Midday open thread

• We'll be liveblogging NY-26 election results at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET.
• Feeling disappointed because you weren't raptured last Sunday? Don't worry. Whackadoodle preacher Harold Camping predicts a new rapture date.
• The Minnesota Family Council wants to have a "respectful discussion" about how homosexuals are pedophiles who engage in bestiality and drink urine and should be constitutionally banned.
• Republicans who are thinking Texas secessionist Gov. Rick Perry can save them in 2012 might want to rethink that:
  

  It's a good thing Rick Perry says he's not running for president ? only 4 percent of Texas Republicans say they'd vote for the governor, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll.

• But maybe Mr. Noun, Verb, 9/11 can save them:

  Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani isn't just thinking about running for president next year: It's his obsession and he's already mapping out a strategy to knock off GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney in New Hampshire.

  According to a long-time supporter, New York Rep. Peter King, running and winning this time is "almost a full-time business for him." [...]

  What's more, adds King, Giuliani has already been "talking to people in New Hampshire" about his strategy to focus all his early attention there, not the Iowa caucus, because beating Romney in the former Massachusetts governor's political backyard will propel the New Yorker's candidacy into the next two showdowns in South Carolina and Nevada. [...]

  "He would focus on New Hampshire almost entirely," said King at a Monday night dinner organized by the conservative American Spectator magazine. "He is very close to running."
  

• The Washington Post fact checker gives Newt three Pinocchios for claiming that it's "normal" and "standard" to have a half-million dollar, no interest charge account at Tiffany's.
• The Tennessee Chamber of Commerce has changed its mind and decided that hating gays is bad for business:
  

  In a sweeping attack against its LGBT community, the GOP-dominated Tennessee legislature overturned a Nashville non-discrimination ordinance that prohibits businesses that contract with the state from discriminating against sexual orientation and gender identity. The legislature responded by passing what?s being called the ?Special Access to Discriminate? (SAD) Act, a bill that prohibits any municipality from extending non-discrimination protections to LGBT people because state law does not currently cover sexual orientation or gender identity as a protected class.

  Though many businesses already have similar policies, the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce joined with religious-right groups to push the SAD Act into law.

  ...

  But, after significant blowback from the LGBT community, as well as the Chamber?s member companies, the business lobby swiftly reversed its position on the bill, stating yesterday that because the bill ?has turned into a debate on diversity and inclusiveness principles, which we support, we are now officially opposing this legislation?[.]

  Sure would have been nice of the Chamber to reverse its position before the bill was signed into law.

• Happy 70th birthday, Bob Dylan.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/2tDO06UglZw/-Midday-open-thread

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