Maverick

FL Here Come the Republi-CONs

2012-01-30T08:56:00.000-08:00

UPDATE VI: The day before the primary The New York Times FiveThirtyEight forecast shows "a wide diversity of results, even among polls that were in the field at the exact same time" but nevertheless "projects a 15-point win for " Obamney.

UPDATE V: The Great Lecherer seems to be giving up. Maybe the establishment pressure is getting to him.

At the debate last night, "Gingrich seemed to be playing for a draw. He passed upon several opportunities to push back at Mr. Romney, despite being expressly presented with opportunities to do so — on health care, on Ronald Reagan’s legacy, on immigration, and on Mr. Romney’s personal finances among other issues."

Read The New York Times, In Florida Debate, Gingrich Ignores Lessons of Recent History.

UPDATE IV: "It’s no secret that the Florida primary is a must-win for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. But, it’s also a victory that former House speaker Newt Gingrich needs to have too." Read the Washington Post, Why Newt Gingrich needs to win Florida.

But the Republi-con establish is closing ranks around Obamney.

And "[p]olling released within the past 24 hours suggests that Mitt Romney may have stopped and possibly reversed Newt Gingrich’s momentum before the Florida primary on Tuesday." Read The New York Times, Polls Suggest Gingrich’s Support May Have Peaked.

The latest FL primary projection shows:

Romney 40.0%
Gingrich 36.4%
Santorum 11.4%
Paul 9.6%

UPDATE III: My last predictions didn't go so well, but try, try again. Here is another, as discussed on the show yesterday:

If Obamney loses big in FL, he stays in the race, but only to collect delegates so that he can (after being hounded by party establishment) graciously reconsider at the nominating convention and set aside for a late entry to the presidential race before The Great Lecherer 'cripples the Republican brand.' (See What Happened in SC?)

UPDATE II: "Is Mitt Romney suffering a reversal of fortune in the Florida polls? It sure looks that way at the moment. There’s a passel of new poll info out and most of it doesn’t look good for the former Massachusetts governor." Read the Christian Science Monitor, Is Mitt Romney's Florida support collapsing.

So what if Obamney loses badly in FL? Would he finally understand that the base wants anybody but Mitt? "Polls have told a consistent story: Between 20 percent and 30 percent of Republican voters support Romney, and the rest support somebody else. Actually, not somebody, anybody."

Would he drop out and endorse anybody but Gingrich?

"No serious person thinks Newt Gingrich will or wants Newt Gingrich to be president. I’d bet a significant percentage of the people who vote for him don’t want him to be president. Voting for Newt Gingrich is just an act of pure petulance. . .

The idea, still apparently existent, that what this electorate — having previously paid close attention to statesmen like Donald Trump and Herman Cain before turning to Newt Gingrich — is clamoring for is the respectable conservativism . . .

[Maybe] Haley Barbour(!), Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, Jon Kyl, Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, and Mike Pence to either run themselves or hurry up and close ranks behind either Santorum or Romney — Jim DeMint’s late entry to the presidential race would be good February entertainment, it’s true — which seems to miss the fact that those people have about as much control over the party electorate now as John Boehner has over the Republican House majority. . .

There is a great deal of point-missing going on. Each of these savior non-Romney Gingrich-killing dream candidates completely lack the quality that led Gingrich to suddenly take the lead: No one likes him and he’s embarrassing. The voters respond to his breezy shamelessness, and Bobby Jindal is not going to fire this crowd up. (Chris Christie, a loud bullying caricature, might do the trick, but he’s too smart to enter now.)

I am also not sure how essentially begging for a brokered convention helps alleviate the 'chaos' everyone is currently worrying over, but, again, I welcome the entertainment.

Sadly, they’re probably still stuck with Mitt."

Read Salon, Conservatives demand new candidate to throw race into further disarray.

UPDATE: "As the Republican presidential nominating contest moves to Florida, it’s important to remember one simple fact: Florida is a very different political animal than the three states that have preceded it. . .

And speaking of political ideology, Florida’s is best understood, according to longtime Sunshine State politicos, through a geographic prism. The state starts off conservative — fiscally and socially — in its northern reaches (think the Panhandle) and moves toward more straight fiscal conservatism through its central region (I-4 corridor) and to something close to centrist moderation in the south (Miami).

Expect Gingrich to clean up in northern Florida, Romney to win the southern part of the state and for the central part to be where the fight is decided. Just like always."

Read the Washington Post, Florida presents a different challenge for GOP presidential candidates.

"For Mitt Romney, the South Carolina primary was not just a defeat, though it was most emphatically that. It was also where his campaign confronted the prospect it had most hoped to avoid: a dominant, surging and energized rival.

The rebirth of Newt Gingrich, a notion that seemed far-fetched only weeks ago, has upended a litany of assumptions about this turbulent race. It wounds Mr. Romney, particularly given his stinging double-digit defeat here on Saturday, and raises the likelihood that the Republican contest could stretch into the springtime.

For now the race goes on, with Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Romney joined by Rick Santorum and Ron Paul. But Mr. Gingrich’s showing here suggests that Mr. Romney may no longer be able to count on his rivals splitting the opposing vote into harmless parcels, or on the support he is getting from the party establishment to carry him past a volatile conservative grass-roots movement.

At a minimum, it is clear that Republican voters, after delivering three different winners in the first three stops in the nominating contest, are in no rush to settle on their nominee."

Read The New York Times, Fresh Doubts About Republican Contest.

BTW, just a week ago, Obamney was leading The Great Lecherer approximately 40-25%. But the first FL primary projection since SC shows:

Gingrich 37.6%
Romney 30.0%

Republi-CON Budget Drama, Much To Do About Nothing

2012-01-30T08:15:00.000-08:00

UPDATE II: "You’re not still worried about the federal deficit, are you? That is so 2010! Get over it! The presidential candidates certainly have." Read the Washington Post, Growing federal debt recedes as political issue.

The Republi-CONs conned the Tea Party.

UPDATE: "[I]n their first major act of 2012, House Republicans picked up exactly where they left off: They staged a duplicitous debate in which they pretended that they were going to deny President Obama permission to increase the government’s borrowing limit.

The pretense had been clear since last summer, when 174 House Republicans voted for a budget deal that guaranteed that the debt limit would continue to increase this year unless two-thirds of the House and Senate voted otherwise — a practical impossibility.

But that didn’t stop many of those same 174 Republicans from marching to the floor Wednesday afternoon to vote for a resolution “disapproving” of the very same debt-limit increase they had already blessed. It was a model of deception: claiming to oppose something they had guaranteed would take effect."

Read the Washington Post, For House Republicans, a game of debt charades.

Last week the national "debt stood at $15.1 trillion, $1 trillion more than when the [Republi-con House] got to town. By the end of next year, projections show, it will grow by an additional $1 trillion."

And how much did the Republi-con House cut next years budget? "[B]y only about $7 billion, a sliver so tiny [you] could measure its impact in minutes."

Read the Washington Post, Washington’s year of drama leaves little done regarding debt.

As I say each show, I'm waiting, where's the balanced budget. But don't hold you breath because the Republi-CONs conned the Tea Party, there'll be no $100 billion budget cut, and let's admit the obvious, the Republi-CONs are not serious about deficits.

I also point out that to balance the budget, Congress should do nothing.

It's Not Who You Are, It's Who You Know

2012-01-30T08:12:00.000-08:00

So much for the Republi-CON 'classless merit-based society' myth, especially in Mississippi:

"A look at the clemency applications of felons who were pardoned reveal that many contained personal appeals from friends of Gov. Haley Barbour and major Republican donors.

Read The New York Times, Many Pardon Applicants Stressed Connection to Mississippi Governor.

More proof that "the instinct to favor family [and friends] never disappears and will reassert itself whenever possible."

Cap and Trade and Save

2012-01-30T08:07:00.000-08:00

"Criticism of cap-and-trade programs often centers on the costs they impose on electric power companies and their consumers. But as I report in Friday’s Times, New York and other Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states that are trying out such a system have found that those costs can be offset by energy efficiency measures paid for by the cap-and-trade program itself."

Read The New York Times, Reaping a Bonus From Cap-and-Trade.

And if you don't believe in global warming, then explain what happens to 35 gigatons of CO2 each year.

Good News for the Economy, Bad News for Republi-CONs

2012-01-27T08:03:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: More bad news for Republi-cons.

"The nation’s on-and-off economic recovery has picked up its pace again, the Commerce Department reported Friday, with the U.S. economy growing at an annualized rate of 2.8 percent for the end of 2011.

That rate is the fastest recorded in a year and a half, and follows three quarters of growth below 2 percent."

Read the Washington Post, U.S. economy in fourth quarter 2011 grew at fastest pace in 1.5 years.

As I said in February 2009, tax cuts are not the answer, and again in October 2010, this downturn won't be over 'til the fat lady gets a job.

But despite the best efforts of the Republi-cons to tank the economy, "[t]he December jobs report is good news. Very good news. Payrolls increased by 200,000 -- and the growth was spread relatively evenly across the economy. Retail added 28,000 jobs. Manufacturing added 23,000 jobs. Transportation and warehousing added 50,000 jobs -- 43,000 of them in the 'couriers and messenging' subcategory, which suggests some of those gains are temporary holiday hires. Health care added 23,000 jobs. Food services added 24,000. Mining added 7,000 jobs. The only payrolls that shrunk in December were government payrolls: we lost another 12,000 public-sector jobs."

Read the Washington Post, A good jobs report — and a good year, which includes this graph for the year:

Expect a lot of panic and denial today from Republi-cons, because it is lookin like it will be Obama in 2012.

Gingrich the Republi-CON

2012-01-26T08:39:00.000-08:00

UPDATE V: BTW, not only does the media love The Great Lecherer, he loves them back. Read The New York Times, Gingrich, Offstage.

UPDATE VI: "He won with a glower. After Newt Gingrich in the Jan. 19 Republican debate fought off a totally reasonable question about an ex-wife’s account of his acknowledged adultery with an attack on “the elite media,” there was little doubt about what would happen. South Carolina is the rawest of GOP states, the political embodiment of the legacy of the man Gingrich was channeling with that stare and orchestrated outrage onstage: Richard Nixon." Read Time, Why Newt Is like Nixon.

UPDATE V: Did you hear the show on Friday with Pastor Flip-Flopper (aka Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins)), first defending The Great Lecherer, then having to agree with his regular 'correspondents'.

The Pastor began by blaming the media. The truth is the media loves Gingrich.

But Vuoto had it right as well as some other pompous regular, and the Pastor had to reluctantly agree, (so-called) conservative support for The Great Lecherer, an admitted serial fornicator and adulterer, showed the moral rot in the party, and a vote for him would be a contract with the devil.

UPDATE IV: Really, the hypocrisy of the Great Lecherer of Morals now blaming the media. From The New York Times, Gingrich Attacks the News Media and Creates a Stir:

In response to a question from the CNN debate moderator, John King, about whether Mr. Gingrich had asked his former wife Marianne for an open marriage, an allegation she made in a recent ABC News interview, Mr. Gingrich said: 'I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.'

When Mr. King tried to explain the question, arguing that it was a major news subject of the moment, Mr. Gingrich had none of it.

'John, John,' he interjected. 'It was repeated by your network, you chose to start the debate with it. Don’t try to blame somebody else.'

Mr. Gingrich added, his voice pitched in anger, 'I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.' He received a standing ovation from the audience."

It was a rabid Republi-CON audience.

UPDATE III: What is more 'tawdry and inappropriate:'

Asking your wife for an 'open marriage' so you can sleep with you new lover while lecturing the world on morals,

or

Complaining about the revelation and refusing to answer questions?

Read the Washington Post, Newt Gingrich: Ex-wife Marianne's interview 'tawdry and inappropriate'.

BTW, does all this remind you of another oversexed Republi-con candidate?

UPDATE II: "We shouldn’t be surprised that Marianne has stepped forward. Indeed, how many other friends, staffers and colleagues have their own tales to tell about the speakership years? With Gingrich you are perpetually waiting for the next shoe to drop. And unlike Bill Clinton, who could drag Hillary into the picture for validation and redemption, Gingrich can’t very well sit down with Callista to explain their joint tale of deceit and adultery. . .

The origin of every Gingrich controversy (ethical, personal or political) is the same: Huge ambition unmoored to a code of conduct or fixed principles.

The reemergence of Marianne will give voters pause. It should. And if it’s the difference between victory or defeat in South Carolina? Well, some would call that Gingrich’s just desserts."

Read the Washington Post, Gingrich’s past catches up.

UPDATE: Today's lesson in Republi-CON history:

"[I]n 1999 [Gingrich] asked his second wife for an 'open marriage' or a divorce at the same time he was giving speeches around the country on family and religious values, his former wife, Marianne . . .

Shocked, Marianne Gingrich replied: 'Is there anybody else?' she recalled. 'He was quiet. Within two seconds, when he didn’t immediately answer, I knew.'

The next day, Newt Gingrich gave a speech titled 'The Demise of American Culture' to the Republican Women Leaders Forum in Erie, Pa., extolling the virtues of the founding fathers and criticizing liberal politicians for supporting tax increases, saying they hurt families and children.

'When a liberal talks about values, will he or she actually like us to teach American history?' Newt Gingrich told the women’s group. 'Will they actually like young people to learn that George Washington was an ethical man? A man of standards, a man who earned the right to be father of this country?'"

Read the Washington Post, Marianne Gingrich, Newt's ex-wife, says he wanted 'open marriage'.

"What seemed like genuine, bipartisan PR in 2008 now looks like conservative heresy by the current frontrunner in the Republican presidential race. Gingrich now calls that TV ad the 'dumbest single thing' he's ever done and insists his policy stance on the environment passes all conservative muster.

'If you notice, I never favored cap and trade,' he said in a candidate forum in New York City on Dec. 3, 2011.

Really? Never?

[But PolitiFact.com] did a little digging and it didn't take long to find that Gingrich has been inconsistent and has at times advocated cap and trade legislation when combined with other approaches."

Read PolitiFact.com, Newt Gingrich claims he 'never favored cap and trade'.

Republi-CONs In Their Delusion-land

2012-01-26T08:24:00.000-08:00

UPDATE II: The title says it all. Read the Washington Post, Gingrich pledges moon colony during presidency, which notes he "proclaimed that the 'weirdest thing' he ever did in Congress was to introduce a 'Northwest Ordinance for space' that would allow a moon colony to become a state once 13,000 lived there."

UPDATE: "It’s not at all clear why we should care if our presidents are idea-obsessed. Just as having a lot of pens doesn’t make you a great writer, having a lot of ideas doesn’t make you a great thinker. And getting distracted by every new idea you hear can distract from the focus and discipline the presidency requires. The idea that cancer is triggered, at least in part, by common viruses is very interesting, but I wouldn’t want the leader of the free world to spend too much time worrying about it. Same with the idea that William Shakespeare was a pen name for Sir Francis Bacon. It is the quality, not quantity, of Gingrich’s ideas that should concern us. And the quality of Gingrich’s ideas is often concerning."

Read the Washington Post, Newt Gingrich’s big, bad ideas, which notes that his ideas "led to one of the more amusing Web sites of the campaign — “Supervillain or Newt?” — which asks you to guess whether a given idea came from Gingrich or a fictional supervillain."

[See Supervillain or Newt, "where you have to decide whether an idea comes from an indestructible megalomaniac hell-bent on ruling the world, or from a fictional supervillain."]

If you think about it, The Great Lecherer, aka Newtenstein, is really just a symptom of the delusion gripping the Republi-CON party.

From the 2008 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics:

"Reading the transcript of Tuesday’s Republican debate on the economy is, for anyone who has actually been following economic events these past few years, like falling down a rabbit hole. Suddenly, you find yourself in a fantasy world where nothing looks or behaves the way it does in real life.

And since economic policy has to deal with the world we live in, not the fantasy world of the G.O.P.’s imagination, the prospect that one of these people may well be our next president is, frankly, terrifying.

In the real world, recent events were a devastating refutation of the free-market orthodoxy that has ruled American politics these past three decades. Above all, the long crusade against financial regulation, the successful effort to unravel the prudential rules established after the Great Depression on the grounds that they were unnecessary, ended up demonstrating — at immense cost to the nation — that those rules were necessary, after all.

But down the rabbit hole, none of that happened. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because of runaway private lenders like Countrywide Financial. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because Wall Street pretended that slicing, dicing and rearranging bad loans could somehow create AAA assets — and private rating agencies played along. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers exploited gaps in financial regulation to create bank-type threats to the financial system without being subject to bank-type limits on risk-taking.

No, in the universe of the Republican Party we found ourselves in a crisis because Representative Barney Frank forced helpless bankers to lend money to the undeserving poor."

Read The New York Times, Rabbit-Hole Economics. He noted that:

"But that’s history. What do the Republicans want to do now? In particular, what do they want to do about unemployment?

Well, they want to fire Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve — not for doing too little, which is a case one can make, but for doing too much. So they’re obviously not proposing any job-creation action via monetary policy.

Incidentally, during Tuesday’s debate, Mitt Romney named Harvard’s N. Gregory Mankiw as one of his advisers. How many Republicans know that Mr. Mankiw at least used to advocate — correctly, in my view — deliberate inflation by the Fed to solve our economic woes?

So, no monetary relief. What else? Well, the Cheshire Cat-like Rick Perry — he seems to be fading out, bit by bit, until only the hair remains — claimed, implausibly, that he could create 1.2 million jobs in the energy sector. Mr. Romney, meanwhile, called for permanent tax cuts — basically, let’s replay the Bush years! And Herman Cain? Oh, never mind.

