"MAGA Republicans seemed to think that the scary setting for Biden’s alarming message was somehow beneficial to them..."

"... and they soon began sharing images of the dramatic black-and-neon-red scene. 'I can’t believe this is a real photograph,' J. D. Vance, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, tweeted. 'It depicts the president of our nation, as he took to the airwaves and spoke about his fellow citizens as if they were sewer rats.' Rick Scott, the Republican Senate campaign chief, tweeted the photo and dismissed Biden as a 'raving lunatic' who 'attacked half the country tonight.' Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, called it a 'hate speech.' Over on Fox News, Tucker Carlson was very, very angry about the 'blood-red Nazi background' and the Marine honor guard in front of Independence Hall, a setting that he termed a 'complete outrage.' Even before Biden spoke, Kevin McCarthy—the House Minority Leader, whose slavish devotion earned him the sobriquet 'my Kevin' from Trump—gave a prebuttal, in which he said that the President should 'apologize for slandering tens of millions of Americans as fascists.'"

Writes Susan B. Glasser in "Joe Biden’s This-Is-Not-Normal Speech on the Rising Danger of MAGA Trumpists/The President calls out Trump and his Republicans, and they see red" (The New Yorker).

Glasser's penultimate sentence: "How telling it is that, when the President of the United States today speaks of threats to the nation, he is warning not about adversaries abroad but the danger within."

She means that to read pro-Biden, strangely enough. 

Question for Mike Huckabee: Were the authors of The Federalist Papers kids, cowards, couch potatoes, or perverts?

How sad. A US Senator created a fake name for Twitter and became "Pierre Delcto." Hiding behind a pseudonym is what kids, cowards, couch potatoes, or perverts like "Carlos Danger" do. https://t.co/E9ti4dUSZ1

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) October 21, 2019

Pseudonyms are an American tradition. They're all over the place in debate over ratifying the Constitution.

And how about Rocky Clark? Was he a kid, a coward, a couch potato, or a pervert? (Rocky Clark was the pseudonym Steve Wozniak used "when attending the University of California, Berkeley after co-founding Apple Computer, because 'I knew I wouldn't have time enough to be an A+ student'" — see "Pseudonym" (Wikipedia)).

And then there's Donald Trump:

Donald Trump, an American businessman, politician, and 45th president of the United States, has used several pseudonyms, including "John Barron" (or "John Baron"), "John Miller" and "David Dennison". His practice of sometimes speaking to the media under the guise of a spokesperson has been described as "an open secret" at the Trump Organization and in New York media circles. Some New York editors recalled that "calls from Barron were at points so common that they became a recurring joke on the city desk." A writer for Fortune reported that Trump's father Fred Trump had used the pseudonym Mr. Green in business dealings....

Was Huckabee couch-potatoing when he came up with that pathetic tweet? He didn't even spell Pierre Delecto right.

Mike Huckabee feels sorry for Chelsea Handler — she seems "angry and bitter and, look, she's almost as old as me."

Mike Huckabee has a fine time defending his daughter Sarah Huckabee Sanders from the depredations of Chelsea Handler, who had 2 abortions and must be jealous of Sarah, who has a husband who loves her and 3 delightful children...



For the record, Mike Huckabee is 62, and Chelsea Handler is 42. And Sarah Sanders is 35. So that's some crazy man-on-woman age-taunting.

But Chelsea Handler had done some crazy woman-on-woman looks-taunting:

"That harlot that they’re dressing up and trolloping out every day? I mean, one day she has no makeup on at all, the next she got, like, six-foot-long eyelashes, and she’s got cleavage and summer whore lipstick all over her face. Can you believe what they turned her into? A proper trollop."

Handler uses the word "trollop" twice, once as a noun referring to Sanders and once as a verb referring to what is being done to her by others. My dictionary, the OED, does not recognize "trollop" as a verb, but it does, in its etymology for the noun "trollop," speculate that "trollop" came from the verb "troll." It observes that the "-op" ending is also in "gallop" and "wallop." But both "gallop" and "wallop" are nouns and verbs, so how does adding "-op" work to change a verb to a noun?

