Since Hillbuzz Loves To Put President Obama In Whiteface So Much...

Speak harshly to your little marks,
And ban them when they grumble,
Call them Eeyores, trolls and orcs;
Abuse will keep them humble.

One good 'Shop deserves another.

**UPDATE**

AND ANOTHER!! 

Wee slickit, paranoid, slandrous beast,
Your world is not so jolly,
But we don't mind you in the least,
Welcome to Chez Polly!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Brought to you as always by Mrs.Polly of Snarkopolitan, the Undead Blog, running twice as fast just to keep three steps behind the exhausting pace of Harvey Bilk!

When They Listen To Kevin Dujan, They Are! More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About the Cook County "Sex Scandal," Because Someone Asked

Chicago Deep Dish

"Anonymous" has written in to ask, regarding the "Prophet Making" Post,

"Then Huffpo is crazy?" (Immediate, visceral response: always!)

Anonymous then links to Will Guzzardi's (of the Huffpo Chicago "Bureau!") piece of July 28th, about the resignation of the young (23) executive director of the Cook County GOP, aka, in the overheated rhetorical stylings of Kevin Dujan, "The Prophet."

Bearing in mind that Snarkopolitan is run by a New York liberal with as much interest in the slimy underside of Illinois Republican politics as she has in the lineup of the Chicago Bears (less!), and no journalistic experience whatsoever, anything I write should be taken accordingly (that is, well-salted). With that proviso, let's wade into the goo:

There are two camps at each other's throats, as Anonymous surely knows better than I: the Lee Roupas camp and the Eloise Gerson camp. The "Prophet," aka Jeremy Rose, is a Roupassard, and Stephen Boulton, General Counsel for the Chicago GOP, is a Gersonian.

The Huffpo article, by Will Guzzardi (of the Huffpo Chicago "bureau!") clearly favors the Gersonians. Writing about how a complaint against Rose that was a year old, and had been settled to the satisfaction of the complainant, got brought up again, Guzzardi says,

"And when a whistleblower came forward about the complaint, Roupas organized a concerted effort to remove that person from her elected position within the party."

Well, that's how Eloise Gerson, the "whistleblower," would characterize it. But if you read this article by Michael Volpe, it looks like a giant, messy power struggle, with Gersonians accusing Roupassards of secret Democratism, and Roupassards accusing Gerson of being a just plain crummy Chairwoman whose fundraising promises were unmet. Gerson's counsel Boulton has a special dislike for Rose for "insulting him" in unspecified ways, and everybody was pretty much angling to oust everybody else, and treating any moves by the other faction as outrageous, ought to be illegal, never in my 32 years as a Republican have I seen, etc. There are meetings without Ms. Gerson (condolences on her cat. And on the in-laws coming to town), and meetings with Ms. Gerson, and Rashomonic accounts from the opposing camps of all of them, which I am not going to try to untangle.

But according to T. Mannis, a conservative blogger who operates Chicago News Bench, this power struggle was at least 18 months old, and so predates the Cubby Bear Unhappy Hour, subsequent unpleasant encounter, complaint, and resolution of the complaint to the satisfaction of the complainant.

So Gerson has an axe to grind, which the Huffpo writer should have discovered and noted, and didn't.(BTW, a bio of Mr. Guzzardi shows him to be the founder of a pretty great-looking online magazine called Wag's Revue. I've nothing against Mr. Guzzardi at all, except that he seems to have taken a few too many people at face value.

He didn't have the advantage I did in being tipped to Kevin Dujan's propensity for concocting lunatic, baroque scenarios, not having been the innocent target of one. Even so, when he links to Hillbuzz repeatedly, he doesn't question certain things that really ought to stand out to a humor writer, like the similarity in tone (ridiculous/ridiculous) between "Roxy Vanilla" and Hillbuzz.

He writes,

"HillBuzz had in fact received a copy of the complaint against Rose more than a year ago; due to a HillBuzz blogger's personal connections to the story, it was not published. But when the Roxy Vanilla email implicated Roupas in covering up the allegations, HillBuzz spoke out--and has been closely following the story since.

"The root of the scandal is something that should have warranted jail time for [Rose]...but he has been protected and helped, apparently, by the likes of Roupas ... all this time," the blogger wroteon July 12."

How brave of Hillbuzz to "speak out!" And how less than objective a way to phrase it. But if"Hillbuzz" (whom we now know is just plain old Kevin) believes that what Rose did "is something that should have warranted jail time," then why did Hillbuzz also suppress this complaint, for an entire year? Instead, because of "personal connections," Hillbuzz sat on a story that could have spared young women the ordeal of being pursued by the Prophet,

"swimming the YR waters like a shark, hunting for seals in this ample rookery. "

And the "personal connections?

