The rhetoric and integrity of the once Grand Old Party (Lincoln's GOP) has become deeply infected by some of the most morally bankrupt, political and intellectual hacks in history.

The new GOP paradigm is to pander to anybody any time if it helps get you reelected.

Not much of a surprise from the party of ethical and moral bankruptcy.

A piece in the Sunday New York Times reports that conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation are engaged in hot internal discussions about self-transformation.  With support for a conservative president and a conservative Republican party at all-time lows, the Times reports, "policy cooks have returned to the kitchen to whip up a menu of new solutions for conservatives disaffected with the party."  Some, like A.E.I. fellow and Bush alum David Frum, are even taking a fresh look at conservative heresies, like the idea that it's in all of our interest to offer people in prison education, mentoring, and support for their children.

The civil war has come to Nevada.

Supporters of Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul have filed suit in state district court in Reno seeking to block the state party from appointing delegates to the national GOP convention.  Ron Paul took second in the Nevada caucuses (the state party has removed the official results page, but it's cached here), defeating presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, but it appears the state party is attempting to deny Paul his delegates to the national convention.

After last week’s adventure in craziness, watching my "team" descend into the same hysteria that Limbaugh and (I love Keith’s name for him) Bill-o the Clown propagates, I announced that I could not consort with the sort of seriously bonkers crowd that hangs around Daily Kos, and would henceforth move my invaluable wares to the TPM Café.  I decided to post my unbelievably boffo essay about how the New Yorker cover was likely to cost Sen Obama the election since it would be taken as proof positive by the rubes out there that what they thought to be true had been proven on both sites.   Amazingly, the crazies found it at both places and said roughly the same thing.  (One poster sought to assure me that the cover wasn’t so bad that Senator Obama could still recover from it.  I thanked him).

The media narrative over the past seven years has been one of "divided Democrats" fighting each other while a unified Republican Party consolidates power.  Even the 2006 elections that brought both houses of Congress under Democratic control raised questions about whether progressives and blue dogs could coexist and form a working majority.

The primary season was no different.  As John McCain wrapped up his party's nomination in February, the Democralypse of the Clinton-Obama battle fed the media narrative that the Democratic Party was tearing itself apart.

Yet as I read the morning news, I notice a change.  It may be sutble, but perhaps the narrative is shifting.  More below the fold.

UPDATED: Since I was accused of "justifying" Jackson's comments in the thread, I'll make my point explicitly:  I am "choosing" to remember an aspect of one person's mixed legacy that I happen to find inspiring.

There has been an inordinate amount of cluck-clucking in the MSM during the past week in an attempt to caricature Jesse Jackson.  

Although I have often disagreed with and been critical of Jesse Jackson, both politically and in the manner he has sometimes conducted himself, I certainly never bought into the ridiculous Republican Party stereotype of Jesse Jackson as a "race-hustling poverty pimp".

However, as the Jackson-bashing continues I think it's important to remember other aspects of who Jackson is and the issues and causes that he has repeatedly championed throughout his career.

My older brother David Rice was a Democrat. He was killed on the 104th floor of the South Tower in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11th, 2001.

David was killed with Republicans, Independents, and Democrats. On that day, they were not members of political parties, they were Americans.

Some Americans and politicans apparently believe my brother was to blame for his own murder because he voted Democrat, which apparently surrendered our borders to those who want to kill us.

In the military, we had a term called a clusterfuck, or, Charlie-Foxtrot.  The history of a clusterfuck is when:

Apocrypha has it that this term originated from situations where groups of United States Marines were too large or disorganized to be able to successfully defend themselves from enemy fire, but in modern meaning it has evolved to mean any set of circumstances in which massive disorganization has the potential to cause serious damage, or a disastrous situation that results from the cumulative errors of several people or groups.

The emphasis was on disorganization and cumulative errors.  So, I'm going to show you how, in leadership, it can go from a clusterfuck to a gagglefuck real quick...

I remember stories from my grandmother and stepfather about runs on banks. I remember that famous scene from "It's a Wonderful Life." Today my brother left a message telling me he saw an actual run on a bank in Duarte California. It begins.

I hate to say it but I told ya so!

There may soon be an announcement of a larger withdraw of troops from Iraq at an even faster pace than Senator Barack Obama’s plan.  

The following story will be spread across America’s newspapers tomorrow.  Americans will ‘think’ that we may be withdrawing next year, the bulk of our troops from Iraq.  

Read after the bump...

NEWSWEEK STORY

I used to vote Republican when I was in the military; most did if they wanted their pay raised.  I have voted Independent.  I have voted for candidates from the Democratic Party.  What I have not had is a "Party affiliation".  You see, it comes down to the issues, ideology, and the Party actions in order for a person to want to be affiliated with a political party.  

