Primavera is the only sane choice.

Rep. Dianne Primavera (D-Broomfield) is running for a third two-year term representing House District 33 in the Colorado House of Representatives. Throughout the last four years she’s worked tirelessly to advance the causes of real, live human beings.

Many wonder why any decent, capable, honorable human being would even consider becoming involved in politics given how shitty it’s become. I’ve wondered that myself. Whatever the reason, the people in this here district are damn lucky that someone as decent, capable and honorable as Primavera wants to be involved.

Of course, times are tough economically. The primary causes are being in a state of war for an astounding nine years, reckless deregulation of the FIRE sector and government policies that not only encourage but affirmatively reward outsourcing. In other words,  the causes are Republican.

History tells us that when the party hired to act as a rebuilding contractor doesn’t move fast enough, the bosses will turn the reins back over to the party that burned down the house in the first place. That’s what’s fixin’ to happen now.

Given the fact that there are more Republicans around these parts than there are Democrats, the moneyed elite is targeting HD33 for recapture yet again.

Primavera’s opponent is a muppet by the name of Don Beezley. He’s one of those generic “businessman” types who has no actual skills but does have a penchant for making lots of money. His current gig involved creating and selling chiropractic clinic franchises.

It wasn’t always that way. Beezley is now a registered Republican, but the conversion is recent and far from complete. Ideologically he’s a libertarian. At one time he was actually a paid libertarian who worked in D.C. as a vice president of the Cato Institute, a right wing “think” tank.

Go to Beezley’s website and you’ll read a bunch of vacuous, poorly-worded platitudes about freedom and the like, but no actual substance. Beezley’s problem is that he’s been grooming himself for public office for quite some time and has a rather ugly paper trail as a result. A small sampling is available here courtesy of the Broomfield County Democrats.

The Denver Post handed out its endorsements in the most heavily contested Colorado House of Representatives races yesterday, and the editorial board’s short ‘n’ sweet commentary on HD33 focuses on Beezley’s hypocrisy in being an anti-government zealot angling for a goverment paycheck:

Republican Don Beezley has said he doesn’t even believe in local or county government. Then why his desire for a state paycheck? Our nod goes to Rep. Dianne Primavera, D-Broomfield, who has served ably since knocking off Bill Berens in 2006.

How much influence the Post‘s endorsement will have remains to be seen. Mindless, weepy-eyed prosaicisms about freedom go a long way among dumbasses.

Birfer Hijinx

I saw  this on t3h intart00bsz yesterday and have been laughing pretty much nonstop ever since. Seems that a gaggle of angry, old, bald-headed white men united under the banner of something called American Grand Jury are really, really upset that Barack Obama is President of the United States. These folks are birfers (the term “birthers” is insufficiently derisive IMO), people who believe for whatever reason that Obama is not a natural born Citizen of the U.S. and thus ineligible to serve as president.

These guys are also “self-declared constitutional experts” looking to have a grand jury indict Obama for treason. It’s not going particularly well:

First, a Tennessee man was arrested after walking into his local county courthouse to try to effect a citizen’s arrest of a grand jury foreman who had refused to investigate President Obama’s legitimacy to serve — an encounter partially caught on video. That enraged one Georgia-based member of the far-right OathKeepers group. Responding to a call from an extremist leader, he drove to Tennessee with an AK-47 in a bid to get his comrade released — only to wind up getting arrested himself.

Entertainingly enough, the guy they were looking to arrest is the foreman of s state grand jury. The problem, apparently, is the foreman’s failure to have Obama investigated for treason, a federal crime. For constitutional law experts, these fellows don’t seem to understand federalism very well.

Also, what’s with all this carriage of commie weaponry? They certainly don’t make patridiots like they used to.

Having a black man serve as president has been illuminating on multiple levels. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that such a thing could happen at all, but it certainly has brought out the crazies in droves.

Incompetence: The New Expertise

So then, it seems that CNN is using Bush administration FEMA Director Michael “Heckuva Job, Brownie” Brown as an expert commentator! That’s right, it’s the very same Michael Brown who set records for stupidity and incompetence during the Hurricane Katrina disaster that may never be equaled.

Brown thinks that “[t]hey want a crisis like this, so that they can use a crisis like this to shut down offshore and gas drilling[.]” “They,” of course, refers to the Obama administration.

It’s a damn good thing we have a monolithically liberal mainstream media in this country. Were it otherwise, idiot right wing whackadoos like Michael Brown might end up as expert commentators on CNN and such.

It’s Kagan

It’s not official yet, but insiders are saying that Elena Kagan, a Harvard lawprof currently serving as the U.S. Solicitor General, is President Obama’s nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.  The move is entirely expected, since Kagan has been the frontrunner since Stevens announced his retirement.

It remains to be seen whether Kagan’s comment that the Senate confirmation process has become a “vapid  and hollow charade” will come back to bite her on the ass.  I suppose she could just say that she was speaking not of the process but rather of Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Jeff Sessions, whose bona-fides as a vapid and hollow charade are beyond question.

Sen. Sessions tells us what we Americans want in a Supreme Court justice here. Turns out that what we really want is someone “committed to the text of the Constitution and the vision of the Founding Fathers” instead of “an activist who will shed a judge’s neutral, constitutional role to push a progressive policy agenda.”

We’re also “looking for judges in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts, not Justice John Paul Stevens.” That’s good to know. Until reading that, I might have believed that I’d prefer a principled conservative jurist to a political hack. Silly me.

Nummy Num — Chocolate Milk!

Let it never be said that Republicans have a monopoly on flaming idiocy. Congressman Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) flew over the massive oil spill in Gulf of Mexico this weekend and declared it “not as bad as I thought.” In fact, the spill kinda looks like “chocolate milk” and t’ain’t no big deal because it’s breaking up all by itself.

