Watauga GOP Can't Stop Bashing ASU Students

Which County Commissioner was it overheard at the Boone paint store loudly declaiming against ASU students? "They don't own property here. They shouldn't be allowed to vote here!"

Interesting attitude toward democracy, that! We fought some wars, seems like, to remove that particular sign over the voting booth: PROPERTY-OWNERS ONLY.

But if the local Republican Party wants to campaign on that principle, who are we to tell 'em nay? "No one should vote who doesn't own [real] property." Okay. Let's take them at their word. That would mean:

Renters (period) won't be allowed to vote. That would include the odd Watauga County school teacher who's moved here straight out of college to teach the children of the property-owners. But a servant's a servant, right? and he/she clearly doesn't need to be messin' in local politics.

The class of "renters" actually would cover a right many folks, and not just students. Some of them professionals, like young technicians at the Watauga Medical Center. But they're clearly here to serve their betters, and need not be messin' in Watauga County politics.

Hold the phone! What about the 18-, 19-, 20-year-old children of property-owners, the ones who don't themselves yet own a homestead? Do we rule them out of the right to vote too? Well, no, dunce! We can let them vote, since they'll likely vote the way their property-owning parents tell 'em to vote, and that's all this is about, really ... disenfranchising people who don't think exactly like the property-owners do!

We're warming up to this task! Some pastors of churches must be denied the vote, since their churches often furnish their domiciles. So men of the cloth who don't own property won't be allowed to vote.

We're gonna need a bigger tablet to keep track of everyone this rule is gonna block!

And we can tell ... this is going to be a REAL POPULAR solution to Watauga County's multiple problems, when the Republican Party decides to go fully public ... like, say, Allen Trivette did in his letter to the editor alleging a plot among ASU professors to lead ASU students by the nostril hairs to the polling place to vote against HIM! (How those plotting professors found time in their busy Satan-serving schedules to lead those students by the nose ... we don't actually know. Just that they DID it!)

Let us know, Watauga GOP, when you're ready to take this campaign public, and we'll be happy to help out! We've already got a list started.

Put Up Or Shut Up

John Kerry yesterday sent out an e-mail to about 3 million people with a call to arms against El Presidente's administration, which is preparing a "right-wing assault on values and ideals." Kerry called on Democrats to fight back against what he labeled Bush's extreme agenda.

Well, duh.

He might start by standing shoulder to shoulder with Barbara Boxer over the issue described below in the previous post.

The War Against Women

At around 5 a.m. this morning, the final version of an omnibus spending bill to keep the government operating was posted on the House web site. It contains an anti-abortion provision that has far-reaching implications. There's already an exception written into federal health-care law that allows Catholic doctors and hospitals to refuse to give information or counseling on abortion to women patients. But the new provision stuck onto the omnibus spending bill would extend that right of refusal to all health care providers, including hospitals, doctors, clinics and insurers. (NYTimes coverage here.)

It's part of an overall campaign to shut down avenues to information, as a necessary step to shutting down the procedure itself. Done according to that old saying, "An ignorant woman is a joy forever!"

Republican Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine said yesterday that the proposed law is "a bad provision" that would "adversely affect reproductive health access for women across the country." She added, "It is an ill-advised policy that is clearly harmful to women."

But it's Senator Barbara Boxer who has vowed to use the ineffable rules of the Senate to block passage of this little jewel. Please write Senator Boxer and encourage her in her obstructionism. (You'll have to register on her site to send an e-mail.) Thank God she's got the balls to stand up!

JOSH MARSHALL OVER AT TALKING POINTS MEMO is all over the House Republican Caucus for voting to exempt their Majority Leader from the rule of law. Marshall suggested yesterday that readers call Republican House members and politely ask how that member voted on exempting DeLay from the rule that would force him to step down from the leadership position if indicted on criminal activity. HILARIOUS, the results of those calls!

Marshall has dubbed the "handful" who voted "nay" in the voice vote "the Christopher Shays Handful," after the Connecticut Rep. who went public immediately and said he took a stand against DeLay's minions.

Amazing how the "Chris Shays Handful" has grown! Also amazing, the number of upstanding Christian Republicans who refuse to tell their constituents how they voted and the number who lie: "There was no vote" or "I was out of the room when the vote was taken" or "I temporarily lost consciousness and don't know how I voted."

We ourselves called Richard Burr's office yesterday and inquired how the Congressman had voted. We were told that since the Congressman is leaving the House for the Senate he did not bother to attend the House Caucus. We wonder 'bout that. Anyone out there have an evidence to the contrary?

Specter Wimps Out

Arlen Specter was forced to issue a four-paragraph "clarification" of his position (a document which was, in fact, a profound deep-sixing of his supposedly "moderate" principles) ... in order to get the backing of his fellow Republicans to become chair of the Senate's Judiciary Committee. (Story in this a.m.'s NYTimes.)

