“Tea Partiers in Michigan claim that the Michigan Tea Party — which had aimed to get 23 candidates on the ballot this fall — was set up by Democrats in an effort to split the Republican vote.” It’s actually looking like that’s likely true! Well, wow.

“Huffington Post FULL OF SHIT? (Yes!),” an editorial by musician John Mayer, Grade 11.

GIVE ME THAT TEN DOLLARS! No, but for real. Today is allegedly youth literacy day and there is literally nothing I like more than literacy. You can send, via text, or even via “mail” I suppose, a donation to 826NYC, which sees 22,000 young people a year. Go on! Try it! “Make a donation of $8.26 on August 26th by texting ‘WRITE’ to 20222.” Or you can PayPal a donation online. DO YOU SEE THAT CHILD CRYING? THAT CHILD IS CRYING BECAUSE SHE IS NOT LITERATE ENOUGH TO READ WEBSITES THAT FANCY LITERARY PEOPLE CAN BE DISMISSIVE ABOUT. HELP HER!

David Yost, who played the blue Mighty Morphin Power Ranger, discusses the harassment he suffered being gay on set. (Also, according to Wikipedia, “He was the only Ranger to appear in every single episode of the original series.” Who knew?) This is clearly also all Ken Mehlman’s fault. (via Towleroad)

To: All Awl Staff
From: Alex Balk
Re: Office decorations

Where’s our fucking bear?

That is all.

Best, etc.,
Balk

Ken Mehlman may seem on the outside to be a mild-mannered, lawyerly guy (he was a classmate of President Obama’s at Harvard) but the presidential campaign Mehlman oversaw was a filthy one, featuring the Swiftboat fiasco and the smorgasbord of voting scandals in Ohio and other questionable episodes, the recalling of which is apt to interfere with a Democrat’s blood pressure. Previously, in 2002, Mehlman was head of the office of political affairs in the White House and therefore was also knee-deep in the New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal (in which Republican operatives hired a telemarketing firm to jam the phone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote call center). Republican John Sununu “won” that election, but lost the seat in 2008 to his former rival, Jeanne Shaheen. Four people have gone to jail over that one, none of these being Ken Mehlman, despite the fact that “someone” in his office-the White House Office of Political Affairs-talked with these clowns in New Hampshire 115 times over the course of that tainted election. My point being that even a dispassionate observer might be forgiven for supposing closeted gay man Ken Mehlman to be no stranger to deceitful behavior in general-a dispassionate observer of any party affiliation, really.

Because he was lying, let’s not forget: “I’m not gay,” Mehlman told the New York Daily News in 2006, “but those stories did a number on my dating life for six months.” After which, we were doubtless meant to imagine, he went back to his regular lady-chasing ways.

But now Mehlman says he is gay, and that he wants to become an advocate for same-sex marriage. What the gays will make of that is hard to fathom, since Mehlman seemed to have no problem with Republican efforts to squelch gay rights when he was working for them, to the consternation of many who suspected or knew the truth.

More interesting? Let’s look at reaction to the Mehlman announcement from more right-ward quarters. Because, in large part, it looks like the reaction from those nearer the left!

The websites of Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Fox News are all conspicuously silent on this matter (though Fox News has got room for a photo of fossilized Crocodile Dundee star Paul Hogan, with a paragraph stating that he has to pay a lot of Australian back taxes.) There is a single tiny link at the bottom of their home page reading “Ken Mehlman,” but click it and you still won’t see the word “gay” anywhere in the results.

“Don’t hate me because I’m/I’ve been a Republican. Love me, because I’m gay, and oh! how I’ve anguished in the company of Republicans,” is how Ann Althouse describes Mehlman’s newest talking points. Youch!

“Granting that being heterosexual is less complicated, given its wide cultural acceptance, I continue to be baffled by middle aged men ‘realizing’ that they’re gay. Either women turn you on or they don’t. Most of us figure that out by junior high,” is how James Joyner of Outside the Beltway completely fails to overreact.

Elsewhere, Michelle Malkin didn’t even bother.

Even the reaction from FreeRepublic, for once, looks mostly something like the reaction from everywhere else.