In any case, the connection between "trollop" and "troll" is one of those things that make me wonder why I didn't notice it before. It's so not unseeable once it's seen. "Troll" comes from older words that have to do with going on a quest for game without real purpose — running about, looking around indiscriminately. The verb "troll" came to refer especially to gay men walking about looking for a sexual encounter. There are other meanings for "troll" that pick up on the similarity to "roll," so that it can mean to sing "in a full, rolling voice" — as in "troll the ancient Yuletide carol" in the Christmas song "Deck the Halls" (the song that amuses us by recommending "gay apparel")...



But back to "trollop," the noun. It means "An untidy or slovenly woman; a slattern, slut; also, sometimes a morally loose woman." So Handler got the wrong word there too, because her complaint about Sanders is that she's ridiculously overdone. Too much makeup. A trollop seems to be more of a walk-of-shame, rolled-out-of-bed type of woman. But I get it that Handler was just trotting out her prostitute words and "trollop" seemed like it wanted to go out streetwalking with "whore."

To be fair to prostitutes, I don't think anyone wears as much makeup as a TV news commentator. That's actually what Sanders looks like. I don't know when we came to see extremely heavy makeup as a look for a newsperson (or press secretary). It doesn't say credibility. But when they're lying, at least it's not a barefaced lie.

By the way, Chelsea Handler lives in the path of one of the California wildfires. Before you decide how sympathetic you want to be toward her, you should know that she tweeted, "Just evacuated my house. It's like Donald Trump is setting the world on fire. Literally and figuratively. Stay safe everyone. Dark times."

The fires aren't in Washington. Metaphorically, it seems more like the fire is an outward manifestation of the sexual corruption in Hollywood. But when terrible things are happening to people, I think it's best to look at those things for what they are in concrete reality and not appropriate them into the relatively painless realm of abstraction.

"My wife's name is Janet. And when you say Janet yellin', I'm very familiar with what you mean."

Ugh. Did Mike Huckabee make a bad and really out of place joke at last night's debate.

That's the type of joke you used to hear all the time in the 1950s and 60s. In TV sitcoms and "The Ed Sullivan Show."

"I know that most politicians say we want everyone to vote, I’m gonna be honest with you, I don’t want everyone to vote."

"If they’re so stupid — that’s right, if they’re gonna vote for me they need to vote, if they’re not gonna vote for me they need to stay home. I mean, it’s that simple... But in the big picture, there are people who vote and they have no idea what our Constitution says... They have no idea what the limitations of government are supposed to be. The fact that the 10th Amendment expresses it very clearly, that if it’s not expressly written in our federal charter called the Constitution those power stay to the states."

Said Mike Huckabee, who seems to be mixing the Constitution up with the Articles of Confederation.

Articles of Confederation, Article II: "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."

Constitution, Amendment 10: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

But I'd still let Huckabee vote. 

Huckabee incites civil disobedience to the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage decision and the Texas attorney general takes the cue.

From yesterday's "This Week" show:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So what exactly are you calling on people to do right now? You say resist and reject this judicial tyranny. Spell out exactly what that means?

HUCKABEE: George, judicial tyranny is when we believe that the courts have a right to bypass the process of law and we've really seen it this week in two cases, in both the Obamacare case, which Justice Scalia called it - said we not - should call it SCOTUScare because they have rescued it twice, ex cathedra to the law, and then in the same-sex marriage ruling in which -

Huckabee avoids the interesting part of the question and concentrates on the criticism of the court. It's tyranny, blah blah blah. Stephanopoulos interrupts to pin him down (and make some news!):

STEPHANOPOULOS: So are you calling for civil disobedience?

