence. They consistently forgot to define their priorities and frame the issues, thus making it easier for the Republicans to falsely define them as radical socialists who were on a wild spending spree. In a serious miscalculation, Obama, tried to appease his sworn enemies at the expense of his base. The result on Election Day is fired-up Republicans and demoralized Democrats.

But, the larger and more serious question is this: How could American voters be so stupid as to return the culprits of our economic meltdown to power while we are still battling to get out of a recession?

The Republicans have worked to turn America into a Third World nation with huge disparities between rich and poor. They have gutted common-sense regulations, turning Wall Street into a casino and food safety into a crapshoot.

Only a country comprised of voters who are poorly educated, easily distracted, emotionally immature, temperamentally volcanic, economically illiterate, and spiritually superstitious, would go down this road to oblivion.

This election (if the pollsters are correct) is the product of a failed educational system, combined with a entertainment obsessed mass media that rarely asks tough questions, nor follows up with due diligence. Their cowardice and incompetence allowed George W. Bush to lead us into a war with Iraq over nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. And, now we may be led into a government of mass destruction that will turn this one-time nation of dreams into a shell of its former greatness.

Our infrastructure is crumbling as fast as our education system. America is losing its competitive advantage, falling behind on alternative energy, lagging in science and math, and our toxic politics has lead to paralyzing gridlock.

Instead of this election focusing on answers to save the State, it has zeroed in on the emotional state of angry and embittered suckers known as Tea Baggers. These are the gullible fools and religious fanatics who have been tricked into doing the bidding for radical and enormously rich anti-regulatory and anti-tax zealots such as News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch and oilmen David and Charles Koch. The joke is really on the members of the Tea Party, because they think they are working for “The People”, when they are unwittingly shilling for the Royalists. As a result of their wide-eyed buffoonery, we will all suffer the consequences.

The most disheartening part of these elections is the broken system, which is pumping unlimited money into campaigns. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s grotesque Citizens United ruling, candidates are quickly becoming nothing more than spokesmodels for wealthy special interest groups. (This year’s Colorado Senate race alone cost $33 million).

What does this have to do with gay rights?

An uneducated, vulgar, decaying country with a fixed market posing as a free market, with a busted political system and a contracted Middle Class that votes based on mood swings instead of wise policies, will not be a nation that is friendly to LGBT equality. Even if pro-gay laws are eventually passed, the daily lives of LGBT people will suffer as anger erupts from families looking for scapegoats to help explain how they slipped through the cracks. Such rage will produce more hateful and harsh demagogues such as Sharron Angle and Sarah Palin. History has taught us where this leads.

Superpowers are almost always brought down by corruption, cronyism and conflict of interest. However, such problems are complex and difficult to understand. It is always much easier for ambitious politicians to blame minorities, such as the Jews, immigrants or gays.

If the election turns out as projected, there is good reason to worry. I’m not so optimistic America will recover this time. At least the Tea Baggers won’t have bailouts to get angry about. America, thanks to the politicians they helped elect, will be too poor to afford them.

I called in to David Pakman’s Midweek Politics radio show this afternoon and we had a nice little chit-chat about how crazy Christine O’Donnell is starting to morph into crazy Sarah Palin, and about how, according to social conservative definitions, I may be an “ex-straight.”  I’m not buying it, though.  Rilly, I do sound super-gay.

Anyway, if you have time, listen to David’s whole show, because he’s really great at what he does.  If you’ll remember, he’s done great interviews with Peter LaBarbera and Shirley Phelps-Roper, and many other Religious Right luminaries.  He’s very good at helping them make themselves look stupid.

If you just want to hear what my sexy voice sounds like, skip to 41:00 or so.

Click the clicky to listen.  Right-click the clicky to download: Midweek Politics 9-22-10

So let’s watch a video of Sarah Palin praising Todd’s junk, brought to us, of course, by Sara Benincasa.

This is pretty funny [via Joe]:

And we mentioned Twitter, so as always, if you’re not already, you should follow me on Twitter here, Wayne here, Mike here, and Truth Wins Out here, and also fan us on Facebook if you’re there.

There’s much to disagree with in Meghan McCain’s politics, but she’s one of the growing number of Republican celebrities who are decidedly to the left of most of the Democratic party establishment on little things like marriage equality. Here she is promoting her new book Dirty, Sexy Politics on Rachel Maddow last night.

Money quote:

“I don’t know why it’s so shocking that you can believe in … small government and conservative beliefs but think that your gay friends have the right to get married.  And for me, it’s just a civil rights issue.  I believe in freedom on a very basic level, and I think that you can’t live in a country and claim it to be free if I have different rights than you do.”

Damn.  Also, this subtle laugh-out-loud moment, about Rand Paul’s interview on Rachel Maddow, where he stated his “academic opposition” to the Civil Rights Act:

“I think the Rand Paul interview was an example of why Libertarianism is logical in a classroom, and not really applicable in real life.”

Snark!

Also, she’s finally dishing, for real, about Sarah Palin, which is fun for the whole family!

[h/t Joe]

Glenn Beck may not personally care whether or not gays can get married, but the wingnuts who form his worldview certainly do.  Media Matters has put together a handy little guide, which includes quotes and background on the following people in Beck’s sphere of influence:

David Barton
James Dobson
Randy Forbes
Jim Garlow
John Hagee
Terence Henry
Alveda King
Richard Land
Daniel Lapin
Patrick Lee
Richard Lee
Miles McPherson
Chuck Norris
Sarah Palin
James Robison
Charles Stanley

Read it all here.

[h/t Andy]

In my weekly column, I wrote that for Democrats to win, they must Define, Defend and Dumb Down. There is a pretty good debate about this on The Huffington Post that you might want to check out.

This morning, I read Gail Collins’ column in The New York Times, “Sarah’s Amazing Race”. In it, there was an example of how dumbing it down creates winners and playing nice makes losers.

In the Republican primary for the United States Senate race in Alaska, her pick, a hitherto unknown person named Joe Miller, beat the incumbent, Lisa Murkowski. Whether Palin’s backing made any difference to the 28 percent of eligible voters who flocked to the polls is unknowable. But Palin’s endorsement did inspire the Tea Party Express to give Miller nearly $600,000 for TV commercials, which he used to brand Murkowski as a liberal insider who changes her positions “more often than a moose sheds its antlers” and as a member of a family that regards itself as entitled royalty. “We stayed on the high road,” Murkowski said when she finally conceded on Tuesday.

You see, one talked about moose antlers and won. The other took the so-called high road and lost. I can only conclude that the “high road” is the one travled by losing politicians with U-Hauls in the opposite direction of Washington, DC.