For over a year now, we’ve been aware of an explosive scandal that’s been rocking the Chicago Young Republicans, but because we know all parties involved in this personally, we have not spoken of it. One of the people involved has a romantic link to one of us here, so the whole thing is messy on so many levels.

A romantic link---to the shark, in fact! That is messy. If Mr. Guzzardi had just googled "Dujan," he would have discovered what best buds Rose and Dujan used to be. Since there has been so much messiness since the Huffpo article was written, the Timeout Chicago feature doesn't come up unless you Google their names together. But a year ago, it would have popped up on the first or second page, as it did for me and other people writing about Dujan in the time of our own travails.

Nobody can blame Mr. Guzzardi for not wading through all the bubbling pits of adjectives and bile that constitute the Hillbuzz Scandal-birthing Swamp to find the aformentioned description of "the Prophet" on July 16, a week before the Huffpo piece appeared:

Unbalanced, vainglorious, and vindictive, yet exceedingly charming and bisexually attractive,

Projection much, Kevin? But "bisexually attractive," combined with "a romantic link," ought to have set off an alarm bell somewhere. Well, that and the fact that in the comments of that same piece, the Shark turns into "Mr. Blondy Sleepy Needs His Coffee Bear."

T. Mannis had the advantage of getting one of the Roxy Vanilla emails from the wrong email address. "theswordandtherose," another dubious adventure in rococo nomenclature. Mannis recognised that the email shared the same distinctive voice as Roxy Vanilla, but was signed differently: "Concerned CYRs," But over on Hillbuzz, the selfsame text was touted as THE LATEST EMAIL! coming straight from Roxy Vanilla. Whoops!

Mannis's reaction:

"If Hillbuzz would forward the email he claims to be from Roxy Vanilla to me, I'll be satisfied. I don't know if Hillbuzz even reads this blog, but if he reads this post he'll probably laugh this off and shout "F--- you, Mannis, you bug!" at his computer screen. Of course, he won't be able to hear you or me shouting "Prove it, Hillbuzz!" at our keyboards."

I would never want to minimize the seriousness of sexual harassment. But Hillbuzz turns the "sexual harassment" charge, which was settled to the satisfaction of the complainant, into "attempted date-rape," which actually does minimize the seriousness of date-rape:

• A young woman met a young man at a social function held in a bar.
• Walked, in the company of other people, to his apartment, despite being unsettled by his putting his hands on, according to her complaint, her neck, and her waist (outside the apartment) and her thigh (inside the apartment). They were still in the company of other people.
• Where, when she wanted to go, he sat on her lap and took her cell phone, which she found threatening.
• The other woman who was there didn't like this at all, grabbed her, and got her out of there.
• The young woman complained to Rose's higher-ups.
• Rose issued an apology.
• The young woman accepted, and considered the matter closed, according to the Huffpo article: This issue was dealt with in the manner that I requested it to be dealt with and I consider it to be done and over with," she said in a recent email.

No mention is made of any clothes coming off, or private parts being touched, or a struggle of any sort. A larger, stronger guy sat in a smaller, weaker, woman's lap, after a boozy evening, in the presence of other people. This makes him a creep, undoubtedly, but is this the "explosive sexual scandal?"

The rest of the allegations are squishy, vague, anonymous of course, and treat young women (and men, Kevin reminds us) as if they were entirely helpless naifs, or seal pups, or something similarly uncomprehending and without volition. But if any other complaints of even slightly coercive behavior were made, nobody, not Hillbuzz or Roxy Vanilla or Eloise Gerson, mentions it. All we get is that the "Prophet" trolls CYR for bed partners, and finds them. Which Gerson (billed inHillbuzz's snappy graphics as " TRUTHTELLER") finds "shocking."

Guzzardi did interview Roupas, and says he was "frequently evasive in an interview," but gives no details of when, where, or how. Roupas claimed "not to know enough of the allegations to believe them," according to the Huffpo writer. Gerson's counsel, Steve Boulton, helpfully signed a statement saying that he'd told Roupas about the allegations in a phone call, but did not email him. The complainant had expressed her wish that the entire issue be handled internally, so as not to hurt the image of the Chicago Young Republicans, so Boulton seems here to be going against her wishes himself in taking the matter up with Cook County Republicans.