By the way, has anyone else noticed the disappearance of budget deficits as a major concern for Republicans once they start talking about tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy?

It’s all pretty funny. But it’s also, as I said, terrifying.

The Great Recession should have been a huge wake-up call. Nothing like this was supposed to be possible in the modern world. Everyone, and I mean everyone, should be engaged in serious soul-searching, asking how much of what he or she thought was true actually isn’t.

But the G.O.P. has responded to the crisis not by rethinking its dogma but by adopting an even cruder version of that dogma, becoming a caricature of itself. During the debate, the hosts played a clip of Ronald Reagan calling for increased revenue; today, no politician hoping to get anywhere in Reagan’s party would dare say such a thing.

It’s a terrible thing when an individual loses his or her grip on reality. But it’s much worse when the same thing happens to a whole political party, one that already has the power to block anything the president proposes — and which may soon control the whole government."

Obama's New BFF

2012-01-25T08:23:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Methinks there is a civil war abrew in the Republi-con party, and they're picking sides now:

On Monday night Palin "took on New Jersey’s blunt-talking governor, her fellow Republican Chris Christie, declaring that he had gotten “his panties in a wad” in a “rookie mistake” that reflected a “lack of self discipline.”

Mr. Christie is the most prominent surrogate for Mitt Romney, who now finds himself locked in an increasingly caustic duel for the Republican presidential nomination with Newt Gingrich."

Read The New York Times, Palin Has a Few Choice Words for Christie.

"The most important figure in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address wasn’t on the House floor. In fact, he hasn’t taken a seat in front of the chamber in 13 years.

But as he campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination in Florida, former House speaker Newt Gingrich was doing more to boost President Obama’s reelection prospects than anything Obama himself could do. While Obama was using the speech to portray the Republicans as plutocrats, Gingrich was doing all he could to prove the caricature true."

Read the Washington Post, Gingrich is Obama’s best surrogate.

For further proof, read CBS News, Gingrich-Romney lives in world of "Swiss bank accounts" and $20 million income and the Washington Post, Gingrich mocks Romney’s 'self-deportation' plan for illegal immigrants.

Keep your fingers crossed that The Great Lecherer, aka Newtenstein, wins the nomination and brings us many happy shows til November.

Even better, he could pick as his running mate Save Us, Sarah, Save Us! (<--editorial note: that term is copy righted by NoBullU.com).

Mass Incarceration in America

2012-01-25T08:12:00.000-08:00

"For a great many poor people in America, particularly poor black men, prison is a destination that braids through an ordinary life, much as high school and college do for rich white ones. More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States." Read The New Yorker, The Caging of America.

Class Today at NoBullU on WEBY, How Should I Vote Edition

2012-01-24T17:59:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Thank you to the caller for helping me, the newbie Republi-con, make this important decision. FYI, in the FL January 31 Presidential Preference Primary Election, I voted for the The Great Lecherer, aka Newtenstein. Keep your fingers crossed that he wins the nomination and brings us many happy shows til November.

Listen to the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- no political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- Just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

NoBullU will broadcast today from 4:05 to 6:00 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY and on line.

Topics:

Local Business/Event Shout-Out: TBD;

Follow-up: see below;

Fact-free fantasies of the shrieking hatemongers of right-wing rhetoric and partisan hackery: all part of the fundamentalist subculture of ignorance that embraces 'discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas'

And America's preference for rhetorical fairy tales to unpleasant realities

One was gays in the military, funny thing, the world's still turning, not even a hurricane, earthquake or an oil well

And don't be duped by the Birthers, including our very own Pastor Dred Scott (you may remember the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which asserted that African Americans were "beings of an inferior order" who "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." That ruling declared that African Americans could never be U.S. citizens and therefore could never be President),

See The Fogbow, "your best resource for debunking the lies of the 'birther' movement and discussing the birther antics" and WhatsYourEvidence.com, there is even a Birther Case Scorecard, 0-80 for the birthers;

Local and regional: Hasta la vista TEAM Santa Rosa and time to vote (Wednesday is deadline to request absentee ballot for primary)

National and international: I'm waiting, where's the balanced budget, don't hold you breath because the Republi-CONs Con the Tea Party, there'll be no $100 billion budget cut, and let's admit the obvious, the Republi-CONs are not serious about deficits, and who's responsible for the debt

Republi-CON budget drama, much to do about nothing

To balance the budget, do nothing

Still no sign of those 'invisible [Republi-CON] bond vigilantes'

Good news for the economy, bad news for Republi-CONs

Did Obama con the Republi-CONs?

The Republi-CON zombie myth that the government forced the banks to make bad loans

Economic stimulus told ya so, again

The myth of expansionary austerity

Pity the 1%, they control only 43% of the country's wealth

Republi-CONs in their Delusion-land

And the Republi-CON race cont., to find America’s Not-Mitt

Eeny Meeny Miny Moe, Which Republi-CON, In Iowa They Still Don't Know

A NoBullU told ya so, it was SC stupid

What happened in SC?

FL here come the Republi-CONs

Still searching for the ideal Republican candidate: conservative, interested, electable

Romney: it's 'party ideology politics and obstructionism first', Romney: 'I like being able to fire people', Pity poor Obamney, McCain's Obamney playbook

Gingrich the Republi-CON, Gingrich is soft on crime, Gingrich supports child labor, Newtenstein, What goes around comes around

Colbert for Cain, and making a mockery of Republi-CONs

Obama in 2012?, Lookin better for Obama all the time

HWJRFO

Déjà vu all over again, what to expect if it is Obama v. Romney

Save Us, Sarah, Save Us!

The Republi-CON Tea Party

Health Care Lawsuit Update

After reading two of the appellate opinions, it doesn't look good for the Republi-CONs

and

Is the can at the end of the road?, an update and was it worth it

The Republi-CON 'classless merit-based society' myth

The Republi-CON 'Obama's a socialist' myth

The myth of voter fraud

Watch Hedgehog News, be dumber than the dumb

Fun stuff: Now why didn't we think of this: urine-controlled video games

and

Donate to a good cause: TBD.

I'll discuss anything, but expect a no mercy take-down if you are a shrieking hatemonger of right-wing rhetoric and partisan hackery, pandering to fear, anger and hatred, because the truth sure makes it hard out there for the party pimps.

So tune-in, call-in, but only if you can handle the truth and some ass kickin' discussion of politics and current events.

Pity Poor Obamney

2012-01-24T08:59:00.000-08:00

UPDATE II: "I’m not sure the Obama campaign could have scripted this more perfectly. In a remarkable bit of good timing, President Obama is set to deliver a State of the Union speech focused on income [inequality] and tax unfairness on exactly the same day that Mitt Romney will reveal that he made over $40 million in the last two years — all of it taxed at a lower rate than that paid by middle class taxpayers. . .

[T]his comes as Obama is set to deliver a speech focused on extreme disparities of wealth, and on precisely the element of the tax code that enables his likely rival to pay a far lower rate than many middle class taxpayers — at a time of rising public preoccupation with inequality. As Chuck Todd put it this morning: 'If Team Obama could have picked any day to have Romney release his tax return, today might have been the day they’d pick.'

Romney doesn’t just disagree with Obama on these fundamental issues; he personally symbolizes virtually the entire 2012 Democratic message. He is the walking embodiment of everything Dems allege is wrong with our system and the ways it’s rigged in favor of the wealthy and against the middle class. Yet this is the standard bearer the GOP seems set to pick."

Read the Washington Post, What timing: On day of Obama’s big inequality speech, Romney reveals massive income, low tax rates.

UPDATE: "Under his plan, Romney in 2013 would see his taxes cut by nearly half of what they would be if you use current law as a baseline." Read the Washington Post, Romney’s tax plan would cut his own taxes by nearly half, new analysis finds.

In one recent year, he made only $374,327.62 giving speeches. A sum he described as "not very much." Read The New York Times, Romney Shares Some Tax Data; Critics Pounce.

What Happened in SC?

2012-01-24T07:59:00.000-08:00

UPDATE III: This is priceless.

One Pulitzer Prize-winnering conservative political commentator begs Obamney to step up his game before The Great Lecherer 'cripples the Republican brand.' Read the Washington Post, Can Romney the turnaround artist do it again?

The Republi-con establishment has no one to blame but itself for their Newtenstein.

UPDATE: Has the right-wing media been too successful in dumbing-down the base? Read The Atlantic, Who Is to Blame for Newt Gingrich's Rise?, which notes:

"People bear responsibility for the media they consume. Voters ultimately own the politicians they elevate. But if you're wondering to which "thought leaders" his rise can be attributed, best to ask, "Whose approach to politics produces, as its logical conclusion, a candidacy like Gingrich 2012?" Surveying the centrality of attacks on the mainstream media, the casting of President Obama as a radical other, and the trick where you shrewdly repeat a racially provocative line, get accused of racism, and cast yourself as an aggrieved victim for political advantage, Gingrich '12 is modeled after the successful tactics of movement conservatism's demagogues. Is there any candidate in memory whose persona so closely resembles an egomaniacal talk-radio host? The rank-and-file in South Carolina accept a would-be president behaving that way because they're used to their "thought leaders" talking like that. They aren't in on the reality that a lot of what they hear on talk radio resembles performance art; they don't presume that the rhetoric and arguments employed daily on Fox News are often contrived or disingenuous.

What a political movement gets when it spends years marshaling more demagoguery than sound arguments against its opponents, what it gets when its intellectuals are deposed by its entertainers, what it gets when Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh are its agenda-setting personalities; what it gets when all these factors and more prevail, is a Newt Gingrich victory in South Carolina, where the voters, having been trained to elevate emotion and style over substance, didn't even realize that they've chosen as their champion a man who is neither conservative nor capable of leading anyone."

This election is teaching Republi-cons that what goes around comes around.

Do the "traditional rules of engagement in a nomination race still apply . . .

[That is] the nomination is technically decided by delegate counts, and somewhat less literally by the preferences of rank-and-file voters, ultimately the nominee is determined by a sort of open negotiation among the party elite, which includes elected officials, major donors and the partisan news media, among others.

Voter preferences can make some difference, but more as a lagging than a leading indicator. Being well-credentialed and building a traditional campaign matters, and candidates who do not do so may soar in polls but inevitably fall back to earth. Moreover, parties tend to come to fairly rational decisions about their nominee, placing heavy emphasis on electability. (This view is eloquently explained in the book The Party Decides, by the political scientists Marty Cohen and others.)

[Or has a paradigm shift] occurred in America’s political culture . . .

Under this interpretation, elite support and the ground game do not matter as much as usual. Instead, success is more idiosyncratic: personalities matter a lot, and nominations are determined based primarily on momentum and news media coverage."

Read The New York Times, Did Gingrich’s Win Break the Paradigm?

It's SC Stupid

2012-01-22T07:57:00.000-08:00

UPDATE XIV: The final tally:

Gingrich 40.4%
Romney 27.8%

From the Washington Post, Five lessons learned from the South Carolina primary:

"1. Debates matter. A lot . . .

2. It’s a marathon, not a sprint . . .

3. Frontrunners falter . . .

4. Mitt Romney has a base problem . . .

5. It’s going to get real nasty, real quick . . ."

And from Politico, South Carolina: 9 takeaways:

"1) Romney may not realize he’s having a near-death experience . . .

2) Newt needs to hold it together . . .

3) Paging Sheldon Adelson . . .

4) Rick Santorum has nothing to lose by going forward . . .

5) Mitch Daniels isn’t doing Romney any favors . . .

6) Nikki Haley suffered a big loss . . .

7) Rick Perry’s backing mattered . . .

8) Gingrich fared surprisingly well with women . . .

9) Romney is about to get all sorts of unsolicited public advice . . ."

UPDATE XIII: And for last projection before the primary, see The New York Times, South Carolina Primary Projections, which continues to momentum for The Great Lecherer:

Gingrich 38.7%
Vote range: 26 - 49

Romney 29.3%
Vote range: 19 - 39

Paul 15.6%
Vote range: 8 - 24

Santorum 13.9%
Vote range: 7 - 22

UPDATE XII: "Up with Newt. Down with dignity. That’s the way it goes.

Newt Gingrich is surging in South Carolina and has a good chance to win that state’s primary on Saturday. But, as he rises, so grows the dark shadow that he casts over his party and the grievous damage he does to its chances of unseating President Obama."

Read The New York Times, Newt’s Southern Strategy.

UPDATE XI: How can The Great Lecherer proclaim "himself the only conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. The reason for his rising popularity is not really because he’s more conservative than Mr. Santorum – he’s not – or because he will bring about more conservative change, as Rick Perry said in endorsing him today before leaving the race.

The reason, colorfully on display this morning in this history-soaked waterfront town, is that no other candidate in the race expresses the kind of visceral, full-bodied disgust with President Obama that Mr. Gingrich does. No one else can even come close to the kind of withering ridicule that Mr. Gingrich employs."

Read The New York Times, Newt Gingrich, Nutty Radio Talk Show Host.

The power of pandering to fear, anger and hatred is on full display this election season.

UPDATE X: "By avoiding direct confrontations with his opponents while giving evasive answers on a range of isshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifues in debates this week, Mitt Romney has allowed Newt Gingrich to become the slight favorite to win in South Carolina." Read The New York Times, Romney’s ‘Prevent Defense’ Yielding Big Gains to Opponents.

And the day before the primary, from The New York Times, South Carolina Primary Projections, here are the forecasts, "formulated from an average of recent surveys, with adjustments made to account for a polling firm's accuracy, freshness of a poll and each candidate's momentum:

Gingrich 35.1%
Vote range: 22 - 46

Romney 32.8%
Vote range: 21 - 43

Paul 15.9%
Vote range: 8 - 25

Santorum 12.9%
Vote range: 5 - 22

UPDATE IX: Taken before the day's upheaval, polls show Obamney and Gingrich in a virtual tie.

UPDATE VIII: It now appears that Santorum edged Obamney "in the Iowa caucuses by 34 votes, but can’t be declared the winner because results from eight precincts are missing."

Other news:

Santorum is the nominal conservative Obamney alternative.

But Gingrich had a bellicose debate performance and has a Palin sort-of-endorsement and Perry dropping out endorsement, but has yet to answer renewed questions about his moral character (see this interview with one of Newt Gingrich’s ex-wives about his open-marriage idea).

There is also that other guy still running, and the vote for Cain for Colbert effort.

UPDATE VII: Obamney “rivals enter the final four days of the South Carolina primary in search of something — anything — to significantly alter the basic trajectory of their party’s presidential nominating contest. . .

[H]owever, they are running out of time." Read The New York Times, Time Running Out for Romney’s Rivals, which notes "that political fortunes can change more quickly than anyone expects. That may be even more true in the age of Twitter, when small moments on the campaign trail can quickly become global phenomenon.

So what might yet happen in the next four days? Here are some possibilities":

1. EVANGELICALS. . .

2. THE MORMON QUESTION. . .

3. A NEW ATTACK? . .

4. A NEW STUMBLE. . .

5. SURPRISE DROP-OUTS? . .

6. ANOTHER DEBATE. . .

UPDATE VI: "Another day, another [Republi-con] presidential debate."

For a recap, read the Washington Post, South Carolina Republican debate: Winners and losers and Fact Checking the Fox News-WSJ debate in South Carolina, and CNN, Five things we learned from Monday's debate.

"The debate last night demonstrated the essential problem that the top three not-Romney contenders face in South Carolina and beyond: No one has been strong enough and focused enough to oust Mitt Romney, but none is so weak as to drop out." Read the Washington Post, Romney’s path to the Republican nomination.

UPDATE V: "As Republican leaders watch with horror Newt Gingrich’s one-man campaign to bring down the party’s likely presidential nominee, they should remind themselves of this: Gingrich is a monster of their own making." Read the Washington Post, Kamikaze Gingrich, on the loose in South Carolina, which notes:

Romney, on his way to South Carolina, complained explicitly that Gingrich was against 'free enterprise.'

Romney has it wrong. Gingrich’s attacks on him are the very essence of free enterprise: They’re helped by campaign finance laws that sell elections to the highest bidder. For those Republicans who thought that unlimited political contributions would be a good thing for their party, it’s a delicious irony that a casino billionaire is using his money to underwrite a populist assault on the GOP front-runner.

'Crony capitalism, where people pay each other off at the expense of the people of this country, is not free enterprise, and raising questions about that is not wrong,' Gingrich said in South Carolina. Americans, he said, should know whether businesses are 'fair to the American people, or are the deals being cut on behalf of Wall Street institutions and very rich people.'

If Republican elites don’t like millions of dollars being spent to amplify that anti-Romney message, they have only themselves to blame."

UPDATE IV: "In South Carolina, they know who their enemy is. They’re just too busy attacking one another to fight [Romney]." Read The New York Times, The Tea Party’s Not-So-Civil War.

UPDATE III: "Voters in South Carolina will have plenty of opportunities to meet the Republican presidential candidates at town-hall-style meetings and campaign rallies over the next week and a half. But why even leave the house?

The state will be awash in campaign commercials, direct-mail fliers and automated phone calls in the days leading up to the Jan. 21 primary, all part of a full effort by the campaigns and their 'super PACs' to break through in what could be the kind of climactic contest that the New Hampshire primary was not."

Read The New York Times, Expensive and Bitter Media War Already Ignited.

UPDATE II: From the Washington Post, The five remaining scenarios in the GOP primary, read the article for "what they would mean for the overall GOP primary":

"Romney wins solidly in South Carolina . . .

