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[h/t Dave]

Dick "Suck On The Toe" Morris is always good for a low mordant chortle or two, especially when he gets called out for shilling a group he has a financial relationship with.

Because Morris hasn't the good sense enough to stop at that point. So there he was yesterday on Fox's Hannity and Colmes, doing it yet again -- on the very day he was called out:

Morris: The Republican Party is dead at that point, it has no role at all to play, because you will have 60 votes in the Senate for the Democrats.

And I've been pushing very, very hard for a group called GOPTrust.com that is running a million dollars of ads in Georgia to elect Chambliss and defeat the Democrat. Now in the last couple of days, some of the liberals have lashed back at me, claiming that somehow I'm getting paid by this group. But the fact is that all they've done is buy ads on my website -- like they buy ads in the New York Times. I'm no more in cahoots with them than the New York Times is. And this has all been fully disclosed in their disclosure statements.

But I won't be intimidated by those groups. It is crucially important that every American who cares about the free-enterprise system go online as soon as this show is over and Alan makes his announcement and get online to GOPTrust.com and give Chambliss the money he needs to win. Your whole future depends on it.

Well, all you have to do is look at the Media Matters report to see that the money flow goes well beyond buying ads for his website.

Through publicly available records filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Media Matters for America found that GOPTrust.com has paid a firm apparently affiliated with Morris at least $24,000 since the beginning of October, mostly for "Email Communication." The "Mailing Address" for that firm, Triangulation Strategies, is listed in one of the National Republican Trust PAC's FEC filings as "dickmorris.com." In numerous other FEC filings documenting payments to Triangulation Strategies, National Republican Trust PAC listed the mailing address for Triangulation Strategies as a New York address connected to Morris. Additionally, a separate October FEC filing from a campaign unrelated to the National Republican Trust PAC directly connects Morris with Triangulation Strategies. Media Matters has documented more than a dozen Fox News appearances or columns in which Morris has mentioned, promoted, or fundraised for GOPTrust.com without disclosing his apparent financial relationship with that organization.

Morris isn't even a good liar. But he is good for a little comic relief.

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Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council was out repeating the nonsensical yet much-repeated "America is a center-right country" meme for CNN's Lou Dobbs program Wednesday, and he added something of a new twist:

I think there is a strategy that's going to be going forward for the conservative movement. I think many in the conservative movement, if you will, believe that the Republican Party took over the conservative movement and kind of ran it off the road. And, uh, conservatives are ready to take back control of the conservative movement, and if the Republican Party wants to be a governing party, as it has been in the past, then it's going to have to return to those conservative principles.

I think most people -- Republicans like Kathleen Parker included -- see it the other way around: the Republican Party was taken over by the conservative movement. One upon a time, the GOP actually was home to genuine moderates like Lowell Weicker and John Chafee; but ever since Ronald Reagan's ascension in the late 1970s, it gradually become a wholly owned subsidiary of the conservative movement.

Certainly, nearly every step taken by George W. Bush during his tenure had the movement's ardent support -- until, that is, it became self-evident to everyone but the 20-percenter kool-aid drinkers that his presidency was an unmitigated disaster for the nation. Now they want to blame that disaster on everyone but the misbegotten philosophy that caused it.

As Digby put it some time ago:

George W. Bush will not achieve a place in the Republican pantheon. Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. (And a conservative can only fail because he is too liberal.)

Now, part of what makes movement conservatives the lovable wingnuts they are is that they are nothing if not spectacularly un-self-aware. They're like people who wear their underwear on their heads and then are puzzled when everyone points and laughs.

So Tony Perkins goes on, while repeating the right's favorite meme, and even admits that Republican governance has been a fiasco:

Look, America is a center-right nation. Barack Obama and the policies he reflects are not reflective of the nation. I think he offered, you know, what he called change, and Americans were ready for change. You know, Republicans have not governed well, and America was looking for a new path, and Barack Obama offered that. Now, his success is going to depend on whether or not he can govern as a moderate, as he campaigned, or whether he is going to be a liberal, as his record would indicate.

