Mississippi Malpractice

Teabagger Chris McDaniel's attempt to defeat incumbent Senator Thad Cochran in the Mississippi Republican primary has ended, not with a whimper but with a tort:

Judge Hollis McGehee on Friday approved Cochran's motion to dismiss McDaniel's lawsuit.

McGehee agreed with Cochran's lawyers that a 1959 state Supreme Court ruling imposed a 20-day deadline for McDaniel to file a challenge, first with the state Republican Party. McDaniel didn't file his challenge of the June 24 GOP runoff until 41 days after the election.

McDaniel's team had argued at a Thursday hearing in Laurel that election laws had been changed since the 1959 "Kellum" ruling that applied a deadline to filing district or statewide election challenges. They also pointed to now House Speaker Philip Gunn's successful challenge against former state Rep. Jep Barbour in 2003.

The state high court heard that case, which Gunn filed 34 days after the primary. There was at the time no argument from either side, or the court, about a deadline.

MgGehee on Friday ruled that the Kellum decision was still "good law." He said that changes to election laws in the interim were not substantial enough to change the court's ruling, as Cochran's lawyers had argued. He said that failure of the parties or court to address a deadline in Gunn's case doesn't dismiss the deadline created by the 1959 decision.

No shit, Matlock.

I don't know Mississippi law, but it's pretty stupid to assume that a case stands for a proposition it does not address.  My guess is that McDaniel's shysters never considered the limitations issue until it was too late, because no competent attorney would advise her client to ignore a clear statement of the law based on nothing more than the fact pattern in a later case.  Any prudent mouthpiece would advise the client in writing of 20 day deadline (and memorialize it six ways to Sunday if the client chose not to follow that advice). 

The good news for McDaniel's shysters is that to prevail in a malpractice case, McDaniel would have to show he would have prevailed on the merits of his challenge of the election but for the blown limitations period.  And that never would have happened.

McDaniel is currently weighing whether he can further fleece the Tea Party in order to finance an appeal, and will identify who he blames for that decision on Tuesday.  If McDaniel decides not to appeal, the most incompetent lawyers in the state will be freed up to represent Mark Mayfield's heirs and that still-threatened wrongful death suit. 

Update (9/2):  Stuck on loser has postponed his announcement until Wednesday.  Apparently the pennies of the brain-dead are still trickling in.

Update II (9/12):  Another Tea Party Thug for McDaniel is set to plead guilty of tampering with evidence in connection with the abuse of Thad Cochran's wife. 

Putting Christ What A Load of Shit Back Into Christmas

Let Samuel Goldwyn Films tell you about the true meaning of Christmas.

Sure, A Madea Christmas had Lisa Whelchel and Larry the Cable Guy, but it didn't have a reenactment of the Council of Nicaea. Or, as a main character, "a guy named Christian White who represents the typical white Christian male." 

Personally, I'd love to see Kirk team up with Kevin Sorbo, Chuck Norris and Mel Gibson for an "Expendables"-type Christian actioner.  Call it "The Excommunicables." 

P.S. Either the Christian Post is recycling old interviews or Kirk doesn't get out much. Noah was released five months ago.

Republican Family Values: Effingham Isn't Just An Act In Genesis Edition

A true story from the land of Newt Gingrich, Zell Miller and Erick Erickson:

A brother and sister were arrested this morning in Effingham County and accused of having sex with each other in a tractor trailer parked at a church.

Christopher Buckner, 20, of Guyton, and her brother, Timothy Savoy, 25, of Jackson, Ga., were arrested and charged with incest, aggravated sodomy and prowling, according to Sheriff’s Office spokesman David Ehsanipoor.

The spokesman said deputies answered a call at about 4:30 a.m. about a prowler in the area of Hester Road and Ga. 30.

As deputies were checking the area, they saw a man and woman walking down the road. The male said he was walking the female back to her house.

Deputies determined that the pair were brother and sister and that they had just had sex in a Kenworth tractor trailer, which was parked at Countryside Baptist Church ["the chruch for families!" - RA], Ehsanipoor said.

He said they admitted having sex three times after watching the movie, “The Notebook.”

I have no information that Chris and Tim have ever voted Republicans but since Republicans tell us that stereotypes are always true, these lovebirds are definitely Republicans. 