Since Snarkopolitan has no position or care in the world about who wins the title of Least Mud-Encrusted in the Illinois GOP Scuzz-Ball Invitational, I'm not going to join the fray on whether or not Lee Roupas should have hired Jeremy Rose, covered up his knowledge of the complaint or didn't think it serious enough to warrant attention, or which people should be forced out of where. If you want to see somebody who really enjoys a good mire-wallowing, with sides of muck-throwing, sliming, cheap moralizing, and double-dealing, you know where to find him.

Brought to you as always by Mrs. Polly of Snarkopolitan, the undead blog, who reminds you, she didn't pick this subject, this subject picked her!

Mucking Around With Chicago Young Republicans: Hillbuzz's Prophet-Making Enterprise

Identities shielded out of sheer embarrassment for the subjects

The absurd little man who once selected Snarkopolitan for random target practice, Kevin Dujan, aka Harvey Bilk, Lord Of The Flies at $hillbuzz (on right, sporting air of mystery and overactive antennae), collected his first real scalp this summer. Based largely on the paranoid Palinophile's not very reliable say-so, his erstwhile buddy, the president of Chicago Young Republicans (above, in pink turban) (and a purported member of the Mittens Mafia of Romney thuggery!!!) was forced out, and now Harvey's clamoring for more scalps. And more.

Harvey's confabulatory antics are well known to Snarkopolitan's, and other, rightier blogs', regular readers, and I really wasn't going to revive this post, but since Harvey's wading back into the icky goo of Chicago politics, a little perspective might be a good thing.

Time was when Harvey and the turbaned fellow above were, as a Chicago magazine put it, "Unlikely Friends." Heck, as the tagline says, "They’d probably be enemies if they weren’t best buds!" Oh true, oh inarguable! The friendship, in fact, must have gone awfully sour.

First, let's consider this quote:

"Unbalanced, vainglorious, and vindictive, yet exceedingly charming and bisexually attractive, “The Prophet” was fired by the Murphy campaign"

"The Prophet?" What is this, an airport paperback? It is fiction, isn't it? Triply adjectival horrible fiction?

It isn't fiction? Well, in a way. It is another Dujanian brew of Gothic poli-romance junk fiction, with more unsubstantiated accusations by mysterious anonymous shadow figures than populate the crumpled contents of Danielle Steele's wastebasket. "The Prophet," Dujan insists, is in fact the very same young man with whom he is posed up there as the Beast With Two Fronts!

And, even better, the unnamed group that emails Hillbuzz (and a few other Chicago RW polibloggers, not all of whom are persuaded) calls itself, ludicrously, "Roxy Vanilla."

This blog's interest in the particulars of Chicago Republican politics is miniscule, but if political organizations are going to start tricking themselves out like drag queens and posting rabid, foam-flecked perorations that are to oratory what armpit-solos are to violin concertos, we're going to have a look. And looky here at this spectacular piece of wroth-waxing:

"Resign PROPHET, just resign. Resign before you are thrown out. Or

do you want to go out in some blaze of glory and burn the whole
house down with you? That is more your style isn’t it. Guess
what? There are more surprises coming. Do not even think you are
smart or you can maneuver your way out. You lost. Go. Quit.
Resign. Leave town. Get out. Put Chicago in your rear view
mirror. Or risk suffering the consequences.

Roxy Vanilla"

There was more. There was so much, much, more. But when you read that frothing, fantastic coup-de-grace, you know that Dujan must have fantasized about using it ever since he was a sprout bouncing on his parents' sofa, using a bathmat for a cape. Charming picture, until you realize it's a power-drunk thirtyish blogger aiming it at a 23-year-old former friend.

Hillbuzz's "Roxy Vanilla" stirs up an accusation against the head of the Chicago Young Republicans that had been handled internally, to the evident satisfaction of the original complainant, a year before. What Kevin Dujan does not mention in reheating this leftover is that he has a conflict of interest. In an October 5 post examining the whole mess, one Michael Volpe charges:

While Hillbuzz has been the driving force in raising the profile of this story, its proprietor, Kevin Dujan, failed to disclose a conflict of his own. He was a Hillary Clinton supporter who joined the CYR to help John McCain get elected. He stayed on after the election, but in June of 2009 he was considered for the position of fundraising director. ([!]--ed.)When that position went to another member, Dujan had a very public blow-up and wasn't seen by the group again.

Michael Volpe is a blogger for Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, which would not ordinarily recommend him, to put it delicately, to this scandalously lefty blog. But it's interesting to see a Breitbart writer take on another blogger who has been doing his best to flirt with Breitbart. Given the pounds-per-square-inch of hissy fits, melodramatic outbursts, and passive-aggressiveness in any Hillbuzz post, it's not hard to imagine the reality of the "very public blow-up."

