Davy's At It Again

Naturally, he had words for that mean old racist Haley Barbour on his blog today, regarding illegal immigration (you know, the kind where they break the law and stuff), but strangely, nothing for Eaves and Franks on their continued gay bashing.

Nice of Davy to take a week off during the Hood/Cowboys laugher, the Espy/Xavier endorsement, and the Great Debate Debate and not address anything but the Inate Racism of the People Who Disagree With Him.

Also, Davy thinks that curbing illegal immigration could hurt the economy. Yeah, because the inevitable tax increases that the tax swap will force upon us won't hurt a bit. And all those pesky right to work laws we have? We really don't need 'em.

Besides, the economy already sucks and we should elect John Edwards president to enact universal health care, right? Because we know that when that happens, all the illegals will just head back to Mexico instead of becoming free riders on the system.

Reality, meet Dave. Dave, reality.

Cry Cry Cry

(With apologies to the late, great Johnny Cash)

Everybody knows where you go when the poll goes down.
I think you only want to talk to Ike Brown.
You wasted your dime on this election try, try, try.
When the polls have closed, you're gonna cry, cry, cry.

You lie awake at night and wait 'til the endorsements come in.
You talk about money changers oh there you go again.
Every statement that you make, says its a lie, lie, lie.
For every endorsement lost, you're gonna cry, cry, cry.
You're gonna cry, cry, cry and you'll cry alone,
When Haley's been elected and you're gone home.
You're gonna cry, cry, cry.

Soon your 'money changers' will all be gone.
You'll wake up some day and find you're in a million dollar home.
You'll call to Jim but he's gonna tell you: "Bye, bye, bye,"
When Hampton turns around and walks away, you'll cry, cry, cry,

When your aimless little campaign is over, no one will laugh at you.
You'll go back to lawsuits for a little cash that's true.
Judges'll tell you no and you gonna ask them why, why, why?
When I remind you of all of this, you'll cry, cry, cry.

You're gonna cry, cry, cry and you'll cry alone,
When Haley's in office and you're left on your own.
You're gonna cry, cry, cry.

You're gonna cry, cry, cry and you'll want Jamie there,
It'll hurt when you think of the self-financed fool you've been.
You're gonna cry, cry, cry.

Signs, Signs

With Sincerest Apologies to both the Five Man Electrical Band and Tesla...

And the sign says "Dirty Moneychanging Republicans Need Not Apply"
So I put my Reagan biography under my arm and I went in to ask him why
He said you look like a fine outstanding young man, I think you'll do
So I took the book out, I said "Imagine that, huh, me campaigning for you"

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs
Messin' up the electorate, breakin' my mind
Vote for this, don't for that, you can't keep the signs

And the sign says "Anyone running against Jamie will be jailed on sight"
So I jumped the fence and I yelled at the house
Hey! What gives you the right!
To put up a Jamie sign, but to kick Jeremy's down
If God was here, he'd tell it to your face, man, you're some kind of clown

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs
Messin' up the electorate, breakin' my mind
Take this one, don't take that, you can't keep the signs

Oh, say now mister, can't you read
You got to have a spotless Democrat record to get a seat
You can't run, no you can't vote, you ain't supposed to be here
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside"

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs
Messin' up the electorate, breakin' my mind
Vote Haley in, vote Steve out, you can't keep the sign

And the sign says "Everybody welcome, come in, remember to pay"
But then they passed around a plate at the end of it all
And I didn't have a penny to pay
So I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own campaign sign
I said, "Thank you Hood for looking out for me, but I was doin just fine"

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs
Messin' up the electorate, breakin' my mind
Steal this, then burn that, you can't keep the sign

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs
Messin' up the electorate, breakin' my mind
Deny this, deny that, you can't keep the sign

