Quitters Never Win*

* Johnny Lang. Follow-up note: he was 15 when he recorded "Lie to Me" and now he's 29.

Don't wear your Zoot Suit to Arizona. A California congressman says that law enforcement officials can tell illegal immigrants from their clothes and shoes. Here in Virginia, I can tell because they're the ones that carry mattresses across the highway in the middle of traffic at night.

One of the first things our Governor McDonnell did when he took office was issue a ban on medical benefits for same sex couples and through his Attorney-General issue a decree to prohibit the protection of legal rights for gays. Why? Yesterday I think we got the answer. Leading a gay rights rally in Richmond was the governor's trans-sexual brother-in-law who now goes by the name Robyn Deane. He was married to the governor's wife's sister for 17 years.

The leader of Americans for Legal Immigration in South Carolina demanded that Lindsey "Butters" Graham come clean about his sexuality. This guy claims that Graham is being blackmailed into supporting immigration reform because he remains in the closet.

Georgia will not allow Arizona to surpass them as pinhead capital of America. Their legislature also wants to pass a "birther" law so that Obama will have to show his birth certificate in 2012. People in Arizona claim it's not aimed at Obama it's aimed at John McCain who was born in Panama.

Diaper Dave Vitters, who has escaped sex scandal after sex scandal, looks like he is in beaucoup trouble by accepting campaign funds in return for getting a company stimulus money.

Dick Cheney endorsed Marco Rubio for Senate in Florida because he will block Obama's "restructuring of the foundation of our fundamental freedoms". It might be hard to do that if he's behind bars. The FBI and IRS are now swarming the Florida GOP about the misuse of campiagn funds and credit cards. No less an authority than Joe Scarborough of the Morning Joe show and former Florida congressman says that Republicans are flipping like crazy and giving the FBI everything. He says this will get "real ugly all summer".

Good news for Democrats. Yesterday as President Obama was addressing the issue of financial reform at Coopers Union in New York City, Karl Rove held a private strategy meeting of GOP high-ups and campaign contributors, notably the Chamber of Commerce, at his house to plot the mid-term strategy. Good news because Karl lost the 2000 President election, barely won the 2004 Presidential election with a war-time President, lost the 2006 midterms and his students failed the 2008 test. However, in the room was approximatelty $100 million of support for Republican candidates.

Steny Hoyer agrees with Charlie Cook that if the election were held today, the Republicans would take the House. That would make Tan Man Boehner the Speaker. The Tan Man showed his leadership form yesterday when he declared that the financial reform bill meant ,"government would take over the entire private sector".

After this type of nonsense, you begin to root that this were true. Like "death panels" or Obama taking away guns. Wouldn't you like one of these things to come true?

Nate Silver at www.fivethirtyeight.com has come back from evaluating the best place to live in Manhattan for New York Magazine to finalize his predictions for the Senate races in 2010. Nate says that the GOP has basically maxed out on opportunities to take over the Senate. Because they failed to recruit Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin and George Pataki in New York, their chances of taking over the Senate have evaporated. Nate's model has a 6% chance of a GOP takeover of the Senate and he says that's high, a result of the vagaries of his model. Currently, he projects Republicans will gain 4 seats in the Senate, leaving it 55-45.

He says there is only a 7% chance that the Democrats could add seats. But he makes a point that as we move ahead in the election year, Democratic opportunities increase, while Republican fortunes decrease. He sees Democrats possibly holding or flipping seats in Colorado, Ohio, Missouri,Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire.

A Harris Poll out of France shows that Barack Obama at 77% as the world's most popular man followed by the Dalai Lama at 75% and Hillary Clinton third at 62%.

Washington conventional wisdom is that Harry Reid is a dead duck in his re-election campaign. At least he's not a dead chicken. His chief rival Sue Lowden, an employee of a gambling company, repeatedly has claimed that patients should pay off their doctors' bill with chickens. This has fueled a little industry of internet parodies. She is ahead of Reid by 10. The only two people who believe Reid will win is Reid and the Nevada Republicans. The Nevada Republicans believe--this was before the chicken policy--that Sue Lowden's weaknesses as a candidate will become more and more obvious over the next several months. If Harry Reid manages to push immigration reform through, the Republicans claim that Reid with union muscle from Las Vegas and Hispanics will win. Reid also has the benefit of a court ruling that allows the tea party candidate to remain on the ballot even though the man was carted off to jail for kiting checks.