Volpe's article also details the divisions in the CYR that found Dujan parted from his "best bud," which tidbit of course Dujan omits in his breathless pulp-thriller plot.

Just as Snarkopolitan doesn't want to become embroiled in Chicago Republican (or any Republican!) politics, this blog isn't going to pass judgement one way or another on the young man Dujan was so eager to accuse, except to remind all parties to consider this particular source.

But this is not the end of the story. It actually gets crazier.

The crux of the accusation against "the Prophet" is that he either tried to put some cheesy moves on, or attempted to restrain by sitting on the lap of, a young woman who didn't find him compelling, and wanted to leave, which she subsequently did with another woman who'd been there the entire time. But Dujan doesn't give his audience details; he simply calls the encounter, "attempted date rape:"

"Murphy was provided with a copy of the attempted date rape complaint filed against “The Prophet” by a young Chicago woman back in July 2009; Murphy received that complaint while he was still attempting a gubernatorial bid of his own, running with a staff comprised squarely of “The Prophet” and other young, relatively inexperienced 'Romney Guys'”

Date rape? That's horrible. There are obviously ugly political currents underlying this post, but that's a serious charge the writer's passing along there. So the segue seems a little abrupt when in the comments of the same post, the readers are treated to this:

Hillbuzz Says:

July 16, 2010 at 10:40 am
"We will give him this: he is cute. especially when he first wakes up in the morning and is all mussed hair mr. blondy sleepy needs his coffee bear."

WAIT....What?

Oh, jeez. Of course.

After all, this is Hillbuzz! So Harvey Bilk has just published allegations that "the Prophet" may be a rapist, and now, in the comments of that same post, he's calling him "mussed hair mr. blondy sleepy needs his coff---"
blechh blechh blechhh!

Excuse me.

But what is the proper response when somebody tells you:

a. So-and-so should be investigated for committing rape.
b. And I've slept with him! And he is like, so cute!

Harvey's loyal readers have had a little trouble digesting this one, and some couldn't quite fight either the nausea or the cognitive dissonance:

B***** Says:

July 16, 2010 at 10:51 am
"Oh, ICK! What a geek!! Ip, I agree.
If this is the best Old Moneybags can DO, that’s just sad!

The Boyz said he was cute so I was expecting somebody MUCH more studly.
Not in a million years!"

Now fights there within the bosom of Harvey Bilk a battle royal between his Sammy Glickitudinous desire to advance himself, and his preening vanity, which begs that his readers recognize that he does NOT sleep with sad icky "if this is the best old Moneybags can do" unstudliness. No! He sleeps with positively adorable date-raping man-candy, prompting this exchange:

Hillbuzz Says:

July 16, 2010 at 11:01 am
"He is nerdy cute. And a surprisingly good snuggler."

Reply
B***** Says:

July 16, 2010 at 11:13 am
"TMI…TMI…TMI…TMI!!!!!

Boyz, have mercy!
Must…find…brain…bleach"


B***** and other of Harvey's followers are conflicted any old which way; is B***** repelled by the idea that Harvey's called a rapist "cute?" Or is she unable to handle the fairly tame mental image of two men snuggling? Or is it those two men? As Hillbuzz's audience gradually turned from Hillarophiles to Palinophiles, the number of people comfortable with even mild homoerotica undoubtedly dropped. Where she fit in the continuum is hard to say.

In any case, BRAIN BLEACH, STAT!

Boasted friend to women, and boastful lover of their (and some men's, too!) sexual predator, Harvey Bilk is quite a piece of work.

It's not funny that either this man has done what he is accused of, or else he is the innocent target of a Hillbuzz smear campaign. Or that there's a greyish, boozy, furry reality not easily discernible to anyone, even the participants.

As always, Harvey buries his hapless readers in yards and yards of unrelieved block text, in post after post about Chicago Republican politics that this blog is not going to try to dissect. Frankly, except for hoping that there was in fact no date-raping going on, this blog's official position is not to care.

Except to note that the all the raping, closeted, covering-up miscreants seem to be part of that damnable gang of smiley-faced Utah-based mafia, the Mormons, whose bland menace is represented in the Buzz-reviled person of Mitt Romney. Mittens is running, putatively, against the Kwittin' Image herself, former half-Governor Sarah Palin. And that might have everything to do with why Harvey Bilk has pulled the plug on a beautiful, unlikely friendship, one that got the retiring Mr. Bilk a write-up, by name, with picture, half a year before he went thermonuclear at the idea that he had been "outed."