HUCKABEE: I don't think a lot of pastors and Christian schools are going to have a choice. They either are going to follow God, their conscience and what they truly believe is what the scripture teaches them, or they will follow civil law. They will go the path of Dr. Martin Luther King, who in his brilliant essay the letters from a Birmingham jail reminded us, based on what St. Augustine said, that an unjust law is no law at all. 

But MLK and St. Augustine didn't anything about judicially declared rights — extra rights for the people, found (perhaps in error) by a court, displacing laws on the theory that those laws were unjust.

Huckabee makes that problem harder to see by getting us to look only at those who feel compelled by religion to resist the Court's decision. But the case the Court just decided doesn't require "pastors and Christian school" to do anything. It only presents an occasion for disobedience to government bureaucrats who find themselves bound to issue marriage licenses. These people can quit their jobs if their religion prevents them from doing what government is now required to do to avoid violating the rights of the citizens they have a duty to serve. No law violation is required.

Huckabee continues:

And I do think that we're going to see a lot of pastors who will have to make this tough decision. You're going to see it on the part of Christian business owners. You'll see it on the part of Christian university presidents, Christian school administrators. If they refuse to...

Huckabee is trying to steer the conversation into things he's predicting will happen, requirements that might befall private citizens. It's not wrong to worry about these things. There are conflicts to come that will need to be resolved, but Huckabee is off the path Stephanopoulos invited him down, and Stephanopoulos knows it and asks exactly the right question:

STEPHANOPOULOS: What about county clerks? Should they issue same-sex marriage licenses?

HUCKABEE: If they have a - a conscientious objection, I think they should be excused. I'm not sure that every governor and every attorney general should just say, well, it's the law of the land because there's no enabling legislation...

Huckabee doesn't really want answer to that question. He won't call outright for resistance from the bureaucrats on the front lines of the marriage licensing function of government. The word "excused" suggests a benevolent reassignment of clerical workers with religious objection so they don't need to quit their jobs to avoid participating in what they view as a sin.

But Texas attorney general Ken Paxton steps into the breach and goes big:

Clerks can refuse based on religious objections, Paxton told the Austin American-Statesman, and because the clerks will probably be sued, "numerous lawyers stand ready to assist clerks defending their religious beliefs," he said....

What's wrong with the CNN headline "Huckabee compares being gay to drinking, swearing"?

My first post today is about my struggle with the Sunday morning talk shows. I watch to blog, so I want the transcript. I said I record 4 of the shows, and, now, getting ready to blog this CNN headline, I realizethat  there's a 5th Sunday morning show, and I never watch it. It's CNN's "State of the Union."

Fortunately, the complete transcript is available, so we can look at exactly what Mike Huckabee said and why there's something wrong with the headline:

DANA BASH: [Y]ou do write very eloquently about it being a religious conviction to oppose to -- oppose gay marriage, but then you also talk about the biblical backings of being heterosexual.  So, given that, how do you kind of square that religious conviction with being open to having gay friends?

HUCKABEE: Well, people can be my friends who have lifestyles that are not necessarily my lifestyle.

Notice that Huckabee shifted the topic from being gay to having a lifestyle.  So right there it's obvious that he's not going to be comparing "being gay to drinking, swearing" — as the headline has it. He'll be comparing acting out on homosexual desire to acting out on a desire to consume alcohol or acting out on the urge to express oneself with profanity. These are all sins in his book, but like anybody else who has friends and believes that a lot of things are sins, he's friends with sinners.

"Next week, Scott Walker will go to the Packers' game, root for his state's team, & sit in the cheap seats & freeze with the common people."

Tweets Bill Kristol, right after "Chris Christie cavorting with Jerry Jones in the owner's box. Numbers plummeting in IA & NH. OTOH, will Jones write big Super PAC checks?"

