Morning Joe Will Have To Ignore This

Democrats Maintain Edge in Party Support

Gallup: "The Democratic Party continues to hold a solid advantage in party support over the Republican Party, as 49% of Americans interviewed in the second quarter of this year identified with or leaned to the Democratic Party, compared with 40% who did so for the Republican Party. However, that nine-point Democratic advantage is smaller than the 13-point edge Gallup measured in the first quarter of the year."

G W Bush: Atheist?

Well, by comparison to John Ensign anyway

More here

Fine With Me

Sometimes, I guess, people do get what they deserve.

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A man died after being gored in the neck during the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, the Navarra regional government said Friday on its Web site.

The death would be the first in the running of the bulls since a 22-year-old American was gored to death in 1995.

The latest victim was a Spanish man, Daniel Jimeno Romero, age 27, from the Madrid area who was vacationing in Pamplona with his family, CNN partner station CNN+ reported from the hospital, where authorities identified him.

He was rushed to the hospital in cardiac arrest and underwent surgery but died soon after, said the statement from the regional government, whose capital is Pamplona.

Watch man try to scramble away from bull »

Amateur video footage showed the victim falling to the ground toward the end of race, just before the entrance to the bullring, and apparently being gored in the neck.

Artifact Endangerment Alert

UPDATE: The above casket seems to have a one-piece top. In the picture below we see the more typical split top. So, maybe this isn't Till's.

Given how important this very 'box' is to American history, the following just devastates me.

Authorities discover original casket of Emmett Till
Posted: 11:41 AM ET
(CNN) — Authorities discovered Emmett Till’s original casket in a dilapidated garage at a historic cemetery where four people are accused of digging up graves and reselling them, police said Friday.

“There was wildlife living inside of it,” Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said of the casket, which he said was found in the corner of a garage filled with lawn care equipment and other “piles of things” at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.

“We very quickly came to the conclusion it was the original casket that Emmett Till was buried in,” Dart said.

Till, 14, was killed in August 1955 in Mississippi after he reportedly whistled at a white woman.

His body was exhumed in 2005 as part of a renewed probe into his death. The Chicago Tribune reported that he was reburied in a different casket.

Four people face felony charges after authorities discovered that hundreds of graves were dug up and allegedly resold at the cemetery. Groundskeepers told investigators that Till’s grave was not among them, Dart said earlier this week.

On August 28, 1955 Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam, began looking for Emmett Till. They found him at his uncle's cabin. Entering the cabin with flashlights and Colt 45 pistols, they kidnapped Emmett. To teach him lesson, they drove him to a weathered shed on a plantation in neighboring Sunflower County, where they beat and then shot him. Three days later, Emmett’s corpse was pulled from the depths of the Tallahatchie River. It was weighted down by a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan, which was tied around Till’s neck with barbed wire, his right eye hanging midway to his cheek, his nose flattened, and a bullet hole through his head.

Till's mother made the decision to have an open casket funeral. She wanted the world to know what had happened to her son. Fifty-thousand people attended the funeral of Emmett Till.

NY Times, 8/28/05

[T]he photographs of Emmett taken at his open-coffin viewing ... were first published nationally in Jet magazine and shunned by mainstream news organizations but have since become iconic, textbook images of the Jim Crow era. In "Eyes on the Prize," the PBS documentary on civil rights, Charles Diggs, a former congressman from Detroit, called the Jet photographs "probably one of the greatest media products in the last 40 or 50 years, because that picture stimulated a lot of anger on the part of blacks all over the country."

Very Very Very Black Pot, Meet Kettle

Specter Challenges Sestak's Party Credentials

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) called likely primary rival Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) "a flagrant hypocrite in challenging my being a real Democrat" and accused his rival of registering as a Democrat "just in time to run for Congress," CNN reports.

Said Specter: "His lame excuse for avoiding party affiliation, because he was in the service, is undercut by his documented disinterest in the political process."Steve Benen notes "the fascinating aspect to this is that Arlen Specter is questioning someone else's party loyalty. Given the circumstances, that takes some real chutzpah."

Someday, probably soon, Joe Sestak, will need money for his Senatorial Primary challenge to Ancient Arlen. Joe is the real deal. Follow him here.

The Velvet Axe Falls

The Deplorable Peggy Noonan hatchets Sara Poledancer, upper eastside style:

Mrs. Palin has now stepped down, but she continues to poll high among some members of the Republican base, some of whom have taken to telling themselves Palin myths.

"I love her because she's so working-class." She is not working class, never was, and even she, avid claimer of advantage that she is, never claimed to be and just lets others say it. Her father was a teacher and school track coach, her mother the school secretary.

"The elites hate her." The elites made her. It was the elites of the party, the McCain campaign and the conservative media that picked her and pushed her. The base barely knew who she was. ... She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon.

"She makes the Republican Party look inclusive." She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated.

Mrs. Palin's supporters have been ordering her to spend the next two years reflecting and pondering. But she is a ponder-free zone.