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[Image courtesy Tom Tomorrow.]

Nate Silver interviewed John Ziegler, the wingnut who commissioned that falsehood-based poll purporting to demonstrate that Obama voters were stooopid.

Silver's questions, as you can see, are perfectly normal and reasonable, but Ziegler completely loses it. By the end, he's doing a Cheney.

It starts to go downhill when Silver, who know a wee bit about polling, asks a perfectly reasonable question:

NS: Why would you commission a survey question with no correct response?
JZ: The purpose of the question, you pinhead, was we wanted to determine the Tina Fey Effect.

In short order, Ziegler starts attacking Silver over the phone:

NS: Where the interviews conducted by telephone or online?
JZ: How can you ask a question like that and pretend that you have any clue what you're writing about! That's unbelievable that someone could write what you did! That is unbelievable that you wouldn't know that it's a telephone or an online poll and that you went on my summaries of the questions before the questions were even released!

NS: We’ve heard reports from our readers that very similar questions had been asked in an online format. There was no online component at all?
JZ: That is correct, which you would have known if you had looked at the information. Before you called this a push poll -- you don't seem to know the definition of a push poll. How do you have this website?

NS: What did Zogby charge you -- what did you pay for this survey?
JZ: I'm not going to tell you that, I'm not a fucking idiot.

By the end, Ziegler is simply hostile -- not to mention thoroughly convinced that his bullshit don't stink:

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I know we're supposed to be all bipartisan and forgiving and stuff in the wake of the Great Repudiation, but sometimes you've gotta sit back and smell the schadenfreude. Case in point: Colorado Republican Marilyn Musgrave:

Two weeks after the brutal loss, Musgrave still hasn’t called her opponent to concede or to congratulate the victor, as is not only textbook but also mannerly to do.

Moreover, Musgrave’s ill manners bleed into her own team. Rumor has it she still — 14 days later — hasn’t even thanked her campaign staff. (Again, textbook.)

Musgrave press secretary Joseph Brettell tells us: “It’s a campaign matter, and I have no further comment.”

And as for Markey, her campaign manger, Anne Caprara, who is in town this week with her boss for orientation, tells us of Musgrave: “No, she hasn’t called to concede, but we’re moving forward.”

Though the Markey team doesn’t plan on stopping by Musgrave’s office while in town, eventually the two camps will have to touch base — just in terms of transitioning. But curiously, more rumors abound that no one has seen or talked to Musgrave since the brutal loss; she’s all but disappeared.

One of the joys of this past election was seeing the final exit of characters like Musgrave from the nation's political stage. This was, after all, the woman who tried to have Michael Schiavo arrested merely for showing up to one of her events.

My favorite Musgrave moment, though, came with the above video, which shows Musgrave critics trying to get her to answer their questions. Not only does Musgrave ignore them as her entourage shoves the questioners out of the way; but at the end, some of her supporters confront the questioners and physically intimidate them by shoving them and grabbing their mike.

Congratulations to Betsy Markey. She did the whole nation a service.

From the Mankato Free Press, the wit and wisdom of a fellw named Paul Bade, "a Mankato resident and self-employed electronics repairman" "who has been active in GOP politics since he was 10 years old":

Bade considers Obama’s rise to be similar to that of Adolph Hitler’s in the 1930s, and he believes there’s an outside chance that America is headed for a dictatorship. More likely is a slide to socialism or, perhaps, just an inept presidency, he said.

“I’m almost expecting the Obama administration to make a botch of things,” Bade said. “They’re too ideologically socialist, and a lot of their ideas are impractical. They just don’t add up.”

When you hear right-wing pundits and politicians proclaim this garbage, you have to at least partially chalk it up to their desire to garner bigger ratings and attention by "pushing the envelope" -- it seems more cynical than sincere.