Then: "And Rick Perry and Ted Cruz will go to Green Bay to root for Dallas, but will sit out in the cold with the voters rather than the donors," "What about Jeb? He doesn't watch football. He'll be at a polo match," "Huck will watch the game at a church-affiliated youth center in Des Moines," and "Rand Paul? Doesn't watch football. Doesn't approve of team sports."

Oh! The poor politico whose speech — written by The Daily Show's Lizz Winstead — gets called "The most painful speech ever" by Politico.

My heart — which, I must say, contains an element of palpable bitchery — goes out to Democratic Congresswoman Donna Edwards, who had a text, probably a fine text that would have killed if delivered with the intensity and commitment — the passion and intrigue — of a Daily Shower like Samantha Bee.



Now, Donna Edwards is to be mocked — on Politico! — because the nitwits in the audience couldn't get jokes like: "Come on, help me y’all: I want to give a really special shout out to Nancy Pelosi and all my sisters in the libido caucus — holla'!"

"President Clinton did a bad, bad thing, Monica Lewinsky was not precisely an innocent victim completely..."

"... I recall thong flashing there," says WaPo's Ruth Marcus, noting the tendency of Republicans like Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul to portray women, "when it comes to sex and sexual activity," as "either innocent victims or... sexually promiscuous, slutty, low-life women." It should be that "women get to use sex and sexual activity and with that use contraception responsibly just like men do."

This is similar to what I said yesterday:

If young women are "conquering the world" (as Paul said), why not credit Monica Lewinsky with her conquest of the world's most powerful man? She was enthusiastic and willing, from what I read.

I had a problem with Rand Paul's talking about Lewinsky as a "young girl" who was taken "advantage" of. He acknowledged the importance of rules against sexual harassment, but for what I thought was the wrong reason:

I think the sexual harassment problem in the case of Bill Clinton has to do with other women who were pressured to have sex and with the women and men who were not in a position to improve their standing in the workplace by interacting sexually with the boss.

Lewinsky was young and seems really to have fallen in love with Bill Clinton, who blithely used her for his selfish amusement, but she was an adult and she made choices. As Ruth Marcus said, "women get to use sex... just like men." That's freedom. That's personal autonomy. And a lot of use goes on.

It's nice to hear Marcus plainly say that Clinton's use of Lewinsky was "a bad, bad thing," and I think some people really will feel that it's got something to do with whether he gets to reside in the White House again, even if it's counting the misdeeds of the man against the wife. When the wife is asking for the distinction of First Woman President, there's some sense in thinking about all of the relevant women issues.

I'd like to see Hillary run on the argument that she's the best. Don't do anything at all to get us hyped up about achieving another "first." Just be the best. It makes more sense, and it might be the easiest path.

David Gregory tries to drag Rand Paul into the war on women.

On "Meet the Press" this morning, Gregory seemed intent on extracting something from Rand Paul that would hurt him with women voters.

First, Gregory started the interview with Mike Huckabee's gift to the Democrats, the statement that birth control coverage implies that women "cannot control their libido." Gregory asks Paul whether that's "helpful," and Rand Paul goes meta, saying "a lot of debates in Washington... get dumbed down and are used for political purposes," which is a way of saying Gregory's question is dumb. Then Paul jokes, "if there was a war on women, I think they won," and proceeds to talk about the women in his family, who are doing well, and the fact that women now outnumber men in law schools and med schools. He concludes that he doesn't see women as "downtrodden." They are "rising up and doing great things." In fact, he worries about men, "because I think the women really are out-competing the men in our world."

On the "Duck Dynasty" flap, Mike Huckabee is opposing and fomenting the squelching of anti-gay speech.

He said:

"I think it's come to a point in our culture where political correctness has made it so if you want to take a point of view that is traditional, that holds to a steadfast, old-fashioned biblical, Christian values - which are also, by the way, values of traditional Judaism and even Islam - and somehow you're just supposed to shut up and keep that to yourself."

Huckabee pointed to a "new level of bullying on the part of these militant activist groups,” as reason for Robertson's suspension by A&E, referring to groups like the Human Rights Campaign, which urged the network to suspend the star.

