Ok, I don't want to be mean here, and apologize ahead of time to those of you from The Sunshine State...but seriously, is there anything Florida doesn't suck at?

I mean they can't even kill somebody right? I knew they were already responsible for especially crappy elections, teachers who really "enjoy" their students and Katherine Harris to name just a few things. But taking 34 minutes to execute someone because you screw up the injection? That's impressive, even when a Bush is running things...


PS Before I hear from angry Floridians, that was at least somewhat meant in jest. I enjoy your sunny environs every February as my parents spend some of the winter down there...but you gotta admit, some crazy shit transpires in Florida....

My weekly AMERICAblog column:

The Week That Was 12/15/06

Another Week. More preposterousness to report.

So the mighty Tom DeLay graced our lives with his crooked snarl once again this past week, in a pose not seen since he took that "photo" while being processed at the big house for trying to subvert our constitutional system of government.

First, we got the emergence of DeLay "the blogger." Well not quite "blogger," as he admitted that someone else actually wrote everything that goes up on his infantile site. But he did say very proudly, on Hardball the other night, that "the ideas were his." Which means I hope that whoever is doing the writing for that blog has no plans for the next 2-7 years and enjoys the thought of conjugal visits.

In any case, DeLay's blog, GAIN, which stands for the something his party did not do in the House or Senate this past cycle--largely thanks to the fact that he's dirtier than Mark Foley's thoughts after watching an all-day marathon of The Goonies--got so many negative comments its first day online, that they took the comments down. And then I hear he illegally used DHS employees to find those responsible.

Second, we got DeLay the paranoid. In one of his usual reality-based statements, he claimed that Hillary Clinton would be the next leader of the free world, because "a liberal coalition, working in concert with the news media," would elect Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to the White House in 2008. He also added that he "had never seen a more powerful coalition."

Ok Tom. Just to remind you, that coalition of religious zealots, corporate reach-arounds and pajama warriors you put together did a decent job of fooling enough of the country that the damage you've done over the past six years couldn't be undone by Harry Potter.

Regarding that liberal coalition, Tom, who exactly gets to be a member in the shady recesses of your lesion-saturated cerebrum? Is it only the mainstream media and liberal activists?

What about Jewish bankers, Masons, the ghost of Abbey Hoffman and SpongeBob SquarePants?

Finally, this past week with Democrat Ciro Rodriguez' stunning upset of Henry Bonilla for yet another House pickup, we got to see the results of Tom DeLay's perfidy aimed at stealing multiple Congressional seats in Texas.

So let me see. You launder corporate money. Work with Abramoff. And win the state house in Texas, all with the express purpose of taking five-six Democratic House seats. Well how's that working for you?

Let's see, bugboy, you couldn't beat Chet Edwards, lost Bonilla's seat and lost your own. So you picked up two seats. And now you will probably learn how best to manufacture car parts when not enjoying "yard time." Well done.

And thanks for giving us the corruption narrative, because that sure didn't play any role in our huge victory in November.

Come to think of it, please don't leave Tom. Keep giving your sound advice to the next generation of GOP Gorgons

For anyone interested I am going on The Bill Mazer Show today (based in New York). If you get WVOX listen at 3:30, or you can go to the website for live streaming. Don't cut and run my friends, listen to it!

And also check out my appearance on The Young Turks yesterday morning for our weekly tour of Republican Sexcapades. If you don't believe me that it's funny, Fernando said it was in the comments of an earlier post.

That should be enough for you cynics!

John McCain sucks.

No really, he sucks.

This is rich. Bush actually has a "privacy board." Yes, you read that correctly. Of course, it is much like Healthy Forests, the Clear Skies initiative and Leave No Child Behind, in that it is named exactly the opposite of what it intends to accomplish (kind of like "victory in Iraq").

Republicans funny. So very funny.

BTW I wrote a piece a while back for Alternet on how Dems should embrace the politics of privacy, which would propel them to victory (many now are, as proven by newly elected Senator Jon Tester, for example, who has called for repealing The Patriot Act--which has some good provisions about getting the intelligence agencies to work together but also provides the kind of snooping into library books that again makes the name of a Bush-inspired law the opposite of the reality).

Check out the piece if you have a minute.

Go check out Bob Geiger's post on what Bill Frist listed as GOP accomplishments from the last congress. It is so inane, so filled with meaningless wedge issues, that it will remind you why these people should not only be in the minority, but locked in room with padded walls for the better part of the next decade.

