Author Archives: Phoenix Woman

Late Night: Is Andy Parrish Michele Bachmann’s Banshee?

Posted by Phoenix Woman on May 20, 2013 Comments Off

The FBI has contacted two former staffers of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign, adding to the swirl of federal and state investigations looking into alleged financial improprieties by top officials in the campaign.

Is that a banshee’s wail I hear?

See, until fairly recently, Andy Parrish was as loyal to Michele Bachmann as a Republican can be loyal to anything outside of the Almighty Dollar. For him to cooperate in this way with the authorities makes me think that there’s got to be something big and juicy here — and I’m guessing that once they get that particular big-and-juicy thing nailed down, they want to build a bridge from that thing to some other big-and-juicy things: Frank Vennes and Tom Petters.

Now that Parrish is talking to the FBI (and did you notice his lawyer is Classy John Gilmore, who’s suing the City of Minneapolis for $10 million for arresting him for being a drunken bigoted asshole to two Muslim women and their pedicabbie friend?), I think I know one reason why Bachmann’s decided to start running campaign ads nearly eighteen months before the next election.

Come Saturday Morning: The Conservative Crack-Up, 2013: Minnesota Marriage Equality Edition

Posted by Phoenix Woman on May 18, 2013 Comments Off

Bradley Dean “Bradlee Dean” Smith’s giving the the prayer for the May 2011 opening of the Minnesota Legislative session for that summer. This was the Minnesota public’s first taste of what their newly-elected GOP lege would be like, and it likely helped lead to the MN GOP’s losing the lege in 2012.

We all knew there were going to be some epic freakouts on the conservative side here in a newly-equalized Minnesota, but boy howdy, friends, I think some of these people have achieved low-altitude earth orbit here.

Check out Glenn “Gone Wild” Gruenhagen, the Saint of Buttsex and Saltpeter, as captured by Sally Jo Sorensen:

Glenn’s back in the news today for Aaron Rupar’s viral post at City Pages, MNGOP Rep. Gruenhagen on climate change: “It’s just a complete United Nations fraud”, but closer to home, he’s calling for measures to protect “the right as citizens, parents and school officials to passively resist the gay agenda coming into our schools.”

The gay agenda! United Nations fraud! The world is a scary, scary place.

The Glennster also appears in his Little Red Victim Hood costume, the favored apparel of so many poor put-upon conservative types, as he claims himself as a martyr to lefty political correctness:

… I have personal experience as a [school] board member, where state statutes were changed and eventually school curriculum and speech had to conform. I was then chided for public comments on school issues when I used terminology that was not politically correct.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have never, ever heard a conservative use the term “not politically correct” or other similar words except when trying to minimize rude, obnoxious, and craptastic behavior on a conservative’s part. Glenn Gone Wild is no exception.

Wanna know why his fellow school board members chided Gruenhagen? It’s because he was being an ass who wouldn’t stop talking about buttsex and other off-topic issues whenever the board was trying to get something done:

. . .With regularity Mr. Gruenhagen inserts his own biases into school board meetings with not the least provocation. Abortion, homosexuality, safe sex, evolution and countless other topics that do not appear on the school board’s agenda are brought to the fore, repeatedly, and forced onto unsuspecting school board members, administrators and individuals in the viewing audience. To do so is rude, a violation of school board decorum, a waste of attendees’ time and a disruption in the flow of otherwise quality public meetings. He ignores the expert advice of the superintendent of schools, two architectural firms, a construction management firm … Incredible! . . .

Incredible, that’s our Glennster.

But as dipshitterific as is Mr. Gruenhagen, one has to actually leave the precincts of the Minnesota State Legislature to find the true China White of North Star State mainline conservatism. That would be one Bradley Dean Smith, a toxic-rock hate preacher who goes by the name of “Bradlee Dean”.