Plus, Focus on the Family says The Notebook "might also be seen as a timely reflection of the deep and lasting loved shared by Nancy and Ronald Reagan, whose love story has made a permanent cultural impression."  Apparently so.

Fuh-KHEW! Gesundheit

The Teabaggers are being played by a high school senior. 

Kendra Turner, a senior at Dyer County HighSchool, said bless you to her classmate who sneezed and the teacher told her that the term was for church.

“She said that we’re not going to have godly speaking in her class and that’s when I said we have a constitutional right,” Turner told WMC.

When she defended her actions, the teacher told Turner to see an administrator. The student said that she had to finish the class period in in-school suspension.

The girl’s parents were told by school leaders that their daughter shouted “bless you” across the room and that it was a classroom distraction.

The predictable nailing of selves to crosses by the usual martyr queens ensued.

These bedwetters have either never attended a high school outside of their parents' basement or have never passed an i.q. test.  Or both. This particular wheeze has been around at least as long as there have been spoiled punks with limited imaginations and no hope of accomplishing anything in their lives.  

Scarry Stupid

Over at right-wing media site Mediaidjit, they've replaced one doctrinaire dullard (Noah Rothman) with another (Eddie Scarry). Scarry screeches:

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Monday called for the arrest of Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown of Ferguson, Mo.

This of course gets the masterracebaters who frequent the site to toss their turds around their cages. As it was intended to do.

What Hayes wrote:

I think the security problem in Ferguson, is not solvable through policing. Until charges are brought against Wilson, this will go on.

Like most sane people, Hayes likely believes that an arrest is in order, and way overdue. But that's not what he said. And Hayes' belief may be incorrect, but he is not calling for anything in his Twitter statement. Is there anyone with an i.q. over Jim Hoft who doesn't understand the difference between "I call for X to happen" and "Unless X happens, Y will continue to happen."

Of course, Hayes has spent days reporting from Ferguson, MO, while Scarry has been in his basement, trying to dial into the Ben Ferguson radio show on a Fisher-Price Chatter Phone. And Hayes can read.  So I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Confidential to E.S.:  This tweet is not calling for worldwide socialist revolution.

Update: Scarry Stupid has changed the hed and lede, not because of this blog, but because Hayes called Scarry on his bullshit.  (See first link.)  Of course, Scarry Stupid lies and calls Hayes' ridicule a "clarification."  Such are wingut bloggers.

Bearded Gits Are The Real Heroes

For those who were planning on building statues in honor of Wesley Lowrey and Ryan Reilly, PoliticHo's wingnut blogger Dyldo Byers demands that you slow your roll:

Ferguson is not Falluja, and Wesley Lowery and Ryan Reilly aren't heroes. They're two reporters who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. The sooner this story returns to the death of Michael Brown, the standoff between the protesters and the police, and the issue of accountability and justice, the better.

But no one I've read has called the two reporters heroes; nor can I find such accolades via Google. The best Dyldo can do is find quotes from Lowery's WaPo colleagues praising his work, not calling him a hero. Nor has any outlet I'm aware of stopped covering the death of Brown to focus on the illegal arrests.

And "the" story isn't just about Mr. Brown's death. There's the story of Brown's alleged murder, and there's the separate story about the local police running roughshod over the rights of Ferguson's remaining citizens, including through the attempted silencing of reporters bearing witness to those actions.  Lack of accountability and injustice aen't limited to Mr. Brown, and holding Brown's killer(s) accountable won't end the injustice for Ferguson's citizens.  Given his political bent, it's no surprise that Dyldo wants to focus on a single event rather than a corrupt and bigoted system that can't be excused as the actions of one bad apple.

Messrs. Lowery and Reilly aren't in a war zone, but they exposed themselves to potentially lethal chemicals and a heavily-armed police department with blood on its hands in order to do their jobs.  And that's a far sight more heroic than blogging with one's pants around one's ankles while waiting to paraphrase Fox News's latest press release.  My guess is that had Dyldo ever done any real reporting in his career, he would've confessed to anything -- and evacuated his bowels -- the minute a police officer looked in his direction.

1-900-SOT-MODO

Maureen Dowd "pays tribute" to Robin Williams in a column that cannot be called sober:

[Williams] was 42 then, wearing his Popeye outfit, a blue-striped T-shirt and black baggy jeans. Surrounded by kids, a rabbit and an iguana, we talked about everything from John Belushi to his father, a stern Ford Motor Company executive.

