Mark Takano

I had such a nice response to the post Thursday night about how The Clash-- and specifically The Clampdown from London Calling influenced Beto's life that I decided to ask other political leaders if music was important to them or if they had any favorite artists or songs or albums. Beto still uses "The Clampdown" when he walks out on the stage at his events and... well, just watch this.

With Trumpf giving a certain air of acceptance to blatant lying this season, California Congressman Mark Takano has put together some useful suggestions about stuffing the predictable arguments with the Limbaugh-lovin' brother-in-law with actual facts. I know, I know... they don't care about facts but what's the alternative?

Scaremongering xenphobia rarely hurts the scaremongers and xenophobesThere's been plenty of talk, including on this blog, about how the U.S. turned away Jewish refugees in the late 1930s-- sending many to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps-- but nothing was going to slow down conservative fear-mongering.

Who fought against LGBT equality? Mark Takai and Donna Kim, the 2 conservatives in the race"Peace through strength!"-- Reagan’s bellicose slogan emulated by faux-progressive congressional candidate in Hawaii."Peace through strength" wasn't thought up by Reagan-- nothing was-- but by Emperor Hadrian around 100 years after the birth of our lord.

There are quite a few of them but the ones progressives have a stake in, in chronological order, are Hawaii (August 9), Wisconsin (August 12), and then a late super-Tuesday on August 26 for Arizona, Florida and Oklahoma. That same day has primaries in Alaska, Missouri, Oregon and Vermont with interesting races but no races that pit a progressive against a shill from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.Up top is the brand new video from one of the most grassroots campaigns anywhere, the Tom Guild campaign for the open Oklahoma City congressional seat.

If you read DWT much, you know how much we distrust identity politics around here. Voting for someone because they are the same religion or ethnicity of gender, etc seems kind of primitive and politically immature. I always thought it should be about character and policy.

This week Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes had a typically gratuitous and nasty diatribe against President Obama in the Wall Street Journal featuring a bizarro-world right-wing reinterpretation of history; nothing new there.