The retiring and anonymous Mr. Bilk might also have forgotten an interview he gave to a magnificently credulous CBS reporter. Bilk happily gave his real name, the name of his virulently nutty online screedatorium, Hillbuzz, and FAN-ta-sized designing a green wardrobe for his inamorata, Sarah Palin.

And by green, he doesn't mean organic bamboo rayon, he really means GREEN. Because dressing like a Lucky Charms logo is sure to quieten the voices of Enviro-fascists who are not in love with the Alaskan Frozen Cheezkake. Excellent job of branding, Harvey.

How could the Palin campaign ever get by without you.

**BONUS!!**

Harvey's "All the Kids Love It When I Read My Hatemail Post turned into a Wordle! (Click through for full-size) "I" "Me" "My!"

Brought to you as always by Mrs. Polly of Snarkopolitan, the undead blog, who says, "Ask me about Tattoine Sarlacs! Go ahead, ask me!"

The Sliming, Part Deux:Flim-Flam Dujan Repeats His False Charges

Burning bridges and readers since at least 2008

It's a press release. It is sprinkled with gems like this:

DuJan, a marketing and fundraising consultant, has created a community onHillbuzz.org that allows gays and conservatives to get to know each other in a respectful, irreverent, but always pro-America environment.

There will be a short pause while ex-Hillbuzzers stop rolling in the aisles and clutching their sides in a respectful, irreverent, but always pro-America way. As it is by Dujan **UPDATE** My good friend YAFB points out that it's actually by a Hillbuzzer who's involved with publicity, whose name I'm not going to use because it's not, exactly, her best work, and now back to our blog post in progress**, it is naturally five times longer than it should be--you'd think a marketing consultant would know these things, but really, his specialty has always been fundraising, hasn't it!

But let's be unDujanian and cut to the chase:

religious people don’t hate us as much as our own leaders do…as much as the Democrat Party in fact does," says DuJan, who has been the subject of smear campaigns orchestrated by liberal and leftist hate sites.

And guess where he links! "Thank you for your support," in which he replays the entire Grand Inquisition Hit Parade, from Snarkopolitan to George Soros to the Man In The Moon. We remember that tune, don't we! Pretty ballsy coming from the Conductor of the Smear Campaign Orchestra.

This classic tissue of lies (mattress of lies, more like) is dated 11/1/10. That was before Kevin Dujan made the mistake of letting his contempt for his readers, much less the truth, show a little too openly. The last time he attacked my innocent friends and me, I thought the entire Right-O-Sphere was going to go after us, but this time, his brand is soiled, and people are just beginning to become aware that Kevin Dujan is a con-artist and liar of the first water. Indeed, I might admire his inventiveness if it weren't used to injure other people.

But even though he's lost most of his audience, it's not like it hasn't happened before; he just reconstitutes, depends on short memories and the fatigue of normal people who try to deal with him, and there he is back at the delete button (which must currently be smoking), madly typing, or texting, away, bathed only in the glow of his Paypal logo, trusting that he can attract a fresh bunch of marks by feeding them star-spangled malarkey.

He's managed to convince a number of harried media producers with minutes to fill and no research budgets, that he is the go-to conservative blogger Bristol Palin can thank for her dance across America's hearts (or spleens, depending), through an "orchestrated campaign" of his own. Sounds like they're actually reading that press release. (BTW, Hillbuzz, says the press release, offers:

commentary and illustrations from several undercover Conservative and Independent contributors.

That's right, illustrators whose work is now appearing uncredited: you are "UNDERCOVER."

In the "Thank You For Your Support" post, (AKA "Mattress of Lies"), Dujan thoughtfully includes links to all the Right-Wing websites that picked up the story and passed it along. It brought him a great deal of recognition, readers, and money. It brought me a bunch of nightmares, a new-found appreciation for cheap happy-hour margaritas, and other ills I've detailed before. But now that I see it again, it strikes me just how handy those links are for, say, former Hillbuzzers (I'm calling them RefuBees) to use to make very clear that the "Boyz" of Hillbuzz are a single scheming shlub whose learning curve is flatter than his prose.

Brought to you as always by Mrs. Polly of Snarkopolitan, the undead blog~~oh, I was going to write such a different post until I read that press release! I had such a good Blingee! Oh, well. A lovely Thanksgiving to all. Mrs. P

The Deed Is Done

And instantly, speculation started about the next stimulation bill. Or, to phrase it more felicitously, the next JOBS bill. Here in NYC, the aptly named Bruce Ratner is lobbying for funds to complete clogging the heart of Brooklyn with his Atlantic Yards project, a giant sports/residential/shopping complex that ran out of gas even before the market tanked.

