Whether it's Ted Cruz's dad, or Rand Paul's assistant, you can count on those around the candidate to be more honestly forth-coming than they are, if just as difficult to understand:

“Most conservatives are not, and never were, racists, but many have displayed a disregard for minorities for a very long time and in a plethora of ways. I certainly did.

Minorities think we don’t like them. Not enough conservatives have tried to convince them that’s not true.

The same conservatives who say they believe government treats everyone badly were not willing to see how that was true for black Americans. They either don’t see it or don’t want to see it. I used not to see it. For that, I am very sorry.”

ACCEPTED.

Good Ol' Mitch has stopped listening to Rand Paul's insane whispers:

“McConnell said the Tea Party was ‘nothing but a bunch of bullies,’” the source said. “And he said ‘you know how you deal with schoolyard bullies? You punch them in the nose and that’s what we’re going to do.’”

And that's The Republican Party I know and love,...

 

Now, I ask you, serious business:

 "Is Gluten the Cause of Your Health Problems?" 

Or is it something else?

"Your choices are limited by who you are."

I love the ring of that phrase - and it's ring of truth - like a kick in the gut. So, since that seems to be the case (and since I'm *kinda safe* for the moment) excuse me as I jump in the fray, because culture is wailing on politics with a vengeance:

McAllister, running as an outsider, lined up an endorsement from "Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson, the patriarch in the popular reality show, and cast member Willie Robertson appeared in a commercial for the candidate. The program is shot in the northeast part of Louisiana that McAllister will represent.

Unlike McAllister, Riser had the backing of a number of prominent Republicans including U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Riser agreed with the governor's stance to reject the Medicaid expansion.

…The funeral home owner was the contest's early favorite with backing from the conservative Tea Party of Louisiana and the national group FreedomWorks, which is aligned with the Tea Party movement.

The Right is so out of sync now, it's pitiful. Everyday is the day before the last election - and then the "unexpected" happens. Again. GlennBoy's even already back to warning Republicans not to get cocky. Why? What are they going to do? Keep coming on like The Party That Doesn't Give A Shit? We've seen that. "Maybe get a black point-man."

"Man Has Magnetic Powers, Can Make Objects Stick To Body"

New Headline:

You Are A Fucking Idiot, Go Back To School - Retake Science

Unoriginal second thought - do we even need another metal attracting guy? Bending spoons? Wow.

Do something useful.

 Now here's a something that gets my attention:

"Since Christianity has produced a lot of dysfunctional people, suicides will more than likely increase among Christians in the very near future."

So it's a self-correcting system - cool. Kinda like this:

"Lady Gaga's 'ARTPOP' Flop Expected to Lose Label Reported $25M in Marketing Costs"

Word is people will be fired - at Christmas. Perfect. Contrast and compare with the netherworld:

 "Michael Jackson Tops List of Highest-Earning Dead Celebrities of 2013"

He's dead, and still a better entertainer than we've got now. What a wasteland. No, really, a wasteland. And nobody knows the difference, either, so far as I can tell. Everything just slips by.

"The Jamaican Maroons were runaway slaves who fought the British during the 18th century. When the British invaded Jamaica in 1655 the Spanish colonists fled leaving a large number of Africans who they had enslaved."

I'm beginning to think they're all a little insane. 

But probably not without good reason,...

“It’s a free country. If these people need to practice their holy rites of atheism, they can do so, as long as they are in clearly-marked encampments far away from the rest of us.

While they’re in their Heathen Zones, they’re free to dance naked around the fire, brand the mark of the Devil on their flesh or whatever else they want to do. Of course, if they step one foot outside the electrified fence we shoot them between the eyes. Two or three times, just to be sure.”

“He, for whatever misguided and terribly cynical reason, believed that his punitive retribution against a community represented by Democrats would somehow encourage that community to support Republicans.”

“I said, ‘That’s asinine! That’s idiotic!’ If you’re doing positive things in the Black community go out and share with the public what you’re doing. They are afraid of anything that has a racial component to it. They don’t know how to respond to it.”