But the long-term effect is that gullible right-wing footsoldiers soak this shit up and internalize it. They really do believe it.

[Via BlueStemPrairie.]

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There is a coordinated effort by Conservatives to play the "Obama is stealing elections" game since they've been resoundingly rejected by the American people. The RNC is actually sending out fundraising letters which are blatantly claiming that Obama and activists are actively stealing elections away from Republicans. Mike Duncan, soon to be exc-RNC head is called out on this lie by CNN's American Morning host John Roberts who thought Duncan was way out of line too.

Roberts...but this fundraising letter clearly said that they are trying to steal these election victories.

Duncan: Well, we have to be careful. There have been a lot of reported irregularities in this election going back to ACORN when....

Roberts: Is it accurate to say that they are trying to steal these elections or did that language go too far?

Duncan: John, haha, I've not got that in front of me right now, but I want to make sure that we are vigilant and allow anyone to irregularly out influence the outcome of this election and we have to have resources to do that.

Roberts: It just seems to me to steal these election victories is pretty charged language and you should have something to back that up.

Duncan: Do you want anyone to steal an election?

Roberts: I don't want anyone to steal an election. but if there's no evidence that anybody is than it's hard to reconcile with how you put that language in a fundraising letter.

So he's telling us that the one and only Mike Duncan, the head of the RNC doesn't know what his own fundraising letter contained in it after he signed it and sent it out. What a liar.

Orrin Hatch is also engaged in similar behavior.

From an Human Events email blast:

Help Defeat MoveOn.Org

Democrats are going to need to recognize that there are real limits to the current urgings of "bipartisanship." Because the fanatical right has no intention of dealing with Obama in good faith.

Exhibit A: Michael Reagan:

EXPOSE LIBERAL CORRUPTION -- With the Democrats back in power in both Congress and the White House, you KNOW that they'll be falling right back into their habits of taking lobbyists' money under the table, trading votes for campaign contributions, spying on and sabotaging Republican legislative plans, covering up their leaders' sexual "flings," and spending taxpayer money on personal expenses like never before. But this time, YOU AND I will be there every step of the way, making sure that no stone is left unturned, every dark corner is filled with light, and every illegal act is paid for with censure, impeachment, recalls, investigations, and jail time for every criminal we expose in Washington, D.C.

As Matt Stoller says:

Reagan is basically giving the playbook for the conservative movement, which is to kick up dust, accuse everyone associated with Obama of sexual misconduct, personal corruption, pay-to-play politics, and lobbyist ties, and then call for impeachments and investigations. And this isn't some loon. Reagan's not only the (adopted) son of a former President, he's a conservative pundit with, well probably not a million listeners but a good number. And he's a well-received citizen of the DC establishment, taking the blame the media narrative to an remarkably audacious level. Though he's called CNN the Terrorist News Network, Reagan appeared on Larry King as recently as October to appear opposite Robert Kennedy Jr, and he has refused to appear on MSNBC because he claims he receives death threats, or so he said at an exclusive party for television industry executives at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

He's also the guy who went on the air a few months ago and said this:

There is a group that's sending letters to our troops in Iraq ... claiming 9/11 was an inside job -- oh, yeah, yeah -- and that they should rethink why they're fighting. Who -- we ought to -- excuse me, folks, I'm going to say this: We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them.

Really. Just find the people who are sending those letters to our troops to demoralize our troops and do what they are doing, you take them out, they are traitors to our country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that, deal with it. But anyone who would do that doesn't deserve to live. You shoot them. You call them traitors -- that's what they are -- and you shoot them dead. I'll pay for the bullet.

It will be instructive indeed to observe who goes marching off with Reagan on his quest for ignominous irrelevance.

Some Republicans are in a really severe state of denial about the ass-kicking they just received Great Repudiation. To wit, Colorado's Marilyn Musgrave:

Bitterness generated by the bruising battle between Betsy Markey and Marilyn Musgrave apparently lingers days after voters decided the winner of the 4th Congressional District.

