Democrats, meet the Tree that’s prepping to take you down on November 2nd.

This is Pterocarya fraxinifolia.

Common name: Caucasian wingnut.

Yep, get ready for this leafy badboy to make an appearance soon at a polling place near you.

Now I’ll be honest. When TPM Reader JB told me about Pterocarya fraxinifolia earlier today, I thought there was a pretty decent chance I was being punk’d. Or maybe JB had been punk’d. Someone was getting punk’d. But some simple googling showed that if this is a put-on someone has spent a ton of time posting spoof pages on tons of arboreal and nursery websites around the world. More than 16,000 according to Google. So I’m going with the Caucasian Wingnut being the real thing.

Ironically, this Caucasian Wingnut is most common, or at least started out, in Northern Iran, which isn’t necessarily what you’d figure for your garden variety Tea Partier. But there you go. JB says it’s the official tree of the Tea Party Movement. But I’ll just say you’ve been warned.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has lifted the injunction imposed by a district court that prevented the Pentagon from enforcing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. This keeps the status quo in place while the case is on appeal.

The one page order reads simply:

This court has received appellant’s emergency motion to stay the district court’s October 12, 2010 order pending appeal. The order is stayed temporarily in order to provide this court with an opportunity to consider fully the issues presented. Appellee may file an opposition to the motion for a stay pending appeal by October 25, 2010. To expedite consideration of the motion, no reply shall be filed.

Relive the moment when Rand Paul stonewalled so much that even Sean Hannity was pushed to an actual act of journalism. Almost. Read More

Yet another Kentucky Senate poll. This one with Rand 5 points ahead.

Rand Paul claims Jack Conway is out of bounds for dredging up Paul’s antics (if that’s the right word for them) while in college — but back in the Republican primary Paul ran an ad against Trey Grayson for voting for Bill Clinton back when Grayson was in college.

Republican Ron Johnson loses the endorsement of a none-too-liberal Wisconsin paper after flubbing a question to editors about how he’d help the middle class.

Okay, fine, they arrested and detained a journalist. But is the chief of Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller’s ‘security’ detail also tied to the militia movement?

TPM has obtained some of the threatening and racist emails that that voter registration group down in Houston received after being targeted by one Texas Tea Party group for alleged “voter fraud.” It’s about as ugly as you would expect: “The WAR is coming and we are going to dispose of each and every one of you while we take OUR (White) nation back.”

Glenn Beck: “I don’t think we came from monkeys. I think that’s ridiculous. I haven’t seen a half-monkey, half-person yet.”

I wanted to step back a few paces and take stock of where we are two weeks out from election day. It seems to me we’re seeing two basic trends. On the one hand, the generic congressional ballot, which had bobbled back and forth over recent months and seemed to be trending back toward the Dems, has moved decisively back in the Republican direction. Read More