"A Houston electrician known mostly for his personal crusades against LGBT rights and the city’s lesbian mayor has won a seat on the Houston Community College Board of Trustees after pretending in campaign materials to be African American,…

…KHOU reported that Wilson pulled stock images of people of color from websites and magazines and used them to make fliers to distribute in his district.

Wilson, a conservative white Republican with tea party leanings, realized that he had little to no chance of beating 24-year incumbent Austin in his heavily African-American district, so Wilson decided not to run as a white man."

"Time for this feud to move back to the front burner."

“Does anybody remember Charlie Sheen when he was kind of going crazy ... And he was going around, jumping around saying ‘Winning, winning, we’re winning’? Well I kind of feel like that, we are winning. And I’m not on any drugs.”

Consider - the Right-wing's many "scandals" have come to absolutely nothing, Syria was cornered without a war, and Ted Cruz's Tea Party faction was outmaneuvered - but here's the (politically pathetic) conventional wisdom after a mere website screw-up:

"Surely, it must be happening, an emergent Obama nostalgia, to take the edge off the dreariness of what the Obama administration has become."

Or - just as "surely" - somebody's still seeing what they want to see, imagines they see, or are told to see.

Which is how we got Obama (including the real man) in the first place,...



 ADDED:

People losing insurance is the only problem I see Obama with, right now, and only because lives are at stake.

It's shocking, to me, what lies y'all decide are important. Very selective. "If you like your plan you can keep it" is worthy of outrage, while "water is medicine" is over 200 years old but long received either a shrug of the shoulders, prominent placement at Whole Foods, celebrity endorsements and/or some viciously aggressive evangelizing that "you can believe what you want to believe."

Obama's critics' long-standing hypocrisy, in this regard and others, serves only to highlight their own opportunistic nature and/or slavery to the ambitions of those behind today's almost-substance-free 24 hour news cycle.

They're a sad replacement for actual wisdom - and work,...

Well, what is a Christian, after all? Can we say that most of us are defined by the belief that Jesus Christ made the most gracious gift of his life and death for our redemption? Then what does he deserve from us? He said we are to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek. Granted, these are difficult teachings. But does our most gracious Lord deserve to have his name associated with concealed weapons and stand-your-ground laws, things that fly in the face of his teaching and example? Does he say anywhere that we exist primarily to drive an economy and flourish in it? He says precisely the opposite. Surely we all know this. I suspect that the association of Christianity with positions that would not survive a glance at the Gospels or the Epistles is opportunistic, and that if the actual Christians raised these questions those whose real commitments are to money and hostility and potential violence would drop the pretense and walk away.

H/T - Ann Althouse

"Don’t get a flu shot, warns conservative talk show host Michael Savage, because you just can’t trust the government."

They leave me out, and leave me out, and leave me out:

   "'[T]here is a growing sense within the Republican political intelligentsia that Christie and only Christie is positioned to solve the major problems that will face the party in 2016.'

And: 'Christie is increasingly seen as the one candidate who might be able to bridge the divide between the establishment and the tea party that is in the process of ripping the party apart.'"

Go on y'all, celebrate mediocrity, I see how you do,...

 

"When Ted Cruz lies, he appears to be praying."

I warned you Rebecca Brooks and her sleazy husband are NewAgers, and now they're charged in England's phone hacking scandal.

-TMR, July 25, 2012

Which also contains this gem:

I'm wrong about Romney and the Mormons? We'll see. I keep telling you cultism's a great clue to everything - because it touches everything - and, alas, it ultimately destroys everything it touches.

But don't get distracted by the Mormon/Ted Cruz thing, here's Rebekah Brooks', so-NewAge-we-never-saw-it-coming, oldie but goodie, dropped just today:

  "The fact is you are my very best friend, I tell you everything, I confide in you, I seek your advice, I love you, care about you, worry about you, we laugh and cry together.

In fact without our relationship in my life I am not sure I will cope."

Alas, she was (naturally) married to someone else at the time, and (naturally) it came out in court while (naturally) she's now "married" to someone else.

Best. Halloween. Ever,...