Romney wins narrowly over Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, or Jon Huntsman . . .

Romney wins narrowly over Rick Santorum or Rick Perry . . .

Romney loses to Santorum or Perry . . .

Romney loses to Paul, Gingrich, or Huntsman . . ."

UPDATE: Which Mitt will show up in SC?

Will it be the "Mitt Romney who campaigned across New Hampshire the past few days entered the workforce 'at the bottom,' feared getting 'a pink slip,' doesn’t own four houses (although he thinks 'that's a good idea') and 'never imagined' he would run for office because, as he put it, 'I was just a high school kid like everybody else with skinny legs'"?

Read the Washington Post, Mitt Romney may face lasting damage from New Hampshire primary.

"The Republican primary race will come to a fork in the road in South Carolina. A win by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in the Palmetto State effectively ends the GOP nomination fight. A loss by Romney likely means a protracted primary fight that continues through Super Tuesday on March 6. . .

The reality of the South Carolina vote, according to a number of well-informed GOP observers, is that it really amounts to two primaries in one.

In one primary is Romney — and to a MUCH lesser extent former Utah governor Jon Huntsman — who are competing for the establishment wing of the state’s GOP. These are voters who prize electability over all other factors and who gave Arizona Sen. John McCain 33 percent — and a win — in the 2008 South Carolina primary.

Romney is likely to win the lion’s share of those voters whether he spends a dime or $10 million on his South Carolina campaign since, unlike in 2008, he is clearly regarded by the smart set within the GOP as the most electable of the current field. (For why Huntsman isn’t likely to be a major figure in South Carolina, make sure to check out our post from this morning.)

That means Romney probably has a floor of about 30 percent in South Carolina and a ceiling around 35 percent almost no matter what he or his rivals do over the next 11 days.

The second primary is between former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — and, to a lesser extent, Texas Gov. Rick Perry. This primary is a fight for the mantle of consensus conservative candidate, a title that remains very much up for grabs at the moment.

The central dynamic of the race then is not then Romney versus Santorum/Gingrich/Perry but rather a three-way cage match — yes, the Fix was/is a huge pro wrestling fan — between Santorum vs Gingrich vs Perry.

(There is even a third primary within the primary and that one is where Texas Rep. Ron Paul resides. In South Carolina, Paul has a slightly smaller following than he has shown in Iowa and New Hampshire though they are no less dedicated. Polling suggests Paul is in low double digits at the moment in the Palmetto State.)"

Read the Washington Post, Why South Carolina matters more than New Hampshire.

How Fast Can You React

2012-01-21T08:34:00.000-08:00

Reaction time is the elapsed time between the presentation of a sensory stimulus and the subsequent behavioral response.

Shot some sheep and test your reaction time. Click the tranquilizer dart (no aiming necessary) when a sheep leaves the flock and runs for freedom.

Be very careful, this can be addictive.

The Republi-CON Tea Party

2012-01-20T07:38:00.000-08:00

"The Tea Party’s influence is diminishing as conservatives seem to be inching toward nominating Mitt Romney," the Republi-con establishment candidate.

Read The New York Times, History vs. the Tea Party, which notes that:

The Tea Party was just "the latest in a cycle of insurgencies on the Republican right," quickly captured by establishment insiders and molded to the party's purpose, doing little more than emphasizing "quixotic crusades" with ""no real plans for reducing government expenditures beyond the conservative pursuit of politics-as-warfare."

Making a Mockery of Republi-CONs

2012-01-19T07:56:00.000-08:00

UPDATE III: "Colbert will join forces with former candidate Herman Cain in South Carolina on Friday, hosting an event called 'The Rock Me Like a Herman Cain: South Cain-olina Primary Rally.'" Read Politico, Stephen Colbert's 'South Cain-olina' rally.

UPDATE II: Colbert, with help from Stewart, is also making a mockery of the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision that corporations were people. Watch The Daily Show, Colbert Super PAC - Not Coordinating with Stephen Colbert:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

UPDATE: "Stephen Colbert's 'super PAC' is out with a new ad, this time urging South Carolina voters to pick a candidate who really is on the ballot for Saturday's primary.

The candidate? Herman Cain. No, wait. Why does he look like ... Colbert?"

Read USA Today, Colbert ad urges vote for ... Herman Cain?

And watch the campaign ad:

"Colbert is a serious performer playing a silly character, while the media and political world are deeply silly but pretending to be serious . . .

What makes Mr. Colbert such an ingenious satirist is not just that he exposes political fantasy but that he also takes it to its illogical conclusion. "

Read The New York Times, Beneath a Deeply Silly Campaign, a Deeply Serious Performer.

Nobody is better at mocking the Republi-CONs than Colbert. Remember his roast of Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner:

It Takes a Republi-CON to Know a Republi-CON

2012-01-19T07:28:00.000-08:00

From BuzzFeed, The Book On Mitt Romney: Here Is John McCain's Entire Opposition Research File, "John McCain's entire, 200-page opposition research file — or 'book' — on Mitt Romney from 2008, the year they were bitter rivals":

The Republi-CON 'Obama's a Socialist' Myth

2012-01-14T08:06:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: If Obama is a socialist, so was Reagan. "Obama's tax policy relies on the same progressive approach that has been the cornerstone of American tax policy since the federal government first collected an income tax in 1863, an approach embraced by Republicans and Democrats. It was based on the Tax Act of 1862, which President Abraham Lincoln signed, and which imposed a 'duty of three per centum' on all income over $600, and five percent on income over $10,000.

The idea is that the wealthy pay a larger share of their income because they are more able to afford it. To the extent the government then gives some of the money to the less-wealthy through various programs, you could say the income is being redistributed. But that concept has been embraced by Republicans and Democrats for well over a century.

That's a far cry from true socialism, which is defined as support for 'governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.'

That's enough for us to set the Truth-O-Meter ablaze, but let's dig a little deeper to explore whether Obama's main policies can accurately be called socialism.

Read Politifact, Rick Perry says Barack Obama is a socialist, which finds the claim a Pants on Fire lie.

"[I]f Obama’s [tax] proposal is intended as a huge redistributionist scheme designed to level our society by bringing about government-imposed equality, then it can already been seen as a pretty massive failure." Read the Washington Post, How Obama’s tax hikes would really impact the rich, in three easy charts, one of which shows "what taxes people would pay in 2013 under various tax regimes, when the Obama proposals would take effect":

Plan For Life

2012-01-14T07:46:00.000-08:00

From an email:

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil - It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good - It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Romney: 'I like being able to fire people'

2012-01-13T08:37:00.000-08:00

UPDATE III: After you get over the irony of Republi-CON complaining of taking statements out of context, consider the statement in context. "What Romney actually said, in context, was worse." Read The New York Times, Who Fires Whom?, which notes that:

"Romney doesn’t understand his own health reform, which was in large part about ensuring not that you can fire your insurance company, but rather about ensuring that your insurance company can’t fire YOU. . .

He evidently has no sense of what it’s like NOT to be the very wealthy son of an already wealthy father; no idea how the fear of unemployment or medical bills afflicts ordinary Americans."

The statement shows a candidate without empathy, who does "not understanding what life is like for most Americans." Read The New York Times, Uncompassionate Conservatism, which cites "David Atkins, over at Digby’s blog," who notes the statement shows

"Romney’s sense of privilege, and a relationship to the world around him that is alien to most Americans and reinforces everything that is wrong with the 1% in America. . .

When it comes to basic services like healthcare, almost no one in America sees the relationship that way. Most of us wouldn't speak of 'firing' our health insurance company. No matter how much we might detest our insurance company, we probably wouldn't describe the experience of removing ourselves from their rolls an enjoyable one.

But most of all, we don't see the health insurance company as providing us a service. We see ourselves, rather, as indentured supplicants forced to pay exorbitant monthly rates for a basic need that responsible people with means can't get out of paying for if we can help it. We don't see ourselves as in control of the relationship with them. They are in control of us-and no more so than when we get sick and need the insurance most. If the company decides to restrict our coverage or tell us we have a pre-existing condition after all, we're in the position of begging a capricious and heartless corporation to cover costs we assumed we were entitled to based on a contractual obligation. It's precisely when we need insurance most that we're least able to 'fire' the insurance company."

UPDATE II: Even Nation Review, founded by that scion of conservative wealth and influence, which "describes itself as 'America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion,'" knows that, quoting the Weekly Standard, an American neoconservative opinion magazine published by News Corporation, which also owns Hedgehog News:

"As a private equity firm, Bain’s goal was to maximize return on investment (ROI) for a small group of high net worth investors. . .

Any jobs Romney or Bain 'created' were thus incidental to their real function, which was (as Last points out) to maximize shareholder value and goldmine the remaining value of the company so that it might more profitably be used elsewhere. Nothing wrong with that, but don’t try to sell it as 'job creation' . . .

A 'job creator' [give] employment to . . . people through the force of his own creative imagination.

But to call corporate restructuring 'jobs creation' won’t fly."

Read National Review, The Battle of Bain Capital.

Even the founder and editor of The Weekly Standard and a regular commentator on the aforementioned Hedgehog News noted that:

Romney’s claim throughout his campaign that his private sector experience almost uniquely qualifies him to be president is also silly. Does he really think that having done well in private equity, venture capital, and business consulting—or even in the private sector more broadly—is a self-evident qualification for public office? . . .

Post 2008, capitalism needs its strong defenders—but its defenders need also to be its constructive critics. The Tea Party was right. What's needed is a critique of Big Government above all, but also of Big Business and Big Finance and Big Labor (and Big Education and Big Media and all the rest)—and especially a critique of all those occasions when one or more of these institutions conspire against the common good. What's needed is a willingness to put Main Street (at least slightly) ahead of Wall Street, and a reform agenda for capitalism that strengthens it, alongside an even more dramatic reform agenda for government that limits it.

Bain Capital shouldn’t be demonized. It may not even deserve to be criticized. But in laying out a way forward, conservatives might remember that Bain Capital isn’t capitalism, that capitalism by itself isn’t freedom, and that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the Gospel of Wealth."

Read the Weekly Standard, From Bain to Main.

UPDATE: The Republi-CON establishment is starting to recognized "the perils [they] face if their nominee — and the GOP in general — are identified with the brand of unrestrained [unfettered, everyman-for-himself, screw-the-working-guy] capitalism Romney’s Bain years embody. Read the Washington Post, Calling for a truce in the Bain wars.

"Remember all the 'pants on fire' finger-wagging outrage directed at Mitt Romney and his campaign’s blatant misuse of a quote by then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008? It’s the one where Obama is heard saying, 'If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.'

The outrage was justifiable since the line was taken completely out of context. The full line reads: 'Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.'

I bring this up because Romney should not be surprised if — no, when — he gets the same treatment after what he said this morning in Nashua, N.H. It’s a line that could be easily ripped out of context and would be equally outrageous."

Read the Washington Post, Mitt Romney’s unforced error: 'I like being able to fire people'.

Get ready Romney, because what goes around comes around.

What to Expect If It Is Obama v. Romney

2012-01-13T08:17:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: "He was for it before he was against it, and against it before he claimed credit for it." Read The New York Times, Romney and the Bailout.

Ronmey, the flip-flopper's flip-flopper.

Funny isn't it, what goes around comes around.

"He’ll have hundreds of millions of dollars, the bully pulpit, Air Force One and high-profile supporters from Warren Buffet to Lady Gaga behind him. But President Obama’s chances of re-election could come down to a single strategic question: To what degree can the history of 2004 be repeated in 2012? . . .

The Obama team, he said, 'wants to make Mitt Romney into the Republican version of John Kerry.'"

Read The New York Times, Can Obama 2012 Replicate Bush 2004?

That's why the base hopes it is anyone but Romney.

What is Your Civic Literacy?

2012-01-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

"Are you more knowledgeable than the average citizen? The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do better? Questions were drawn from past ISI surveys, as well as other nationally recognized exams." Take the civic literacy exam.

And post your score in the comments.

The Price of Fear, Anger and Hatred

2012-01-13T07:51:00.000-08:00

"[S]even and a half years at Guantánamo, without explanation" and a stain on the U.S. Constitution. Read The New York Times, My Guantánamo Nightmare.

How Now NH

2012-01-11T08:49:00.000-08:00

UPDATE VI: With 95% of the precincts reporting, the Washington Post reports:

Romney 39.4%
Paul 22.8%
Huntsman 16.8%
Gingrich 9.4%
Santorum 9.3%
Perry 0.7%

UPDATE V: From The New York Times, New Hampshire Primary Overview and Forecast, here is "each candidate’s FiveThirtyEight forecast for New Hampshire along with what the forecast model deems to be his 90 percent confidence interval":

Mitt Romney
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 39 percent
High end of forecast range: 47 percent
Low end of forecast range: 27 percent
. . .

Ron Paul
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 19 percent
High end of forecast range: 27 percent
Low end of forecast range: 11 percent
. . .

Jon M. Huntsman Jr.
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 17 percent
High end of forecast range: 26 percent
Low end of forecast range: 9 percent
. . .

Rick Santorum
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 12 percent
High end of forecast range: 20 percent
Low end of forecast range: 6 percent
. . .

Newt Gingrich
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 11 percent
High end of forecast range: 19 percent
Low end of forecast range: 5 percent
. . .

Rick Perry
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 1 percent
High end of forecast range: 3 percent
Low end of forecast range: 0 percent

UPDATE IV: And the day before the NH primary, the FiveThirtyEight NH forecast model predicts:

Romney with 39.3%, and a vote range of 26-49%

Paul with 19.4%, and a vote range of 10-29%

Huntsman with 15.6%, and a vote range of 7-26%

Santorum with 12.1%, and a vote range of 5-21%

Gingrich with 11.3%, and a vote range of 4-20%, and

Perry with 1.4%, and a vote range of 0-3%.

The forecasts "are formulated from an average of recent surveys, with adjustments made to account for a polling firm's accuracy, freshness of a poll and each candidate's momentum. Although this improves accuracy, there is still considerable uncertainty in the forecast as is reflected in the range of possible vote totals for each candidate."

UPDATE III: From The New York Times, New Hampshire Debates: Five Things to Watch:

"Six Republican candidates will gather Saturday night for a two-hour debate sponsored by ABC News, Yahoo and WMUR-TV. Ten hours later, they will reconvene, this time on the set of NBC‘s “Meet the Press” program for another debate.

The twin face-offs have the potential to be the highest-stakes events in a campaign that has been shaped by debate performances. And for these debates, there will be no net — New Hampshire voters will vote less than two days later, giving candidates little time to recover from a blunder.

With new polls showing Mr. Romney maintaining his wide lead in New Hampshire, his rivals are all but certain to aim their attacks at him. But Mr. Romney has proven himself to be a skilled debater in this campaign and is no doubt preparing for the expected onslaught.

Here are five things to watch for during the debates:

1. NEWT UNLEASHED . . .

2. SANTORUM IN THE SPOTLIGHT . . .

3. HUNTSMAN’S LAST STAND? . . .

4. NO MORE 'OOPS' . . .

5. PAUL’S ATTACKS . . ."

UPDATE II: "Independents are a finicky and fickle bunch. They are deeply dissatisfied with the direction of the country, with an overwhelming majority saying things are badly off track. Social issues do not concern them. Many of them voted for President Obama.

And now, this critical voting bloc — which makes up as much as 45 percent of the New Hampshire electorate — is about to take center stage. If the Iowa contest exposed the conflicted mood and sharp divisions within the GOP, then New Hampshire will offer a broader snapshot of a hard-to-pin-down sliver of the electorate that has an outsize impact on elections, particularly in this swing state."

Read the Washington Post, Independents represent a major unknown in the N.H. primary.

"The Iowa caucuses answered some questions — no, Michele Bachmann isn’t going to be president — but raised lots and lots of others.

As the race moves to New Hampshire (Jan. 10) and then South Carolina (Jan. 21), here’s a look at five key questions — the answers to which will tell us a lot about the shape of the race going forward.

1. Does Newt Gingrich go on a kamikaze mission? . . .

2. Can Rick Santorum stand the heat? . . .

3. How much more money does Restore Our Future have? . . .

4. Does Rick Perry stay viable? . . .

5. Do conservatives unite? . . ."

Read the Washington Post, The 5 key questions of the Republican presidential race.

Romney: It's 'Party Ideology Politics and Obstructionism First'

2012-01-11T08:10:00.000-08:00

"[C]utting through Mr. Romney’s expensive armor and exposing the hollow core within. Read The New York Times, Huntsman's "Country First" Slogan.

Economic Stimulus Told Ya So, Again

2012-01-11T07:46:00.000-08:00

On December 12, 2008, more than three years ago I (and a few others) suggested mortgage refinancing as an economic stimulus for Main Streeters. And I suggested it again in February 2009, and yet again several other times over the years.

Guess what the big-shot economist are suggesting now. Read the Washington Post, By promoting mortgage refinancing, Obama could win big, which notes:

"From 2001 to 2003, Glenn Hubbard served as President George W. Bush’s chief economist. Today, he’s dean of Columbia University’s School of Business and one of Mitt Romney’s top economic advisers. But right now, the candidate who could most benefit from his advice is President Obama.

Hubbard is an advocate for using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to set off a nationwide wave of mortgage refinancing. In a paper co-authored with Columbia economist Christopher Mayer, Hubbard estimates that more than 75 percent of the homeowners with 30-year mortgages backed by Fannie or Freddie are paying interest rates higher than 5 percent. But for the past two years, interest rates have been closer to 4 percent. That means tens of millions of Americans are paying more than they need to every single month. . .