And cheerfully, indefatigably corrupt Al D’amato is lobbying for Ratner. D’amato’s last triumphant project? Kirsten Gillibrand. So though AY is mired in lawsuits (lots of eminent domain problems), I wouldn’t be shocked to see some of its 16 towers rising across the river.

The showpiece, Frank Gehry’s “Miss Brooklyn”, a dainty, undulating building who looked like she was lifting her skirts, has been replaced by a pile of shoeboxes, as if she’d just grabbed her Manolos and cleared out.

Obama announced that this bill did more for healthcare than had been done in a decade. Sayyyyy, doesn’t “decade” include the last years of the Clinton administration?

Was that a swipe?

Cross-posted at Rumproast, Brooklyn's Meatiest Blog.

Ssempa Fideles

As if Rick Warren weren't objectionable enough for his famous slippery bigotry, Max Blumenthal writing for Smirking Chimp has much, much worse news:

While Pastor Warren has been active in AIDS programs in Africa, his main focus has been on preventing not AIDS but condom distribution, and persecuting homosexuals through the paranoiac homophobic Ugandan reverend, Martin Ssempa:

"Warren's man in Uganda is a charismatic pastor named Martin Ssempa. The head of the Makerere Community Church, a rapidly growing congregation, Ssempa enjoys close ties to his country's first lady, Janet Museveni, and is a favorite of the Bush White House. In the capitol of Kampala, Ssempa is known for his boisterous crusading. Ssempa's stunts have included burning condoms in the name of Jesus and arranging the publication of names of homosexuals in cooperative local newspapers while lobbying for criminal penalties to imprison them."

Ssempa has said he is afraid of homosexuals, although he hasn't had to flee his house and go into hiding, unlike his victims. He bravely marched into Kampala University, confronted a giant condom-wearing effigy used to promote AIDS prevention, and defeated it, stripping it of its protective sheath (there's the illustration I should have done. Maybe tomorrow).

He also thinks there is a secret witches' coven that convenes under Lake Victoria.

Anyone who was ever impressed by Tom Lantos, the member of Congress who survived the Holocaust, will stay impressed with him as he fought these vicious fearful lunatics even as he was dying of cancer:

"Troubled by what he was witnessing in Africa, the late Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., led the new Democratic-controlled Congress to reform PEPFAR during a reauthorization process in February 2008. Lantos insisted that Congress lift the abstinence-only earmark imposed by Republicans in 2002 and begin to fund family-planning elements like free condom distribution. His maneuver infuriated Warren, who immediately boarded a plane for Washington to join Christian Right leaders, including born-again former Watergate felon Chuck Colson, for an emergency press conference on the Capitol lawn. In his speech, Warren claimed that Lantos' bill would spawn an increase in the sex trafficking of young women. The bill died and PEPFAR was reauthorized in its flawed form. (Days later, Lantos died of cancer after serving for 27 years in Congress.)"

Stephen Lewis, the United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, told the New York Times their activism is "resulting in great damage and undoubtedly will cause significant numbers of infections which should never have occurred."

As weird and disheartening as this news ought to be, I find a slender ray of hope in it: perhaps in drawing Warren into the Obama administration's influence, Obama might persuade Warren to part with or lean on Ssempa, to moderate the attacks on Ugandan homosexuals and bring back accurate health information to Uganda.

The struggle for equal rights, the persuit of happiness, of homosexuals in America is possibly the last great American civil-rights frontier. But here is a behind-the-scenes struggle that might be affected positively by the choice of this puffed-up celebrity preacher to drip a few oily words on an audience that I hope will be flying thousands of rainbow flags.

UPDATE: You Guessed It

TO WANT A BRAWL

This is terribly sad. This cherubic young girl, Ashley, a McCain volunteer from Texas, evidently attacked outside an ATM in Pittsburgh. She said that the attacker threatened her with a knife, took $60, and had stepped away from her when he saw the McCain bumper stickers on her car, became enraged, knocked her to the ground and carved this B on her face. Backwards.

It's sad on many counts: that this young woman is suffering these injuries, that many young women suffer injuries like this, and that it's probably a fake.

(2:16 PM- she's confessed: http://kdka.com/local/attack.McCain.Bloomfield.2.847628)

All the features of this story are fuzzily familiar: the attacker is of course 6'4", of course black, and of course Ashley doesn't want to go to the hospital. Why would a 20 year-old be interested in a plastic surgeon repairing her scarred face?