Let the inimitable, iron-nerved Sally Jo Sorensen delineate his latest exploits for you:

It used to be that Bluestem could depend on local sources for news of toxic metal preacher Bradlee Dean’s latest rantings and not have to listen to his radio show ourselves. But since his lawyer initiated yet another lawsuit (we’ll let Wonkette explain), those heroes of fee speech have been silenced while the legal eagles work things out.

Funny how a guy like Dean who describes himself as a son of liberty works that way.

Fortunately, People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch is listening to Dean’s show so we don’t have to. In Bradlee Dean Has Epic Meltdown over Minnesota’s Gay Marriage Law, RWW’s Brian Tashman reports:

Minnesota-based Religious Right activist/rock star Bradlee Dean went ballistic on his radio show yesterday in response to his state’s new marriage equality law. Dean warned that Gov. Mark Dayton, who signed the same-sex marriage bill into law, is at “war with God” and is “about to find out what it’s like as to what the fallout is when you throw rocks towards God, he’s going to learn how gravity works.” He added that Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who backed his state’s marriage equality law, and other pro-gay rights “criminals” will face divine justice as well.

Listen to the audio at RRW. Tashman points to some classic Dean schtick:

Dean even seems to believe that every gay person in the country showed up for yesterday’s celebration of the marriage equality law in order to “push their propaganda and their agendas on the American people,” just as Saul Alinsky commanded.

“They come from all over the country to do this so what you’ve seen was probably the whole lump of the population of the homosexual community in the United States of America,” Dean said. . . .

Dean really needs to get out more.

Do I detect a bit of flop sweat on Mr. Smith’s brow? His rants have taken on the hyper-manic quality of someone who fears his fifteen minutes of fame and working the bigotry grift are about to end — and given his persona non grata status at the Capitol nowadays in the wake of his prayer session there, his alternate career options probably aren’t exactly legion, or lucrative.

Late Night: Marriage Equality and Pilgrims’ Progresses in Minnesota

Posted by Phoenix Woman on May 18, 2013 Comments Off

This past Tuesday, on the day of Minnesota’s joining the growing number of Marriage Equality states, Sally Jo Sorensen shared a photo of Tom Peterson’s at this link (which also appears in this post) and included these comments:

Since a least one member of the state’s New Apostolic Reformation prayer warrior teams warned that John Bunyan and the Jolly Green Giant might be representations of Old Testament giants, the depiction of the two getting gay married just might make Mary Kiffmeyer, Dan Severson and Sean Nienow’s heads explode.

Understandable typo, in that we Minnesota Pilgrims have certainly made some progress over the past year. Remember, at this time last year the Marriage and Voter Restriction Amendments both led in the polls, and by leads that certain would-be Serious Thinkers thought insurmountable. But pilgrims like Sally Jo Sorensen ignored the Serious Thinkers and won the day.

Come Saturday Morning: Republicans Bad and Good

Posted by Phoenix Woman on May 11, 2013 Comments Off

John Gilmore as Marat, by David Rothko

Good morning, everyone! And how is your weekend so far?

The theme this week is Republicans Bad and Good. In a spasm of relative generosity, I’m only going to name one Bad Republican, and overbalance this by naming two Good Republicans.

First, the Bad Republican: That would be John Gilmore, prominent Minnesota GOP operative who was arrested for his drunken antics towards Muslim women and their pedicabbie friend outside of Netroots Nation 11 in June of 2011, and who is now suing the City of Minneapolis for $10 million for daring to arrest him. Too bad for him that video documentation exists of his behavior.

Next, Good Republican #1: That would be Paul Douglas, the trained meteorologist who dares to irritate his fellow Republicans by saying things like this:

A staunch Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, set aside vast swaths of America for our National Parks System, the envy of the world. Another Republican, Richard Nixon, launched the EPA. Now some in my party believe the EPA and all those silly “global warming alarmists” are going to get in the way of drilling and mining our way to prosperity. Well, we have good reason to be alarmed.

[...]