Incumbent Republican Musgrave, who lost to Democrat Markey by a 56 to 44 percent margin Tuesday, has yet to call and congratulate Markey on her win.

Musgrave also hasn't conceded the race, said Markey spokesman Ben Marter. "She has yet to admit defeat," he said. "It's a little bizarre."

Calls to Musgrave's campaign and congressional office went unanswered Friday.

Ah yes, we remember Musgrave well: She was one of the co-sponsors of a Federal Marriage Amendment, and once declared that gay marriage "is the most important issue that we face today."

Musgrave's residence on Planet Bizarro appears to be permanent.

The universe is turned inside out at Bloggingheads, beginning with Ann Althouse's declaration that Glenn Reynolds is the "greatest blogger of all time," after which the implosion becomes cataclysmic.

If you want to spare yourself the brain damage, here's the transcript:

Reynolds: I really do worry about Obama. I am concerned that he is going to be hit on by a whole bunch of interest groups who are going to demand a lot, and that he's going to have a hard time saying no. Paradoxically for him, I think, having the Republicans maintain enough seats to keep a filibuster is probably a good thing, I think it will probably give him a chance to resist some of these demands from his constituencies.

But I'm a little concerned. If he had run the kind of campaign that the early part of his campaign symbolized and that his really very nice acceptance speech last night symbolized, I would have felt better about him. There was a lot of sort of thuggish behavior toward critics and stuff, and the fundraising stuff, that I didn't like, and that kind of gave me a bad feeling about him. And we'll just have to see if that translates into an Obama administration now, or not. ...

Althouse: Well you know, I got the feeling -- this idea of standing up to the Democratic Congress was really important to me, but I didn't feel like McCain would do that. I felt like McCain had always been about reaching across the aisle and wanting the Democrats to love him. And I actually felt that, you know, once the national security interests became secondary, because I think we essentially won the war -- and I voted against Kerry in '04 because I thought he was going to lose the war for us, and that was the overwhelming issue then -- so once that wasn't the main issue, and it's about standing up to the Democratic Congress on all these various economic questions, and immigration issues and things like that, I felt that Obama would actually be the stronger man, that he would be able to be his own man, he wouldn't need to make overtures to the Democrats to get them to love him, that he would need to stand for something, and that his inclination is to stand for, uh, representing the interests of the country perhaps in a way he would define with his more coherent style of thinking. Whereas McCain just struck me as completely erratic on all kinds of issues other than national security. And his admission early on that he didn't know anything about economics -- I'm still actually more angry about that than anything else anybody said, practically.

The Stupid, It Burns.

As Blue Texan observes:

What neither of these idiots seem to understand:

US voters want the Republican Party, which took a beating in this week's general elections, to embrace progressiveness and work with Democratic president-elect Barack Obama to get America back on track, a poll showed Friday.

"By nearly three to one, voters think the Republicans should support Obama's policies," Robert Borosage, co-director of CAF told reporters.

Even among Republicans, nearly half -- 45 percent -- thought their party should work with the new Democratic Party president elect and help him bring about change.

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Have you noticed how all these right-wingers, like Bill Bennett, want to claim credit for Barack Obama's election as some kind of racial vindication for America, when they're the very people who were indulging the worst kind of dog-whistle stereotypes in their strenuous efforts to keep him from becoming president?

Keith Olbermann honored Rep. Michelle Bachmann, the Diva of the New McCarthyism, last night as the "Worst Person in the World" for the following remarks:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) told Politico Thursday that she was “extremely grateful that we have an African-American who has won this year.” She called his victory “a tremendous signal we sent.”

“I have not seen the United States as a racist nation,” said Bachmann, who represents Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, in the east-central part of the state. “In my district, I don’t sense racism, and that’s why I’m thankful that hopefully this will send a national signal across our country that America is not a nation made up of racists. ... On the same hand, I hope that the national media will not confuse disagreement with Obama’s policy positions with being consumed [by] racism.”