But Huckabee conceded that Robertson's comments would have been "more appropriate for the duck woods than it would be for the pages of a major news magazine."

So Huckabee is part of moving the culture to the very point that he's observing that it's come to. There really are things you don't say in mixed company, and it's long been part of the culture to refrain from voicing religious views that make other people uncomfortable. In Christianity, there are many many sins, and it's not socially acceptable to talk about all of them openly and indiscriminately.

If you don't believe me, here's an experiment you can do over the next 3 days. Whenever you find yourself in a conversation with a fat person, inform them that gluttony is a sin. Here are some Biblical verses you can incorporate into your experience:

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.” Proverbs 28:7 declares, “He who keeps the law is a discerning son, but a companion of gluttons disgraces his father.” Proverbs 23:2 proclaims, “Put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony.”

Let me know how that works out for you. But you won't do it, because you know it's not acceptable.

What people are having trouble with is the somewhat sudden change, with hostility to homosexuality moving into the category of something not appropriate to spout to a general audience.

And that doesn't mean Phil Robertson shouldn't have said what he said. He was being interviewed and pressed on a topic and he answered honestly. He has a reality show that is entertaining because it's somewhat daring and different, and people can choose whether they'd like to drop in on this particular cast of colorful characters. The culture of the show is a different, smaller circle than the whole American culture. And the network, A&E, is another culture. It includes some entertainment premised on colorful indiscretions that go only as far as fits a corporate brand.

We're in the process of figuring out what you can say where, what has no consequences, what counts as funny or daring and offensive to some but not enough to have a negative effect a speaker or a network, and what everyone ought to know by now is going to hurt you.

What hurts a business like A&E is different from what hurts an individual human being, especially one who believes he is building up his treasures in heaven.

"30 Best Quotes" from the GOP convention.

As seen by John Hawkins, with #1, #5, and #14 coming from Mike Huckabee. Was Huckabee that good? Here's the #1 quote:

“The Democrats say we ought to give Barack Obama credit for trying. That sounds like the nonsense of giving every kid a trophy for showing up. Friends, we’re talking about leading the country, not playing on a third-grade soccer team! I realize this is the man who got a Nobel Peace Prize for what he would potentially do, but in the real world, you get the prize for producing something, not just promising it.”

I don't think the Democrats are saying "we ought to give Barack Obama credit for trying," and the everybody-gets-a-trophy trope is hackneyed. It was a reasonably spiffy quote though, like something Rush Limbaugh would say ad libbing on his show in any given hour.

By the way, speaking of what Democrats say, I can easily picture Democrats calling that quote racist. Why? For comparing Obama to children. Why doesn't somebody review each speech with an eye toward eliminating things like that? The Democrats in my head — whom I can hear giving their spin on any and everything — are saying: Because they really do want to reach white people in that residual racist part of their brain.

Live-blogging Day 2 of the GOP Convention.

6:03: Ayla Brown — the erstwhile "American Idol" contestant and daughter of Senator Scott Brown — sings the National Anthem.

6:07: "Please release each one of us from ego"... part of the invocation, given by a Sikh.

6:08: The color guard are amputee veterans, which we see because they're wearing shorts, earning a new, immediate exception to my "men in shorts" rule.

6:10: A bombastic tribute to Ron Paul. "No, no, I'm not going to be elected," he said to his wife. "To be elected, you've got to be like Santa Claus." Rand Paul says one thing he likes about his father is the lobbyists don't even bother to come by his office.