"The media did her in." Her lack of any appropriate modesty did her in. Actually, it's arguable that membership in the self-esteem generation harmed her. For 30 years the self-esteem movement told the young they're perfect in every way. It's yielding something new in history: an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy.

Just One More time With This Idea

Sarah is a Pole Dancer. The guy who picked her to be 'one heartbeat away from the Presidency' is the true traitor. As we have said for years.

Matt Steinglass

McCain is a guy of rather mediocre intellect, little curiosity, and very poor and impulsive decision-making skills. He’s vain and headstrong, and he easily turns opposition over matters of policy or politics into personal vendettas. He became a political commodity in 1973 because he embodied the right-wing working-class value of patriotism under duress at a moment when patriotism and the white working class felt under attack for their complicity in a disastrous foreign war. And he was seized upon by a desperate Republican Party in political free-fall; in the thick of Watergate, the Nixon administration launched him as a political celebrity. He then parlayed that notoriety into a political career a few years down the road. He certainly has a substantial amount of charm and an instinct for playing the press, and he’s hardly the dumbest guy in the Senate. But he is not a responsible or serious person. And to a great degree, when he met Sarah Palin, he probably felt he was looking at a younger version of himself. Which is to say that the “rot” in the GOP, the eagerness to substitute celebrity and resentful pseudo-patriotic gibberish for real political discussion, goes back a lot longer than 8 years.

John McCain: Tail First. Country Last.

Some Deep Shit Here Man

TPM:

The Deeper Questions

There's a lot of salacious back and forth today about the Ensign scandal. But beneath the tabloid headlines there's a critical question that needs to be asked:

Which is more emasculating?

Getting paid a hundred grand by the guy who screwed your wife?

Or being a fifty-something United States senator and still needing mom and dad to cut the check to pay off your mistress and her husband?

Finally, The Truth Is Being Spoken

More than anything else, they want to bang her. A stiff dick has no political conscience:

Steve Chapman (note: Right Wing Nut)

Palin is not alone in using her looks to enchant the Republican faithful. Carrie Prejean went from being a runner-up for Miss USA to a conservative heroine because she came out against gay marriage in her pageant interview -- but also because she wears a bikini well. Ann Coulter would be just another rabid pit bull if not for the long hair and short skirts. Harriet Miers' problem was that she couldn't overcome her deficiencies with sex appeal. When people remain ardent fans of Palin no matter how badly she performs, it's reasonable to wonder what they are thinking. But thinking has nothing to do with it.

How many of YOU know who this person is?:

Rahm Emanuel, Evil Genius

Taking down both Israel

Netanyahu appears to be suffering from confusion and paranoia. He is convinced that the media are after him, that his aides are leaking information against him and that the American administration wants him out of office. Two months after his visit to Washington, he is still finding it difficult to communication normally with the White House. To appreciate the depth of his paranoia, it is enough to hear how he refers to Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, Obama's senior aides: as "self-hating Jews."

"He thought that his speech at Bar-Ilan would become mandatory reading at schools in the United States, and when he realized that Obama gave no such order, he went back to being frustrated," one of his associates said.

At a recent meeting with with Netanyahu, ostensibly about the understandings with the U.S. on the settlements, former prime minister Ehud Olmert was shocked to see the prime minister focusing mainly on the media. "Is this what he called me in for?" a source close to Olmert quoted him as saying.

and Sarah Palin

one of the most interesting aspects of the [Time Magazine] story is how vehemently the Palin camp blames Barack Obama.

From the story:

For Palin, however, these aren't isolated incidents. She believes they grow from the same root, which is too big and too formidable to ignore. "A lot of this comes from Washington, D.C. The trail is pretty direct and pretty obvious to us," says Meg Stapleton, a close Palin adviser in Alaska. Awaiting a flight back to Anchorage from distant Dillingham, Stapleton adds that the anti-Palin offensive seems lifted straight from The Thumpin', which describes the political strategies of Rahm Emanuel, who is now the White House chief of staff. "It's the Sarah Palin playbook. It's how they operate," Stapleton says.

Palin and her Alaska circle find evidence for their suspicions about the White House in the person of Pete Rouse, who lived in Juneau for a time before he became chief of staff to a young U.S. Senator named Barack Obama. Rouse, they note, is a friend of former Alaska state senator Kim Elton, who pushed the first ethics investigation of Palin, examining her controversial firing of the state's public-safety commissioner. Both Rouse and Elton have joined the Obama Administration. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs scoffed at the theory. "The charge is ridiculous," he said. "Obviously there is no effort ... From my vantage point, a lot of the criticism she is getting from others seems to be generated from self-inflicted wounds.

"I just hope to God Rahm Emanuel isn't using taxpayer money to come after Alaska." That's the way they think about it: that these Alaskans filing ethics complaints have been hoodwinked by Obama operatives into wasting the Alaskan government's time and resources.

Not Just Any Cemetery

Chicago Tribune

The scene at Burr Oak Cemetery
An unknown number of graves have been dug up in the historic cemetery over the last several years and the bodies dumped in the rear of the burial ground so the graves could be resold by the cemetery management. Blues music legend Willie Dixon and civil rights figure Emmett Till are among those buried in the suburban Chicago cemetery.