As our interview ended, I was telling him about my friend Michael Kelly’s idea for a 1-900 number, not one to call Asian beauties or Swedish babes, but where you’d have an amorous chat with a repressed Irish woman. Williams delightedly riffed on the caricature, playing the role of an older Irish woman answering the sex line in a brusque brogue, ordering a horny caller to go to the devil with his impure thoughts and disgusting desire.

I couldn’t wait to play the tape for Kelly, who doubled over in laughter.

So when I think of Williams, I think of Kelly. And when I think of Kelly, I think of Hillary, because Michael was the first American reporter to die in the Iraq invasion, and Hillary Clinton was one of the 29 Democratic senators who voted to authorize that baloney war.

Ms. Dowd appears to forget a couple of key points in her free hallucination association game.

Popeye didn't wear a blue striped shirt or black baggy jeans in that movie (nor in any other iteration), and Williams certainly wasn't sporting a costume from a movie filmed 13 years earlier.

More importantly, Dowd forgets that Michael Kelly was a cheerleader for the baloney war he died covering.  Witness "reporter" Kelly's writing on the invasion of Iraq:

We are in a position of triumph, and potentially much greater triumph. A few months ago, all was still in tatters. Hussein still defied with impunity, still ruled unchallenged over his torture state, still schemed to advance his dreams of himself as the atomic Saladin... The will of one man, George W. Bush, changed all this.

So Cheerleader Kelly didn't think of Senator Clinton when he thought of the baloney war.

MoDo continues:

It was obvious in real time that the Bush crew was arbitrarily switching countries, blaming 9/11 on Saddam so they’d get more vivid vengeance targets and a chance to shake up the Middle East chessboard, and that officials were shamelessly making up the threat as they went along.

Shame that MoDo didn't report on the obvious in real time, and left the field to the bloviating cheerleader. (Perhaps she demurred as a professional courtesy to Judy Fucking-Miller.) Equally a shame MoDo can't recall that Kelly was where he was when he died -- embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division -- precisely because his cheerleading was useful to the Administration and the Pentagon.

Secretary Clinton -- and Michael Kelly -- and many others share responsibility for the deaths of the American and allied soliders and the Iraqis who died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. But Clinton bears no responsibility for the death of Cheerleader Kelly.

For the sake of Robin Williams' survivors, let's pray that MoDo's rememberance of Kelly doesn't lead her to show up shit-faced at Williams' funeral.

Update: Others have already made these points, including here and here (and, as to Kelly, back in 2013, on the 10th anniversary of Kelly's demise, as linked above).  Great minds think Dowd is a dishonest hack. 

As for Clinton's role, see tristero.

A Tea Party Champ Bears Arms

In March, I reported on self-identified Tea Party candidate Glenn Champ, who ran unsuccessfully for Governor of California.  The Champ for Governor website now welcomes visitors with this message:

And they thought they had Jesus nailed to the cross until the third day. He rose again. Now, it is apparent that California does not want any form of God.

So, please prepare yourself for the carnage that’s coming, from the wrath of Jesus the Christ.

Sometime after posting that message, Mr. Champ decided that Jesus the Christ was taking His own sweet time, and that would not do.

Champ and other property owners have been fighting over a paved road for the past few months. Witness Richard Norman says the ongoing fight escalated [last Thursday,] after Champ punctured the tires on a quad [all-terrain vehicle], sending the 13-year-old driver to call for his parents.

"The guy said, 'I'm (expletive) done with everything; I'm done with all the (expletive),' and ended up pulling out a gun and shooting John in the stomach," said Norman.

As they rushed to get the victim some help, witnesses say Champ continued to fire.

"I went to my car to hide behind the vehicles. I saw him shoot a few rounds into the pen," said Champ.

And those rounds struck and then killed a horse.

Authorities say Champ then took off. Tulare County Sheriff's deputies arrested him after a traffic stop near Goshen Friday morning.

Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims says the one-time gubernatorial candidate has an extensive criminal history dating back nearly 30 years. In 1998, Action News cameras were rolling when Champ pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

"The voluntary manslaughter charge resulted from a case in the Prather area where Champ ran over a competitor trash collector with his garbage truck," said Mims.
...
Deputies say because Champ is a registered felon, he should never have had a gun in his possession.

