20 May 2011 PM….

This will be even more disorganized than normal….

The Republicans were confident that they would win in conservative Jacksonville Florida. They didn’t:

Republican leaders said over and over in recent weeks that a race for mayor of Jacksonville amounted to the first big Florida fight in the 2012 presidential race.

“The liberal organizers who want to keep the American people enslaved by wasteful spending and hideous deficits need to know that they have jumped the gun on 2012 and have awakened a sleeping giant,” Duval County Republican chairman Lenny Curry declared this month before handing a $50,000 check to Republican mayoral candidate Mike Hogan. “We’re going to send a message that Florida is red.”

Republicans better hope Curry is wrong about the race being a harbinger, because an African-American Democrat named Alvin Brown this week was elected mayor of Florida’s largest county. Across Florida and the country, stunned Republicans are struggling to understand the narrow upset in conservative northeast Florida.

“Jacksonville has always been a conservative stronghold for Republicans, and we’re going to have to really study what happened in this race,” said Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos, a U.S. Senate candidate who had expected Hogan to win handily. [...]

Bottom line: the Republican may have well been hurt by having to embrace the Tea Party. Of course, there is probably some local factors and I know that I am ignorant of those…but then again it was the knowledgeable “serious” Republicans who had been predicting victory.

International The Israeli Prime Minister may have misjudged Americans:

Update In the comments, Dr. A reminds me that “expect” can also mean “anticipate” rather than “demand”; e. g. I “expect” that Dr. A. will vote Republican even if they run a rubber chicken.

For whatever reason, I tend to react strongly when a foreign leader disrespects the United States, and its President. I didn’t like it when Hugo Chavez of Venezuela insulted President Bush; I don’t like listening to Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan lecture the U.S. on its sins, and I’m not happy when certain Pakistani leaders gin-up righteous indignation about American behavior when it was their country that served as a refuge for the greatest mass murderer in American history.

And so I was similarly taken aback when I read a statement from Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday that he “expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of U.S. commitments made to Israel in 2004, which were overwhelmingly supported by both House of Congress.”

So Netanyahu “expects” to hear this from the President of the United States? And if President Obama doesn’t walk back the speech, what will Netanyahu do? Will he cut off Israeli military aid to the U.S.? Will he cease to fight for the U.S. in the United Nations, and in the many international forums that treat Israel as a pariah?

I don’t like this word, “expect.” Even if there weren’t an imbalance between these two countries — Israel depends on the U.S. for its survival, while America, I imagine, would continue to exist even if Israel ceased to exist — I would find myself feeling resentful about the way Netanyahu speaks about our President.

Remember that on a cumulative basis, we’ve given more aid to Israel than any other country:

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. From 1976-2004, Israel was the largest annual recipient of U.S. foreign assistance­, having since been supplanted by Iraq. Since 1985, the United States has provided nearly $3 billion in grants annually to Israel.

(via: the U. S. Congressional Research Office)

Ignorance: yes, some high school student challenged Rep. Bachmann to a debate about the Constitution. Nothing new here; anyone can challenge anyone to debate about anything (even though I think that Ms. Bachmann is profoundly ignorant or at least pretends to be). But now this student is receiving …..death threats?

CHERRY HILL, N.J. — A New Jersey teenager says she’s received threats since challenging U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann to a debate over the Constitution.

Ann Myers challenged the tea party favorite in a letter dated April 29. After it started getting media attention last weekend, commenters on tea party websites have threatened to publish her home address and some have threatened violence.

The 16-year-old from Cherry Hill says several commenters have called her a “whore.”

Her father, Wayne, says he’s concerned for his daughter’s safety.

But Cherry Hill Police Lt. William Kushina says anonymous online threats like these are usually empty.

Myers says the Minnesota congresswoman misstates or distorts facts about the Constitution. Bachmann’s office told The Courier-Post of Cherry Hill that it won’t respond to the debate challenge.

I wonder how many of these threats contained misspellings and grammatical errors?

More ignorance:

The key thing here is that this clown says that “every President, up until 2008, acknowledged Jesus…”
First: Thomas Jefferson was, at most, a deist; he even created the Jefferson Bible in which he stripped the Gospels of anything supernatural. Next: President Taft was a Unitarian; Unitarians denied the divinity of Jesus as an official part of their doctrine! He wasn’t the only one; there 4 altogether: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore and William Howard Taft.

Note: some atheists have tried to claim President Obama as “one of us”, but sadly, he really isn’t:

Key quote: 1:44 to 2:05. No atheist would say this; they would say something more generic like “I pray and read the Bible”, etc.

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