Yep, this is the same woman who thought that Obama was "anti-American." Only a day ago, she also said this:

It looks like the Sopranos. That is kind of what we are looking at. This is knuckle Chicago politics and that is what is going to be in the White House now. We have been, conservative Republicans, have felt the brunt of Rahm Emanuel this election cycle, last election cycle. It’s unlike anything anyone has ever seen or heard and now it’s going to come forth out of the White House.

Piece. Of. Work.

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Bill Bennett last night on CNN put the most sickening spin possible on Barack Obama's victory (which at that point was only looming):

Anderson Cooper: I mean, if he does become president, and it still is an if, does anyone know what this means in terms of change of race relations in the United States, or perception of?

Bennett: Well, I'll tell you one thing it means, as a former Secretary of Education: You don't take any excuses anymore from anybody who says, 'The deck is stacked, I can't do anything, there's so much in-built this and that.' There are always problems in a big society. But we have just -- if this turns out to be the case, President Obama -- we have just achieved an incredible milestone. For which the rest of the world needs to have more respect for the United States than it sometimes does.

Wow, Obama is even more powerful than I thought. I guess his election just wiped out all the remaining institutional bigotry -- particularly the persistent job discrimination against black men -- with a magical wand. Whoda thunk?

I guess Bennett wants us to forget that this "milestone" was achieved over the strenuous opposition of people like himself. Funny how he seems to want to claim credit for it.

Fortunately, David Gergen (who has been a consistent voice of conservative good sense throughout this election, actually), chimed in to observe: "I don't think we have taken care of the issue of racial prejudice."

Nonetheless, I'm sure we can count on the wingnutosphere reiterating this little nugget a lot over the coming four years.

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Laura Ingraham was repeating what's about to become wingnuts' favorite theme: Republicans lost because they weren't wingnutty enough!

Bill Hemmer: Let me flip that argument around here. If the Republicans are swept out of power -- I mean, the Senate, the House, the White House -- how does the Republican Party change, do you believe?

Ingraham: Well, I think -- I heard Mary Matalin say this last night, and really, she hit it out of the park. If McCain loses, if Republicans lose seats across the board, this is a rejection of Republicans who don't follow traditional conservative principles. It's not a rejection of conservatism, or Reagan, or small government.

... I think Republicans are going to have to do some soul-searching, but not on conservative principles -- on how they governed.

Er, mebbe. But how they governed was precisely according to conservative principles!

The Big Shitpile is a direct product of conservative principles enacted in governance -- namely, the Panglossian belief that deregulation of business, and the financial sector, was an unrelievedly good thing.

Well, the people who are paying the price for that foolishness have managed to figure that out.

[H/t to Dave for the video.]

After Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, it was common for right-wingers to argue that he wasn't elected "legitimately" because he'd won with less than 50 percent of the vote, thanks to Ross Perot.

Of course, you didn't hear that much after 2000, when the future Worst President in History effectively stole the White House without even winning the popular vote.

Now that they're on the verge of getting an ass-kicking of historic proportions, they're warming up that familiar refrain.

The Instaputz cleared his throat today with a numbingly dumb NY Post piece titled "Stealing an Election? Obama's Dubious Allies". John Fund also held forth in Politico at length about how, yes, those falsified voter-registration form can in fact turn into real votes.

Well, yes, it is possible for fake registrations to be used for actual votes -- but to do so takes a large number of hoops to jump through on an individual basis. And it's what you call a low-reward crime; there isn't much incentive for large numbers of people to actually jump through all these hoops.

Fact is, the vast majority of fake registrations are winnowed out before Election Day. And if fake voters actually do make it to the polls, their numbers will be so small as to be inconsequential.