The effect on the economy would be twofold: First, the refinancings would act like a high-powered tax cut for those homeowners who took advantage of them. As Hubbard and Mayer write, 'Empirical evidence suggests that consumers spend a larger portion of permanent increases in income than temporary increases.' And as these refinancings would lower payments, they’re as permanent as you can get in government policy. Second, it would make the Fed’s efforts to keep interest rates low more effective in stimulating the economy."

Better late than never I suppose, but is it too late for Obama?

From the Pensacola Streets of 'Deaths and Drugs'

2012-01-10T07:53:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: "Warrington is rife with violence, drugs and poverty -- deadly realities for those who live in the heavily wooded area just southwest of Pensacola, Fla. The Alabama junior tailback is lucky to have escaped it, but others haven't been so fortunate.

Last year, three of Richardson's friends were murdered."

Read FOX Sports, Richardson won't turn back on his roots.

"Trent Richardson went to the same high school as Emmitt Smith, who calls Richardson 'the best running-back prospect in a long time.'" Read The New York Times, With Family as Foundation, Alabama’s Richardson Perseveres.

Given his comment, I'm not sure the city will make him an honorary mayor any time soon.

Maybe if he makes it big he can use some of his wealth and fame to make Pensacola a better place.

The Republi-CON 'Classless Merit-Based Society' Myth

2012-01-09T08:34:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: "Americans are much more likely than citizens of other nations to believe that they live in a meritocracy. But this self-image is a fantasy: as a report in The Times last week pointed out, America actually stands out as the advanced country in which it matters most who your parents were, the country in which those born on one of society’s lower rungs have the least chance of climbing to the top or even to the middle.

And if you ask why America is more class-bound in practice than the rest of the Western world, a large part of the reason is that our government falls down on the job of creating equal opportunity. . .

So where is the evidence that Mr. Romney or his party actually believes in equal opportunity? Judging by their actions, they seem to prefer a society in which your station in life is largely determined by that of your parents — and in which the children of the very rich get to inherit their estates tax-free. Teddy Roosevelt would not have approved."

Read The New York Times, America’s Unlevel Field.

Republi-CON assertions to the contrary, "Europe’s social democracies now fit the description of 'merit-based opportunity societies' much more than ours does.

The best way to measure a nation’s merit-based status is to look at its intergenerational economic mobility: Do children move up and down the economic ladder based on their own abilities, or does their economic standing simply replicate their parents’? Sadly, as the American middle class has thinned out over recent decades, the idea of America as the land of opportunity has become a farce. As a paper by Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution has shown, sons’ earnings approximate those of their fathers about three times more frequently in the United States than they do in Denmark, Norway and Finland, and about 11 / 2 times more frequently than they do in Germany. The European social democracies — where taxes, entitlements and the rate of unionization greatly exceed America’s — are demonstrably more merit-based than the United States."

Read the Washington Post, No longer the land of opportunity.

As a result of the study, "researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. . .

Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths. . .

While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile."

Read The New York Times, Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs.

Obama in 2012?

2012-01-09T08:17:00.000-08:00

UPDATE III: And what might help Obama's re-election chances? "Why Hillary Clinton is the answer. Seriously." Read The New York Times, Just the Ticket.

UPDATE II: "'IT'S the economy, stupid' may not be either party’s official slogan in this year’s presidential campaign. But it might as well be.

Will Barack Obama win re-election? Well, that depends mainly on the economy.

If the economy surges, he’s likely to win. If it lurches into a recession, he will quite probably lose. And if it simply muddles along at a sluggish pace, more or less as it has been doing for months now, the election could easily be a photo finish.

Those are the latest projections of Ray C. Fair, the Yale economics professor who has been studying the economy’s effect on American elections for decades.

His current calculations, which he shared with me last week, show President Obama with 50.17 percent of the vote, giving him a margin so small that it falls within the 2.5 percent 'standard error' of the equations. . .

These calculations suggest the quandary faced by the opposition party. New measures that stimulate the economy could decide a close election. But if the Republicans are obviously obstructionist, they could take some blame for a weak economy. The equations may not capture this kind of political calculus."

Read The New York Times, Through an Economic Lens, an Election Too Close to Call.

UPDATE: Does this model "overestimates the effect of candidate ideology on election outcomes"? Read the Washington Post, Candidate ideology probably only accounts for 1-2 percent in elections.

For a "killer calculus of the president’s re-election chances," read The New York Times, Is Obama Toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election, which uses a three-factor model "approval ratings in the year before the election, G.D.P. growth during the election year itself and the ideology score of the opposition candidate" to come up with a forecast of next year’s election.

The article uses the book, 'The Party Decides,' by the political scientist Marty Cohen and his colleagues to "estimated the ideological positioning of past opposition-party nominees based on a combination of objective indicators like Congressional voting records and surveys of presidential historians . . . [and translated the estimate] to a scale that runs from 0 for an extremely moderate nominee to 100 for an extremely liberal or conservative one, with 50 representing the average."

The article then "estimated extremism scores for this year’s Republican candidates by combining data from the three principal objective methods that are used to estimate ideology, one based on Congressional voting, one based on fund-raising contributions and the other based on voters’ assessments of the candidates’ ideology in polls . . . [and] placed the Republicans onto the scale based on how their figures compared with past candidates. Here’s how they stacked up:

Jon Huntsman 40
Mitt Romney 49
Herman Cain 60
Gary Johnson 63
Rick Santorum 64
Rick Perry 67
Newt Gingrich 68
Michele Bachmann 83
Ron Paul 96"

The article includes an interactive graph, What Are the Chances for Republicans?, that shows the "likelihood of each candidate winning the popular vote based on 2012 G.D.P. growth, President Obama’s current approval rating and the ideology of the candidate."

You Are UnAmerican If Your Kids are Brown

2012-01-08T07:24:00.000-08:00

So says a Ron Paul supporter. Read the Washington Post, Huntsman objects to ad by Paul backers featuring adopted daughters.

Is Santorum History?

2012-01-07T08:52:00.000-08:00

As I said before, Americans prefer rhetorical fairy tales to unpleasant realities.

"Modern American politicians almost never use their campaign rhetoric to deliver bad news or to challenge the citizenry." Read the Los Angeles Times , The coddled American voter.

And Santorum is about to find out why. Read the Washington Post, Santorum says debt crisis demands immediate cuts in Social Security, even if it hurts.

Lookin Better and Better for Obama

2012-01-07T07:59:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: First, good news for the economy, bad news for Republi-CONs.

Now complaints that his proposed tax plan that saves top 1 percenter only $82,000, makes Romney an Obama neo-socialist in disguise?!

It's looking more and more like President Obama for four more years.

"With the Republican presidential field as fractured as ever, talk of a brokered GOP national convention is increasing in Republican circles. And a big reason is that Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is positioned to, at minimum, earn a large enough bloc of delegates in next year's caucuses and primaries to be a real force." Read U.S. News, GOP Nightmare Scenario: A Brokered Convention.

In the meantime, a "rare showdown between House and Senate Republicans over a temporary extension of the payroll tax cut poses a political threat to the party’s members on both sides of the Capitol heading into the 2012 elections.

It feeds into President Barack Obama’s campaign narrative that House Republicans’ obstructionism has resulted in a do- nothing Congress at a time when middle-class Americans need help in a struggling economy. At the same time, it fuels Tea Party opposition to Senate Republicans who teamed with Democrats to pass a two-month extension instead of a longer-term fix." Read Bloomberg, Tax Politics Pose Risk for Republicans.

"Given how [GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell] and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest." Read the Wall Street Journal, The GOP's Payroll Tax Fiasco, How did Republicans manage to lose the tax issue to Obama?

It's all part of "Obama 2.0, a feistier president willing to take the fight to Republicans," with new and improved approval ratings. Read the Washington Post, Post and CNN polls show Obama’s fight is working, which includes this graph:

And don't forget, for a "killer calculus of the president’s re-election chances," see this prior post, Obama in 2012?

Modern Family: A Man, A Women, and Her First Husband

2012-01-07T07:40:00.000-08:00

A relationship in violation of the Defense of Marriage Act, "whereby the federal government defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman."

But she says "it's not the legal arrangement, it’s the emotional arrangement, that emotional commitment" that makes them family.

Read the Washington Post, A family learns the true meaning of the vow 'in sickness and in health'.

Is the Can at the End of the Road?, An Update

2012-01-07T07:21:00.000-08:00

UPDATE V: News that is unlikely to comfort the families of Americans who died in Iraq:

"It was one of the deadliest insurgent groups in Iraq in recent years, an Iranian-backed militia that bombed American military convoys and bases, assassinated dozens of Iraqi officials and tried to kidnap Americans even as the last soldiers withdrew.

But now the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is welcoming the militant group into Iraq’s political system, a move that could tilt the nation’s center of gravity closer to Iran. The government’s support for the militia, which only just swore off violence, has opened new sectarian fault lines in Iraq’s political crisis while potentially empowering Iran at a moment of rising military and economic tensions between Tehran and Washington.

The militant group, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, broke away from the fierce Shiite militia commanded by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who has strong ties to Tehran. The American military has long maintained that the group, led by a former spokesman for Mr. Sadr, Qais al-Khazali, was trained and financed by Iran’s elite Quds Force — something that Iran denies."

Read The New York Times, Political Role for Militants Worsens Fault Lines in Iraq.

UPDATE IV: Iraq continues to unravel. Read The New York Times, Attacks on Shiites in Iraq Kill at Least 60.

UPDATE III: "With the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from Iraq, we’re finally going to get the answer to the core question about that country: Was Iraq the way Iraq was because Saddam was the way Saddam was, or was Saddam the way Saddam was because Iraq is the way Iraq is — a collection of sects and tribes unable to live together except under an iron fist. Now we’re going to get the answer because both the internal iron fist that held Iraq together (Saddam Hussein) and the external iron fist (the U.S. armed forces) have been removed. Now we will see whether Iraqis can govern themselves in a decent manner that will enable their society to progress — or end up with a new iron fist. You have to hope for the best because so much is riding on it, but the early signs are worrying." Read The New York Times, The End, for Now.

UPDATE II: The end of the road? Read the Washington Post, Iraq war draws to a quiet close and Arc of Iraq war told in images and The New York Times, Ravaged and Remade, Iraq Is on Its Own.

And consider an Iraq what-might-have-been.

UPDATE: As we debate the debt ceiling, it should be asked again, after the all the blood and treasure, was the Iraq war worth the price? Before you decide, read The New York Times, U.S. Report Finds Security Deteriorating in Iraq, which reports:

"Over the past year, security in Iraq has deteriorated and electricity shortages and corruption have continued unabated, according to a report released Saturday by a special inspector appointed by Congress to oversee Iraq’s reconstruction.

The report, released five months before the United States is scheduled to withdraw 47,000 troops from Iraq, paints a bleaker picture of the country’s stability than assessments by diplomatic officials."

As asked before, what good did the can kicking do? Read the Guardian, Fears of al–Qaida return in Iraq as US–backed fighters defect.

After the all the blood and treasure, was it worth the price?

In Case You Missed It, Colbert Recaps the Iowa Caucus

2012-01-06T07:28:00.000-08:00

First, Romney's victory speech as he was moved by the moment, "but Rick Santorum proves that a man with a vision, a willingness to work hard and a laser-like homophobia can make a mark":

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Indecision 2012 - Iowa Caucus - Mitt Romney's Victory Speech & Rick Santorum's Coup

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Then, what goes around comes around, but "Romney denies coordinating with Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney super PAC responsible for a barrage of negative ads against Newt Gingrich":

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Indecision 2012 - Iowa Caucus - Not Mitt Romney's Super PAC

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And for a little context regarding SuperPACs and to understand the irony of Newt's destruction, read The New York Times, Newt’s Shop of Horrors, which noted that:

"There must be a Greek tragedy, a Shakespeare play or a 'Daily Show' parody to explain the exquisite irony of Newt Gingrich being destroyed by the very forces he unleashed — a smack-down that sets up 2012 as the year the moneyed elite learn to use the limitless power granted them by the Supreme Court.

The deflated Newt balloon is pathetic, to use one of his favorite words. There he was, tired and bitter on election night, after getting carpet-bombed by advertisements painting him as a soulless hack tied to Washington like sea rust on the underside of a listing ship.

He complained about 'millionaire consultants' buying every television outlet to 'lie' about him. He whined about getting buried under 'an avalanche of negative ads' that left him 'drowning in negativity.' You get the picture: ugly, sudden death, the very life snuffed out of him by things he could not control.

And yet, of course, what killed Gingrich was in part his own creation, and not just because he himself is a millionaire consultant paid to destroy or inflate on demand. The Frankenstein’s monster emerged from his own shop of horrors.

Gingrich, for the last few years, has been partners in self-promotion with Citizens United, the group that prompted the worst Supreme Court decision of the nascent 21st century, the one that granted 'personhood' rights to corporations and green-lighted them to dominate American elections. More to the point, that 2010 case gave birth to shadowy super PACs that can annihilate a candidate, no holds barred, no responsibility to those pulling the strings.

If you live in Cedar Falls, and didn’t like seeing Iowa nice turned into the scene from 'Fargo' when a victim is ground up in the wood chipper, blame Citizens United, and the Supreme Court majority that Republicans can’t praise enough. Unlimited political filth by anonymous rich groups — this is John Roberts’s America."

Who is the Fixer/Spoiler for the GOP Establishment in 2012?

2012-01-05T08:08:00.000-08:00

UPDATE II: Here are "two [other] hypothetical (and deliberately exaggerated) scenarios on how [and why] Mr. Perry’s decision came about:

Hypothetical Scenario A: Although most of Mr. Perry’s strategists were urging him to drop out of the race, he prayed on the decision, talked it over with his wife, and decided to ignore their advice. There was a strong emotional element to the decision: Mr. Perry felt embarrassed by his performance in Iowa and wanted the opportunity to redeem himself and go out on a better note.

Hypothetical Scenario B: Mr. Perry was prepared to drop out of the race, but his advisers saw a credible path to victory and urged otherwise. Moreover, he received a string of phone calls, text messages and e-mails from major donors, Republican elected officials and conservative activists who expressed their support and told him that he should press on. These party elites were concerned that Mr. Romney was going to waltz to the nomination, and they were either poorly disposed toward Rick Santorum or convinced that Mr. Santorum lacked the resources to seriously challenge Mr. Romney."

Read The New York Times, Perry, Perry, Quite Contrary.

UPDATE: Although Obamney may be the inevitable nominee, he must still vanquish the ironic post-Iowa anti-establishment alliance of Gingrich-Santorum. Read the Washington Post, Romney’s not-a-mandate.

And the Republi-con civil war continues.

In 2008, Romney was generally disliked by the other candidates and not the favored nominee of the Republican establishment.

You may remember that "after his victory in Iowa, Mike Huckabee handed to McCain, who was waiting in New Hampshire, the responsibility of blocking Romney’s path to the Republican nomination." Read the Washington Post, Romney and McCain bury the past.

So after spending about $364 per vote, compared to Santorum, who spent about 73 cents per vote, who is the GOP establishment's fixer/spoiler this year? Read the Washington Post, Rick Perry: 'Here we come, South Carolina!'

HWJRFO

2012-01-04T08:44:00.000-08:00

"[I]n this Christian-leaning nation, there has to be something more politically powerful than the 'odor of mendacity' that has been emanating so strongly from the Iowa Caucuses? . . .

What I think we need is for 78 percent [of Americans who continue to identify themselves as Christians] to step up and say enough! – enough already of all this nattering about whether or not Jesus controls football results! What we as Christian-leaning Americans demand is that all presidential candidates …

1. Ask themselves this one simple question: If Jesus were running for president of the United States, what kind of campaign would He run?

2. Then, that they run that kind of campaigns."

Read the Washington Post, A truly ‘Christian’ candidate?

Eeny Meeny Miny Moe, Which Republi-CON, In Iowa They Still Don't Know

2012-01-04T08:27:00.000-08:00

UPDATE IX: For the record, it now appears that Santorum edged Obamney "in the Iowa caucuses by 34 votes, but can’t be declared the winner because results from eight precincts are missing."

[Note: the post date was not changed for this update.]

UPDATE VIII: An 8-vote victory and from the Washington Post, Eight lessons the Iowa caucuses taught us:

A ties goes to the underdog . . .

Romney is still the favorite . . .

Negative ads work but . . .

Late entrants don’t work . . .

Frontrunners get tested . . .

Ron Paul is like 'Friday Night Lights' . . .

Organization still matters . . .

Republicans are divided . . ."

UPDATE VII: Romney accomplished two most important things in Iowa:

"First, Mr. Romney eliminated Rick Perry from the nomination contest. . .

Mr. Perry was the only candidate other than Mr. Romney to rack up a significant number of endorsements, a key measure of party support. He was the only candidate other than Mr. Romney to raise enough money to run a full 50-state campaign from the start. He had better public-sector credentials than Mr. Romney — the sitting three-term governor of a large state rather than the former one-term governor of a medium-sized state — and his signature accomplishment in office was a strong job-creation record rather than shepherding the passage of a health care bill that is substantively similar to President Obama’s. He had no misgivings about confronting Mr. Romney — something candidates from Tim Pawlenty to Michele Bachmann were strangely reluctant to do. He had a speaking style that seemed to be more in line with the mood of the Republican base. Mr. Perry had a lot going for him, but his campaign appears to be at an end.