My climate epiphany wasn’t overnight, and it had nothing to do with Al Gore. In the mid-90s I noticed startling changes in the weather floating over Minnesota. Curious, I began investigating climate science, and, over time, began to see the thumbprint of climate change — along with 97% of published, peer-reviewed PhD’s, who link a 40% spike in greenhouse gases with a warmer, stormier atmosphere.

And last, Good Republican #2: Dr. David May, Chair of the Board of Governors of the American College of Cardiology — and a big fan of single-payer health care:

How, you might say, could a Republican come to such a position? The simple answer is I really think it is quite Republican. Oh, I know there will be many raised eyebrows and many critics. I accept that. I understand the fact that no single payer system is perfect, that it is “socialist,” that it is “un-American.”

I would submit to you, however, that it is un-American to allow many of our citizens to be uninsured, that it is un-American to shunt money away from a strong military in order to support a bloated, inefficient and fraud-laden health care system, that it is un-American not to be open and above board with the cost of what we do, the expense of that service and the profit that we make. Mostly, it is un-American to let this outrageous health care injustice continue.

See? I can do Fair and Balanced, too — and Truthful, in the bargain.

Late Night: IRS Apologizes for Doing Its Job

Posted by Phoenix Woman on May 11, 2013 Comments Off

In case you were wondering if rich conservatives controlled the levers of power, wonder no more:

The Internal Revenue Service is apologizing for inappropriately flagging conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.

Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, said organizations that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status were singled out for additional reviews.

Lerner said the practice, initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati, was wrong and she apologized while speaking at a conference in Washington.

Oh, and now Mitch McConnell wants an investigation. Das ist zum Kotzen.

So when we see the words “Tea Party” or “Patriot” attached to a group, that’s not supposed to be a good indicator of whether the group engages in political action? Really? Really? As TBogg reminds us, the “TEA” part of the modern astroturf “Tea Party” wing of the GOP stands for “Taxed Enough Already” — how is that not a political stance?

Amazing, how conservative front groups funded by far-right hyper-rich folk like the Koch brothers and the Coors family can in essence whine that just because their groups’ names are pretty blatant in their political coding, doesn’t mean they aren’t tax exempt after all.

Meanwhile, the IRS, already so horrifically underfunded — by Congressional design — that it can’t hunt down the biggest tax cheats, now must put up with Mitch McConnell’s grandstanding garbage?

Arrrrrggggghhhhhhh. Argggh.

Late Night: IRS Apologizes for Doing Its Job

Posted by Phoenix Woman on May 11, 2013 Comments Off

In case you were wondering if rich conservatives controlled the levers of power, wonder no more:

The Internal Revenue Service is apologizing for inappropriately flagging conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.

Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, said organizations that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status were singled out for additional reviews.

Lerner said the practice, initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati, was wrong and she apologized while speaking at a conference in Washington.

Oh, and now Mitch McConnell wants an investigation. Das ist zum Kotzen.

Arrrrrggggghhhhhhh. Argggh.

Come Saturday Morning: Terry Jones Sets Us Straight

Posted by Phoenix Woman on May 4, 2013 Comments Off

Of the three kings of England named Richard, our grade-school history books usually state that Richard I the Lionhearted was a great king, Richard II was a megalomaniacal madman, and Richard III was a deformed and evil tyrant. Wrong, wrong, wrong, says Terry Jones in Episode 8 of his 2004 BBC series “Medieval Lives”.

Per Mr. Jones, the real stories go something like this: Lionheart was a creepy violent guy who cared only about finding excuses to fight, which is why he loved the Crusades so much, and he hated England, preferring to live in his lands in Normandy and Anjou and using England as a cash cow for his ruinously expensive wars and exercises in French castle-building. Richard II was a deeply religious man who acted to stop conflict wherever possible; this didn’t sit well with his barons, who wanted him to go to war more often so they could profit from it. Richard III was an able administrator who as Duke of Gloucester governed the north of England effectively and well, and upon becoming king introduced major reforms to the English legal system, such as having all the proceedings of a courtroom conducted in English instead of Latin or French.

