It seems like state Rep. Steve Cookson (R-153) has been getting lots of grief about his proposed “Don’t Say Gay” law – so much so that he won’t talk to reporters from outside his district. He protests that he had no homophobic intent, no, not at all. As a matter of fact, he’s on the side of angels, interested in safeguarding the rights of families and learning itself.

In this news video he states that just wants to bring “families back into education, and, for those who don’t have that support, we’ll deal with those. … counselors have special training to help students when they’re under stress.” Also, for some reason, he seems to think that any mention of the fact that some people are not heterosexual might interfere with the “core curriculum.”

Just in case you’re interested, here’s the full text of Cookson’s proposed legislation, HB2051:

Not withstanding any other law to the contrary, no instruction, material, or extracurricular activity sponsored by a public school that discusses sexual orientation other than in scientific instruction concerning human reproduction shall be provided in any public school.

Note the inclusion of “extracurricular activity” in the list of venues where it is verboten to mention sexual orientation? Gets at those pesky gay-straight student clubs that help create a climate of acceptance where the bullying to which so many gay adolescents are subjected can no longer exist. Can’t have that now, can we?

And about that core curriculum, as Randy Turner, a Joplin teacher, journalist and blogger, writes in a Huffington Post article (that, incidentally, speculates convincingly about the origin of Rep. Cookson’s brainchild):

Cookson and his co-sponsors are saying that if gay marriage, for example, or Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell become campaign issues in this year’s presidential election, they cannot be discussed in high school government classes. Laws that are proposed in the state legislature itself would also be off-limits for discussion. Under Cookson’s reactionary law, teachers would be unable to address the kind of bullying that often takes place because of students’ sexual orientation.

I just have one thing to add: If Cookson’s bill is all about sweetness and light, why, then, is it so punitive, so concentrated on prohibiting free and open communication? As Mark Jones of the Missouri National Education Association says in the video report above, the bill would only “further ostracize children who are exploring their sexual orientation.”

I’m truly sorry that Rep. Cookson is receiving violent threats – that’s just wrong. However, I would like to know how many of the emails he is receiving involve nothing more than the strong disapproval that we all have to feel when we see legislators threatening children and their teachers in the service of an ugly and bigoted agenda.

There’s been lots of discussion of the latest gaffe on the part of GOP gubernatorial candidate, Dave Spence – or rather on the part of his campaign staff. It’s  funny enough that it’s even made national blogs. An aide, one Matuschka Lindo Briggs, mistakenly distributed to the press a memo not intended for the public. In it she poffered a more eloquent response to the endless and pointless GOP (-generated) curiosity about the President’s religion.

Asked previously whether or not he thought the President was a Muslim, Spence had replied “I don’t know.” Briggs suggested that he try to spin the subtextual message that the President is not like you and me in a more eloquent fashion that would also conform to the general GOP line while layering on a slather of faux dignitas:

This is not an issue that I felt was pertinent to my candidacy for governor and expressed those sentiments. However, if the media insists that this is a critical issue that must be addressed, I will be clear.  President Obama says he is a Christian, and I take him at his word.

It seems to me that I’ve heard several GOP politicians making similar declarations. So many otherwise critical politicians seem to be willing to give the President the benefit of the doubt. Which, given the fact that were never any grounds for doubt –  nor any reason to be too interested in any case – is really generous of them.

The best take on the whole situation can be found in the comments section of TPM:

Dave Spence says that the thought and speech centers of his brain, despite all available evidence, are not connected directly to Karl Rove and Frank Luntz’s sewage systems, and I take him at his word.

Mitt Romney (r) has a record which the Obama 2012 campaign will quite probably continue to point out:

[The Commander-in-Chief gets one chance to make the right decision.]

Bill Clinton: That’s one thing George Bush said that was right. the President is the decider in chief. Nobody can make that decision for you.

Look, he knew what would happen. Suppose the Navy Seals had gone in there and it hadn’t been Bin Laden. Suppose they’d been captured or killed. The down side would have been horrible for him, but he reasoned, “I cannot in good conscience do nothing.” He took the harder and the more honorable path, and the one that produced, in my opinion, the best result.

[Which path would Mitt Romney have taken?]

[Mitt Romney criticized Barack Obama for vowing to strike al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan if necessary. – Reuters, August 4th, 2007]

Wolf Blitzer: [reading quote of Mitt Romney] “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”

He was referring to the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

What did he mean by that? ‘Cause it’s generated a little controversy, given Osama Bin Laden’s role in killing, what, three thousand Americans on, on nine eleven.  

Bill Clinton: He had to decide. And that’s why you hire a president to do. You hire the president to make the calls when no one else can do it.

[Obama/Biden]

Uh, yep.

The Missouri Democratic Party met by congressional district across the state on Thursday evening to select delegates to the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina in early September. Delegates and alternates to the congressional district meetings were selected at county meetings in March. The 4th Congressional District meeting took place in Warsaw with 119 delegates voting to select three female and two male delegates to the national convention.

Delegates and alternates were required to sign in before 7:30 p.m.

with many arriving over an hour before the start of the meeting for a potluck dinner.

Delegates and a representative of the Missouri Democratic Party (center) in conversation before the meeting.

Delegates can campaign for themselves or others seeking one of the coveted congressional district national delegate spots.

Campaigning.

