The former chair of the Florida Republican Party admitted in a two day deposition taken in May and released last week that party officials met in December 2009 to discuss “voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting.”  Jim Greer is currently being prosecuted for public corruption, which he says is for retaliation for blowing the whistle on state Republican politicians who were “using party credit cards like drunken soldiers” and because he supported former Governor Charlie Crist’s  appointment of a black man to the Florida Supreme Court.

Greer denounced the “whack-a-do, right wing crazies” that he says have taken over the party. The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating one of said whack-a-do’s, Gov. Rick Scott, and his efforts to purge voter rolls due to ostensible voter fraud. Purely coincidental that 87 percent of those purged are persons of color.

[Tampa Bay Times]

[Salon]

Pandaazzz! At the Sandy Eggo Zoo. The unwashed masses insist that Stinque Overlord Nojo make a day trip to the zoo (tax write-off, natch), to see how Butterstick 3.0 is doing. Besides, dear hamster, it will do you good to go outside for more than a cigarette and langostino burrito down the road. The fucking iPhone app will still be there waiting for you to program it when you come home.

Who preps him?

But in his comments at a fundraiser Sunday evening with well-heeled donors (chief among them current GOP mega-moneyman Shelden Adelson) Romney promptly disabused anyone of the notion that he either fully appreciates, or is terribly concerned with the punishing realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In a salute to Israel’s economic growth, Romney compared the GDP of his hosts to that of the Palestinian territories as though they were just any old neighboring countries. “As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality,” he said.

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Besides the drama over whether reporters would be allowed to the Sheldon Adelson fundraiser for Mittens in Jerusalem where he’s going to announce he “respects” going to war with Iran, the Mittster managed to step into a little pile of local politics poo, with the last minute cancellation of a meeting with the Labor Party leader after meeting with Netanyahu.

As far as we know, he has managed so far to not tell anyone in Israel that he helped baptize their grandmothers murdered in the Holocaust.

[Wikipedia: Golden Plates/Alt-text explanation]

Mitt shits the bed again:

But Romney’s campaign announced Saturday that it would block the news media from covering the event, which will be held at the King David Hotel [in Israel]. The campaign’s decision to close the fundraiser to the press violates the ground rules it negotiated …

But look at this dancing horse!

UPDATE: FLOP!

A  Closed Mouth Gathers No Feet [His Vorpal Sword]

Aside from — well, everything else, we must admit enjoying this scene between Daniel Craig and some amateur doing a decent impression of Helen Mirren. Certainly beats a platoon of Willy Wonkas emerging from a pit of Hades to illustrate the Industrial Revolution.