Whew, that’s a relief!

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, the well at issue continues dumping 200,000 gallons of oil per day into the Gulf and the spill has tripled in size over the past  three days.

Az. Governor: If You Love Terrorism So Much, Why Don’t You Marry It?

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer took to Fox News the other day to offer a totally unassailable rationale for her decision to sign that overtly racist legislation:

“You know Arizona has been under terrorist attacks, if you will, with all of this illegal immigration that has been taking place on our very, very porous border,” Brewer said.

There you have it. Those poverty-stricken Mexicans risking life and limb crossing the border in hope of finding something that resembles a better life? Terrorist invaders is what they are.

As our old friend Illusory Tenant correctly points out, the U.S. Constitution places the job of protecting states from invasion squarely in the hands of Congress. The Justice Department, private attorneys, civil rights organizations and any others that might ultimately challenge the law in court would no doubt have figured out that angle on their own. Even so, it was awfully decent of Gov. Brewer to draw a big red circle around it.

Va. AG Goes All John Ashcroft on State Seal

The seal of the state of Virginia is really dumb looking. Its most prominent feature is a cartoon drawing of a lady standing triumphantly with one foot on the chest of an apparently lifeless gent lying on the floor. Both characters are dressed in something that looks like ancient Roman garb, and the drawing strongly suggests that the triumphant lady beat the lifeless gent to death with a gargantuan dildo during a role-play that got a little out of hand.

Trouble is, the cartoon lady’s toga has shifted to reveal a cartoon hooter. That doesn’t sit well with Ken Cuccinelli, the Ol’ Dominion’s current Attorney General. Like John Ashcroft before him, Mr. Cuccinelli has taken it upon himself to impose Christian decency upon slutty artwork. The AG has had new lapel pins issued for his staff. The new pins feature the same magnificently idiotic cartoon, but with the triumphant lady’s formerly exposed hooter covered up. A side-by-side comparison of the old and new lapel pins is available here.

You might recall Mr. Cuccinelli as one of the Republican state attorneys general who filed suit in federal court to challenge the constitutionality of recent federal health care reform legislation. The Florida litigation, which involved thirteen attorneys general, was apparently too anonymous for Cuccinelli, who filed his own separate lawsuit in a Virgina federal court.

Filing separately makes for better grandstanding, don’tcha know, and grandstanding is important when you ask a court to override the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives.

Sic Semper Tyrannis indeed.

Dianne Primavera Continues to Rock

I’ve gotten somewhat involved in local Democratic politics since moving to Colorado in 2003.  Over the the past couple of years, though, I’ve found myself sitting in a meeting or an assembly multiple times wondering, “What the fuck is the point?”

But every now and again the old excitement returns. Last night was one of those times.

I was a delegate to the Democratic Colorado House District 33 Assembly.  Pretty much the sole purpose of the Assembly was to nominate incumbent Rep. Dianne Primavera as the party’s official candidate for the state House of Representatives.

It was all pretty perfunctory. Everyone knew way that Dianne wanted to run for reelection. No other Democrat wants the job, AFAIK, and Dianne is extraordinarily good at it. She’s respected on both sides of the aisle and is widely viewed as the James Brown (“hardest working [wo]man”) of the Colorado General Assembly.

The Assembly got under way at 7:30 p.m. and its business took all of about fifteen minutes to complete. We managed to nominate Dianne before she even showed up.

So why wasn’t she on time? What’s the matter, can’t this hoity toity incumbent be bothered with the details of her own reelection?

That’s not it at all, of course. Dianne was late to the Assembly because she was working, as always. The House Judiciary Committee was conducting a hearing on S.B. No. 10-076 (pdf, 3 pages), which Dianne is sponsoring along with Sen. Morgan Carroll. The bill is quite important to Dianne, and she wanted to be there in person to shepherd the bill through what promised to be a rather prickly process.

It worked. When all was said and done the Judiciary Committee voted 7-4 in favor.

And what does the bill do? It designates as an unfair claim settlement practice an insurer paying its employees bonuses, incentives or other compensation for denying or delaying a claim, or for canceling or rescinding an insurance policy. When Dianne arrived and told us why she was late, the room erupted in applause. While clapping my hands I smiled and thought, “This, THIS is the point.”

Anyone who knows our humble little district knows that Dianne is a Democratic incumbent in sea of Republicans. Given the voter registration numbers, the state Republican Party has once again made retaking this seat a priority. So despite Dianne’s exceptional record over the course of two terms, getting reelected will take loads of time, effort and money.

You know what? It’ll be worth it. Dianne Primavera’s extraordinary combination of skill, work ethic and deep concern for actual flesh-and-blood constituents is all too rare. We’re fortunate as all hell to have Dianne Primavera representing us in Denver, and we’ll not give up such high-quality representation without a huge honking fight.

Shrill, Baby, Shrill

Here’s my favorite lunatic Republican conspiracy theory (from the past couple of days, at least). According to conservative icon and morbidly obese OxyContin junkie Rush Limbaugh, the current environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico might just be the work of “environmentalist whackos.” That’s right — maybe, just maybe, said whackos blew up that offshore drilling rig, thereby causing an oil spill that may well end up worse than the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989,  to prevent us from achieving energy independence by making “Drill, Baby, Drill” our actual, literal public policy instead of just an idiotic Republican slogan.

Didn’t Fat Boy say he’d leave the country if “Obamacare” passed?

Palin-Beck in 2012?

Hey, don’t blame me. It’s Sarah Palin’s suggestion, apparently. The fact that such lunacy got so much as a nod from CBS News, much less the full-blown article it actually got, is itself a telling comment on the state of the media, the contemporary Republican party, or both.

H/T – The Legal Satyricon