Mr. Romney’s second major accomplishment was that he avoided being 'vetoed' by Iowa voters. This is not meant to condemn Mr. Romney with faint praise, although I am sure it will sound like it. Until real votes start rolling in, there is always some chance that a candidate just won’t take well to actual voters, and there were reasons to think that Mr. Romney might have been one of them: he had faded down the stretch in both Iowa and New Hampshire in 2008, and candidates with Mr. Romney’s pedigree have historically underperformed in the Iowa caucuses. When you’re the favorite to become the nominee, eliminating downside scenarios is the name of the game, especially in an unpredictable state like Iowa, and Mr. Romney eliminated some of them on Tuesday night."

Read The New York Times, Winning Ugly, but Winning.

UPDATE VI: Eeny meeny miny moe, it is Obamney by less than a little toe!

"[H]is Iowa showing — finishing just eight votes ahead of former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) — highlighted the big problems that still dog Romney: suspicions about his avowed conservatism, struggles to connect with voters and an inability to rally more Republicans around his candidacy." Read the Washington Post, Romney leaves Iowa with same problems he had in 2008.

UPDATE V: "Predicting the outcome of the Iowa caucuses is challenging enough. Six different Republican candidates — Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney — have led at least one poll of the state at some point in this cycle. A seventh, Rick Santorum, is closing fast in the polls and has a realistic chance to win on Tuesday night.

What may be even more challenging is predicting how the results of the caucuses will reverberate throughout New Hampshire and the other states. As the political scientist Jonathan Bernstein notes, and as my research has found, performance relative to expectations can matter almost as much as the order of finish. The Iowa caucuses are a two-step process: first comes the voting, then comes the spinning."

Read The New York Times, In Iowa, Six Candidates Compete to Beat Expectations, which includes "an attempt to consider how each candidate’s range of possible outcomes might play out in terms of the post-caucus narrative . . . The figures associated with each candidate represent the 90 percent confidence intervals from the FiveThirtyEight forecast model.

Mitt Romney
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 22 percent
High end of forecast range: 32 percent
Low end of forecast range: 12 percent
. . .

Ron Paul
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 21 percent
High end of forecast range: 31 percent
Low end of forecast range: 11 percent
. . .

Rick Santorum
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 19 percent
High end of forecast range: 29 percent
Low end of forecast range: 10 percent
. . .

Newt Gingrich
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 15 percent
High end of forecast range: 24 percent
Low end of forecast range: 7 percent
. . .

Rick Perry
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 10 percent
High end of forecast range: 18 percent
Low end of forecast range: 4 percent
. . .

Michele Bachmann
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 8 percent
High end of forecast range: 15 percent
Low end of forecast range: 2 percent
. . .

Jon M. Huntsman Jr.
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 4 percent
High end of forecast range: 8 percent
Low end of forecast range: 0 percent"

The forecasts "are formulated from an average of recent surveys, with adjustments made to account for a polling firm's accuracy, freshness of a poll and each candidate's momentum. Although this improves accuracy, there is still considerable uncertainty in the forecast as is reflected in the range of possible vote totals for each candidate."

UPDATE IV: As I said in August (gosh I'm good), Republi-cons are searching for the ideal Republican candidate: conservative, interested, and electable. And "[i]n the final days before the Iowa caucuses, many voters who once hoped for [conservative AND electable are] realizing that they may not be able to have it all." Read the Washington Post, Romney and Santorum surge as Iowa caucuses near.

And re-read The New York Times, Pondering Perry’s Electability, which sums it up with a graph that shows Romney just on the outside edge of 'reliably conservative.'

(The graph doesn't show Santorum, who, according to current New York Times' Republican Primary Projections, won't win, place, or show in the early primaries (Iowa, NH, SC, and Florida) except in Iowa.)

UPDATE III: "The first-in-the-nation caucuses are only a few days away! Frankly, people, it will be the first big nonevent of 2012." Read The New York Times, Feel Free to Ignore Iowa.

Except if Ron Paul wins. "A penchant for conspiracy theories has been a constant throughout his political career," and a win would reflect poorly on the party. Read The New Yirk Times, Campaign Stops: Ron Paul’s World.

But "[n]o matter what happens in Iowa, Mitt Romney has a safety net in New Hampshire." Read the Washington Post, New Hampshire looks like Romney’s granite fortress.

As noted two months ago, he's the inevitable nominee.

Then, as also noted two months ago: what goes around comes around.

"[Obama will] have hundreds of millions of dollars, the bully pulpit, Air Force One and high-profile supporters from Warren Buffet to Lady Gaga behind him. But President Obama’s chances of re-election could come down to a single strategic question: To what degree can the history of 2004 be repeated in 2012? . . .

The Obama team, he said, 'wants to make Mitt Romney into the Republican version of John Kerry.'"

UPDATE II: "One more thing to keep in mind with one week to go before Iowa: everyone in the system has strong incentives to exaggerate how volatile the presidential nomination contest is and how uncertain the outcome. Matt Glassman has a timely reminder of that today; he argues that even Mitt Romney may find it in his interest to pretend the race is wide open." Read the Washington Post, Prediction for Iowa: hype.

UPDATE: "Two new surveys show that Republicans are either dissatisfied with the field of candidates or have little commitment toward any one candidate." Read The New York Times, The Caucus: Polls Find G.O.P. Electorate in Flux.

"The contenders for the G.O.P. nomination – seven of them now that Herman Cain self-immolated – have given speeches, schmoozed diners at diners, and run TV ads. They’ve also participated in thousands of debates, which— like last night’s season finale— have amply demonstrated that no one on stage with a remote chance of winning is remotely suited to leading this country. . .

[This article tries is to] sort out the choices based on what Republican caucus goers might be looking for."

Read The New York Times, Beyond Eeny Meeny Miny Moe: Sorting Out the G.O.P. Field.

NoBullU Battle Cry, Time to Refresh Liberty and Siege D.C.!

2012-01-01T08:02:00.000-08:00

This is an urgent battle cry for all NoBullU readers and listeners: Time to unite Tea Party members and Occupy movements to fight corrupt crony capitalism.

The plan is to lay siege to the federal government, a figurative siege that is, of calls, and faxes, and emails, and letters, and demand that the government protect the treasury of our country from further looting.

The next siege will commence on a date in January to be announced, with one volley, at noon EST.

The specific objective is the White House.

The coordinates are:

Address for letters: The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500

Phone Numbers:
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461

Email form: click here.

Tell them that we're not gonna take it and you want the government to protect the treasury.

I'm going to tell them: "Stop crony capitalism! Protect the treasury NOW from further looting."

Prepare for the siege by watching this video:

This is our banner:

Now is time to prepare. Recruit fellow taxpayers, family, and friends.

Check back for further details.

CAUTION: Be careful, and don't do anything stupid.

2011 In Review

2011-12-30T07:57:00.000-08:00

What Government Institution is 3 Times Less Popular than Lawyers?

2011-12-30T07:42:00.000-08:00

See the other 10 "charts that do the best job of explaining the political and economic scene in 2011, at the Washington Post, 2011 in 11 charts.

OMG, Republi-CON Are Ready to Endorse ObamaCare (Again)

2011-12-30T07:27:00.000-08:00

UPDATE II: Listen to Gingrich explain and defend the individual mandate:

Now he and Republi-cons are trying to con you into believing they oppose the individual mandate as a matter of principle. That's why I call them Republi-CONs!

UPDATE: "On Saturday, David Fahrenthold wrote that 'more than a year after Republicans first pledged to ‘repeal and replace’ President Obama’s new health-care law, the GOP is still struggling to answer a basic question. Replace it . . . with what?' . . .

[But 1990-2006, Republi-cons had a health care plan.] The only problem? It was Obamacare."

Read the Washington Post, Newt Gingrich’s health-care problem — and the Republican Party’s.

Maybe that explains their support for the new Wyden-Ryan plan.

It seems one influential Republican is "now on record for the Affordable Care Act model, more generously funded than was his previous plan, with a public option." Read the Washington Post, What Wyden-Ryan hath wrought and Paul Ryan and Ron Wyden want to bring Obamacare to Medicare.

The Myth of Expansionary Austerity

2011-12-30T07:16:00.000-08:00

UPDATE VII: "Look at Britain [or Italy or Spain] to see the tragic effects of a very bad idea." Read The New York Times, The Austerity Debacle.

UPDATE VI: "Once again, when politicians and policy makers decided to focus on deficits, not jobs, they proved Keynes right about a slump being the wrong time for austerity. " Read The New York Times, Keynes Was Right.

UPDATE V: From The New York Times, The Hijacked Crisis:

[The markets are] "signaling, as clearly as anyone could ask, that unemployment rather than deficits is our biggest problem. Bear in mind that deficit hawks have been warning for years that interest rates on U.S. government debt would soar any day now; the threat from the bond market was supposed to be the reason that we must slash the deficit now now now. But that threat keeps not materializing. And, this week, on the heels of a downgrade that was supposed to scare bond investors, those interest rates actually plunged to record lows.

What the market was saying — almost shouting — was, 'We’re not worried about the deficit! We’re worried about the weak economy!' For a weak economy means both low interest rates and a lack of business opportunities, which, in turn, means that government bonds become an attractive investment even at very low yields. If the downgrade of U.S. debt had any effect at all, it was to reinforce fears of austerity policies that will make the economy even weaker.

So how did Washington discourse come to be dominated by the wrong issue?

Hard-line Republicans have, of course, played a role. Although they don’t seem to truly care about deficits — try suggesting any rise in taxes on the rich — they have found harping on deficits a useful way to attack government programs.

But our discourse wouldn’t have gone so far off-track if other influential people hadn’t been eager to change the subject away from jobs, even in the face of 9 percent unemployment, and to hijack the crisis on behalf of their pre-existing agendas."

UPDATE IV: We are in a 'Great Contraction,' and problem No. 1 is too much debt.

"Until we find ways to restructure and forgive some of these debts from consumers, firms, banks and governments, spending to drive growth is not going to come back at the scale we need.

Our challenge now, therefore, is to deleverage the economy as fast as possible, while, at the same time, getting back to investing as much as possible in our real pillars of growth so our recovery is built on sustainable businesses and real jobs and not just on another round of credit injections"

Read The New York Times, Win Together or Lose Together, which quotes:

"Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard, who argued in an essay last week for Project Syndicate that we are not in a Great Recession but in a Great (Credit) Contraction: 'Why is everyone still referring to the recent financial crisis as the ‘Great Recession?' ' asked Rogoff. 'The phrase ‘Great Recession’ creates the impression that the economy is following the contours of a typical recession, only more severe — something like a really bad cold. ... But the real problem is that the global economy is badly overleveraged, and there is no quick escape without a scheme to transfer wealth from creditors to debtors, either through defaults, financial repression, or inflation.'

Re-read 'The Great Stagnation' about our broken political system.

UPDATE II: We are not suffering through a normal "business-cycle recession, in which the drop is quick, and the recovery is usually similarly swift. That is not what we’re in. That is not what financial crises are. And mistaking one for the other has, in his opinion, cost us a fortune.

Financial crises are not about the business cycle falling out of whack. They’re about debt. Lots of it. And that’s why they’re so resistant to efforts to speed a recovery. Whereas you normally get out of a recession by lowering interest rates and persuading consumers to spend, the period after a financial crisis is marked by consumers trying to dig out from under a mountain of borrowed money. You can accelerate that process, but it’s hard to do. But first you must correctly diagnose the problem. . .

'Debt de-leveraging takes about seven years. That’s the essence,' [Carmen Reinhart, now of the Peterson Institute for International Economics] says. 'And in the decade following severe financial crises, you tend to grow by 1 to 1.5 percentage points less than in the decade before, because the decade before was fueled by a boom in private borrowing, and not all of that growth was real. The unemployment figures in advanced economies after falls are also very dark. Unemployment remains anchored about five percentage points above what it was in the decade before.'"

Read the Washington Post, Double dip, or just one big economic dive?

But whether it is a Republi-con double-dip recession or not, there is no argument that Republi-cons want Obama to fail, the American economy is just acceptable collateral damage to achieve that goal.

UPDATE: As I first stated in 2008, the economy is deleveraging. From The New York Times, We’re Spent:

"We are feeling the deferred pain from 25 years of excess, as people try to rebuild their depleted savings. This pattern is a classic one. The definitive book about financial crises has become 'This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly,' published in 2009 with exquisite timing, by Carmen M. Reinhart, now of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and Kenneth S. Rogoff, of Harvard.

Surveying hundreds of years of crises around the world, Ms. Reinhart and Mr. Rogoff conclude that debt is the primary cause and that the aftermath is 'deep and prolonged,' with 'profound declines in output and employment.' On average, a modern financial crisis has caused the unemployment rate to rise for more than four years and by 7 percentage points. (We’re now at almost four years and 5 percentage points.) The recovery takes many years more."

And the article warns of the risk of austerity measures now:

"The easy thing now might be to proclaim that debt is evil and ask everyone — consumers, the federal government, state governments — to get thrifty. The pithiest version of that strategy comes from Andrew W. Mellon, the Treasury secretary when the Depression began: 'Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,' Mellon said, according to his boss, President Herbert Hoover. 'It will purge the rottenness out of the system.'

History, however, has a different verdict. If governments stop spending at the same time that consumers do, the economy can enter a vicious cycle, as it did in Hoover’s day."

Of course, Republi-cons don't want an economic recovery just yet, even if unemployment remains high. It doesn't benefit their plans for the 2012 election, just as Bush couldn't admit the Iraq strategy failure until after the 2006 elections, even as soldiers died.

Another warning about the myth of expansionary austerity.

"The Irish, British and, soon, Greeks have bought into a misguided belief in austerity — that they can somehow cut their way to growth. In the United States, we have seen states and municipalities slashing head counts of teachers, cops and firemen. The “paradox of thrift” has morphed into a misguided economics of austerity. Hence, even when the private sector manages to create some jobs, its offset by public-sector job cuts." Read the Washington Post, Wall Street analysts and economists have this recession recovery wrong, which notes the economic downturn was caused by a credit-crisis, not an ordinary run-of-the-mill recession, "far rarer, more protracted and much more painful [and] different from other cycles" and bubbles.

How About Maverick @ NoBullU.com for President

2011-12-29T07:51:00.000-08:00

"For all the roller-coaster tumultuousness of the primary season, the general election promises another strange jolt: the likely presence on the ballot in all 50 states of a third-party nominee — identity, and ideology, to be determined.

This political wild card for the Internet age is Americans Elect, which just secured a spot in California, meaning it has now qualified for the ballot in 13 states and collected signatures in the 17 others that allow signature-gathering the year before the election."

Read the Washington Post, Americans Elect: A wild card for the Internet age.

If nominated, I'll ask Sarah to be my running mate.

What Happens to Unspend Money?

2011-12-29T07:27:00.000-08:00

"Over at the Wall Street Journal, Phil Izzo reports that some $41 billion worth of gift cards have gone unused since 2005. So what, exactly, happens to that money? After all, retailers aren’t allowed to report the cash used to buy gift cards as income until the cards are actually redeemed. So there’s a murky area that arises when a gift card just gathers dust in a drawer for years, lost and forgotten." Read the Washington Post, How your Best Buy gift card ends up in New York’s bank account.

Local School Makes the National News for Teaching Religion

2011-12-28T07:38:00.000-08:00

"Despite Supreme Court rulings in 1962 and ’63, open prayer and Christian symbols have never really disappeared from some schools." Read The New York Times, Battling Anew Over the Place of Religion in Public School, which mentions the ACLU court case regarding "Pace High School near Pensacola, Fla. [where] teachers cited the Bible as fact in class and one teacher preached to students with a bullhorn as they arrived at school."

Holiday Lights

2011-12-25T10:26:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays!

Amazing Grace Techno.

Double click to see the video in full screen mode. Watch other videos at Holdman Christmas.

Redneck Santa

2011-12-25T08:23:00.000-08:00

A holiday favorite:

What more can I say.

Best Decorated House?

2011-12-25T08:22:00.000-08:00

A holiday favorite:

Once again, I was disqualified from my neighborhood's "Best Decorated House." They said I had a bad attitude!

What do you think?

What If Jesus Was Born Today

2011-12-25T08:13:00.000-08:00

Watch a what if -- the story of the Nativity in the time of the web, social media, and mobile phones:

The Christmas Can-Can (Animated Version)

2011-12-25T08:02:00.000-08:00

By Straight No Chaser:

'Twas the Night Before Christmas by Jeff Dunham

2011-12-25T07:50:00.000-08:00

Season's Greetings from Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special:

Why Santa Didn't Answer Your Letter

2011-12-25T07:17:00.000-08:00

Not for the young:

A Very TSA Christmas

2011-12-25T06:55:00.000-08:00

Suggested by Mom & Pop Tammy, who said "[f]unny but sad because there's some truth to this," Grandma Got Indefinitely Detained:

Just in Time for Christmas

2011-12-25T06:37:00.000-08:00

UPDATE II: FYI, before you buy me one of the gifts below, you should know that a "gift’s price matters more to the giver than to the recipient, and people like getting cash or something on their gift registry more than a surprise gift."

Read The New York Times, In Pursuit of the Perfect Gift? It’s a Lot Closer Than You Think.

UPDATE: Of course, there is also "a $420,000 tour of European flower shows on a private jet and waysa $250,000 handcrafted mahogany speedboat." Or even a $1 million home fountain. See the Washington Post, Get your $1 million dancing fountain! Neiman Marcus unveils latest extravagant Christmas ideas.