Keep it to yourself Ken, you have for 43 years.
Marty62 (marty60)

There is something wrong when it takes 43 years to get comfortable with who you are.freekitty

Happy Days, so why should I give a sh**.
boomop1

Poor Ken, he was the last to know.
NonValueAdded

This is not news. He’s been “outed” several times. I think Bill Maher actually outed him on his show.
OldDeckHand

I don’t care that’s just more girls for me. Except I’m married and fat and bald and old and grumpy.
Selmore

Cool…tomorrow he can proclaim he is a teapot and next week he is a fireman and the week after that a labradoodle. The sky is the limit to become a happier person.
crazyhorse691

So for 30 odd years when Kenny masturbated he was fantasizing about trees or tires? Give me a break. This slimebag knew what turned him on decades ago but had the common sense to know it was perverted. Now he’s just lying through his teeth.
DesertRenegade

Although… here is a perspective particular to FreeRepublic, in a remarkable display of maybe five separate trains of cognitively-dissonant thought colliding in one poor noggin:

I believe homosexuals decided to infiltrate the Republican Party after values voters and conservative Christians got involved in politics. They could either get “caught” and open the party up to charges of hypocrisy, or come out like Ken and say “See, I’m a Republican, too!” Goes along with my pet conspiracy theory that the Bushes are really Dem moles sent to destroy the Republican Party from within.
Pining_4_TX

There’s also a train of thought that retroactively casts Mehlman as a stealth gay leftist operative.

I gave a substantial amount of money to the RNC during those years 2005–2007 so it really angers me that this scum was intentionally undercutting the Republican Platform.
DesertRenegade

Washington is supposedly “run by gays”. I saw some documentary on one of the movie channels a few weeks ago about all of the gays in politics (forget the name of it). They claimed a huge % of staffers on both sides are gay. They made a point to name all of the gay republicans, including Mehlman and Charlie Christ. I wouldn’t have a problem with gays in the GOP if they weren’t doing what Mehlman has done and pushed the gay agenda.
by lwd

That poster later clarified that the politician’s name is actually Charlie “Crist.”

Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo: The Macho of the Dork and

Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman.

It’s another “kids text the darndest things” story, this time from CNN. But can you translate this authentic message discovered by the authors of some book about what kids do online?

1 w45 50 j4ck3d up |457 n16h7. 1 5c0r3d 50m3 cr4ck 47 7h3 p4r7y 50 1’d h4v3 17 f0r 70n16h7 4nd 70m0rr0w, 4nd 7h3n J1mmy 700k 0ff w17h 17, 7h3 455h0|3! 1 4m 4|| j1773ry 4nd n33d 70 m337 up w17h y0u 70n16h7 4f73r my p4r3n75 7h1nk 1 4m 45|33p. c4n y0u m337 m3 47 b0j4n6|3’5 47 m1dn16h7 ju57 f0r 4 f3w m1nu735? 1 ju57 n33d 4 |177|3 4nd 1 c4n p4y y0u b4ck 0n m0nd4y, 1 pr0m153.

It is probably easier to just let them do crack.

Local web hottie Rich Juzwiak goes long today in endorsing the “Hunger Games” trilogy over at a popular blog for fairly liberal-minded stay-at-home mommies who used to work in corporate environments called Jezebel. But what about Jonathan Fraaaaaaanzen, Rich? (Related: I’m 1/4 of the way through Mockingjay and I’m all thumbs up.)

The Japanese anime film director Satoshi Kon died on Tuesday, three months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was 46. I cannot claim any familiarity with his work, but this lengthy goodbye message posted posthumously by his family leaves me speechless. “They’re the last words of a supremely talented artist who knows he is dying very soon, with work left unfinished,” notes its translator. “It’s been the talk of the Japanese internet, and it struck me deeply.” Here’s an excerpt.

I made the big decision to see my parents. They wanted to see me too. But it was going to be so hard to see them, and I didn’t have the will to. But I wanted to see my parents’ faces one last time. I wanted to tell them how grateful I was that they brought me into this world.

I’ve been a happy person. Even though I must apologize to my wife, my parents and all the people that I love, that lived out my life a bit too faster than most.

My parents followed my selfish wishes, and came the next day from Sapporo to my house. I can never forget the first words out of my mother’s mouth when she saw me lying there.

“I’m so sorry, for not bringing you into this world with a stronger body!”

I was completely speechless.

Read the rest here.

by Luke Mazur

6. 847 (Illinois, including Cook County)
5. 605 (all of South Dakota)
4. 850 (the Florida panhandle)
3. 414 (Milwaukee County)
2. 301 (western Maryland)
1. 407 (Orlanda, FL metro area)

Luke Mazur would suggest screening numbers with these area codes, but only insofar as that suggestion is not commentary.