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I just love it when Karl Rove goes all Projectionist on us and starts whining that the Obama White House is being tooooooo political. Anticipating today's planned speech on immigration reform from President Obama, Karl Rove went on Greta Van Susteren's show last night and warned that this was all Machiavellian theater:

Rove: Now, I gotta tell you, this is cynical, and it is hypocritical, and it's political with an issue that oughtn't to be treated sincerely, honestly, and outside of politics as much as possible.

I don't think the president's really interested in passing comprehensive immigration reform this year. He just wants a political issue to jazz up Latinos, and to get them to vote, maybe not for Democrats this fall, but for him in 2012.

Rove does this a lot.

It's what a poker player calls a tell: Whenever you hear that little high hitch in Rove's voice, it means he's scared.

He knows all too well that the Republicans' bellicose Latino bashing, embodied in Arizona's SB1070 and the right's ongoing adamant defense of it, will cost Republicans Latino voters for many years to come -- and considering demographic trends, that spells disaster for the GOP. Newt Gingrich knows this too, and has tried to use similar wedge rhetoric to cast Obama's motives as purely cynical.

It's true that Obama has been more timid than he need be on the issue, and his pandering to the nativists with National Guardsmen has been a source of real dismay.

On the other hand, he campaigned openly on immigration reform, and brought it up frequently during the 2008 election. He's also continually promised to move it forward, though as Rove suggests, his commitment has tended to flicker in the wind.

Still, it took Republicans in Arizona to finally prove, once and for all, that comprehensive reform can't wait. Because if it continues to sit on the back burner, the Republican nativists are going to be busy enacting their agenda in the vacuum.

It'll kill them in the long run -- maybe even in the short run too -- but they can't help themselves. It's just in their natures. Like projecting his own ugly predilections onto everyone else is in Karl Rove's.

I just love it when comeuppance is served in such an insidious, evil ear-worm-y way.

People did not forget that Jim DeMint famously predicted that health care reform would be Obama's "Waterloo" and the GOP's chance to break him. And now, with the health care reform bill signed into law, and David Frum worriedly suggesting that it may in fact be the Republicans' Waterloo, it appears some imps decided to have some fun with Jim DeMint's Facebook and Twitter pages (h/t BalloonJuice)

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You, sir, have been ABBA-rolled

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I woke up this morning and turned on ESPN's First and Ten to listen to as I made my coffee. The first thing I heard was that several football players came out slamming Rush Limbaugh over his bid to buy the St.Louis Rams after all his years of racial politics. I hope more black players rally around these two players and throw up a road block to this group that wants to buy the team.

NY Daily News:

Mathias Kiwanuka loves his former defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, but the Giants' defensive end says he will never play for Spagnuolo's Rams if Rush Limbaugh purchases the team.

Kiwanuka and the Jets' Bart Scott made it clear Thursday that they would never play for the Rams or any team owned by the controversial conservative radio host.

"All I know is from the last comment I heard, he said in (President) Obama's America, white kids are getting beat up on the bus while black kids are chanting 'right on,'" Kiwanuka told The Daily News. "I mean, I don't want anything to do with a team that he has any part of. He can do whatever he wants, it is a free country. But if it goes through, I can tell you where I am not going to play."

I am not going to draw a conclusion from a person off of one comment, but when it is time after time after time and there's a consistent pattern of disrespect and just a complete misunderstanding of an entire culture that I am a part of, I can't respect him as a man.

Nicole Belle emailed me this piece from Think Progress that lists some of Boss Limbaugh's racist statements.

Indeed, as CNN reported at the time, ESPN fired Limbaugh from Sunday NFL Countdown for “his statement that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated because the media wanted to see a black quarterback succeed.” But, of course, Limbaugh has a long sordid history with making racist remarks. Some of his more recent lowlights:

– “Look, let me put it to you this way: The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”

– “We need segregated buses. … This is Obama’s America.”

– “President Obama is black. And I think he’s got a chip on his shoulder.”

– Democrats are interested in Darfur to secure black “voting bloc.”

– “Minorities never do anything for which they have to apologize.”

– Obama’s nomination for president “goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.”

– Obama is a “halfrican-American.”

Take my C&L/AOL Hot Seat Poll that is featured today on AOL which leans right. I submitted this post last night before I heard about players striking back at Limbaugh.