Tuesday's Primaries: Political Planet 2010

THUMBING THROUGH Tuesday's primaries turned up some choice glimpses of the political landscape of 2010.

In California, Meg Whitman, the former eBay chief, spent $61 million - much of it from her own piggy bank - to win the Republican primary for governor. She doubtless will spend much more for the general election against Democrat Jerry Brown. Whitman got 64.1 pct. of the vote, which translates into nearly a million bucks per percentage point. Nice work - if you can find a way to pay for it!

Also from California came the good news that Orly Taitz, who has gained questionable prominence as a leading witch-like voice questioning President Obama's birthplace credentials, was defeated in the GOP primary for secretary of state. She got 26 pct of the vote, which may be evidence that one of four California Republicans believe in witchcraft.

In Nevada, the home of high rollers and quickie marriages, Sharron Angle, won the Republican senatorial primary to challenge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Angle is the darling of the Tea Party and a militant outfit called Oath Keepers, who are convinced they they should be armed for battle when the U.S. government starts creating concentration camps for innocent Americans across the land. If it sounds like anarchy is on the march , well... I can only wonder how Sen. John Cornyn, who heads the Republican national senate campaigns will respond to this bit of scary news.

For pure Planet 2010 in American politics, however, nothing can top the Democratic senate primary in South Carolina, a state where strange things seem to happen every day. A fellow named Alvin Greene, an unemployed military veteran with virtually no cash on hand, won the contest although he was relatively unknown. Never mind. State Democratic Party Chairman Carol Fowler offered this meek explanation of how Greene topped former State Sen. Vic Rawl on Tuesday. She supposed that since neither candidate was well known, people voted "alphabetically." I can only conclude that when the word gets out, a lot of people with last names beginning with "A" or "B" will be clogging the ballots. Makes sense to me.

PS: State Rep. Nikki Haley, an Indian-American, won the South Carolina primary for governor to the chagrin of GOP State Sen. Jake Knotts, who described her as a "f--king Raghead". For the sake of the children who might show up at the polls, let's put that in context: What he said was: 'We already have a Raghead in the White House, we don't need another one in the Statehouse." Then came the added F-word description. Knotts did show a little remorse when he was criticized for his ethnic insight. He allowed that he should not have used the F-word.

The NFL may call offsides on Rush

MIDWEEK MADNESS:

THE RESPONSE to Rush Limbaugh's bid to become a co-owner of the NFL's pathetic St. Louis Rams has been largely negative so far. Surprise, surprise. The owner of the Baltimore Colts says he doesn't want to play this hand. The NFL's Players Association as well as Commissioner Roger Goodell believe the potential arrival of race-baiting Limbaugh into the muscular world of pro football would hardly be a salutary presence in a league where three-fourths of the players are African-Americans.

Race-baiting? He lost his job an ESPN's Sunday night football after he accused sportswriters of being uncritical of the Philadelphia Eagles' Donovan McNabb because they cozy up to black quarterbacks. He also likened pro football to a contest between "Bloods and Crips," notorious street gangs, without guns. It's even been more obvious since Barack Obama became president. Limbaugh now projects a vision of ObamaWorld, as he calls it, to a daily routine of violent black kids beating up white kids. As he runs into the negatives of his latest dream, Limbaugh should be reminded of the words from Jeremiah: "As ye sow, so shall ye reap". I'm a long way from being a Biblical scholar, but somehow those words ring true to me.

Why am I so amused by the chutzpah of adulterous, sin-hating guys like Republican Sen. John Ensign who are now out to save the Republic from the monstrous fate of a health reform bill? Ensign is the Nevada once-religiously clean political star who paid off his mistress's husband (his former chief of staff) with $97,000 in "gifts" after it was discovered that he had been enjoying a jolly good time in bed with the chief's wife for months. Now that the transaction is complete, an apparently unrepentant and rehabbed Ensign is back on TV hammering the health bill. Can anybody tell me why we should believe him? (By the way, Ensign's lawyer says the gifts were legal because they were within the limits of tax rules. Problem solved.)