Holmes Osborne, the Democratic Party candidate in the 53rd Legislative District.

Members of the 4th Congressional District Democratic Committee (consisting of county chairs and vice chairs

and legislative district chairs and vice chairs) held a brief meeting before the start of the election of national delegates.

Alternates who were selected as voting delegates (as replacements for those delegates who were not able to attend)

are registered as delegates and receive their orange ballot card before the start of balloting.

Candidates for the three female delegate slots (as well as candidates for the two male delegate slots) were given the opportunity to make a one minute speech before the vote.

Counting the ballots cast for female delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

Holding up orange delegate cards – waiting to receive ballots to vote

for the male delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

Remember when GOPer Roy Blunt ran for the Senate by harping on the “failed” stimulus?

Remember when Rep. Todd Akin (R-2) took to the floor of the U.S. House to denounce the Recovery Act (i.e., the stimulus) as a failure, and Obama and the Democrats for turning the Bush recession into a depression?

Remember when Rep. Billy Long (R-6) demanded that Congress “admit they made a mistake and vote to repeal the Stimulus Act in order to reduce our deficit”?

These examples offer a very small subset of the disrespect that our GOP delegation lobbed at the Recovery Act. Almost every Missouri GOPer has a small archive of similar statements. They are usually accompanied by recipes for budget cuts, deficit reduction and similar austerity measures.

Which is what makes this chart (h/t Maddow blog) so sweet (for those of us in the U.S. at least).  Look at what happened to Great Britain and the Eurozone countries that took the austerity message so deeply to heart:

Britain, whose austerity policies many GOPers urged the administration to emulate, has officially entered a “double-dip” recession, while the U.S., where our President and his Democratic allies managed to push a small stimulus past GOP obstructionists, shows slow but consistent growth ever since the stimulus package began to take effect in the second half of 2009.

Don’t forget, either, that many economists have faulted the Recovery act only for being too small. Most realize,  though, that a larger stimulus would have been impossible given the Republican’s hide-bound, seemingly ideological opposition to the Keynesian approach that proved so effective in the 1930s and 40s.

Ed Kilgore, reporting on Robert Draper’s new book on the 111th Congress, quotes several passages that indicate that the GOP war on the stimulus may have been motivated by political considerations as much or even more than ideological concerns. Draper recounts the almost immediate mobilization of key Republican policy makers, at a dinner on the night of the Obama inauguration no less,  to devise ways to “submarine” the Obama presidency. Kilgore summarizes the strategy they devised:

In Draper’s account, these schemers decided on three very immediate steps: a campaign of villification [sic] aimed at Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, an effort to obtain a unanimous vote in the House against economic stimulus legislation, and an early initiation of attack ads.

So political has the attack on the stimulus been and so divorced from fact, that I doubt whether the dire effects of the austerity crash across the Atlantic will penetrate GOP rhetoric in the slightest degree. I predict we’ll continue to hear the same tired canards about the “failed” stimulus” from the same cast of characters from now until November. Maybe then, if we’re lucky, the players will change for the better – in a few cases at least.

Via David Weigel, find below the first map of the electoral college for the 2012 election produced by Carl Rove – who Weigel notes, has been surprisingly accurate in the past.  Weigel observes that it is “more optimistic than some Democrats I talk to are willing to be,” adding the parenthetical “Rove, you prince of trickery!” I wonder what he could possibly mean?

Of especial interest: Rove considers Missouri to be a toss-up, which, if it pans out, should be good news for Claire McCaskill. There’s nothing like a good set of coattails (and “toss-up” constitutes better coattails than “leans Romney” – which better conforms to conventional wisdom).  Of course, as far as McCaskill’s chances go, there’s also nothing like a set of potential opponents who are, as Ed Kilgore puts it, engaged in “one of those look-at-me-I’m-the-craziest GOP primaries.”

Addendum: Missouri’s toss-up status probably explains why Carl Rove’s Crossroads GPS is ginning up its ad campaign against McCaskill once again:

Crossroads GPS, the nonprofit affiliate of the GOP-aligned super PAC, is launching an $1.2 million ad blitz against five Democratic Senate candidates on Tuesday, using its early financial advantage to attack the candidates’ records on spending and taxes.

The ads are targeted against Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., former Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine, and former North Dakota Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp.

Be prepared for some big time lies – and remember there’s lots more $ where these ad buys come from.  

Good to see that the Obama campaign is continuing its efforts to call Mitt Romney to account for his  ongoing prevarication:

https://www.youtube.com/v/858vyozbpWc?version=3&feature=player_detailpage

Now we’ve just got to do  some of the same type of truth-telling when it comes to Missouri pols like Roy Blunt – as Duane Graham does  in his takedown of Blunt’s latest whopper about Obamacare and who gets the blame for the interest rates charged to students taking out financial aid loans.

…and lungs.

More money from a North Carolina tobacco company to oppose raising Missouri’s lowest in the nation tobacco tax.

Yesterday, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C121181 04/25/2012 ENOUGH TAXES ALREADY Cheyenne International 701 South Battleground Ave Grover NC 28073 4/23/2012 $80,000.00

[emphasis added]

That’s a total of $181,000.00 in the month of April.

Previously:

Campaign Finance: cough, cough, hack, hack (April 10, 2012)

Campaign Finance: up in a cloud of smoke (April 20, 2012)