Okay, this is getting fun…

Sen. Max Baucus’ girlfriend met with his divorce attorney in 2007, months before the senator and his wife separated, and later received a nearly $14,000 pay raise from Baucus as they were becoming romantically involved, a spokesman for the senator said Friday…

Baucus, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, recommended Hanes for Montana’s U.S. attorney post in February, by which time the two were in a romantic relationship. He has called the former state prosecutor “highly qualified.”

We’ll grant it’s no Cocktober — neither a live boy nor a dead girl — but Baucus has been just short of Joe Lieberman in his efforts to tank a decent healthcare bill. If we can’t get bread from him, we’ll take circuses.

Baucus Girlfriend Met With Divorce Lawyer In 2007 [AP/TPM]

• Jenny Sanford forgets the poltiical-wife script, files for divorce. [Political Wire]
• Sarah Palin admits reading her book, compares it to Obama’s Nobel speech. [USA Today]
• Michele Bachmann says Obama Administration “not connected to reality” before flying off with the umbrella she used as Gretchen Carlson’s nanny. [TPM]
• “And when they got back to Tiger’s plush apartment at the MGM casino, the golfer scored another birdie with her.” [Sun UK]

Like any Tea Party Patriot, Merry Hyatt has had it to here with government intrusion into our lives. But instead of wasting her time on meaningless theatrics like a Senate Die-In, she’s actually doing something about it — gathering signatures to put hijacked pagan solstice rituals back where they belong:

The initiative would require schools to provide children the opportunity to listen to or perform Christmas carols, and would subject the schools to litigation if the rule isn’t followed.

As it happens, California schoolchildren are already allowed to sing odes to festive winter home-invasion scenarios, but that’s missing the point:

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onfession time: When I was but a lad I spent a few years studying at a relatively well known Northeastern university which shall remain nameless except to say that it wasn’t Yale because, Jesus Christ, I’ve got standards, OK? Cut me some slack. At any rate, in the process of becoming “well rounded” I did take a political philosophy course with a Professor named Cohen. In fact, there were two Professor Cohens in my alma matter’s Political Science Department: one who was often invited to chair Presidential advisory panels and dated super models, and one who didn’t. My professor Cohen was the latter. And the reason my Professor Cohen didn’t chair Presidential Advisory Panels or date supermodels, I suspect, is because he lacked a certain… er… how shall I put it… intellectual rigor. If you asked him to, for instance, define “fascism,” the guy would ramble on for ages about militarism, cults of personality, authoritarianism, institutional racism, and blah, blah, blah. And when it was all over you were no closer to determining whether your RA confiscating your roomate’s water bong was an act of fascism or not. You knew it was fascism, of course, but Professor Cohen had done precious little to help you argue the case. Read more »

Our earlier confusion over WaPo’s Ezra Klein arguing that Barack Obama is an effective “liberal” is answered by Politico:

Another key undecided moderate, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Vt.), said Thursday that his level of unease with the Medicare buy in is also rising.

Now we understand. Joe’s a moderate — which shifts Obama to the left, and ourselves somewhere past Cuba.

And this is what moderates stand for:

“In my opinion, the choice could not be more clear… between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not.”

We’re glad that’s straightened out. If nothing else, we haven’t had an excuse to run Joe’s anal pear for awhile.

Snowe: Medicare buy-in loses her vote [Politico]

Ezra Klein wonders whether we’re mistaking theatrics for performance:

You could imagine a lot of presidents more dogmatically liberal than Obama, but I wonder whether there are a lot of plausible hypotheticals in which they amass more liberal achievements than Obama.

Which begs the question: What liberal achievements? We fully acknowledge that Barack Obama is not George W. Bush, and we shall always remain grateful for that. We also grant that ideology can be counterproductive to practical results. But this Be thankful Obama’s not X line of thought just underlines the point: Obama didn’t campaign for or win the presidency promising to be a competent caretaker.

Nope. Once upon a time, we were the people we’ve been waiting for. We’re sticking with Irony.

How liberal is Obama? [WaPo]

Rod wants to hear the Safe Word only it's so hard to hear when his hands close around his lovers' throats.

Twisted GOP S&M freak and former Missouri House speaker Rod Jetton thinks battering and choking people is normal, everyday lovemaking, according to a recent legal complaint, just oh-s0-snuggy, yeah, and apparently oh-so-hot when your fist hammers through the bitch’s caps and, yeah, oh fucking yeah, when you choke the bitch unconscious and it feels so, like, oh, god, oh fucking yes, so like the first time you voted Republican.

Guys snugging guys or ladies snugging ladies, well, hey, that’s a crime against god and nature, Jetton decided in 2007 and, according to TMP Muckraker:

fired a state lawmaker from his committee chairmanship in 2007 because the lawmaker had changed a bill in order to end a state ban on gay sex — or what Jetton called “deviate sexual intercourse.”

When a lesbian buries her face between her lover’s legs, say, she needs to bite her genitals, beat her unconscious and rape her anally with a live rabid ferret apparently for the encounter to qualify as honest to god sex for Jetton. Maybe if all the homosexuals in the universe were able to prove that they beat the fuck out of each other during sex, Jetton would recant his position.

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