The backwards “B”, besides being the dead giveaway, illustrates an old, sad, joke: Q:What’s the difference between genius and stupidity? A:Genius has limits. The crime itself is so very illogical and melodramatic it mirrors the cheap-novel gothic mind of a disturbed freshman: After getting sixty dollars,a pretty good haul, the mugger’s that outraged by a McPalin sticker? He hasn’t gotten used to seeing McPalin signs in Pittsburgh?

Instead of getting the hell out of there, he gently incises the more difficult of Barack Obama’s initials into her face, without leaving any ragged edges or even breaking the skin. Why not an easier O?

Self-mutilation through scratching is a not uncommon practice among teenage girls. Nor is texting, and she texted her search for an ATM to a group site she participated in with unusual devotion, carefully noting her transit to the Wrong End of Town. (the "wrong end of town" turns out to be a heavily white Italian neighborhood, the scene of the crime a busy intersection) Does downtown Pittsburgh have no ATMs? Downtown Manhattan is nothing but bank branches. Of course, many of them are failed banks. But the ATMs still work. Mostly.

So we have her placed in the Bad Section, a little Texas girl's prefab nightmare, and up pops the six-foot black man, who in classic bogeyman fashion, can't leave well enough alone by absconding with his loot, but has to turn back to attack the heroine. And I’m no expert in how blacked eyes heal, but this happened when, a couple days ago? The white of the blackened eye is clear.

For the first and probably last time in my life I have to write that I agree with Michelle Malkin on this. Which makes me breathless and sort of uneasy, but there you are. Hoax.

It certainly was:

• Her FaceBook page, which was screencaptured before it was taken down, has a statement about how much fun it is to lie.
• She called the McCain campaign office BEFORE she called the police.
• Security cameras showed she wasn't even an ATM customer.
• Here is a photo from her flickr page, showing her holding a sign she lettered. That "R" sure looks familiar! http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeinthefield/2962501339/

This poor addled race-baiting nincompoop is looking at some charges, I think, like filing a false police report, for one. (But what about the race-baiting nincompoops like Sean Hannity and members of the McCain campaign, who eagerly bit on this rotten story that even Michelle Malkin could see through? And can we now please recognize the go-to black bogeyman story employed by sad-sacks like Ashley for what it is the next time it's dragged out of storage among the other racist toys in their attic?)

THE TOUGH GO SHOPPING

looking cheap at any price

This scandal is so plump, so tasty, how best can we excise every glorious morsel and not miss a single tidbit?

The Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion editor missed all of it. She wrote a piece about Sarah Palin's unassuming, fashion-free middle-class "non-assertive" outfits.

She didn't notice the red leather jacket (Jon Stewart accused Palin of borrowing Michael Jackson's "Thrilla" jacket)? Or the dominatrix boots, or the Judy Garland over-the-bridge-to-nowhere-red-spangled-F-me-pumps? Or the chartreuse raw silk jacket? Or the bell-sleeved fitted jackets, with the little bow at the waist?

I assumed they'd fancied Sarah up, but even I had no idea. I thought they just had a few little half-blind children in the basement running up RealAmurkawearTM for her night and day.

SAY IT AIN'T JOE!

Living talking point salt-of-the-earth Plumber Joe is neither a Plumber nor a Joe! http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/joe-in-the-spotlight/?hp

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher is a registered Republican non-plumber who owes back taxes. And--developing---may be related to, (and pardon me for enjoying this so much)-------

CHARLES KEATING!

Perhaps he really did happen to see Obama campaigning in the neighborhood and just decided to pin him down. And perhaps the new darling of the New York Post betrayed something extra when complaining about the answer Obama gave him: Sam---er, "Joe", complained that Obama tap danced "like Sammy Davis Jr." Now let's pause while Republicans dust off their "Obama's playing the race card", their go-to, dog-eared, time-worn, battle-scarred, defense of racism.

FLASH: THIS JUST IN, NOTJOE ALSO NOT A KEATING

Just another darling of local right wing talk-radio hosts, whose father, Robert Wurzelbacher, happens to share the same name as Charles Keating's SIL, Robert Wurzelbacher. But NotJoe Wurzelbacher, of the Ohio Wurzelbachers, does have an ability to spout right-wing talking points, engaging hapless reporters not only on his hostility to Social Security, but the necessity for offshore drilling, a true bread-and-butter Ohio issue.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN WASILLA---- the Dairygate Follies, Part 1

That's all for now! But wait for our next installment, in which we find out how much cheese six hundred thousand dollars will buy, and meet a little girl who just happens to love cows.

My Favorite Scandal

Here she is, and I know more than a few Conservatives have already pictured her just this way, (ooh, starbursts everywhere!) Governor Sarah Palin, who loves a good bail-out, wink wink. This is my very favorite scandal, and nobody's talking about it. It has everything:

• Firings.
• Cronyism
• Gross but entertaining incompetence
• Bucolic setting
• Love of Cows
• Cheese Futures

Did you say CHEESE FUTURES? Oh yes I did!