6:29: I found it hard to watch Mitch McConnell. I almost got out my sketchbook and pen, though, because his face says "Caricature me!" So I moved from C-SPAN over to CNN. (I'm recording both, and also Fox News.) They had an interview with Paul Ryan, in which Gloria Borger prodded him about how he felt when, as a 16-year-old boy, he discovered his father dead. Ryan moved on to how you have to live knowing you could die at any time, so Gloria asked why he didn't live fast and run right away for President. He said there were others who could do that job, but he was the only one would could father his young children. Gloria did not proceed to ask why then is he taking on the VP slot, but I guess that's a very short campaign period and, frankly, once you get it, it's a lot less work than chairing the House Finance Committee. Then Piers Morgan was interviewing Michele Bachmann, and the 2 of them agreed that Ann Romney was just lovely and then enthused about the "miracle" of the 2 of them agreeing, which Wolf Blitzer then echoed, sending me back to C-SPAN which was showing the on-stage entertainer, a horrifying aging rock singer who was belting the line "I'm back in the game" over and over.

6:30: Rand Paul: "You know when the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, the first words out of my mouth were 'I still think it's unconstitutional.'" Pushed to reflect, he reflected, and he still thinks it's unconstitutional. "The whole damned thing is unconstitutional." Meade says, "He said 'damned.'" And then, more seriously: "What we have here is crazy old Ron Paul" — and Meade makes a Ron Paul face — "morphing into Rand Paul."

6:50: Video of the Bushes, 41 and 43, and their wives, Barbara and Laura. So they weren't entirely banished from this place. They are circumspect, yet charming, claiming their place in history without seeming the slightest bit arrogant. Old Bush even does his Dana Carvey imitation imitation: "Not gon' do it. Wouldn't be prudent."

7:00: John McCain. Why is he here and not George Bush? McCain lost. Bush won twice. Meade says: "Because Bush is through with politics." McCain gives a paean to foreign wars in the cause of freedom, and the crowd's response is tepid.

7:50: Danny Gokey — another "American Idol" person. Another Wisconsin person.

8:00: Rob Portman, the short-list guy who came up short. "We need Romney/Ryan and we need them now." He seems perfectly fine, but I am glad he was not Romney's choice. There's some insurmountable dullness about him, no matter what he says, no matter how enthusiastically.

8:31: Another VP also-ran, Tim Pawlenty. He's reading jokes. For example: Obama is "the tattoo President" — it seemed cool at the time, but you look at it and say "What was I thinking?"

9:15: Huckabee and Rice both gave very long speeches that were neither bad nor good. Here's some text from Rice's speech.

9:19: Biggest cheer of the night comes when Gov. Susana Martinez says: "I carried at 357 Smith & Wesson Magnum" (referring to her experience, as an 18-year-old, working for her parents security guard business, protecting the Catholic church at bingo times). She's a good speaker. A nice edge of passion in her voice. With toughness.

9:29: Both Meade and I thought: We may be looking at the first woman President of the United States.

9:30: Paul Ryan. Meade says: "He looks like a young JFK only healthy." I'm struck by this quote, directly attacking Obama: "I have never seen opponents so silent about their record and so desperate to keep their power. They've run out of ideas. Their moment came and went. Fear and division is all they've got left."

9:40: As Paul Ryan expresses his love for the state of Wisconsin, the C-SPAN camera closes in on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and we see there's a tear rolling down his cheek.



That was pointed out by Meade, who confesses to a tear of his own.

9:55: Paul Ryan gives a moving tribute to his mother, who, as a new widow, commuted 40 miles a day to Madison — to my school, the University of Wisconsin — to learn the skills she used to build a new business and a new life in which her happiness was not just in the past and to become his role model. After a long ovation from the crowd, Ryan moves into what will be the greatest iteration of what has been the convention's them: You did build that. He says:

Behind every small business, there's a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities, the restaurants, cleaners, gyms, hair salon, hardware stores — these didn't come out of nowhere. A lot of heart goes into each one. And if small business people say they made it on their own, all they are saying is that nobody else worked 7 days a week in their place, nobody showed up in their place to open the door at 5 in the morning, nobody did their thinking and worrying and sweating for them. After all that work and in a bad economy, it sure doesn't help to hear from their President that government gets the credit. What they deserve to hear is the truth: Yes, you did build that!