The Great Newt seems to like his phrase "secular and socialist machine", referring to the Obama Administration. He even penned an op-ed for the Washington Post on this subject. My prediction--if the Republicans regain the House--God forbid--Newt will run for President. If they don't, he won't.

I finally found out what Republican Senator Burr actually does--his own state party have been asking since he won election six years ago. He meets with the banking lobbyists-like yesterday--to promise his support to kill financial reform in return for campaign finances. He did this at a meeting organized by GOP lobbyist Charlie Black, whom you remember for his role in McCain's campaign until the press made an issue of it.

If you want a sense of what the Administration is up against--think about this--5,000 lobbyists actually swarmed the Agricultural Committee to kill the derivatives bill. You can imagine the full court press on the total financial reform bill.

The Christian Right is after the Southern Poverty Law Center for its reports on right-wing extremism and its monitoring of anti-gay outfits. They are claiming that the Center wrote the original Homeland Security Report on right-wing extremism, which is not true. The report had been written by the Bush Administration as they were walking out the door. Groups like Focus on (Your) Family are trying to mount a campaign against SPLC.

The Christian Right is also upset that Franklin Graham was dis-invited to a ceremony at the Pentagon because of his attitudes toward Muslims. But there is more here. The Christian Right is blaming the Obama Administration for knocking the National Prayer Day out of the box. They seem to confuse our legal system as carrying out presidential orders--I guess, a lingering memory of the Bush-Cheney years. But in the National Prayer Day at the Pentagon , participants have to pledge adherence to a statement of their faith. This statement as written would offend Jews and Muslims but after I read it , it would preclude all normal Christian denominations--Catholicsm, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox--because it asserts the literal truth of the Bible as the word of God. This little dirty secret is just beginning to leak out as well as the fact that the co-chair for this event is the wife of James Dobson. The extent of fundamentalist Christian penetration of our armed forces is just beginning to emerge and it's going to get ugly.

The Free Republic asserts that President Obama is an agent of Satan. I guess they're catching on that their gig may be up. Even though the President has asked the courts to reconsider the National Day of Prayer. The history of this is murky. Eisenhower only agreed to this during the Cold War to get the evangelicals off his back but it was organized and seen as the private domain of "the Family" since the 1950s. Obama broke their rice bowel this year by opening up the Day to all religions and denominations, pushing the fundamentalists to the side lines.

Michael Steele admitted that blacks have literally no reason to vote Republicans because the party has had a "Southern Strategy" for over 40 years, catering to Southern white males. Pat Buchanan, who had a major role in Richard Nixon's embrace of the Southern Strategy, went apoplectic, saying this was "a big lie". Harry Dent, Nixon's adviser on the subject, admitted this before he died and said he was sorry.

But Blackwater doesn't have to be sorry. Their defense for the weapons caches and presents of weapons to the King of Jordan was that CIA ok'd it.

The Goldman Sachs defense is that what they do "is good for America". No, that's General Motors not Goldman Sachs.

Silent so far about financial reform are the teabaggers. Curious no? According to teabagger faction 1--Freedomworks--the teabaggers haven't read the bill yet. Like they did for healthcare? I think Boehner's "the government will take over the entire private sector" is the dog whistle. Let's see whether they respond.

Newt claims the teabaggers represent the "militant" wing of the GOP--like in a guerrilla movement.

But now it can be told. One of the major sponsors of the teabaggers is Koch Industries (pronounced "Coke"), the largest privately held oil company. Koch created the front groups to call FDR a "socialist" , created the John Birch Society to call Eisenhower a "Communist sympathizer" and now Obama " a socialist" again. Well, the family seems to have direct experience with socialism. From the late 1920s to the mid-1930s, they built the entire oil production infrastructure of the Soviet Union. I wonder what the teabaggers would think?

Barack Obama said immigration reform is next up within a month. John Kerry and Lindsey Graham are complaining because they want climate change now and don't want to move their issue for immigration. Stay tuned.