Why were the real stories suppressed? In Lionheart’s case, the church, which approved of his crusading, had its chroniclers praise him to the skies. In the cases of Richards II and III, history was rewritten — literally — to please the victorious enemies of both kings. One wonders what other tales taught in school are not what we were told.

Late Night: So What Data Got Dumped Today?

Posted by Phoenix Woman on April 20, 2013 Comments Off

Fridays — especially Friday afternoons — and holiday periods are where the news cycle shuts down, at least in North America. That means that those are the times when those persons who are compelled to do something they find disagreeable, like admitting wrongdoing or releasing documents or other items that cast these persons in a less than favorable light, are likely to make their unpleasant revelations: Because they hope no one will notice them.

With the intense US media focus on Boston right now for the past work week, the effect is that of Friday Squared. All the media cycles of the last five days have been led by the Boston bombings and their aftermath — the hunt for the suspects, the speculation as to identity (the last was very important to the US media because, unlike right-wing and homegrown American terrorists for whom the Limbaugh crowd will make every excuse, foreign-born and/or Muslim ones aren’t considered to have motives worth analyzing, much less legitimate grievances), whether any of the suspects would be taken alive — which means that little else is being noticed, much less covered in detail.

Let’s see if we can make a small effort towards fixing that.

List the breaking or otherwise newsworthy stories you know of that got swept under the rug this week, or those furtive data dumps that the dumpers hoped would go unnoticed. Stories like the debunking of the Rogoff-Reinhart “Austerity Rocks!” paper the catfoodies and other austerity junkies and death-panellists keep citing the world over, or the whole CISPA issue, or Congress quietly conspiring, and Obama signing off on, the re-legalization of insider trading by Capitol Hill lawmakers. Oh, and there was a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in the Sichuan region of China.

Among the good news that’s being swept aside — and which has been swept aside for a while now: The impact of the Cleveland Model and other systematic, strategically-oriented efforts to bring economic democracy and justice to America.

If you’ve hit your limit of news coming from Boston, here’s your chance to escape from it for a little while.

An Honest Look at Margaret Thatcher

Posted by Phoenix Woman on April 11, 2013 Comments Off

As Glenn Greenwald points out, it’s rather hypocritical for the same forces that had no problems with attacking Hugo Chavez upon his death to suddenly get all “let no one speak ill of the dead” in the wake of the demise of a person who unlike Chavez, helped only her own fellow elites and did great damage to the majority of people in her country. I have come to bury Thatcher, not to praise her. The evil that she did lives after her; The good was so minimal as to be nonexistent.

Margaret Thatcher

Let’s lead off with a portion of an excellent summing up of Thatcher, done by Seumas Milne:

Not only in former mining communities and industrial areas laid waste by her government, but across Britain Thatcher is still hated for the damage she inflicted – and for her political legacy of rampant inequality and greed, privatisation and social breakdown. Now protests are taking the form of satirical e-petitions for the funeral to be privatised: if it goes ahead, there are likely to be protests and demonstrations.

This is a politician, after all, who never won the votes of more than a third of the electorate; destroyed communities; created mass unemployment; deindustrialised Britain; redistributed from poor to rich; and, by her deregulation of the City, laid the basis for the crisis that has engulfed us 25 years later.

Thatcher was a prime minister who denounced Nelson Mandela as a terrorist, defended the Chilean fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet, ratcheted up the cold war, and unleashed militarised police on trade unionists and black communities alike. She was Britain’s first woman prime minister, but her policies hit women hardest, like Cameron’s today.</bl

[...]

… Average growth in the Thatcherite 80s, at 2.4%, was exactly the same as in the sick 70s – and considerably lower than during the corporatist 60s. Her government’s savage deflation destroyed a fifth of Britain’s industrial base in two years, hollowed out manufacturing, and delivered a “productivity miracle” that never was, and we’re living with the consequences today.

