Freaky Deaky Friday

Was taking time to see whether the insanity was dying down. Congress finally fled Washington,D.C. The Question is whether we're going to see any August like the last with death panels and socialized medicine rallies. The Senate was miffed because they had to be called back to vote in the House's adjustment to their bill to allocate $300 million to that "danged" border fence in Arizona. The House did save the teachers and other state employees jobs, despite the Tan Man calling them "sepcial interests". In a stealth move, Republican Governors have been signing up for stimulus money, despite pledges not to receive federal funds.

A poll released on Wednesday by CNN put approval of the state aid bill at 60% to 38% opposed. The question did not suggest that the bill was paid for. Republicans claimed it would add to the deficit--it would not. 57% of Independents supported it, 78% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans opposed it.

CNN also produced the first national poll this week which showed a majority of Americans supported same-sex majority. Yes, it was within the margin of error but it still was the majority, which had never been recorded before.

You have five days left to appeal Vaughn Walker's ruling on Prop 8. But it's not clear that the defendents who lost the case actually have standing to mount the appeal. It was sort of disgraceful for NPR to broadcast "concerns" of the Prop 8 supporters about questions about communal property if gay marriages continued after the ruling before the appeal. Why should they care?

Oh yes, the majority of American people, according to nother CNN poll, are against repealing the 14th Amendment. Phew!

The Hart/McInturff group conducted a poll for the Wall Street Journal , which showed that 58% of Americans say Obama has performed as they thought he would, with 12% saying he exceeded their expectations. The poll also showed a list of people and places asking for approval. Michelle Obama tops the list at 50% and very low negatives, President Obama is number two at 47% approval; The Democratic Party at 33%; the Tea Party at 30%; the Republican Party at 24% and Pakistan trails everyone at 4%.

Markos Malitos, the founder of Daily Kos, has his new book out The American Taliban: How War,Sex,Sin and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right.(Polipoint Press, paperback.) If you want to recap the last 18 months of insanity on the right, Markos does a splendid job of summing it up. Even I had forgotten some of the highlights. The best chapters are on sex and women. On the latter, Markos reminds us of the new war against women being waged by the Right around the country. On sex, he treats us to the great scandals of the "family values" crowd and also probes into some of the practices in right-leaning states--the high incidence of porn subscribers,divorce and out of marriage wedlock. One little factoid that is worth repeating: 95% of Americans practice pre-marital sex today; 90% of Americans practiced pre-marital sex in 1940. As Chuck Colson would say, this is a cultural armaggeddon. It's an entertaining read and would be funny if these people weren't players in our political system.

Someone did a notable thing by breaking down the generic congressional poll question in terms of region. This indicated that Republicans are almost exclusively a southern party or dominant in districts that resemble the south. Republicans have a high 20% edge in the South. The Democrats have a significant edge in the Northeast and Midwest. But, worrisome for Democrats is their only 1% lead in the West. The usefulness of this breakdown is it allows us to get some sense of the ping-pong moves in generic congressional questions during this election year. Gallup has the Democrat lead by 1%, which means with likely voters the edge goes to the Republicans.