Little Jamie at the Plant

A Ballad of the State of Mississippi. Sung in the Year 2007. The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mooreville Kid that day In polls he was somewhat distant, with but one month more to play, And then when tax swap died at first, and beef plant did the same, A sickly silence fell upon the supporters of the ideas lame. A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast; They thought if only Jamie could but get the numbers down so scant-- We'd put up even money now despite three votes in favor of the plant. But Eaves preceded Jamie, and following him was Hood. And the former was a lulu and the latter was no good; With beef and monied lawyers their chances were slimmer than a gnat So then there seemed but little chance of Jamie getting past all that. But McCoy let drive an idea, to the wonderment of all, And Holland, so much smarter, smoked a cigar by the wall; And when the dust had lifted, and the men saw what had occurred, There was McCoy safe from an indictment and Holland speaking no words. Then from 3 million throats and more there rose a confused yell; It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell; It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon an ant, For Jamie, little Jamie, was talking about the plant. There was anger in Jamie's manner as he stepped into his place, There was pride in Jamies's bearing and a scowl on Jamie's face. And when, responding to the laughs, he yelled and stomped his feet, No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Jamie talking about the beef. Ten thousand eyes were on him as he began to fight with dirt; Five thousand tongues applauded as he sweated through his shirt. Then while the angry media flack ground his resume into his hip, Defiance gleamed in Jamie's eye, a sneer curled Jamie's lip. And now the terrible insults came hurtling through the air, And Jamie stood a-lying confidently in haughty grandeur there. Over the candidates poorly shorn locks the irony sped -- "Phil's to blame," said Jamie. "Oh God," the media said. From the benches, bleak with people, there went up a muffled roar, Like the beating of the storm waves on a worn and distant shore. "Don't listen, don't listen!" shouted someone in obvious pain, And it's likely they'd have done it had not Jamie talked again. With a frown of constant rage angry Jamie's visage shone; He tried to still the commotion; he bade the charade go on; He signaled to the media and once more the groans flew; But Jamie still ignored it and Bryant laughed, "The beef's all on you." "Talk about the queers!" cried the maddened flaks, and the echo answered queers; But one scornful look from Jamie and the audience thought him weird. They saw his face grow stern and red, they saw his teeth yellow stained, And they knew that Jamie wouldn't let a good lie go by again. The sneer is screaming from Jamie's lip, his teeth are clinched in spite; He pounds with cruel violence his hand upon the table with the mike. And now the candidate winds up his speech and now he lets it go, And now the air is shattered by the absurdity of Jamie's show. Oh! somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright; The band is playing somewhere and somewhere hearts are light, And somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout; Of course there's plenty of joy in Mooreville -- at last Jamie has struck out. (With the greatest of apologies to Thayer)

Desperation is a Stinky Cologne

It seems that the Franks people leaked a favorable internal poll this week on the Cotton Mouth blog. It shows the race 'tightening' as we approach election day. Rule of thumb when a campaign leaks a poll: They're desperate. It goes hand in hand with the Barbour trust leak. Charlie Ross tried the same thing, and it didn't work. There are a number of polls commissioned by campaigns, and a number of them are designed to be favorable.

The polling that they actually believe probably shows them what I have stated before: Their base is strong amongst the fanatically Democratic, but that's shrinking daily. There's a very low ceiling for Mr. Franks because he's so combative and partisan, his statements to an adoring media nonwithstanding. Mr. Franks has been careful to keep himself clear of Ike Brown and his ilk, but he's still one of the ones who voted to back the suit on the state committee. He's probably also finding his support amongst the black community, but how much support can he have when it's discovered that he campaigned in 2003 as a 'champion of our heritage' who supported the current state flag?

What am I saying? That's not likely to get reported. But it was part of his radio ads in the 2003 cycle.

He's been working the union vote very hard lately, and proposed adding a Department of Labor. I'm sure he's probably also going to promise behind closed doors to end the right-to-work laws we have here as a tradeoff to the unions, much like the debate they're having in other southern states. I wonder though: How effective will a state dept. of labor be? It would, after all, be staffed by the same pool of applicants as the land, water and timber board that was so instrumental in the beef plant fiasco.

A candidate that's got everything together doesn't have to work to court the base of his party. This screams of not having it together. A candidate who's got it together is trying to broaden his appeal, not limit it. Finally, let's discount this supposed strength in Northeast Mississippi. There's a good chance he won't even carry District 19, which just rebuffed his hand picked successor.

This is a campaign in trouble. It's desperate, and it smells of it.

Hail Mary

Football teams wait until the end of the game to throw the 'Hail Mary' pass, a desperate heave with little chance of success. It seems that in Mississippi we have our own version, though a long way before the end of the game.



This one was in last week's Bloomberg report on Governor Barbour's lobbying ties. Now, the fact that he was a lobbyist might be news to someone living under a bridge, but to most of us-especially anyone who's read Bill Minor's weekly Barbour bash for any length of time-well, it's about as fresh as Boise State's beating Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. Because that upset was so last season.



Now the truth comes to light, of course: That the state ethics commission's findings are confidential. So how did Bloomberg News come up with the information from the story? Of course, it's members include none other than Will Ferrell look-alike Bill Wheeler, former District 19 representative and law partner of the Golden Boy, and Tom Hood, the brother of Attorney General and State Rube Samson.

Of course, Sid Salter believes that neither one of them did the leaking. And maybe that's true. But then we get back to the lawyering, and defining 'is' and whatnot. Both Hood and Wheeler have a vested interest in seeing Haley Barbour brought down-and that's the elections of Samson and the Golden Boy. The best way for that to happen is to make sure Barbour has no coattails. Because let's face it, two guys who run on the premise of making Barbour's life miserable have little to hope for if he stays popular.