On an unrelated note, Bill Frist claims he is going back to being a doctor. Here is my question. After seeing his brilliant tel-prognosis of Terry Schiavo (can't he do something about Ann Coulter's goiter by the way?) would anyone actually say to themselves, "yeah, I want this guy doing the check up."

Do you want to really understand what is going on in Iran? FoxNews and Rush not quite cutting it? My good friend, progressive blogger, radio host and all around bon vivant Sean-Paul Kelley took a trip to check out the goings on in Persia recently.

Here is what he had to report. Check it out.

So that sanctimonious jackass (no not Joe Lieberman for once) Roy Moore, you know the guy that wanted to keep that big slab of rock with the Ten Commandments on it in state judicial building because there's too much to write on his hand, now thinks Muslims should not be allowed to enter Congress.

Sure glad he got to spend time on the Supreme Court of a state. Maybe he can fill in for Clarence Thomas when the new Long Dong Silver movie comes out?

Did you have your soy product today? I did, and suddenly I became the best-dressed man in the neighborhood!

PS As far as I can tell this is no joke, this jackass actually wrote this...

John Edwards is getting rave reviews for his appearance on Hardball last night. At one point, Chris Matthews even admitted during a commercial break that he (Matthews) was getting his butt kicked.

Now I am still agnostic on 2008. But Edwards has apologized for his Iraq vote unlike some "other" candidates. He speaks about the real divide in this country passionately: the growing gap between rich and poor. He realizes that an increased emphasis on organized labor is the way to go for Democrats, morally and politically, as union members vote Democratic 60-65% of the time. Meanwhile, with other white men, it's less than 50% (and in the South...don't even get me started).

He can make the GOP have to fight for North Carolina and might even be able to carry it, and he could perhaps put us over the top in Florida and Virginia, not to mention West Virginia, Ohio and Iowa with his economic populism.

He is likeable. And folks, if you don't think this matters just look at who won the last four presidential elections (and both in the 80s) and compare them to the opposition. It is what it is, right or wrong.

So endorsement? No. But Edwards is definitely on my short list...way ahead of some "other" frontrunners with big names...(I guess I am not completely agnostic after all :)

Cookoo. Cookoo. Cookoo.

Excellent Smithers!

So it looks like we just picked up another House seat in Texas. With almost 70% of the vote in, it appears Texas Dems have taken out DeLay stooge Henry Bonilla. That makes it 31 seats gained this cycle if you count Bernie Sander's seat, or 30 if you don't.

So I am not one to brag, or beat up again on sparring partner Brad "Whitey Mcwhite" Blakeman from MSNBC, but let's see whose predictions were closer on this episode of "How did you ever become a pundit?"

PS Let's see if my prediction about the number of Republicans going to jail over the next year is also true...

Notice how all of the Republican Senators who suddenly are "concerned" about Iraq or have "reservations" about Iraq are up for reelection in 2008 (Sununu and Coleman and Cornyn, oh my!)? Notice also how most of them are from either blue or swing states?

Quite a coincidence, their sudden pangs of conscience and their electoral status, no?

As always, my friend Steve Benen has the goods at The Carpetbagger Report.

No Way!! They found the first Republican!!

These are supposedly REAL comments that were up on Tom DeLay's new blog before he had them removed. Yes, when not breaking laws and stomping angrily on bugs Tom DeLay blogs these days.

I have no way to vouch for the accuracy, but supposedly someone caught this screen shot. It is funny either way, but if true, priceless...

I guess we're losing The War On Christmas?!?

I thought we had it won after George Allen turned out to be Jewish...Damn you New Jersey!!

My Americablog column from Friday in case you missed it:

The Week That Was 12/08/06

Another week. More preposterousness to report.

Well what do you know? Shockingly the "Ethics Committee" found that nobody is really to blame for Foley-trolling, except the honorable former first fornicator himself. Hoewever, being that he wasn't relying on Republican contributors like Enron, but the federal government for his pension, he'll still get his cold hard cash for retirement.

I mean have a heart, it's not easy defraying the cost of the multiple Rambo flicks, a year's supply of Lambskins and a vat of Banana Boat.

Although, in a just world, it'd be delivered to him by some of Vladamir Putin's friends in a bag of polonium.

Speaking of Republicans in Congress, if you really want to understand this coverup as well as the corporate-fellated, make-believe moral, "I must invade another country because I never got laid in high school" lives of these feudal-lords-in-fundamentalist-clothing, I give you Rep. Jack (-ass) Kingston.