I just can't seem to find a Party to be affiliated with because I just can't be "one of the sheep" who follows along blindly...

And the hits just keep coming.

After years of government officials feigning ignorance on just how harmful FEMA trailers were for Katrina victims, Democrats investigating the formaldehyde levels in these trailers have found out that the companies who sold us these "toxic tin cans" knew all along how poisonous they were. Their own employees were suffering many of the same symptoms that have been found in Katrina victims who have used these trailers as housing while trying to rebuild:

nose bleeds, shortness of breath, dizziness and bleeding ears. One employee told investigators that there was a foul odor throughout the plant.

For years, we've allowed these companies to poison our own people, all the while throwing billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to do it. And as usual as the depths of the moral depravity of companies like Gulf Stream Coach, Inc come to light, House Republicans are working hard to make sure justice is served- for the trailer manufacturers.

Rather than devoting space to pithy political observations, I'd like to use my daily diary quota to throw a question to the Kossacks.

My question:  By returning blank fundraising documents to the RNC, am I helping the Republicans piss away money and time?

The other day, a little bit of a screaming match broke out when I published a diary that poorly articulated how I felt about the practice of abortions and the general debate about them.   Therefore, after some thought, I have decided to refine the explanation of people who share my position.   It sort-of-is and sort-of-isn't a position within the pro-life camp, depending on how you define that camp.   It sort-of-is and sort-of-isn't part of the pro-choice camp.  As some people have pointed out, my position is really the pro-choice  position; and then proceeded to call me sexist.

After doing some research and general digging concerning the background info on some of the key field operatives and organizations supporting the GOP effort this year, I've come to the conclusion that it's just all so damn UGLY--the more I read the worse it gets--I'm to the point where I don't know where to begin.

Yesterday, I blogged about "2008's Grand Masters Of GOP Dirty Tricks," ( in advance, I ask your forgiveness for any unintended appearance of diary pimping; my sincere goal here is to get some specific realities up on everyone's radar now, in preparation for what lies ahead)  and today I wanted to drill a little deeper on that theme with regard to my concerns about planned and/or potential Republican "caging," voter suppression and any overall, generally racist efforts that we will most likely see supported by those camps in coming weeks and months.

For now, I'd like to focus on the McCain campaign in the always-critical states of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Specifically, I'd like to zero in on the two or three people that have been put in place by the McCain operation to head those states' efforts for the GE.

In a classic children's story, now considered too non-PC to be widely read, Joel Chandler Harris created a fictional character with the name of Uncle Remus.

Uncle Remus is a fictional character, the title character and fictional narrator of a collection of African American folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris, published in book form in 1881. A journalist in post-Reconstruction Atlanta, Georgia's West End, Harris produced seven Uncle Remus books.

Uncle Remus is a collection of animal stories, songs, and oral folklore, collected from Southern United States blacks. Many of the stories are didactic, much like those of Aesop's fables and the stories of Jean de La Fontaine. Uncle Remus is a kindly old slave who serves as a storytelling device, passing on the folktales to children gathered around him.

The Republican brand is not tarnished. It is not trashed. It is in the toilet. This is not the conclusion of Liberal Bloggers. The Weekly Standard quotes  McCain campaign officials:

McCain's pollsters point to the findings of other surveys on party identification. That they would do this suggests just how damaged the Republican party brand is heading into the 2008 general election.

.. The average advantage for Democrats in the ten surveys the McCain campaign cited was 9.3 points.

The bold 50 state campaign strategyof Obama reflects this new reality.

So what is their solution? Rebrand the Republican Party as   `bipartisan'. When in trouble obfuscate. So, why does  Obama, who would be  the beneficiary of differentiating, obfuscate  his own  brand?

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

However much I am displeased with the agenda and behavior of Senator Barack Obama at times there is no doubt that, in his way, he seeks progressive incremental solutions is a classic liberal governance worldview.  The "new" in this framework is the Millennial Generation agenda, devoid of Vietnam and Watergate and raging cultural tactics based upon sexism and racism, but more critically in my mind is absent fear as a motivating tactic.

Senator John McCain, however, is a classic right-wing authoritarian, as outlined so brilliantly by the incomparable Sarah Robinson of The Big Con.  Authoritarian intellectual structures inherently defy change, the Republican Party is full of big oil interests who won’t even acknowledge global warming, for instance, let alone help to solve it.  These general characteristics alone garner an instant vote for Senator Barack Obama, irrespective of any other single variable.