Saintless

Wow, I can’t imagine any governor, or wannabe governor, seeking his help after Byrne’s meltdown. I thought I’d heard it all, until I read the article from Forbes.

A day after Utah’s school-voucher program was wiped out, the chief financial backer of the movement accused voters Wednesday of being insensitive to minorities…

…also said he would take his voucher campaign to black churches in South Carolina.

But The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People opposed Utah’s voucher program, saying it would lead to segregated schools.

Ok, so the above wasn’t a melt down. Here it comes:

In a phone interview with the AP, Byrne blasted Huntsman, who signed the voucher law but didn’t do much to try to persuade voters that it was worth keeping. Byrne gave $75,000 to Huntsman’s campaign for governor in 2004.

“He said, ‘I am going to be the voucher governor.’ He said this was his No. 1 priority. He said this was going to be his legacy,” Byrne recalled. “The moment Jon Huntsman becomes Gov. Huntsman, all this changed.”

Awww, was Governor Huntsman not for sale? Well, maybe someone else will be.

“I can say definitively he has lost my trust,” Byrne said of Huntsman. “I think that he, as a governor, he’s house-sitting in the governor’s mansion to the day Utah elects an actual governor.

“I don’t care if he’s communist. I wouldn’t care where he was politically,” Byrne said. “If any opponent emerged, he would have my unqualified support.”

Wow, a communist? Impressive Mr. Byrne. Impressive. Just hope they don’t find out how badly you piss your pants when you don’t get your way.

The event was turned into a TV ad for the pro-voucher group, Parents for Choice in Education, although Byrne claims the governor’s staff demanded the ad be pulled.

“I don’t want to be mean, but I do want the citizens to know what really went on behind the scenes,” Byrne said.

Well, let him go throw his money away elsewhere. I’m with JM Bell, no more of my money is heading his way.

“He clearly does not understand the African-American community,” Jeanetta Williams said. “For him to think all he needs to do is go to the black churches and throw his money around and win support – that’s not the case. It angers me.”

All of the above is in addition to his other hissy fit, which was summarized this way by Crooks and Liars:

Got that? Disagree with the right on voucher schemes that don’t work, and you’re a child-hating moron.

Haven’t guys like Byrne ever heard of losing with dignity? Maybe a little class?

h/t paramaphil)

Last Thursday, I re-requested to be listed on the hive, and two days later, I got an email saying I was in! Yay! (And thanks to Jason The for his support!)

On to bigger and better things, Jon Stewart is a good man. The writers went on strike, so Jon is going to pay the writers for both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report out of his own pocket, so that they will not be hurt financially from the strike. Apparently, he plans to do a lot of interviews while the strike continues, to make up for the lack of writers. Damn good guy, he is.

I’m way behind on my email and blog-reading, and work has (almost) all of my attention today, but I have tons of email and instant messages telling me that Barack was on SNL this weekend, and apparently he was pretty good. So, I took 5 minutes to watch it, and I about fell off of my chair. It was hilarious! The whole thing was great, even though Barack only had a tiny part. Oh, oh I wanna give away his punch line!! But, I won’t. So, watch it!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndQM0X5rhfE&rel=1]

And a special thanks to JM Bell for getting this little mistake corrected. I’ve seen several recent occurrences where Donald Dunn is called the Chair of the Utah Democratic Party, and all of them have been in the context of Dunn’s endorsement of Hillary. I’m fairly sure that Utah’s Democratic Party Chair has not endorsed anyone. His name is Wayne Holland. Dunn hasn’t been Chair in a few years. So, when I saw KCPW list him as the Chair, I was a bit frustrated, and even left a comment correcting this. But, now I look like a crazy person, because JM Bell put in a word, and had the article fixed, after I complained to him via IM. Ah, well. It’s not like it isn’t true.

Speaking of whom, Mr. Bell put out his first podcast today – Vouchers: Worst Case Scenarios. I’d highly recommend listening to it, but if that’s not an option, he’s got a transcript there. But, there’s something about the music that just makes it better, if you’ll listen.