What she did succeed in doing was to restore class privilege…

Here’s some of what Thatcher biographer Hugo Young had to say about her before he died in 2003:

What happened at the hands of this woman’s indifference to sentiment and good sense in the early 1980s brought unnecessary calamity to the lives of several million people who lost their jobs. It led to riots that nobody needed. More insidiously, it fathered a mood of tolerated harshness. Materialistic individualism was blessed as a virtue, the driver of national success. Everything was justified as long as it made money – and this, too, is still with us.

Thatcherism failed to destroy the welfare state. The lady was too shrewd to try that, and barely succeeded in reducing the share of the national income taken by the public sector. But the sense of community evaporated. There turned out to be no such thing as society, at least in the sense we used to understand it. Whether pushing each other off the road, barging past social rivals, beating up rival soccer fans, or idolising wealth as the only measure of virtue, Brits became more unpleasant to be with. This regrettable transformation was blessed by a leader who probably did not know it was happening because she didn’t care if it happened or not. But it did, and the consequences seem impossible to reverse.

Sounds rather like what’s been happening in the US since Reagan, Thatcher’s soul mate, came to power and in essence never left, his evil like Thatcher’s living after him.

Late Night: The Terror We’re Told to Ignore

Posted by Phoenix Woman on April 6, 2013 Comments Off

A MySpace photo of the late James Cummings, multimillionaire neo-Nazi, kiddie porn fan, and would-be dirty bomb maker

The appearance of this little day-brightener by Attaturk reminds me of a part of American history that’s been shoved down the memory hole.

Remember how during the Bush years the FBI and its media allies had collective pants-peeings over various small-time outfits whose leaders and instigators were the FBI agents who’d infiltrated them and organized them? You know, like the guys who were supposedly going to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago but who were so hapless they didn’t know where Chicago was — and so poor their FBI-agent ringleader had to buy them all boots? Or the idiots who thought they could take out the Brooklyn Bridge with hacksaws?

Notice how people who commit crimes against rich peoples’ property, crimes that don’t actually hurt, much less kill, other people, generate similar pants-peeings?

Meanwhile, those terrorists whose groups (because they were right-wing ones) weren’t infiltrated much less run by the FBI, those terrorists who came up with their terroristic ideas without any help, get a lot less mainstream press.

People like, oh, the cyanide bomb makers in Noonday and Tyler, Texas, who were shipping their wares across the country to like-minded militia groups. Or the white supremacist who tried to bomb the MLK Jr. parade in Seattle.

And then there’s the multi-millionaire trust-fund neo-Nazi guy, James G. Cummings II, originally from California but who moved to Maine, who wanted to build a dirty bomb out of nuclear material and who had the money to get the materials and the people needed to do it. What stopped him wasn’t the FBI, but his own wife Amber, who shot him to death after enduring years of his abuse and fearing for the safety of their young daughter.

Oh, and I almost forgot this recent one, the shooting murders at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, committed by the former leader of a white-supremacist heavy-metal band.

This is all stuff that we’re told to ignore, because when the authorities try to point it out, conservatives with lots of money backing them up start screaming and pressuring the government via their tame congresscritters to back off.

Arrrgh.

Come Saturday Morning: Another Charter School Exponent Falls from Grace

Posted by Phoenix Woman on March 30, 2013 Comments Off

Well, well, what have we here?

A grand jury on Friday indicted Beverly L. Hall, the former superintendent powerhouse of the Atlanta School District, on racketeering and other charges, bringing a dramatic new chapter to one of the largest cheating scandals in the country.

The grand jury also indicted 34 teachers and administrators in addition to Dr. Hall, who resigned in 2011 just before results of an investigation into the scandal were released. The panel recommended $7.5 million bond for Dr. Hall, who could face up to 45 years in prison.

In a list of 65 charges against the educators that includes influencing witnesses, theft by taking, conspiracy and making false statements, Fulton County prosecutors painted a picture of a decade-long conspiracy that involved awarding bonuses connected to improving scores on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, the state’s main test of core academic subjects for elementary and middle schools, and a culture where, in some schools, cheating was an acceptable way to get them.