11:10: Ryan did a brilliant job. It was much more than a fine speech and an excellent delivery. He embodied that speech. We saw a brilliant candidate.

Trump won't run.

I'm posting about this for some reason, even though I didn't see the point of posting that Huckabee won't run. What does a man have to do to get attention for not doing something?

"Donald Trump is now tied with Mike Huckabee for first place when Republicans are asked who they support for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012..."

A new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll.

ADDED: "Wow, what's happening to Mitt Romney?"

Huckabee takes sides in the Michelle v. Sarah food fight.

Sarah Palin took a very gentle shot at Michelle Obama... on the subject of dessert:

In her TLC show Sarah Palin's Alaska, the former GOP vice presidential nominee is seen opening cupboards in search of chocolate, marshmallows and graham crackers, asking "Where are the s'mores ingredients?"

"This is in honor of Michelle Obama, who said the other day we should not have dessert," Palin said.

Mike Huckabee, famously once quite fat and actually pretty fat again, opined:

“With all due respect to my colleague and friend Sarah Palin, I think she's misunderstood what Michelle Obama is trying to do... Michelle Obama's not trying to tell people what to eat or not trying to force the government's desires on people... She’s stating the obvious, that we do have an obesity problem in this country."

Well, he's not running for President against Michelle Obama. He's running (potentially) against Sarah Palin. Ironically, Sarah Palin is the one who's thin.

Now... is it true that Michelle Obama isn't "trying to tell people what to eat" and "not trying to force the government's desires on people"? Is it true that she's only "stating the obvious, that we do have an obesity problem in this country"? I don't know why Michelle Obama looks better if she's simply "stating the obvious" fact that there are a lot of fat people in this country. If it's so obvious, why point it out? And it's rude to do nothing more that point out that people are fat.

Here's Michelle Obama looming over some little boy as Barack Obama signs the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Looming large. You decide what's obvious. Or ask Huck, the arbiter of obvious. I just want to note that this bill seems to be about telling people what to eat and forcing the government's desires on people. (Forcing the government's desires on people? That sounds weirdly rape-y.)

But as the school-nutrition bill evolved, the first lady became involved in the sometimes messy world of legislative sausage-making to help push it through. 

This government that forces its desires on us pushes through with a messy sausage. Yikes. The imagery. Avert your eyes.

Anyway, what's in that bill? It's not about telling us what to eat? The linked article says it "will set national nutritional standards for public schools, boost funding for low-income meal programs and advance [Barack Obama's] wife’s campaign against childhood obesity." And in those "national nutritional standards," do the kids get s'mores or not? I don't know, but I see that as Obama signed the bill, he said:

“Not only am I very proud of the bill... but had I not been able to get this passed, I would be sleeping on the couch.”

Is it cool for the President to pose as pussy-whipped?

Mike Huckabee deploys the passive voice.

In a statement about Maurice Clemmons, the man wanted in the shooting of 4 police officers. Boldface added:

He was recommended for and received a commutation of his original sentence from 1990, this commutation made him parole eligible and he was then paroled by the parole board once they determined he met the conditions at that time.

These things just happened to Clemmons, according to Huckabee, who, as Arkansas governor, was the giver of the commutation that Clemmons received.

He was arrested later for parole violation and taken back to prison to serve his full term but prosecutors dropped the charges that would have held him.

Bad prosecutors.

Jon Voight is not happy with Barack Obama.

And some folks are not very happy with Jon Voight.

"Using mind control techniques developed on his home planet, Obama has unleashed an army of seductresses..."

"... in order to eliminate the men who stand in the way of his reelection in 2012. Based on the timing of the Sanford and Ensign affairs, it appears he launched the offensive before the first primary of 2008. I know this seems like a far-fetched theory, but it will seem a lot more plausible should Huckabee or Pawlenty ever hold the confessional press conference."