Sooner Blue

Jimmy Kimmel told Howard Stern a joke he decided not to use at the White House Correspondents' Dinner -- "I had some jokes about -- like Rick Santorum. I said something like -- well, I didn't say it, but: Newt Gingrich's campaign is so dead Mitt Romney wants to baptize it and Rick Santorum wants to put it in a jar and show it to his kids."

Good decision .. it's clever and all, but to refer to a dead child .. crass and tasteless.

But the interesting thing is -- how bizarre that the, uh, personal belief system of these two men even allowed Kimmel to construct such a joke.

Hey, you never know with righties -- the Santorums thought it was perfectly okay to let their kids see their stillborn sibling .. and Barbara Bush apparently thought it was fine to let her son see her miscarried fetus, which she kept in a jar.

Who am I to judge?

Jeffrey Toobin has an interesting piece about how Chief Justice John Roberts orchestrated the Citizens United decision to remove campaign finance limits so that rich corporations could have the same "free speech" as a person.

" When the Court announced its final ruling on Citizens United, on January 21, 2010, the vote was five to four and the majority opinion was written by Anthony Kennedy. ...the result represented a triumph for Chief Justice [John] Roberts... As American politics assumes its new form in the post-Citizens United era, the credit or the blame goes mostly to him. ... The Roberts Court, it appears, will guarantee moneyed interests the freedom to raise and spend any amount, from any source, at any time, in order to win elections."

Sure didn't take John Roberts long to secure his place in history as the one of the crappiest Supreme Court Justices Ever .. the Citizens United decision will go down in history as weakening our democracy.

If you accept two premises, that money is speech .. so, if you have more money than me, you have more speech than I do .. and that corporations are people, having the same rights as a person, then Citizens United makes sense.

To me, it only makes sense in a state owned by corporations.

The five Republican-appointed Supremes (Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas) knew exactly what they were doing when they saddled America with their Citizens United ruling.

One thing they didn't figure on was how the long drawn-out 2012 Republican primaries would expose just how dang corrupt unlimited corporate, and individual billionaire, campaign donations would be. They probably didn't dream how much obscenely wealthy Republicans would use their wealth to trash and smear other Republicans.

But, don't hold your breath waiting for the five right-wing Supremes to reverse their corrupting decision .. all those state and local races, and the ones for Capitol Hill seats, are going to need boatloads of Citizens United cash for unlimited smear ads against any Democrats (or Independents) daring to get in the way.

The only way SCOTUS will kill Citizens United -- when Democrats start outraising the Republicans in SuperPac fundraising.

If only ...

... and finally gave us that gay rights pony we'd been whining about ...

Andrew Sullivan said it best - "Today Obama did more than make a logical step. He let go of fear. He is clearly prepared to let the political chips fall as they may. That's why we elected him. That's the change we believed in. ..."

If you read my blog yesterday, what can I say? I guess I was born cynical because I had a list of reasons a mile long for President Obama NOT to announce to the nation that he favors marriage equality. But does he listen to me?

I still think Obama's 'coming out' will make his road to a second term even bumpier .. I can already see Karl Rove using all that Super-Pac money to make TV commercials trying to bury Barack Obama.

This is exactly the spit-flecked social issue that Righties want to jump on to distract voters from the fact that Republicans step on the backs of the working class to give billionaires tax breaks, and have no real plan for jobs, etc.

Ah well, the more they bellow and bray about Obama's "war on marriage," the less they yak about the slow economy .. while Obama talks about jobs, income inequality, student loans, etc.

My fellow Americans, this is leadership .. President Obama has taken a stand that threatens his re-election .. he came through at a time when Gay Americans really need it, telling them he's on their side, that they matter.

It would have been easier to continue to Romney around with evasive answers .. but there he was, making history, declaring himself as aligned against bigotry .. which is always the right answer.

To those whiners who say he shoulda spoken out a day earlier, before North Carolina’s Amendment One passed - which banned not only same-sex marriages but unions and partnerships - I say balderdash, the vote in NC was never going to be influenced in any meaningful way by a statement from Obama.

Obama had already backed same-sex marriage as much as he could at the federal level .. the tenth amendment has individual states write the marriage rules .. not the President or Congress.

He's smart to get this out of the way so far ahead of the elections, so that it can be old news by then .. he avoids all the endless questions and silly evasions. When you're running against the nation’s most infamous political waffler, you don’t want to look like a waffler yourself.

Okay, it's done now .. in the short run we wait to see how the nation feels after the dust settles.

In the long run we just sit back and wait for the rest of the country to catch up to us equality-happy progressives - and the polls show it's happening slowly but surely. We'll wait for states to start rolling back their anti-gay amendments, which will allow their lesbian daughters and gay sons to live near their families, where they were born, where they grew up, instead of fleeing to coastal states and urban centers.

My conservative friend said that Obama's current position on marriage equality is purely political. I said, well duh .. he's a politician isn't he?

I know why the president teeters on the fence, he needs every vote he can get .. right now any negative flack over this issue would lose him votes, which is exactly why the Righties are pushing it, pushing it .. which isn't too smart if they'd stop and think a moment - because the more stink they raise, the more it will force Romney and the Republicans to take a position on a difficult social issue. A real minus for them would be independent and moderate voters watching Romney kiss radical Tea Party ass .. right on top of him having to fire his Gay campaign advisor last week too.

Obama's coalition of Democrats, black voters, women, Hispanics and urban voters are all intact -- and in favor of gay marriage -- but swing voters, especially suburban voters, are still split.

So now I'm wondering if President Roadrunner is scammin' the Acme Tool Co. Righties again .. having Biden Big Mouth say something about approving gay marriage, you know, so it's out there .. which will get the so-called liberal media (ha ha) all riled up, hounding the President's press secretary .. one of reporters actually fainted and slid to the floor at the White House presser.

Anyway, President Obama doesn't have to say anything more, only have Sec'y Carney repeat his "evolving" talking points. This will nudge Obama's position forward while seeming to walk it back .. his message is clear and he can deflect until December.

I believe Obama's heart's in the right place, and the only evolving he has done is into a presidential candidate trying to win a 2nd term...

Wake up whining Lefties - if Obama doesn't attain enough electoral votes, the rights of ALL Americans won't just go on the back burner .. they'll go up in flames.

If Obama endorses equality it would alienate some culturally conservative Democrats .. look what happened in NC last night .. the unfortunate reality is that a big segment of the population is backward thinking .. such a move would also herd more disgruntled anti-Mormon evangelicals Romney's way ...

I know, I know, it sucks, because marriage equality is an important issue.. but we don't get further along down the road by making it a referendum on the candidate. We know dang well which candidate signed a Rightie pledge against gay marriage. Can we leave it at that until after November?

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that Obama has a national lead over Romney by seven points, 49% to 42%, "due to increased support from independent voters and more optimism about the U.S. economy."

Pissing people off and giving fear mongers a soap box isn't the way to play this .. we must continue to hold our cards close to the vest and bluff.

If being honest and going by the book were the only important factors in the game of politics, Jimmy Carter would be #1 on every list of great presidents.