Hall’s loyal fans rushed to her defense back in 2011, claiming that it wasn’t a crime to demand “excellence” from students. But it is a crime to cheat and to rig tests — and it’s also a crime to sit idly by when the rigging you know is going on, is being done.

Cheating at charter schools is a widespread and growing phenomenon in the US. Charter schools in places like Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Newark have all been caught up in it. Maybe if teachers were actually free to teach as opposed to being made to “teach to the test” and being made into profit vectors for some corporate entity that might as well be turning out tires for all it cared about education, the quality of our schools would improve and all this cheating for dollars would be unnecessary.

Late Night: What The WHAT?!

Posted by Phoenix Woman on March 30, 2013 Comments Off

The last week and a half has been filled with many examples of Conservatives Behaving Badly. From Louis Gohmert’s repeated exhibitions of mean-spirited, high-handed blithering idiocy to Don Young’s open bigotry to Larry Klayman’s flat-out unspeakableness, there’s been an embarrassment of embarrassments coming from the Cons. But there are two incidents in particular on which I want to focus because to my eyes they may represent a mini-trend: Two cases where conservatives bashed non-conservative elected officials by using the children and grandchildren of these officials as political punching bags.

The first instance is where, breaking not just tradition but affronting basic human decency, Matt Boyle over at Breitbart’s shop is taking dead (and stupid) aim at Sasha and Malia Obama:

Breitbart.com writer Matt Boyle reported on the specific location where President Obama’s teenage daughters are vacationing for spring break, ignoring the decades-old journalistic tradition that media outlets should not report on a president’s minor children when they are not attending “official or semi-official events” for privacy and security reasons.

The second instance is where a sizable chunk of the “respectable” portion of the Minnesota branch of conservatism — people like John Gilmore (who you may remember from his creepy behavior towards two Muslim women and their pedicabbie friend outside of the Netroots Nation 2011 event in Minneapolis), Sheila Kihne, and John Rouleau — are having backarching Troofer rage ecstasies over the (cue the scaaaaaary organ music!) what is allegedly the suspicious timing circumstances of the C-section that resulted in the birth of Democratic Governor Mark Dayton’s first grandchild — timing that caused him to (eeek!) do some rearranging of his schedule (oh noezzz!):

Governor Dayton had had another event scheduled from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., speaking at the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce's "Public Affairs Series featuring Governor Mark Dayton," but had sent Chief of Staff Tina Flint Smith in his place; the substitution had been arranged two weeks before.

Finance and Commerce reports in Dayton assistant stresses support for business:

Dayton “deeply respects” the business
community, said Smith, who said she was speaking in the governor’s stead
because he was becoming a grandfather for the first time. (A Dayton
spokeswoman confirmed the governor’s son Eric and his wife, Cornelia
(Cory) Dayton, were the parents-to-be.)

Not good enough for a number of Minnesota's finest conservatives commentators on twitter. The substitution became a "cancellation;" without stopping to learn the circumstances of the birth, it became "induced labor;" and, the lack of interest by the press about the alleged snubbing of the business community became occasion for outrage.

Yes, really.

Go over to Sally Jo’s site and witness the conservative twittery in all its embarrasing glory. As an apertif, savor the irony of Arthur Dimmesdale stand-in Michael Brodkorb being the voice of reason and decency, gently trying to make Gilmore et al understand why going after Governor Dayton’s grandchild is a really dumb move.

Late Night: What The WHAT?!

Posted by Phoenix Woman on March 30, 2013 Comments Off

The first instance is where, breaking not just tradition but affronting basic human decency, Matt Boyle over at Breitbart’s shop is taking dead (and stupid) aim at Sasha and Malia Obama:

Breitbart.com writer Matt Boyle reported on the specific location where President Obama’s teenage daughters are vacationing for spring break, ignoring the decades-old journalistic tradition that media outlets should not report on a president’s minor children when they are not attending “official or semi-official events” for privacy and security reasons.