No, the main way to commit voting fraud on a massive scale on the registration level is to sign people up for the election -- and then throw out their registrations if they're from the opposite party. Who's been doing that? Republicans.

You can also run massive voter-purge operations and voter-caging schemes that rob citizens of their legitimate voting rights. Republicans have been doing that too.

Facts don't matter to people like the Putz and Fund, though. They're only interested in propagating right-wing bullshit. These guys are setting the table for after Tuesday.

We can count, I'm sure, on four years of hearing how Obama stole this election. After all, the one thing they can't stand is to admit they actually got their asses kicked.

Bill Kristol says they'll greet the news with "with our usual resolute stoicism or cheerful fatalism."

Yeah, right, Let's not forget their usual conspiracism and hysterics, either. Because that's what we're already getting.

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Another day, another gimmick. Republicans are digging out every possible turd they can find to fling and seeing what will stick on Barack Obama's wall -- and so far, no luck. Earlier this weekend they were peddling a dumb smear about Barack Obama's aunt being an illegal immigrant who had been ordered deported.

But there's one little problem with that tale: As the Washington Post reports, the release of that information was a violation of confidentiality laws for immigrants seeking asylum:

Federal privacy law restricts U.S. immigration agencies from disclosing information about citizens and permanent residents, and DHS policy similarly limits disclosures about the status of legal and illegal immigrants. Asylum-seekers are granted greater protection, because of the sensitive nature of their claims and the risks of retaliation.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the matter has been referred to the agency's Office of Professional Responsibility and its parent department's inspector general.

"They are looking into whether there was a violation of policy in publicly disclosing individual case information," ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said. "We can't comment on individual cases."

As Kyledeb at Citizen Orange observes:

There are very specific confidentiality laws around asylum cases. Why? Because it could be dangerous to disclose information about potential asylee. It could result in their further persecution. This is true, of course, even after an asylum case is closed because then there would be a huge disincentive not to apply for asylum.

... In other words, while nativists are screaming "ILLEGAL" at the top of their lungs and "progressives" are refusing to defend unauthorized migrants, it appears that everyone's lost sight of who the real "ILLEGAL" is. That "federal law enforcement agent" broke U.S. immigration law. Perhaps the anonymous source should be deported?

Of course, at this point, the GOP seems to believe it has nothing to lose; after all, any investigation will be too late to do anything about it.

And the intent is obvious: Scare those white suburbanite undecideds with the notion that Obama is going to open the floodgates to Scary Brown People. In a related vein, the GOP hopes to revive the wingnut conspiracy theory that Obama's being elected with a foreign donor base.

But talk about deja vu all over again. Back in 1992, GHW Bush's operatives were caught illegally riffling through Bill Clinton's passport files and disclosing the information therein. Of course, the Republican operative -- Joe DiGenova -- appointed as "independent counsel" to investigate the matter rather predictably found no serious lawbreaking had occurred.

This time, they shouldn't be permitted to get away with it.

[H/t to Heather for the video.]

Duncan cracks me up.

Jim Geraghty Comes Undone

As I noted at the time, the United States is a nation of 300 million people. They aren't all named Fred Jones. Assuming that a name is fake just because it is unusual, or "funny," or the same as the name of a celebrity, is nothing short of stupid.

Unfortunately, that's a lesson some people have to learn the hard way. Jed L at Daily Kos points out that the National Review's Jim Geraghty made a fool of himself by mocking American Prospect writer Adam Serwer based on just such an assumption:

Now, unless A. Serwer thinks that there is actually a registered voter named "Duran Duran" in New Mexico, he ought to refrain from sputtering that those who disagree with him are 'racist' and 'paranoid.'

You see where this is going, don't you? Yep.

Here's Geraghty's follow-up:

UPDATE: I am floored by the fact that the white pages for Albuquereque, New Mexico has a listing for "Duran Duran." Mea culpa.

For those of you who don't know, I did tour with Duran Duran a few years ago.