This was probably the magic bullet in the gun, but I'm sure as polling has been coming in and is telling Franks/Hood/Eaves the same thing that I could have told them for the price of a meal at Hardin's Country Store: Haley Barbour is popular. Their bases of support are strong, but their ceilings are low. In order to win, they have to lower Barbour's ceiling. The best way to do that is to sling mud.

It's hard to do that when you're stump speech includes the line "Haley Barbour is a good man." Oh, but if your buddy, or his surrogates, happens to put a little something in a reporter's pocket that makes it to the paper...

This was probably going to be used the week before the election, something that hits the pages on Thursday and Sid Salter can't type fast enough to debunk it before Tuesday. It's a desperate move. But what do you expect? Playing dirty is par for the course for these two, and for the partisan media. Or did we forget about Dan Rather while we were gone?



This political Hail Mary fell short.

Hiding Behind VPAC

I knew I smelled a rat last week when Jamie Franks Jr claimed that he wouldn't seek to roll back Tort Reform. He won't have to, of course. It'll be taken care of for him by VPAC candidates. All he'll have to do is swing the gavel and shrug his shoulders. VPAC is the organization formed by Speaker Billy McCoy to ensure Democrat majorities in both houses. And not just any Democrat, mind you; the real loyal kind that will make sure the interests of the party and its backers are supported in the legislature (remember, one James R. Franks is a member of the state Dem Executive Committee, the group that authorized a lawsuit to close primaries). The kind that just might, say...try to overturn Tort Reform, since many of their candidates are going to want to return to the good old days when a small business could be shut down thanks to the hard-working heroic Champions of the Little Man who advertise on billboards and the backs of phone books. It's a great cover for Mr. Franks. Just remember, folks, when he says that he won't seek to roll back Tort Reform, he's still a lawyer mincing words and trying to define what 'is' is. And he won't lift a finger. All those 'talented' people that he's going to find in the Senate (who'll probably all manage to have a JD behind their names) will make sure he comes off smelling like a rose...just in time to ride into the Governor's mansion in 2012. (Hey, there's another good thing about John Arthur Eaves, isn't it, Mr. Franks? He's a weak enough candidate that the governor's mansion will be unoccupied in the 2011 race in case you win this time around. Mighty convienient-just like the story of Ronnie Musgrove's toe sucking fetish hitting the papers right before the filing deadline).

Oh my Good Lloyd...

Well, just when you think the Daily Journal's Jamie Franks Jr Cheerleaders are about to go on hiatus they prove you wrong. This morning's paper advises our intrepid representative to not align himself so closely with John Arthur Eaves, he of the trial lawyer, Jehovah-obsessed, trophy wife-taking gubernatorial school of thought as it might hurt him in the election. Please. Stop. The. Inanity. This farce that's going on in the Franks Cheerleading Section-sorry, the offices of the Daily Journal-has got to end. Let's not pretend that the man is some kind of consensus builder, Lloyd. If you'd ever talk to people who don't fund him-like certain representatives from the Meridian and Picayune areas that I've met, for example-you'd find out that the man is despised by lots and lots of people he's worked with. He's vile and coarse and rude when a camera's not on him. And this whole thing about Haley Barbour having a pet for LG...did we forget there's a whole nother chamber to the state legislature? Every article bashes Amy Tuck for being "too close to Barbour," but I've yet to see one that says that Tim Ford was too close to Musgrove, or that maybe Billy McCoy and Jamie Franks-once described as 'McCoy's protege' in print-running both houses of the legislative branch would be a bad idea. Third, they don't have a problem with the governor being too powerful. They have a problem with a governor they don't control being too powerful. Four years ago they could tell Musgrove when to sit, speak and fetch. They don't have that anymore and it's grating at them. I guess they long for the days of wasting $14 million on a special election over what flag we'll be flying. Should Franks win, I guess we'll have a referendum on what uniforms Ole Miss and State will be wearing for home games. Lastly, stop throwing 'populist' around. They're not populists. Populists are summed up best by the quote from William Jennings Bryan: "The people of Nebraska are for a silver standard, so I am for a silver standard. I will look up the arguments later." The bunch that Lloyd and his office mates love to slap that label on aren't populists, because they're more inclined to tell people what to do than take orders from them. Seriously, can you imagine Bryan, after reading that quote, telling people what lifestyle decisions to make? Suing private businesses because people made the mistake of buying their product when they've been told their entire lives its bad for them? Eliminating the choice of what section to sit in the restaurants? Is there a constituency for the tax swap scheme other than the offices that you guys sit in every day? Is there one for never purging the voter rolls? Good Lord, help me make it through ten more weeks of this. It's going to be hard. Oh, yeah, Lloyd, you might also want to take a drive to Mooreville sometime to see what his neighbors think of him. I promise, you'll come away with a revelation. Eaves cost himself the Mooreville box when he appeared there with Franks.