Get me "the 2012 Ferrari FF . . . priced at $395,000, [it] jumps from 0 to 60 in less than 3.7 seconds and reaches top speeds of over 200 mph."

"Kohler’s Numi toilet comes with a heated seat, music, a lid that automatically raises and lowers, a remote control and more, all for $6,400." Read The New York Times, Bells and Whistles Descend Upon the Throne.

Animals of YouTube Sing "Deck the Halls"

2011-12-24T12:42:00.000-08:00

The Republi-CON Zombie Myth That the Government Forced the Banks to Make Bad Loans

2011-12-23T07:15:00.000-08:00

UPDATE II: How does the Big Lie, "that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started the housing crisis," work? Read The New York Times, The Big Lie.

UPDATE: The 'Big Truth' is that the financial crisi was caused when "Congress allowed Wall Street to self-regulate, and the Fed the turned a blind eye to bank abuses." Read the Washington Post, What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral.

Those Republi-con zombie myths live on. But it is not true that the government forced banks to make bad loans. The vast majority of subprime loans were made by independent lenders not covered by government banking regulations. Read:

Businessweek, Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with subprime crisis,

New America Foundation, It's Still Not CRA,

Economist’s View, Yet Again, It Wasn't the Community Reinvestment Act. . .,

The American Prospect, Did Liberals Cause the Sub-Prime Crisis? (Conservatives blame the housing crisis on a 1977 law that helps-low income people get mortgages. It's a useful story for them, but it isn't true.), and

Rortybomb, Bloomberg’s Awful Comment; What Can We Say For Certain Regarding the GSEs?, which notes:

Highly respected analysts who have looked at these data in much greater detail than Wallison, Pinto, or myself, including the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission majority, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and virtually all academics, including the University of North Carolina, Glaeser et al at Harvard, and the St. Louis Federal Reserve, have all rejected the Wallison/Pinto argument that federal affordable housing policies were responsible for the proliferation of actual high-risk mortgages over the past decade.

You might also re-read earlier posts regarding this old but tired Republi-con myth:

More Proof That Republi-cons are at Fault for the Economic Mess,

Republi-Con Myth Busters, and

Problem, Causes and Professor NoBull's Solution for the Economic Mess.

Finally Got the Tree Up!

2011-12-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

How Does Santa Know?

2011-12-22T08:18:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Mom & Pop Tammy, from the Facebook page of Young Americans for Liberty:

Class Today at NoBullU on WEBY, Special Holiday Edition

2011-12-22T08:10:00.000-08:00

Local Business/Event Shout-Out: TBD;

Follow-up: see below;

Fact-free fantasies of the shrieking hatemongers of right-wing rhetoric and partisan hackery: all part of the fundamentalist subculture of ignorance that embraces 'discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas'

And America's preference for rhetorical fairy tales to unpleasant realities

One was gays in the military, funny thing, the world's still turning, not even a hurricane, earthquake or an oil well

Speaking of gays in the military, on December 21, 2011, a "Navy tradition caught up with the repeal of the U.S. military's 'don't ask, don't tell' rule . . . when two women sailors became the first to share the coveted 'first kiss' on the pier after one of them returned from 80 days at sea." Read the Washington Post, Two women kiss at Navy ship's return

And don't be duped by the Birthers, including our very own Pastor Dred Scott (you may remember the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which asserted that African Americans were "beings of an inferior order" who "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." That ruling declared that African Americans could never be U.S. citizens and therefore could never be President),

See The Fogbow, "your best resource for debunking the lies of the 'birther' movement and discussing the birther antics" and WhatsYourEvidence.com, there is even a Birther Case Scorecard, 0-80 for the birthers;

Local and regional: TBD;

National and international: I'm waiting, where's the balanced budget, don't hold you breath because the Republi-CONs Con the Tea Party, there'll be no $100 billion budget cut, and let's admit the obvious, the Republi-CONs are not serious about deficits, and who's responsible for the debt

To balance the budget, do nothing

One way to reduce the deficit

Still no sign of those 'invisible [Republi-CON] bond vigilantes'

Did Obama con the Republi-CONs?

The Republi-CON zombie myth that the government forced the banks to make bad loans

The myth of expansionary austerity

Pity the 1%, they control only 43% of the country's wealth

Republi-CONs in their Delusion-land

The Great Stagnation' and our broken political system

Happy Shopmas!

Did you know, polyester is a sin

And the Republi-CON race cont., to find America’s Not-Mitt

Eeny meeny miny moe, which Republi-CON, in Iowa they still don't know

Still searching for the ideal Republican candidate: conservative, interested, electable

Iowan Republi-Con religious conservative hypocrisy

Cain isn't able, except maybe to grope

Gingrich the Republi-CON, Gingrich is soft on crime, Gingrich supports child labor, Newtenstein, What goes around comes around

Obama in 2012?, Lookin better for Obama all the time

Déjà vu all over again, what to expect if it is Obama v. Romney

Save Us, Sarah, Save Us!

Health Care Lawsuit Update

After reading two of the appellate opinions, it doesn't look good for the Republi-CONs

OMG, Republi-CON are ready to endorse ObamaCare

Republi-CON 'it's not Judicial activism, it's judicial engagement' hypocrisy

Does Palin have a point about the corrupt crony capitalism

Corrupt crony capitalism and Congress

and

Is the can at the end of the road?, an update and was it worth it

The myth of voter fraud

Watch Hedgehog News, be dumber than the dumb

Fun stuff: Just in time for Christmas,

'Twas the Night Before Christmas with Peanut and Jeff Dunham

A Very TSA Christmas

Now why didn't we think of this: urine-controlled video games

and

Donate to a good cause: TBD.

Ron Paul's Not-So-Wacky Foreign Policy

2011-12-22T08:03:00.000-08:00

So, you'd vote for Ron Paul if it weren't for his wacky foreign policy? Mom & Pop Tammy suggests that you watch:

Happy Shopmas!

2011-12-21T08:12:00.000-08:00

UPDATE III: You might also read the Pensacola News Journal, Advent Conspiracy reinvents Christmas, Movement encourages people to spend less on gifts and work to help others.

UPDATE II: "As I was reading 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas!' with my kids, I couldn’t help but marvel that the book (and the animated television special) endures as a holiday favorite, even as its core anticonsumerism message goes completely ignored.

Consider these lines, describing the Grinch’s reaction after those darn Whos join hands and celebrate in Who-ville, even after he has robbed them of their Yuletide baubles and Roast Beast:

'Maybe Christmas,' he thought, 'doesn’t come from a store.'

'Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!'"

Read The New York Times, The Movement Toward a 'Buy Nothing' Christmas.

UPDATE: A repost:

Those defending Christmas are not being true to their traditions and teachings. "There are no Christmas dinners in the Bible, which is why America’s Puritans, strict adherents of what that venerated text offers, never sat down by the raging fire awaiting St. Nick; indeed, they briefly banned Christmas in Massachusetts. Yule as we celebrate it today owes more to Charles Dickens than to Thomas Aquinas. . . Christmas is a product not of Nazareth but of Madison Avenue." Read The New York, Faith and Modernity.

Save Us, Sarah, Save Us!

2011-12-21T08:03:00.000-08:00

UPDATE III: After more than a year, an update. "Will she run, or won't she. She just doesn't know, you know?? Read The New York Times, Chasing Sarah Palin.

All kidding aside, if she promised not be to "thin-skinned" and "vindictive", I'd vote for her.

UPDATE II: "Sarah Palin’s amateurism and liabilities are her badges of honor, and Republican leaders who want to stop her, and they are legion, are utterly baffled about how to do so." Read The New York Times, Could She Reach the Top in 2012? You Betcha.

UPDATE: Not everyone is ready to be saved, especially not a former Bush chief speechwriter and senior policy advisor. Read the Washington Post, Palin's erratic behavior mars 2010 elections.

He thinks Plain is "increasingly indifferent to Republican fortunes and increasingly tolerant of disturbing extremism."

I'm guessin he didn't get a Mama Grizzly Endorsement.

Will Republi-cons be able to put the Palin genie back in the box (actually a large jar)?

"If there's nobody else to do it, then of course I would believe that we should do this." -- from Entertainment Tonight, Sarah Palin: I will Run for President in 2012 If There's Nobody Else To Do It.

Can you say 'messiah complex'.

Now Why Didn't We Think of This: Urine-Controlled Video Games

2011-12-19T07:54:00.000-08:00

"Going to the loo has never been more fun, after the world's first urine-controlled video game is installed in a London bar:"

Newtenstein

2011-12-19T07:23:00.000-08:00

"Many politicians are full of themselves. Gingrich is overstuffed." Read The New York Times, Self-Adoration Reaches Newt Heights.

But not everyone is so full of Newt.

"Some Republicans are going public with their worry that Newt Gingrich would be a weak general election candidate and a drag on the party’s fortunes." Read The New York Times, As Gingrich’s Star Rises, So Do His Party’s Concerns.

The Republi-con establishment has no one to blame but itself.

"It is one of the true delights of a bizarrely entertaining Republican presidential contest to watch the apoplectic fear and loathing of so many GOP establishmentarians toward Newt Gingrich. They treat him as an alien body whose approach to politics they have always rejected.

In fact, Gingrich’s rise is the revenge of a Republican base that takes seriously the intense hostility to President Obama, the incendiary accusations against liberals and the Manichaean division of the world between an “us” and a “them” that his party has been peddling in the interest of electoral success.

The right-wing faithful knows Gingrich pioneered this style of politics, and they laugh at efforts to cast the former House speaker as something other than a “true conservative.” They know better.

The establishment was happy to use Gingrich’s tactics to win elections, but it never expected to lose control of the party to the voters it rallied with such grandiose negativity. Now, the joke is on those who manipulated the base. The base is striking back, and Newt is their weapon."

Read the Washington Post, Newt Gingrich and the revenge of the base.

Iowan Republi-Con Religious Conservative Hypocrisy

2011-12-16T08:15:00.000-08:00

UPDATE III: The winners after last night's debate: "Romney (who might have revived his frontrunner status) and Bachmann. And the rest of us, who don’t have to wade through any more debates [Republi-CON lies] — until 2012." [The tautology, Republi-CON lies, added by editor.] Read the Washington Post, Romney wins, Gingrich and Paul falter in Sioux City and Fact checking the Fox News debate in Iowa.

UPDATE II: Tonight's the night, the sweet sixteen of the Republi-con debate-a-thon, the last debate before the Iowa caucuses. Read The New York Times, Final Debate of 2011 Poses Danger for Hopefuls and the Washington Post, GOP debates, both interesting and important, score in TV ratings.

UPDATE: Speaking of Iowa, "[t]he race for the Republican nomination may be coming down to Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, but in the contest for the Iowa caucuses, their high-profile battle might still turn out to be a sideshow. The national party has spent the last two weeks resigning itself to a choice between the former speaker and the former Massachusetts governor. But Iowa Republicans may end up choosing between Gingrich and Representative Ron Paul. . .

Should Iowa really come down to Paul versus Gingrich, the clash will make for a fascinating contrast. Physically, neither man resembles a classic presidential candidate (especially compared to Romney and Perry) but for completely different reasons. Paul is all bone and sinew and nervous energy – an Ichabod Crane or a Jack Sprat, hunched and herky-jerky in too-large suits. Gingrich is broad and self-assured and faintly decadent, with a Cheshire Cat’s face and a body that looks like it’s ready for its toga.

Neither man talks like a typical presidential candidate, either: They’re more verbose, less sound bite-ridden, more digressive and less embarrassed about displaying erudition. But again, their specific rhetorical styles are worlds apart. It’s useful to imagine both of them as the kind of eccentric uncle who talks your ear off at a Christmas party. Uncle Newt has an easygoing and expansive mien, the latest gadget on his belt, and a remarkably persuasive five-point case for why you should invest in his new business venture. Uncle Ron just wants to hector you about the evils of the Trilateral Commission.

Most important, they represent two very different endpoints for the Tea Party movement. Paul, for all his crankishness, is the kind of conservative that Tea Partiers want to believe themselves to be: Deeply principled, impressively consistent, a foe of big government in nearly all its forms (the Department of Defense very much included), a man of ideas rather than of party.

Gingrich, on the other hand, is the kind of conservative that liberals believe most Tea Partiers to be – not a genuine “don’t tread on me” libertarian, but a partisan Republican whose unstinting support for George W. Bush’s deficit spending morphed into hand-wringing horror of “socialism” once a Democrat captured the Oval Office."

Read The New York Times, Ron Paul Rising.

"The latest polls show a surging Newt Gingrich winning substantial support among white evangelical voters, the key voting bloc in the upcoming Iowa Caucuses. Those same voters, who comprise the core of the religious right movement, powered former minister Mike Huckabee to a Corn State upset in 2008. Huckabee’s decision to not run this election cycle created an opening for the rest of the GOP field to now court their support.

Yet Gingrich may seem unlikely as their choice for leader.

The thrice-married Gingrich has acknowledged infidelities and other personal failings, and a recent Public Religion Research poll finds religious conservatives in overwhelming agreement that marital infidelity is a disqualifier for public office. . .

[But] Gingrich's checkered past, along with his failure to build a grassroots organization, defies the conventional wisdom about how to win Iowa. But this year, religious conservatives everywhere appear to be looking for a different kind of faith: They want a conservative GOP leader whose message makes them believe that he can make Obama a one-term president."

Read the Washington Post, Newt Gingrich and religious conservatives: A marriage of convenience.

Gingrich is Soft on Crime

2011-12-16T07:46:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Maybe the title of the post should be Gingrich the hypocrite. Read Sentencing Law and Policy, "Newt Gingrich A Hypocrite For Supporting Death Penalty For Marijuana Smugglers, Gary Johnson Says".

But he is a Republi-CON so you should already know that he is a hypocrite.

The Tea Party has failed the test of 'limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility,' but they may finally have a soft on crime candidate. Read Sentencing Law and Policy, When might media (or GOP opponents) discuss Newt Gingrich's "Right on Crime" positions?

Be Very Very Afraid of 'The Invisible [Republi-CON] Bond Vigilantes'

2011-12-16T07:41:00.000-08:00

UPDATE XI: "When it comes to views on economics, Republicans have been consistent, clear and wrong." Read The New York Times, G.O.P. Monetary Madness, which notes "that hard-money doctrine and paranoia about inflation have taken over the party, even as the predicted inflation keeps failing to materialize. For example, in February, Representative Paul Ryan, who is somewhat inexplicably regarded as the party’s deep thinker on matters economic, harangued Mr. Bernanke on how terrible it is to “debase” a currency and pointed to a rise in commodity prices in late 2010 and early 2011 as evidence that inflation was finally coming. Commodity prices have plunged since then, but there is no sign that Mr. Ryan or anyone else is having second thoughts."

UPDATE X: How about those invisible Republi-CON bond vigilantes. Read the Washington Post, Average rate on 30-year fixed mortgage ties low of 3.94 pct.; 15-year also hits record.

UPDATE IX: For all the anti-Keynesian folks out there, please explain:

UPDATE VIII: A told ya so by the 2008 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, in The New York Times, One Point Seven Seven:

"That’s the current interest rate on 10-year US bonds.

Remember, back in 2009 there was a big debate between people like me, who said that we were in a liquidity trap and that interest rates would stay low as long as the economy was depressed, and people like the WSJ editorial page and Niall Ferguson, who said that government borrowing would bring on the bond vigilantes and send rates soaring.

How’s it going?

And just to be clear: this isn’t just about I-told-you-so. We’re talking about different models, different visions of how the economy works. Their vision led to calls for austerity now now now; mine said that the overwhelming danger was that we wouldn’t provide enough stimulus, and that we would pull back too soon. Sure enough, we didn’t and we did. And now catastrophe looms."
Republi-cons continue to sacrifice workers to appease their imaginary inflation gods.

UPDATE VII: It has been several weeks since the so-called downgrade. So how are those bond vigilantes doing? Read The New York Times, Mortgage Rates Hit 50-Year Low.

UPDATE VI: "Fitch Ratings said Tuesday it will keep its rating on U.S. debt at the highest grade, AAA, and issued a 'stable' outlook, meaning it expects the rating to stay there." Read The New York Times, Fitch Ratings Keeps U.S. at Top Credit Rating.

UPDATE V: "Thirty years ago, it became clear that defeating inflation was crucial, even if the means needed to accomplish that would cause a deep recession. . . . [But i]t is time for a new lesson to be learned. Sometimes we need inflation, and now is such a time. " Read The New York Times, Sometimes, Inflation Is Not Evil.

UPDATE IV: "Behold the power of a stupid narrative, which seems impervious to evidence." Read The New York Times, The Downgrade Doom Loop.

UPDATE III: More from that 'liberal' commentator won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics:

"[T]here is no reason to take Friday's downgrade of America seriously. These are the last people whose judgment we should trust.

And yet America does have big problems.

These problems have very little to do with short-term or even medium-term budget arithmetic. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its current deficit. It's true that we're building up debt, on which we'll eventually have to pay interest. But if you actually do the math, instead of intoning big numbers in your best Dr. Evil voice, you discover that even very large deficits over the next few years will have remarkably little impact on U.S. fiscal sustainability.

No, what makes America look unreliable isn't budget math, it's politics. And please, let's not have the usual declarations that both sides are at fault. Our problems are almost entirely one-sided - specifically, they're caused by the rise of an extremist right that is prepared to create repeated crises rather than give an inch on its demands.