Goddam Elites

Democrats are the party of The Brainypants

Most Scientists Support Democrats

A new Pew Research report on American attitudes toward science finds that 55% of scientists identify as Democrats, while 32% identify as independents and just 6% say they are Republicans. When the leanings of independents are considered, fully 81% identify as Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 12% who either identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP.

No Wonder Hillary Lost

Coulter: "[P]robably a large majority of the hatred for Palin" comes from jealous liberal women in NY

How Many Times Have We All Said This?

No Truth To The Rumor That Marion Barry Will Be Running For IL Governor

One More Thing

The One White Glove?

The first sign of madness.

So Sue Me

You do not get to be called King Of Pop if you made up the title by yourself and for yourself.

And being King of 'Pop' (not 'Soul', Not R&B, Not 'Rock' Not, god help us, 'Cool') is FUCKING CHEEEEEEEZZZZZEEE.

And, hanging with Liza, Liz and 10 year olds? Hopelessly Uncool.

Dying like Elvis? Tedious.

Bringing Vegas Values to the Dance Floor? Unforgivable.

What did he do again?

For The Record

RE: Palin Popularity

RE: Real America

RE: Political Myths

Courtesy Dave Wiegel

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” roiled, as most political shows will today, with discussions of Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-Alaska) resignation. And as with most discussion of Palin, it featured well-paid New York or Washington-based pundits explaining why the second member of a Republican ticket that lost Indiana, Ohio and Virginia represented “real America.”

“Which vice presidential candidate was taken off the campaign trail and which one was out there drawing thousands of people?” asked Joe Scarborough. Of course, then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) was not “taken off the trail,” and as TWI’s Laura McGann has reported, Palin’s crowds were always overrated. Scarborough’s quasi-co-host Mika Brzezinski followed this up by saying Palin represented “real Americans,” and that some people in “urban America” didn’t get it.

This is fascinating.

In 2004, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) lost the presidency with 48.3 percent of the vote, and no one seriously suggested that they represented “real Americans” or anything else. As Ben Smith reported after the election, at least 79 percent of Americans now live in urban areas; the people with whose opinion Brzezinski is so concerned represent a demographic and political fringe. Famously, the county in North Carolina that Sarah Palin pegged as an outpost of “real America” went for Barack Obama over John McCain, by 18 points.

(a story I have told countless times in the last eight months -GT12)

By every metric, Palin is one of the less popular Republican politicians on the national stage: her ticket even carried less of the vote in Alaska (59.4 percent) than the
Bush/Cheney ticket carred in 2004 (61.1 percent). And yet mainstream pundits insists that she represents more of the country than the people who won the 2008 election. It’s quite extraordinary.

Weak Tea

More Tea Bag Parties on July 4!

Just not too many more. And certainly lots of not as much on th e attendance front

Once We Were The Coin Of The Realm

Thanks Andrew!

Spintria; AE 21, c. 22-37 AD, 3.80g. Buttrey, Spintriae, Num. Chron. 1973, Scene 7. Obv: A man with erect penis reclining r. on his front on a couch, supporting his upper body on his l. elbow and looking back l. at another man who is making love to him; this second man holds the first man's thigh with his r. hand, and the first man holds the second man's arm above the elbow with his r. hand; a footstool and drapery are seen under the couch, and additional drapery hangs in l. background. Rx: Numeral XII within circle of dots and laurel wreath. Ex M&M 79, 1994, 639; ex Sternberg 21, 1988, 532. On less well preserved specimens the figure reclining on the couch could be thought to be a woman, but his sexual organ on our coin proves that he is in fact a man. Our obverse is from a different die than the specimen illustrated by Buttrey, pl. 3, 7. According to Buttrey, p. 60, another specimen like ours combining this scene with the number XII on reverse is in the BM. This is one of the few coins in the Spintria series that shows homosexual intercourse. It is a great rarity of historical significance. Some corrosion on the reverse edge, otherwise EF. A remarkable coin.

The Core Of The Base

Because this is never far from their thinking, I have never considered the Republican Party worth the time of any human.

Let’s check the Wonkette tips …. Ah, here’s one right there at the top of the Inbox. As usual. Because this is what Republicans do: “Racist ‘humor,’ the Internet, and political ambitions don’t mix. Audra Shay, vice chairman of the Young Republicans and the leading candidate to be elected its chairman on Saturday, is now the latest in a growing list of GOP officials learning this lesson the hard way ….”

Shay is just some 38-year-old “Young Republican” gal in Louisiana who was recently endorsed by Bobby “The Exorcist” Jindal to chair that fine youth organization for the under-40 GOP crowd. A fresh face, etc.! And she got one of those Facebook pages, so she could interact with her friends, the Young Republicans. In response to one such comment by a friend — about how You Know Who is a commie Muslin coon illegal alien — Shay typed an honest, simple reply:

You tell em Eric! lol

And later, after Audra sort of half-assed apologized, after getting caught, Eric came back to offer this assessment of, uhm, America?

GT12 thanks Wonkette for putting this all together.