Governor Dayton had had another event scheduled from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., speaking at the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce's "Public Affairs Series featuring Governor Mark Dayton," but had sent Chief of Staff Tina Flint Smith in his place; the substitution had been arranged two weeks before.

Finance and Commerce reports in Dayton assistant stresses support for business:

Dayton “deeply respects” the business
community, said Smith, who said she was speaking in the governor’s stead
because he was becoming a grandfather for the first time. (A Dayton
spokeswoman confirmed the governor’s son Eric and his wife, Cornelia
(Cory) Dayton, were the parents-to-be.)

Not good enough for a number of Minnesota's finest conservatives commentators on twitter. The substitution became a "cancellation;" without stopping to learn the circumstances of the birth, it became "induced labor;" and, the lack of interest by the press about the alleged snubbing of the business community became occasion for outrage.

Yes, really.

Roger Stone’s Defense of The Daily Caller Calls Attention to Stone Himself

Posted by Phoenix Woman on March 26, 2013 Comments Off

The latest turn in the implosion of the Daily Caller‘s months-long effort to smear US Senator Robert Menendez has been the sudden self-injection of none other than Roger Stone into the public debate on this topic, via a series of somewhat desperate-sounding late-Sunday night tweets, all done in the space of an hour:

Why does Sen Menedez campaign spend so much on DC Hotel Rooms? Apt staked out? — Expand

Menendez? WaPo will be proven wrong- Daily Caller/Tucker Carlson will be proven right- Menendez banged hookers in DR — Expand

ABC NEWS skype interviewed current DR Govt official who attended Menendez Sex party- Suppressed? — Expand

WaPo full of shit- 3 girls who said they were paid for sex with Menendez are being paid to lie NOW- Not the same girls in Daily Caller — Expand

ABC NEWS skype interviewed current DR Govt official who attended Mennedez Sex party- Suppressed? — Expand

A few things spring to mind:

– Really, Roger? Still pretending that the Washington Post is the only entity that’s called the Caller‘s smear job into question? When the FBI found it baseless? When ABC, the New Jersey Star-Ledger, and the Associated Press have all publicly cast doubt on it? Did all of these entities somehow interview the wrong hookers, Roger? Are they all paying hookers to trash the Caller? Really?

– Wow, reduced to tweeting a link to an anonymously-sourced Gawker story and twice implying without a shred of proof that Dominican officials attended Menendez sex parties. Running out of actual ammo, Roger?

– Roger Stone may well regret tweeting that “WaPo full of shit- 3 girls who said they were paid for sex with Menendez are being paid to lie NOW- Not the same girls in Daily Caller” as well as “WaPo will be proven wrong- Daily Caller/Tucker Carlson will be proven right- Menendez banged hookers in DR” because people will want to know the following: “Oh really? How do you know this, and can you prove this — and why should you care? What’s your skin in the game?”

Calling attention to yourself with a hurried fire-off-everything-no-matter-how-useless barrage like this isn’t a wise move, dear heart. It just makes people wonder about why you did so.

A slight revision of Proverbs 28:1 comes to mind. And not the part about the righteous being as brave and calm and non-panicky as lions.

(Crossposted to Mercury Rising.)

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Author Archives: Phoenix Woman

Late Night: Is Andy Parrish Michele Bachmann’s Banshee?

Come Saturday Morning: The Conservative Crack-Up, 2013: Minnesota Marriage Equality Edition

Late Night: Marriage Equality and Pilgrims’ Progresses in Minnesota

Come Saturday Morning: Republicans Bad and Good

Late Night: IRS Apologizes for Doing Its Job

Late Night: IRS Apologizes for Doing Its Job

Come Saturday Morning: Terry Jones Sets Us Straight

Late Night: So What Data Got Dumped Today?

An Honest Look at Margaret Thatcher

Late Night: The Terror We’re Told to Ignore

Come Saturday Morning: Another Charter School Exponent Falls from Grace

Late Night: What The WHAT?!

Late Night: What The WHAT?!

Roger Stone’s Defense of The Daily Caller Calls Attention to Stone Himself

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