The truth is that as far as the straight economics goes, America’s long-run fiscal problems shouldn’t be all that hard to fix. It’s true that an aging population and rising health care costs will, under current policies, push spending up faster than tax receipts. But the United States has far higher health costs than any other advanced country, and very low taxes by international standards. If we could move even part way toward international norms on both these fronts, our budget problems would be solved.

So why can’t we do that? Because we have a powerful political movement in this country that screamed “death panels” in the face of modest efforts to use Medicare funds more effectively, and preferred to risk financial catastrophe rather than agree to even a penny in additional revenues.

The real question facing America, even in purely fiscal terms, isn’t whether we’ll trim a trillion here or a trillion there from deficits. It is whether the extremists now blocking any kind of responsible policy can be defeated and marginalized. "

Read The New York Times, Credibility, Chutzpah And Debt.

UPDATE II: "Virtually unnoticed last week was that [another ratings agency] kept a Triple A rating on the United States." Read The New York Times, Moody’s: Why the U.S. Is Still AAA.

UPDATE: So much for the inflation fear-mongers.

Today the Bank of New York began charging a fee on large deposits. Read the Wall Street Journal, BNY Mellon Deposit Fee: Life in the Liquidity Trap.

BTW, a liquidity trap, "in Keynesian economics, is a situation where monetary policy is unable to stimulate an economy, either through lowering interest rates or increasing the money supply. Liquidity traps typically occur when expectations of adverse events (e.g., deflation, insufficient aggregate demand, or civil or international war) make persons with liquid assets unwilling to invest."

I guess John Maynard Keynes was right after all.

Of course, one 'liberal' commentator has been scoffing at inflation concerns for years.

From more than two years ago, read The New York Times, The Big Inflation Scare, where he speculates that "inflation fear-mongering [was] partly political, coming largely from economists who had no problem with deficits caused by tax cuts but suddenly became fiscal scolds when the government started spending money to rescue the economy. And their goal [seemed] to be to bully the Obama administration into abandoning those rescue efforts."

I guess that's why that 'liberal' commentator won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.

I wonder what the Hedgehog News prize winning economist would says now.

(Warning, that is a satirical comment.

Hedgehog News doesn't have any prize winning economist on the payroll.

But Hedgehog News does have many Republi-con candidates on the payroll.)

"S&P has triggered another invisible attack by the invisible bond vigilantes." Read The New York Times, What If They Announced A Downgrade And Nobody Cared?

BTW, a bond vigilante "is a bond market investor who protests monetary or fiscal policies they consider inflationary by selling bonds, thus increasing yields."

If you don't understand this post, you should refrain from debating fiscal policy issues.

The Republi-CON 'We're Against the Redistribution of Income' Myth

2011-12-15T07:24:00.000-08:00

"We take billions from high-income blue states like New York and California, and ship them via federal benefits and subsidies for farming and oil to poor red states like Alabama and Oklahoma. We do this even though the recipient states mostly vote Republican and moan endlessly about getting Uncle Sam off their backs.

We give a hefty housing subsidy via the mortgage-interest deduction to Bill Gates — while Gates’s maid, assuming she rents, gets no housing subsidy at all.

Then there’s Medicare’s secret. Few people realize that Medicare spends wildly different amounts per senior depending on where the senior happens to live. The most famous example, from research by John Wennberg, found that Medicare spends 2.5 times more per senior in Miami than in Minneapolis (even after adjusting for regional differences in input costs, such as for office rents). Yet there’s no difference in quality or health outcomes associated with this extra spending.

In other words, Medicare redistributes billions from regions where doctors practice cost effectively to regions where the local Medical Industrial Complex pads its income with excess services and procedures. . .

When Paul O’Neill was Treasury secretary under George W. Bush I asked him about all this. 'If we want to have a conversation about equities, then we ought to have a complete conversation,' O’Neill told me. 'It should not be about health care. It shouldn’t be about education. It should be a broader conversation about how much resources should be provided from those who have something to those who have less or nothing.

'That’s the clean conversation,' he added. 'It’s about purchasing power for the things one needs to lead a decent and civil life. That’s the question.'

That’s my kind of Republican. But I’d bet a million bucks that today’s GOP wouldn’t agree to a Lincoln-Douglas debate on this question. The president ought to challenge them to one and see."

Read the Washington Post, Real Americans redistribute: The payroll tax debate’s dirty secret.

Never Forget to 'Think Outside of the Box'

2011-12-15T06:43:00.000-08:00

From an email:

You are driving down the road in your car on a wild, stormy night, when you pass by a bus stop and you see three people waiting for the bus:

1. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.

2. An old friend who once saved your life.

3. The perfect partner you have been dreaming about.

What would you do, knowing that there could only be one passenger in your car? Think before you continue reading.

This is a moral/ethical dilemma that was allegedly once actually used as part of a job application. You could pick up the old lady, because she is going to die, and thus you should save her first. Or you could take the old friend because he once saved your life, and this would be the perfect chance to pay him back. However, you may never be able to find your perfect mate again.

The candidate who was hired (out of 200 applicants) had no trouble coming up with his answer.

For his answer, see the comments.

Oxymorons

2011-12-14T07:34:00.000-08:00

An oxymoron is a "a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect."

From an email:

1. Is it good if a vacuum really sucks?

2. Why is the third hand On the watch Called the second hand?

3. If a word is misspelled In the dictionary, How would we ever know?

4. If Webster wrote the first dictionary, Where did he find the words?

5. Why do we say something is out of whack? What is a whack?

6. Why does "slow down" and "slow up" mean the same thing?

7.. Why does "fat chance" and "slim chance" Mean the same thing?

8. Why do "tug" boats push their barges?

9. Why do we sing "Take me out to the ball game" When we are already there?

10. Why are they called " stands" When they are made for sitting?

11. Why is it called "after dark" When it really is "after light"?

12.. Doesn't "expecting the unexpected" Make the unexpected expected?

13.. Why are a "wise man" and A "wise guy" opposites?

14. Why do "overlook" and "oversee" Mean opposite things?

15. Why is "phonics" Not spelled The way it sounds?

16. If work is so terrific, Why do they have to pay you to do it?

17. If all the world is a stage, Where is the audience sitting?

18. If love is blind, Why is lingerie so popular?

19. If you are cross-eyed And have dyslexia, Can you read all right?

20. Why is bra singular And panties plural?

21.. Why do you press harder On the buttons of a remote control When you know the batteries are dead?

22. Why do we put suits in garment bags And garments in a suitcase?

23. How come abbreviated Is such a long word?

24. Why do we wash bath towels? Aren't we clean when we use them?

25.. Why doesn't glue Stick to the inside of the bottle?

26. Why do they call it a TV set When you only have one?

27. Christmas - What other time of the year Do you sit in front of a dead tree And eat candy out of your socks?

28. Why do we drive on a parkway And park on a driveway?

The Republi-CON 'Taxes and Regulations Are Killing Business' Myth

2011-12-13T07:40:00.000-08:00

UPDATE X: Some much for that Republi-con myth.

"[T]he net percentage of companies that say they have already increased their employment in the last three months — that is, the percent saying they increased their staff minus the percent saying they decreased it — was positive for the first time in nearly four years."

Read The New York Times, Small Businesses Plan to Increase Hiring.

UPDATE IX: You "may not like President Obama’s regulations, but they are not stealing jobs or crushing our economy." Read The New York Times, The Wonky Liberal.

UPDATE VIII: "For the last nine years, the World Bank has been grading countries on 10 measures of business regulation: getting electricity, enforcing contracts, protecting investors, dealing with construction permits, trading across borders, registering property, resolving insolvency, paying taxes, getting credit and starting a business.

Based on these criteria . . . The United States comes in fourth."

Read The New York Times, Is Overregulation Driving U.S. Companies Offshore?

UPDATE VII: Another brilliant take-down by Colbert, this time the Republi-con myth regarding "the EPA's job-murdering environmental regulations." Watch the Colbert Report, Indecision 2012 - Job-Killing EPA:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

But if you think life is so much better in other countries, Colbert notes that in China, "thanks to mercury poisoning and factory suicides, positions are opening up all the time."

UPDATE VI: "If people are willing to do a job, no matter how dangerous, pointless or dehumanizing, the government has no business stopping them." Watch The Colbert Report, Look out for the Little Guy, which notes the efforts by Florida Republi-con Ritch Workman to repeal 'job-killing' laws against dwarf tossing:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Why not allow baby-juggling also?

What a fine society we will have when Republi-cons next rule.

UPDATE V: "[R]egulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community year in and year out. In other words, it is a simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment." Read The New York Times, Misrepresentations, Regulations and Jobs, which references several surveys and includes this table:

UPDATE IV: "[C]oncerns over sales, rather than concerns over regulations or taxes, are what have really changed in recent years" Read the Washington Post, Regulations aren’t to blame for the 'uncovery', which references Economic Policy Institute, Regulatory uncertainty: A phony explanation for our jobs problem.

UPDATE III: "Despite what Republican presidential candidates are saying, regulation and taxes are not responsible for America’s weak job growth." Read The New York Times, Phony Fear Factor.

UPDATE II: For more on taxes, regulations and the Republi-con "confidence fairy's effect on the American economy," watch The Colbert Report, Barack Obama's American Jobs Act - Paul Krugman:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

UPDATE: Imagine a world without government regulation, where businesses invite more foreign 'guest workers' to take American jobs for piece-rate wages.

No need to imagine, businesses are allowed to do so now.

Read The New York Times, La. Business Owners Sue Over New Rules for Guest Workers.

"Politicians and business groups often blame excessive regulation and fear of higher taxes for tepid hiring in the economy. However, little evidence of that emerged when McClatchy canvassed a random sample of small business owners across the nation.

'Government regulations are not 'choking' our business, the hospitality business,' Bernard Wolfson, the president of Hospitality Operations in Miami, told The Miami Herald. 'In order to do business in today's environment, government regulations are necessary and we must deal with them. The health and safety of our guests depend on regulations. It is the government regulations that help keep things in order.'"

Read McClatchy Newspapers, Regulations, taxes aren't killing small business, owners say.

As discussed in the past, Republi-CON zombie ideas live on.

So many lies, so little time to refudiate.

The Republi-CON Wealthy 'Job Creators' Myth

2011-12-12T07:46:00.000-08:00

"In getting to the truth about those wealthy 'job creators' the Republicans aim to protect, the ’80s film 'Wall Street' seems more relevant than ever." Read The New York Times, All the G.O.P.’s Gekkos.

Did You Know, Polyester is a Sin

2011-12-09T08:28:00.000-08:00

I didn't know that.

Read Leviticus 19:19.

I learned that at Time, Top 10 Protest Signs, Silent Bob Strikes Back.

What Goes Around Comes Around

2011-12-09T07:56:00.000-08:00

"Kevin Drum of Mother Jones recently dug up a 1978 Gingrich quotation lamenting that ‘one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty.’

Thanks to Gingrich, this is no longer a problem, in either party. Embracing Newtonian Nastiness, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) called Gingrich ‘too erratic,’ ‘too self-centered’ and lacking ‘the capacity to control himself.’ Former congressman Guy Molinari (R-N.Y.) called Gingrich ‘evil’ and the prospect of him becoming president ‘appalling.’

Then came the Romney-hosted teleconference.

Gingrich ‘says outrageous things that come from nowhere, and he has a tendency to say them at exactly the time when they most undermine the conservative agenda,’ Talent reported.

Gingrich ‘is more concerned about Newt Gingrich than he is about conservative principle,’ Sununu contributed. The ‘off-the-cuff thinking . . . is not what you want in the commander in chief.’

Now, Gingrich said he doesn’t want to be ‘the attack dog in the Republican Party.’ But it’s a bit late for purity. He’s Newt Gingrich, and he approved this message."

Read the Washington Post, Newt’s nastiness comes back to haunt him.

The Candidate Doth Protest Too Much

2011-12-08T08:13:00.000-08:00

UPDATE IX: "You understand, of course, that Herman Cain is never going to go away.

'Me, a womanizer? I would never have thought they’d come up with that one,' Cain wrote to his supporters this week in an essay promising to — yes! — keep talking.

Where do you think he’ll pop up next? As the newest Fox commentator? On 'Dancing With the Stars?' As Donald Trump’s guest judge on 'Celebrity Apprentice' As a contestant on 'Celebrity Apprentice?'

We’ll know all too soon. The only part of his last chapter that remains sort of fascinating is Ginger White, the accuser who has been given credit in some corners for bringing the Cain campaign down. All things considered, that couldn’t have been much of a strain. ('Rumors of Extramarital Affair End Campaign of Presidential Candidate Who Didn’t Know China Has Nuclear Weapons,' read a headline in The Onion.)" [Link added.]

Read The New York Times, The Last Herman Cain Column.

UPDATE VIII: BTW, I can't wait to hear our Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins) defend Cain on Friday.

But expect the Pastor to avoid the subject and enlighten us with his wisdom on God's wrath, or delusional birther lies, WMDs in Iraq, or even mythical missiles over LA.

UPDATE VII: His modus operandi seems to be economically vulnerable women. Read the Washington Post, Ginger White accuses Herman Cain of long affair.

So much for that NoBullU prediction.

UPDATE IX: At the CNBC in Michigan, Cain "offer[ed] a rather strange defense, saying, 'For every one person that comes forward with a false accusation, there are probably thousands who will say that none of that sort of activity ever came from Herman Cain.'

While having the majority of women you've met not accuse you of sexual harassment might seem like a low bar for a human being, let alone a presidential candidate, the debate audience cheered enthusiastically."

Read Mother Jones, Herman Cain: Not Every Woman I Know Has Accused Me Of Sexual Harassment.

UPDATE VIII: For a timeline of "the unfolding allegations and Cain's responses," read the Washington Post, Cain’s response to accusations.

UPDATE VII: Add to the Cain defenses that Republi-con tried-and-true technique: appear on Hedgehog News and make stuff up. Read Politico, Fox will correct Block claim on air.

UPDATE VI: "Cain, like those before him, was a politician, standing behind a microphone, surrounded by the clicking of cameras. He wagged fingers and denied. From his spot on the dais, Cain employed the tried-and-true techniques so often trotted out by politicians in the headlights of a scandal. And what struck us was his range: he didn’t just pick one tactic, he used them all. . .

Deny . . .

Split hairs . . .

Trash-talk the accuser . . .

Blame the media . . .

Play the victim . . .

Blame political enemies . . .

Invoke the wife . . .

Sneak in a commercial . . .

Read the Washington Post, Cain’s defense: a script we’ve heard before.

UPDATE V: Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for the Washington Post, "offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective,' and she writes in her column, Herman Cain discredits himself:

"There’s really no way to adequately describe how downright weird Herman Cain’s news conference was today. There was Cain referring to 'Herman Cain,' a throwback to Bob Dole’s frequent use of self-referential third person. There was the part where he told us that there may be other allegations --- but those will be false. Memorable, too, was his insistence that the claimants are all anonymous, when in fact two women have been identified by name. Then there was the ranting and raving about the media, although Sharon Bialek came forth with no media filter. I sorta liked the part where he conceded that there was no 'definitive' — definitive in the sense of “any” — proof that he was the victim of a conspiracy.

In a way, this was a fitting downfall: The slick ex-talk show host undone by his own rambling. He was no longer charming. He was desperate and entirely unbelievable. Forget the presidency. Forget becoming a conservative icon. Cain succeeded only in leaving the impression that he may be a bit off his rocker. . .

Who is to be believed: Cain or the women? Certainly Cain has managed to discredit himself as much, or more, than any of them have.

What about those bloggers and talk show hosts who went to the ramparts defending him and pushed the narrative that this was all a racist plot? One only hopes that readers and listeners will take their future utterances with a large helping of salt. These 'genuine' conservatives who pretend to talk for an entire political mvement, it seems, have rather poor judgment. Good thing the GOP electorate as a whole is blessed with a good deal more common sense. . ."

UPDATE IV: "If true, the experience related by Sharon Bialek, a former employee of the National Restaurant Association’s educational foundation, was more than a joke. Allegedly, on the pretense of showing Bialek the restaurant association’s offices, Cain parked the car and essentially assaulted Bialek, slipping his hand under her skirt and trying to bring her head toward his lap.

Not a very presidential image that.

When Bialek protested, reminding Cain that she had a boyfriend, he allegedly said, 'You want a job, right?'

Corroborating testimony via written statements from two other individuals, whom Bialek had told about the incident at the time, including her then-boyfriend, further reduces Cain’s wiggle room.

Read the Washington Post, Herman Cain and the parked car.

It's the audacity of grope:

UPDATE III: Did you hear Grace Vuoto rip Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins) a new one on Friday? Loved it!

UPDATE II: 9-9-9 has more than one meaing to Cain. Read Politico, Herman Cain accuser attorney: Settlement dated 9/99, Kilgore signed.

Coincidentally, Cain "resigned as president of the NRA effective June 30, 1999, before his three-year term was up, yet these board members say they were never fully informed as to why."

UPDATE: "Herman Cain, the long-shot Republican presidential candidate turned frontrunner, has done just about everything wrong since news broke Sunday night that his former employer had paid two women to settle sexual harassment complaints against him.

Cain denied it. He said the women didn’t understand his humor. He said his accusers fabricated the charges. He said he couldn’t remember the details, then suddenly he could. He said he had no knowledge of the settlement, then suddenly recalled some details, which turned out to be vastly understated. He publicly predicted more allegations would surface. He blamed his opponents, he howled about racism, and he accused the media and the entire city of Washington of trying to do him in.