Blame me for being a broken record but I admit that the Orly Taitz saga is so fascinating that I can't walk away from it. The latest twist for this Queen of the Birthers is that she says she will refuse to pay a $20,000 fine by a Federal judge who accused her of misbehavior in her many lawsuits challenging President Obama's birthplace. She described Judge Clay Land to TV's Joy Behar as "corrupt and delusional." When a reporter asked her about whether she intended to pay up, she responded:. "You must be kidding."

Careful there, Orly. I've never known judges to kid around in their decisions. In your own deluded trot, you may have taken a step over the cliff.

UPDATE: Rush has been cut from the practice squad by a team of bidders for the Rams. They concluded that he would only "complicate" the deal to buy the team. He's said to be angrier than hell, and you can expect a torrent of invective from him on this issue. He'll have to settle for a seat in the end zone. Maybe he will organize his own league with only white players from Alaska and his idol Sarah regressing to her days as a cheerleader.

Anti-health reform mobs: Nullification next?

THE WORD FROM OTHERS:

The New York Review of Books has an essay by Michael Tomasky, the editor of Democracy: a Journal of Ideas, that has a sobering look at the growing clout of the Tea Party mentality that is partly fueled by racism. Saying that it's unlikely that the reaction would be as hatefully demonstrated if the Democrats had elected a white president. He writes:

"We can't measure this, and I'm not sure what good it would do us to know even if we could. What we do know is that this movement is backed by corporate millions, powerful media organizations, such as Fox News, and votes in Congress, and that it will be around for some time, advancing new scandals and lies. The next phase in all this, if health care passes, might well be 'nullification' lawsuits or resolutions in states that don't want to have to implement Obama's reform."

Tomasky notes that South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty have "intimated" that nullification would be the best course of action. (Sounds to me like the kind of stuff that was going around in South Carolina in the years leading up to the Civil War.)

THE BONUS ONUS remains very much alive, no matter where you look today. Even the Tribune Company, the mega-media owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and TV stations, is arguing in bankruptcy court that its $66 billion in bonuses were important to

"incentivize"(God, how I hate the word!) its management. David Carr takes up this silliness in his The Media Equation column in the New York Times.

"Let's say that a group of corporate executives uses scads of debt to take over a struggling company, sells off some profitable assets, lays off thousands of employees while achieving miserable results. And then less than a year after saddling the company with $8 billion in debt, they opt for bankruptcy.

"You'd expect them to walk the plank, or at the least, spend a good stretch of time in the naughty corner. but you wouldn't expect the top 700 managers to collect $86 million in bonuses. But that's just what might happen at the Tribune Co.

(By the way the guy defending incentivization (!) is the Tribune Co.'s chief financial officer, Chandler Bigelow III. That's not the sort of name that would head a Laborers Union.)

Thanks to Talking Points Memo for alerting us to the judicial setback for the wacky California dentist/lawyer Orly Taitz, who has been one of the national ringleaders in challenging President Obama's birthplace. Taitz is a birther who has been challenging Obama's legitimacy wherever she could park her lawsuits. But U.S. District Judge Clay Land (Georgia Middle District) decided he had had enough of her nonsense and fined her $20,000 for misconduct. Should you question the logic behind the fine, here is, in part what he wrote:

When a lawyer files complaints and motions without a reasonable basis for believing that they are supported by existing law or a modification or extension of existing law, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer uses the courts as a platform for a political agenda disconnected from any legitimate legal cause of action, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer personally attacks opposing parties and disrespects the integrity of the judiciary, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer recklessly accuses a judge of violating the Judicial Code of Conduct with no supporting evidence beyond her dissatisfaction with the judge's rulings, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law, that lawyer ceases to advance her cause or the ends of justice.

Taitz: A birther born in Moldova

DO YOU FIND find it ironic that one of the national leaders of the birther movement to disprove President Obama's birthplace is a California dentist/lawyer who was not born in the U.S. but is a native of Moldova, the former Soviet Republic? Her name is Orly Taitz and she is described as a rabid litigant among birthers. She earned a law degree from an online correspondence school. Her sidekick in this ridiculous mayhem is a lawyer named Charles Lincoln, who has been disbarred in three states for his way of doing legal work.