Here is what this Georgia peach-for-brains had to say about the terrible new requirement Democrats are implementing in the Congress, that he actually, you know, work five days a week:

Keeping us up here eats away at families," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. "Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says.

First of all, nice cheap-shot attack on all Democrats you Southern-fried, Deliverance clone. Second of all:

B-O-O-H-O-O

Yet, as you would guess from a statement like this, Jack-in-the-Box is stalwart supporter of easing the economic burden on married families and supporting them in any and all ways he can muster. That's probably why he opposes raising the minimum wage, universal healthcare, birth control, free childcare, family and medical leave, gay marriage, tax breaks for the middle class instead of Paris Hilton and Halliburton.

He does, however, support the government's right to intrude into private medical decisions made by a husband concerning his wife, as he did in the Terry Schiavo case. Luckily he'll now have an extra couple of days a week at work to propose other helpful legislation, when he isn't surfing the web for naked photos of Borat and speaking in a dialect that can only be called Southeastern trailer.

It still is stunning, however, the hypocrisy of these people. Lawsuits suck says Trent Lott, when it is time to vote for limits on jury awards to please his corporate benefactors. But the minute his house got wrecked because President Dumbo was playing with a shiny new set of dinner forks instead of being the Decider when Katrina hit, he joins a class action suit to get as much $$ as he can fit into his grubby little hands.

Which by the way are still aching from the multiple splinters he got from that burning cross he nailed on a lawn in Jackson last night.

Once again Democrats, we can't work with these people. From Kingston's ridiculous attack on Democrats as "anti-family" to Kingston and Lott's sheer hypocrisy, as many (including your humble narrator) predicted right after the election, they're not looking for compromise. It's easier to oppose things for other people they support for themselves. It is the essence of today's Republicanism.

Well that and lesbian daughters who have children because they can avoid many of the consequences of gay marriage bans their party passes.

If they want to support a progressive agenda, the more the merrier. Otherwise, in this man's opinion, here is how they are to be treated.

Now let me highly recommend two of the best progressive books I have read in a while, for Holiday Gifts (ha ha O'Reilly, I am bitch-slappping Christmas again). They are:

Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without The South; and Sweet Relief: The Marla Ruzicka Story. Yes, full disclosure, both of these authors are friends. And these are also two of the best progressive books I have read in a while, with Tom Schaller's work (the former) a great work of "strategery," and Jen Abrahmson's work (the latter) an amazing story about a little slice of humanity and compassion in Iraq and Afghanistan.

GIFT ALERT

A grad school friend of mine from a few years back, Jen Abrahamson, has just written an unbelievably touching and all-around fantastic book about her friend Marla Ruzicka. It is called Sweet Relief: The Marla Ruzicka Story.

You may remember Marla as an activist who was sadly killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq at the age of 28. But not before she used her strength of will, charisma and intelligence to get the US congress to, for the first time ever, put aside funds for civilian victims of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. This story also is important in what it tells us about how we can lose the hearts and minds of those we are supposedly trying to save, by ignoring their pain when they become "collateral damage."

It is truly an inspirational story, and Jen is the perfect person to tell it, as an inspiration herself, and a terrific writer.

That is one reason to buy this book, for yourself or for a holiday gift for anyone and everyone you can think of. Another reason is that, in their usual lizard-brained manner, the right-wing intellectual loofahs in the blogosphere attacked Marla as anti-American, right after she was killed, because she tried to help victims of war who were CIVILIANS (yes, these are people who call themselves "pro-life").

This includes little moronic Ann-Coulter-wannabe Debbie Schlussel (sorry, I will link to Wikipedia which tells the story, but not her column, I don't link to trash), whose sickening attack on Ruzicka after her passing still makes my blood boil and is exactly the kind of thing that motivates me to continually carve up these miscreants on television and in print. Also self-hating, fat-ass former Commie David Horowitz.

So go grab a copy, or 5! You will not only love the book, but you'll piss off the soulless Schlussel and Horowitz.

Bush edging towards the 20s again in approval. My only question: Who are those 3 in 10 people who think to themselves, "yeah, this guy is really doing a swell job."

And I am suspicious that the 9% of Democrats who approve of him are Southerners still calling themselves Democrats for the sake of their heritage, but haven't voted for a Democrat in years.

Either that or they're unbelievably fuckin stupid.

Just one man's opinion.