Well if you want something done, sometimes you just have to do it yourself. The Mat Maid Dairy Scandal is a bit involved, so I will explicate it in comic-book form as best I can, considering my limited experience with either comics or cows. This is the first installment: here you see Alaska tax dollars, simply buckets of them, ready to pour into the Mat Maid Dairy by charmingly demented Governor Sarah Palin, whose very good friends happen to own cows whose milk is bought up by that same dairy.

I have depicted her on a field of Cheesy Orange which shows off her tanned shoulders. She looks great in anything, especially cheese. Cheese is her color.

Tomorrow, I will start the comic proper, and we will learn why the Mat Maid Dairy needed buckets of money, how badly it was failing, what Governor Palin did about it, and to whom she did it.

Johnnie Mac, the Intertubal Way

Now, this is the sort of partisan agitprop video with Profoundly. Melodramatic. Narration. In short. Urgent. Bursts. With Scary soundtrack. That. I. Don't like.

BUT it's about John McCain's temper! Which I am in a mood to highlight. After all, he two-facedly came out swinging at his opponent the day AFTER the match. That's not the MacNasty we need! But it seems that he can control himself if the opponent can hurt him back---aside from the contempt which leaks out of him in dribs and drabs. Is "That One" a drib or a drab?



Today, McCain and Palin continued to push the notion that Obama is a dangerous foreigner with terrorist ties, using half-truths, exaggerations and distortions. For instance, Obama served on the board of a charity with former Weather Underground member William Ayres. The charity was founded by Walter Annenberg, a conservative Republican and founder of Reader's Digest. But does anyone think he was a terrorist sympathizer?

At McCain and Palin rallies, shouts of "Kill him!" "Terrorist!" and "Cut off his head!" have been reported, but neither McCain nor Palin have said anything to calm down the mob mentality they seem to be cultivating. They simply repeat, "Who is Barack Obama?" as if it were Obama who'd been pulled out of obscurity five weeks ago and not Sarah Palin.

One day, people may deny that they were at McCain/Palin rallies the way older folks deny having been McCarthyites now. My folks once attended a McCarthy rally on a lark. Bad idea. My post on it: http://snarkopolitan.blogspot.com/2008/05/laughing-at-mccarthy-rally-bad-for.html

CURSE YOU, DARKNESS!

After the board election (and why should you the reader be even faintly interested in the nasty internal politics of somebody else's apartment complex? Because the complex is subsidized by your money, you, the taxpayer, you. YOUR MONEY!!!!, and is trying to cash in, without giving you any of YOUR MONEY back, employing tactics that would do a Rove or a Corleone proud, most instructive to students of Machiavelli and anyone else requiring proofs of the duality of human nature. That's why),

We thought a relative peace would reign. No more fliers slipped under our doors with headlines like:
Well, we haven't had more of those, but we've had something better: a newsletter from our state senator, declaring his devotion to us. Very exciting! He's never felt the need to communicate with *Muttonchop City residents by you-the-taxpayer-funded newsletter before. But here he is, with the *Muttonchop City Report, a First Edition:

It's a little hard to read, I apologise, and also for the obsessive/compulsive nature of the little bits of paper taped all over it. This is the last item in the newsletter, which spends two thirds of itself advertising the funds Senator *Neville (I thought I'd give him a name that's in the air recently) has obtained for our fair complex. The first line is: "Acting in response to an alert given him by Muttonchop residents.....

The "alert" would be a letter-writing and calling campaign by *Muttonchop Rights, Incorporated, Copyright, the pro-priva----well, it's a dirty word, I can't say it, but it ends in "--atization" group. That's the group started by personal injury lawyer, too-rich-to-live-at-Muttonchop-City, has-a-second-home-in-the-Hamptons, *Toby Mugg:and the other lawyers, real-estate agents and brokers who make up the core of *Muttonchop Rights.

Senator Neville knows how to count votes. That's what made it worth his while to risk playing quite the fool:

So Senator Neville co-sponsored the bill because he was "led to believe" it was a 7.5% flip tax, NOT a 75% flip tax! MmmmHmmm. His name was placed on the bill by evil gremlins. But NOW he knows better.

So you the taxpayer get to pay for Senator Neville's apologia for signing on to a bill that would return some of your tax money to you--the taxpayer.

*all names, appearances and search terms changed to protect the Pollys from the wrath of their lovely neighbors.