"It's a done deal," said that Grandee of the Right Wing, Orrin Hatch of Utah.

Aside from putting what's left of his testes in a blind trust, Specter significantly offered to side with those Republicans who plan to change the Senate rules to remove the last smidgen of influence left the 45 Democrats ... the filibuster. Specter said he thought there was "sufficient precedent" to change the rules to allow an override of a filibuster with 51 votes.

To complete the truly appalling spectacle of his own collapse as a moral agent, Specter lied. When asked by a reporter if he had been pressured into releasing the statement, he said, "I have not been pressured at all." The whinneying laugh of James Dobson could be heard all the way from Colorado.

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(Thanks to B.P.)

SCRIPTURE READING FOR THE DAY:

"Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing, and does not give him his wages; who says, 'I will build myself a great house with spacious upper rooms,' and cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar and painting it with vermilion. Do you think you are a king because you compete in cedar?" Jeremiah 22:13-15

Tom DeLay thinks he's king. And he is ... King of the Pharisees, a.k.a., the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Yesterday, DeLay engineered a voice vote behind closed doors (we think those doors were padlocked as well) in the Republican House caucus to exempt himself from an 11-year-old rule that says "Thou shalt not get indicted for crimes and continue to lord it over your un-indicted fellow Republicans."

Ronnie Earle, the district attorney in Travis County, Tex., which includes Austin, won indictments earlier this year against three political associates of Mr. DeLay. Despite the indictments of his associates, Mr. DeLay has not been called to testify, and Mr. Earle has not said whether the congressman is a target. But guilt will out, and Mr. DeLay is acting like a guilty man in clear anticipation of being indicted. His main line of defense: Mr. Earle is a ... a ... Democrat, natch! A godless, communist, probably homosexual DEMOCRAT. 'Nuff said.

But just to be on the safe side, we'll also change these House rules, 'cause me and my best buds know what's right. Not that we're above the criminal law, mind you, but just temporarily beyond its reach as practiced by a DEMOCRAT.

By "voice vote," DeLay and his cronies accomplished this. You know what THAT means, O my brethren? That means railroad. That means put the hammer down. It's hard to get any accuracy from "behind closed doors," what exactly that voice vote might have sounded like when they called for the "nays," but according to Representative Henry Bonilla of Texas, who sponsored the rule change on DeLay's behalf, "only a handful of members had opposed it." (Account taken from the NYTimes.) Weak little minor chorus of nays?

One whose NO rang loudly was Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, who was quoted in the Times: "This is a mistake." When the Republicans gained control of the House in the elections of 1994, Shays added, "we were going to be different."

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a group that follows campaign finance issues, said: "With this decision, we have gone from DeLay being judged by his peers to DeLay being judged by his buddies. It's an absurd and ludicrous new rule and an affront to the American people."

But will the People notice this House built of unrighteousness? They notice so little these days.

"THEIR ARROGANCE IS ASTONISHING," said Nancy Pelosi, but it isn't really astonishing at all. It's common, garden-variety, plain ole every-day arrogance, as practiced by God's Own Party:

House Republicans are moving to amend their rules to allow their Majority Leader Tom DeLay to remain in his office even after, and if, he's indicted in Texas for illegally using corporate campaign contributions to help Republicans win state legislative seats (three of his closest aids have already been indicted for those crimes and everyone apparently expects the other shoe to fall very soon).

But they're Righteous. They can do whatever they please.

Riding Bareback to Victory

Blogactive says that George W. Bush's pick to be head of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman, who was also El Presidente's campaign manager during the late unpleasantness, is rumored to be G.A.Y. But keep reading the link above for the outing of Dan Gurley, RNC National Field Director and Deputy Political Director, who apparently likes it bareback with multiple partners. Check out the "screen capture" of his profile on gay.com. Under the category "Politics," Gurley self-identified himself as "Leaning right." Cute. (No smart remarks now, though several occur to us.)

The most pertinent thing to know about Gurley, not seen on the link above, is his past work as the spearpoint (ahem) of North Carolina Republican politics. He was director of the state Republican Party in 2000 and then served as Chief of Staff for our own ex-Congressman Cass Ballenger. Gurley caught the flak when Ballenger confessed to the Charlotte Observer that he got to feeling a little bit "segregationist" when he had to deal with African-American Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. Gurley explained to the AP at the time, "There's no question in my mind that the comment there is not a reflection of his general view, it's only a reaction to the pushiness of somebody like McKinney."

We expect that approximately now Gurley is telling some Republican right-wing hack in D.C. that advertizing for unprotected sex in gay chatrooms "is not a reflection of my general view but only my reaction to the pushiness of several somebodies who always want me to lean to the right."

Which do we focus on first? That God's Own Party on Earth has Satan-lovin' gays working to promote family values? Or that a deeply closeted man like Dan Gurley would loan his balls to the gay-haters?

It's too early in the morning for this kind of cognitive dissonance!