Champ faces a number of charges including attempted murder and animal cruelty. 

It goes without saying that the Godly Champ was also a registered sex offender.

It is possible that Mr. Champ may avoid justice. In the June gubernatorial primary, Champ got over 59,000 votes, "nearly 2 percent of the total votes."

ChiComs Invade Hollywood! Film at 10:40, 2:20, 6:00 and 9:40

I'm not a huge follower of wingnut film criticism, or other forms of drivel, so there may have been some spluttering about this I'm not aware of:

The White House is represented onscreen [in Transformers: Age of Extinction] by a sniveling fool, but where the last “Transformers” took a gratuitous swipe at Barack Obama, this time it’s the military-industrial complex that gets gashed. The bad guys are the CIA, who are killing the noble Autobots for the benefit of a corporation that wants to melt them down and turn them into commercial products, and the film’s major villain is a Dick Cheney-esque spymaster played by Kelsey Grammer, who is using the government to advance a secret corporate project that will earn him a fortune, cloaking his murderous agenda in appeals to national security.There’s nothing wrong with filmmakers either lionizing or lampooning U.S. institutions.

...

That’s what freedom of speech is all about. In “Age of Extinction,” though, satire ends at the water’s edge. As soon as the action shifts to Hong Kong, the outbreak of alien-engendered chaos is met by a sea captain ordering a call to “the central government” for help, and later China’s defense minister does a walk-and-talk, sternly and seriously vowing to defend Hong Kong. America’s government is portrayed either ridiculous or diabolical, but China’s is assured and effective.

Not coincidentally, “Age of Extinction” is considered an “officially assisted production,” made with help from Jiaflix Enterprises and official state broadcaster CCTV’s China Movie Channel, who ponied up for part of the budget and get a piece of the box office. No such deal gets struck in China without the consent and approval of the Beijing government and the Chinese Communist Party, and in this case, Paramount is in business with the Beijing regime directly, through CCTV.

Not surprisingly, the film is big in Beijing.

Generous soul that I am, I'd like to think that even wingnuts are smart enough to avoid a Michael Bay production. Or at least spent more of their formative years with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles than with toy trucks.  Maybe they took pity on Kelsey Grammer, or gave it a pass based on Bay's history of wingnuttery and racism.  But I'm still amazed that the Keyboard Kommandos of Kulture have passed up such golden opportunity to fling their own feces at Steven Spielberg and Tinseltown.  

Wolverines my ass.

Thanks, Frank!

Thanks to the Pontiff for filling in during my brief hiatus.  As always, his contributions are thoughtful, if not infallible.

You can catch Jorge Mario Bergoglio at his regular website and his Twitter feed.

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The Real I.R.S. Scandal

is that Teacriminals are allowed tax-exempt status.

In its 2004 application for tax-exempt status, filed under penalty of perjury, Move America Forward told the IRS that it would not directly or indirectly share facilities, equipment, mailing lists or other assets with any political organization.

Yet Move America Forward shares its Sacramento office suite with at least two of the three PACs set up by Russo, Marsh, as well as The Campaign Store, DonationSafe and Frontline Strategies, a political consultant firm where Callahan is a partner.

According to the charity's 2012 tax return, Move America Forward paid about $82,000 in rent that year. The PACs reported paying no rent for the same period, according to filings with the FEC. The office's property manager confirmed to ProPublica that the rent for the office is now about $83,000 a year, plus fees for use of the common area, indicating that in 2012, the charity likely covered the rent for all of the suite's occupants.

Read the whole thing.  If these assertions are proven, a significant number of 'baggers should be sharing a cell with Dinesh D'Souza.

Nixon by Nixon

Great HBO doc on the Dick Tapes. I give it Two Rogers Up.

Highly recommended viewing for the likes of Bens Stein and Shapiro and Mikey Medved.

Pat Buchanan's aleady got it continuously looped on a monitor mounted on the ceiling over his bed.

The Chunky Crying Game

Ross Dontdothat thinks he's playing three-dimensional chess.  As usual, he's only playing with himself.

Surely a House that authorized a frivolous lawsuit against El Presidente has no taste for frivolous impeachment!