Speaking of vouchers, a friend called me today to tell a story about a mutual friend and vouchers. This friend, we’ll call him Joe, for anonymity’s sake, is a Dem, and even a very active Obama supporter. But, he didn’t see why the Dems were against vouchers. I hadn’t realized this, or I’d probably have tried to tell him why. But, he called up our mutual friend this morning and wanted her opinion, because he wanted to make sure he understood the argument. She referred him to Rob Miller, and “Joe” apparently spoke with him for about 45 minutes, and finally realized that pursuing charter schools is a far better solution than vouchers. “Joe” called her back and told her what had happened, and will apparently be calling the Republican Party HQ to let them know what changed his mind about vouchers. Way to go, “Joe”! (And Rob, too!)

I know that it’s pretty apparent that vouchers are going to be defeated tomorrow, but it’s still important that you (yes, YOU) get out there and vote against them, anyway. That will help send the message that they aren’t welcome in Utah, even if the legislature tries to work some voodoo on them and make those “Oreos” look gourmet. Go do it.

P.S. There are only two more days left to Vote Obama in the DFA’s Primary Pulse Poll.

[Update]Oops, I meant to link Jason The above, so now I’ve fixed it an he has two links. :)

KCPW says that Utah’s two largest school districts won’t be letting their teachers off to vote on Election Day specifically because of the educational issues on the ballot.

Is this even legal? If there’s a precedence of teachers taking time off to vote on Election Day, can they stop them this time? I’m floored that they’d try this. Seems to me that there’s a whole can of worms they’ve opened.

Jeff’s latest Nightside debate with Ethan is up. Paul in SLC was among the callers in the second half of the show, and I just loved this quote from him:

“For I was hungry and you fed me, and I was sick and you asked for my insurance card.”

I just have to add “And I was dumb so you gave me a voucher.”

Jeff’s outrage really is cute, so go take a listen.

I’ve read a lot of blogs today that have made me so mad that I couldn’t comment for fear I’d call them f*^%tards and not be able to help myself.

Here’s an example. Craig, of KVNU, diagrees with Huntsman’s actions, or lack thereof, so he brings up something totally unrelated:

This has me pretty aggravated. The Governor, who campaigned on vouchers, and signed them into law, is choosing to keep a low profile during the current debate.

He claims that it’s enough for him to state his support for vouchers when asked about it, and to personally vote for it in November. But as a voucher proponent, I say that’s not nearly enough. Since he campaigned on this issue, what he’s doing now, in abandoning vouchers in the 11th hour, amounts to breaking his campaign promise in my eyes.

It’s not as if he’s too busy to campaign for it. All he’s been doing recently is pushing his ridiculous “Lights Out” program and attending meetings on climate change, neither of which will have any effect on his constituents.

If he doesn’t want to come out and fight for the voucher program over the next month, then I see no reason why I should support him next November.

Ok, the last paragraph I can understand. Don’t vote for someone who doesn’t do things the way you want them to. That’s kinda why we vote, right? But he starts off complaining that Huntsman’s not doing enough on the voucher issue, and then implies that Huntsman is turning all liberal or something, and he’s spending so much time on climate change that he’s neglecting his duty to support vouchers. Ok, idiotic, yes. But what really got me is that Craig actually believes that “Lights Out” and climate change will have NO EFFECT on Huntsman’s constituents. Is that because the only people that count in this state are the ultra-right wing conservatives who think that climate change is a hoax? None of the rest of us (or logic) matters. I’m just so dumb-founded by this utterly ridiculous notion of some sort of supremacy granting these people special knowledge of things that contradict reality.

Then there’s the debate on Mathias’ blog. Apparently, there’s a group that wants to take care of a chimp but were told that the chimp’s guardians had to apply to court for that, but then were told that the chimp couldn’t have a guardian because it wasn’t a person. Very odd story about people trying to use strange loopholes in the law to get a problem resolved. However, Dave, in the comments somehow tied chimps into homosexuality, saying “Suddenly, all the slippery slope arguments about gay “marriage” aren’t sounding so silly after all.”

The conversation only got more confusing from there. I started to reply, pointing out that the root of Christianity and Islam is one and the same, and that it’s absurd to react the way some of the commenters on the blog did, but again, I just couldn’t post because I was a little irritated, a little bewildered, and mostly I don’t think my comments were going to change the attitudes of these people, so I gave up. I guess that was the most Christian thing I could do, because God never asked me to force reason and love on anyone else, He just asked me to show them. But it still makes me mad to see bigotry in the name of God.

The Utah blog-o-sphere seems to be full of IT today, but thankfully, several of my favorite bloggers wrote something worth reading.

Ok, venting done, I feel better.