On Wednesday morning, he raised the paranoia dial another notch. 'There are factions trying to destroy me personally, and this campaign,' he announced, revealing this conspiracy to a group of technology executives at the Ritz-Carlton in Tyson’s Corner."

Read the Washington Post, The Herman Cain crack-up.

Cain "might have a real problem on his hands" with the sexual harassment allegations. Read The New York times, Harassment Allegations Could Cut at Core of Cain’s Appeal, which notes that "blaming the messenger, if it can be an invaluable first line of defense, can also be a strategy with a short shelf life."

And his campaign stonewalled too long, the 'pushback' should have included all "mitigating and qualifying information at the outset, for the initial story." Read the Washington Post, Herman Cain and the penalties for stonewalling.

Test Your News IQ

2011-12-07T08:16:00.000-08:00

Find out how your score compares with other Americans who took the Pew Research Center's The News IQ Quiz.

Gingrich Supports Child Labor

2011-12-07T07:27:00.000-08:00

"It is a rare day when Al Sharpton emerges as the voice of sagacity, but when Newt Gingrich has the microphone, all things are possible.

Just four weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, Gingrich — swinging like a trapeze artist over the heads of his fellow Republican contenders — has done what everyone knew he would, said something mind-blowingly wrong. Not just wrong as in incorrect but off-the-charts insensitive, insulting and, most important, Out. Of. Touch.

He might as well have wrapped his remarks in a Tiffany box and handed them to Mitt Romney, who could exhale for a moment. Or to Sharpton, who finally had a justifiable excuse for outrage on his MSNBC show and scorched the earth beneath Gingrich’s feet.

Gingrich’s big idea was that kids from poor neighborhoods should work janitorial jobs at school in order to learn a work ethic."

Read the Washington Post, Gingrich’s poor excuse for a big idea.

All Puns Intended

2011-12-05T07:51:00.000-08:00

From an email:

1. Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.

2. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

3. Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.

4. A dyslexic man walked into a bra.

5. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm, and says: "A beer please, and one for the road."

6. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"

7. "Doc, I can't stop singing The Green, Green Grass of Home." "That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome." "Is it common?" "Well, It's Not Unusual."

8. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, "I was artificially inseminated this morning." "I don't believe you," says Dolly. "It's true; no bull!" exclaims Daisy.

9. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

10. Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.

11. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day, but I couldn't find any.

12. A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, "Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!" The doctor replied, "I know, I amputated your arms!"

13. I went to a seafood disco last week...And pulled a mussel.

14. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

15. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, "Dam!"

16. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Not surprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

17. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel, and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories.

After about an hour, the manager came out of the office, and asked them to disperse. "But why," they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said. "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

18. A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt , and is named 'Ahmal.' The other goes to a family in Spain ; they name him 'Juan.' Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

19. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (oh, man, this is so bad, it's good)...A super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

20. A dwarf, who was a mystic, escaped from jail. The call went out that there was a small medium at large.

21. And finally, there was the person who sent twenty different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least ten of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Watch Hedgehog News, Be Dumber Than the Ill-Informed

2011-12-01T08:36:00.000-08:00

People who watch Hedgehog News, "the most popular of the 24-hour cable news networks, are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government than those who watch no news at all (after controlling for other news sources, partisanship, education and other demographic factors). [Hedgehog] News watchers are also 6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government than those who watch no news." Read the reports of the Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind Poll, Some News Leaves People Knowing Less and Many think US is bailing out Greece; NPR, Jon Stewart Out-Fox Cable News.

The first report quotes Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson and an analyst for the PublicMind Poll, who says that "the results show us that there is something about watching. [Hedgehog] News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all."

Did Obama Con the Republi-CONs?

2011-11-29T08:03:00.000-08:00

As noted before, to balance the budget, do nothing, and now more than ever.

"In August, Republicans scored what they thought was a big win by persuading Democrats to accept a trigger that consisted only of spending cuts. The price they paid was 1) concentrating the cuts on the Pentagon while exempting Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare beneficiaries, and 2) delaying the cuts until January 1, 2013. That was, they figured, a win, as it eschewed taxes. Grover Norquist's pledge remained unbroken.

But 12 years earlier, George W. Bush had set a trigger of his own. In order to pass his tax cuts using the 51-vote budget reconciliation process, he had agreed to let them sunset in 2010. A last-minute deal extended them until the end of 2012.

So now there are two triggers. One is an extremely progressive spending trigger worth $1.2 trillion that goes off on January 1, 2013. The other is an extremely progressive tax trigger worth $3.8 trillion that goes off on...January 1, 2013. If you count reduced interest payments, the two policies alone would reduce future deficits by about $6 trillion. That's far more than anything the supercommittee came close to discussing. It's distributed far more progressively than anything the Democrats have even considered proposing. And all that needs to happen for it to pass is, well, nothing."

Read the Washington Post, The GOP's dual-trigger nightmare.

Also read the Washington Post, The GOP’s dual trigger nightmare in one graph, which notes, "[t]o get a sense of how progressive, here’s a graph comparing the spending cuts and tax increases in all of the major deficit-reduction packages proposed thus far":

A NoBullU Prediction: Romney-Cain in 2012

2011-11-29T07:33:00.000-08:00

UPDATE VII: So much for this prediction. Read the Washington Post, Ginger White accuses Herman Cain of long affair.

UPDATE VI: "The Republican Party’s inevitable decision to nominate Mitt Romney for president is starting to look evitable after all.

That’s certainly not a consensus view among the Washington cognoscenti, who tend to see the yet-to-come primaries and caucuses as mere formalities. . .

But I’m less and less convinced. It’s hard for me to see how any of the other candidates can win the nomination — but it’s hard for me to see how Romney wins it, either.

Polls have told a consistent story: Between 20 percent and 30 percent of Republican voters support Romney, and the rest support somebody else. Actually, not somebody, anybody.

It was bad enough when Romney’s main challenger was Michele Bachmann, whose views are so extreme that she favored allowing the nation to go into default — thus triggering the possible collapse of the global financial system — rather than to raise the debt ceiling. It was bad enough when Rick Perry entered the race and vaulted into the lead, sight unseen. It was bad enough when Republicans, having actually made Perry’s acquaintance, practically offered New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie the nomination, along with a dog and pony, if he’d just say yes.

But the whole Herman Cain infatuation is much worse, from Romney’s point of view. Here’s a man with no experience in public office, no knowledge of international affairs and, from the evidence of his '9-9-9' tax plan, bizarre ideas about how arithmetic works. Yet before allegations of sexual harassment threatened to derail the Cain Train, he was leading in many polls.

It is safe to conclude that most Republicans are looking for an alternative. Clearly, they don’t see Romney as the inevitable nominee — and they’re the deciders."

Read the Washington Post, Is Romney really the GOP’s choice?

BTW, evitable (first sentence above) means possible to avoid.

UPDATE V: Of course not everyone is happy with The Inevitable Candidate.

One long time conservative columnist thinks "Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate. Republican successes down the ticket will depend on the energies of the Tea Party and other conservatives, who will be deflated by a nominee whose blurry profile in caution communicates only calculated trimming."

Read the Washington Post, Mitt Romney, the pretzel candidate.

UPDATE IV: For further proof that Romney has the eelction wrapped up, read the Washington Post, Perry goes into the fever swamp; Birtherism and secession and Rick Perry’s birther Parade, which notes that "political professionals expect more from a mainstream candidate such as Perry. After Perry’s birther Parade, strategist Karl Rove lectured his one-time friend Monday in a Fox News appearance. 'You associate yourself with a nutty view like that and you damage yourself,' he said. Rove added that the pandering to Trump 'starts to marginalize you in the minds of some of the people whom you need in order to get the election.'"

UPDATE III: After last week's blunder on abortion, Cain might not be the Republi-con VP nominee, but have no doubt, Romney's got it wrapped up.

"FOR the next three months, the political press will engage in an extended masquerade, designed to persuade credulous readers and excitable viewers that the Republican presidential nomination is actually up for grabs.

Last week the big story was Herman Cain’s rise to the top of the polls, and then Rick Perry’s combativeness at the Las Vegas debate. Next week, perhaps, it will be Newt Gingrich’s surprising resilience or Ron Paul’s potential strength in the early caucuses or the appeal of Perry’s flat-tax plan. Then there will come a debate in which Mitt Romney looks shabby instead of smooth, a poll that shows one of his rivals surging, a moment when all his many weaknesses are on every pundit’s lips.

Please do not listen to any of them. Ignore the Politico daily briefings, the Rasmussen tracking polls, the angst from conservative activists over Romney’s past deviations and present-day dishonesties. Please ignore me as well, should campaign fever inspire a column about the Santorum surge or the Huntsman scenario. Because barring an unprecedented suspension of the laws of American politics, Mitt Romney has this thing wrapped up."

Read The New York Times, The Inevitable Nominee.

UPDATE II: Though he's a teabagger Republi-con favorite, he's really a political insider.

"From 1996, when he left the pizza company, until 1999, Mr. Cain ran the National Restaurant Association, a once-sleepy trade group that he transformed into a lobbying powerhouse. He allied himself closely with cigarette makers fighting restaurant smoking bans, spoke out against lowering blood-alcohol limits as a way to prevent drunken driving, fought an increase in the minimum wage and opposed a patients’ bill of rights — all in keeping with the interests of the industry he represented." Read The New York Times, Cain, Now Running as Outsider, Came to Washington as Lobbyist.

UPDATE: Or Cain-Romney. Read the Washington Post, Herman Cain surges to front of GOP pack in new poll.

Tea Party supporters and conservatives prefer Cain by a 2-to-1 margin.

A Romney-Cain ticket would quiet Not-Mitt Republic-cons, and appeal to the base.

BTW, did you know that in "February 2008, Herman Cain used his syndicated column to endorse a candidate in the Republican primary." Read The Atlantic, When Herman Cain Endorsed Mitt Romney for President.

The Fundamentalist Subculture of Ignorance That Embraces 'Discredited, Ridiculous and Even Dangerous Ideas'

2011-11-28T08:44:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: For several recent articles on point, read:

Washington Post, The e-mail rumor mill is run by conservatives, and

New York Magazine, When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality.

And for more on the Republi-con problem with reality, re-read these prior posts:

More Partisan Zealotry Through Highly Selective Editing of Reality, and

Republi-CON Created Reality.

"The rejection of science seems to be part of a politically monolithic red-state fundamentalism, textbook evidence of an unyielding ignorance on the part of the religious." Read The New York Times, The Evangelical Rejection of Reason.

Read this article if you want to understand the Fact Free Friday show with Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins).

Will the Tea Party Debate Pass the Test of 'Limited Government, Free Markets, and Fiscal Responsibility'

2011-11-23T08:04:00.000-08:00

UPDATE IV: It's been almost three months since the questions was first posed, but Ron Paul finally said it: "the federal war on drugs is a total failure . . . it undermines our civil liberties, it magnifies our problems on the borders -- we spent like over the last 40 years a trillion dollars on this war and, believe me, the kids can still get the drugs. It just hasn't worked." Read Sentencing Law and Policy, GOP candidate Ron Paul assails Obama pot policy and garners applause calling federal drug war "a total failure".

UPDATE III: You might also ask about the federalization of law enforcement.

"For centuries, a bedrock principle of criminal law has held that people must know they are doing something wrong before they can be found guilty. The concept is known as mens rea, Latin for a 'guilty mind.'

This legal protection is now being eroded as the U.S. federal criminal code dramatically swells. In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent. Today not only are there thousands more criminal laws than before, but it is easier to fall afoul of them.

As a result, what once might have been considered simply a mistake is now sometimes punishable by jail time."

Read the Wall Street Journal, As Federal Crime List Grows, Threshold of Guilt Declines.

UPDATE II: Another GOP debate, another chance to ask questions "about incarceration policies and the drug war:

Instead of putting our tax dollars into prisons, why not put them into rehabilitation centers for those who get caught with drug possessions?

America has the largest prison population per capita of any country in the world. Do you believe that we are arresting too many people?

Would you back a law to make prison time mandatory for anyone that employs illegal aliens, no exceptions?

The Federal Government spends $500 per second on the war on drugs, adding to the 90% of federal prisoners incarcerated for non-violent crimes. This is overshadowed by the cost of The War on Terror. As President, would you let these costly wars go on?

What will it take to end, in a timely decisive manner, the Global Drug War; a scheme of American Prohibition and world-wide U.S. Imperialism, that funds not only domestic violence and international terrorism, but also the Prison-Industrial Complex?

I am not especially confident that any of these questions will get posed tonight or at any of the forthcoming GOP debates, but I will continue hoping these issues might eventually get some attention at some point in this political/election cycle."

Read Sentencing Law and Policy, Hoping (perhaps foolishly, yet again) latest GOP debate addresses crime and punishment.

UPDATE: Something to remember as you watch the debates:

"The tea party was described as the new kid on the block of American politics, when in fact it was the extension of forces long at work in the political system.

It was described by some of its grass-roots organizers as a movement driven by principle whose members swore no allegiance to either party. That, too, has been shown to be wrong as its roots in the Republican Party have become more evident."

Read the Washington Post, What the tea party is — and isn’t.

Interesting questions and commentary from Sentencing Law and Policy:

"[A]nyone with a truly serious and sustained commitment to 'limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility' must start asking a number of tough questions about huge federal and state government spending on the drug war and mass incarceration. Here, as just a couple of examples, is how these tough questions might find expression in the tonight's Tea Party Debate:

Do you support the bill introduced by Ron Paul and Barney Frank to get the federal government out of the marijuana regulation business (basics here)? Would you sign or veto such a bill as president if it came to your desk?

Do you consider the modern 'War on Drugs' — a federal government program started by Richard Nixon and increasingly funded at the federal level by every President since — to be a classic example of a failed big government program or a notable example of big government success?

According to a Pew Center report in 2009, state criminal correction spending has quadrupled in the past two decades, outpacing budget growth in education and transportation (basics here). Meanwhile, the Justice Department recently wrote to the US Sentencing Commission about federal prison spending and overcrowing (basics here). Does this data concern you and what do you think this nation's president can or should do about the pure economic costs to taxpayers of modern mass incarceration?

Though I would love to hear the GOP candidates' response to all of these questions, I will be pleasantly surprised if even a single question about the drug war or big-government criminal justice spending comes up tonight. If there are not any such questions during the Tea Party Debate, I will continue to [wonder] if the 'core principles and values of the tea party movement' really are 'limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility.'"

Corrupt Crony Capitalism and Congress

2011-11-18T08:17:00.000-08:00

UPDATE VI: Read an interesting op-ed by Palin at the Wall Street Journal, How Congress Occupied Wall Street.

I posted the following comment:

The Tea Party protests government and the Occupy movement protest corporations. But they have a common 'enemy,' corrupt crony capitalism. It pervades government and businesses everywhere. I could give numerous examples in my home town. And I'm sure others could also.

I've been a critic of Palin in the past. She's become a rabid partisan with a group I call the Republi-CONs. She can also be thin-skinned and vindictive, not good qualities for a public figure. But at times as Governor of Alaska, she was a reformer. (See The Atlantic, The Tragedy of Sarah Palin )

The reformer Palin would see an opportunity to unite Tea Party and Occupy protestors to end the problem of corrupt crony capitalism. Lord knows that Obama and Gingrich and most of our other political 'leaders' will never do so.

UPDATE V: "Insider trading is illegal — except for members of Congress. A Wall Street executive who buys or sells stock based on insider information would face a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and quite possibly a federal prosecutor. But senators and congressmen are free to legally trade stock based on nonpublic information they have obtained through their official positions as elected officials — and they do so on a regular basis." Read the Washington Post, Crony capitalism exposed.

UPDATE IV: "Disgraced ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff is out of jail. He was released in June. He now works as an accountant at a kosher pizza parlor. And he needs a literary agent. 'I was actually thinking of writing a book,' he told '60 Minutes.' 'The Idiot’s Guide to Buying a Congressman.'" Read the Washington Post, Jack Abramoff’s guide to buying congressmen.

Or watch the '60 Minutes' episode:

A sad commentary on our current political system.

UPDATE III: "[W]hen good chunks of the 1 percent come by their riches via clubby, rigged systems of CEO pay, or by peddling subprime securities that implode and wreck the economy, or by taking taxpayer bailouts and turning them into obscene bonuses, people know something is deeply, systemically corrupt. . .

Purge the crony capitalists!"

Read the Washington Post, Justice, inequality and the 99 percent.

UPDATE II: The title of the article says it all. Read the Washington Post, Wall Street is still playing us for suckers.

Isn't that what I've been saying for years, even as early as October 2008.

UPDATE: Want to know why the public has so little faith in Congress.

"Citigroup had to pay a $285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers — securities that it knew were likely to go bust — and, with the other hand, shorted the same securities — that is, bet millions of dollars that they would go bust.

It doesn’t get any more immoral than this. . .

Our financial industry has grown so large and rich it has corrupted our real institutions through political donations. . .

Our Congress today is a forum for legalized bribery. One consumer group using information from Opensecrets.org calculates that the financial services industry, including real estate, spent $2.3 billion on federal campaign contributions from 1990 to 2010, which was more than the health care, energy, defense, agriculture and transportation industries combined. Why are there 61 members on the House Committee on Financial Services? So many congressmen want to be in a position to sell votes to Wall Street. . .

Capitalism and free markets are the best engines for generating growth and relieving poverty — provided they are balanced with meaningful transparency, regulation and oversight. We lost that balance in the last decade. If we don’t get it back — and there is now a tidal wave of money resisting that — we will have another crisis."

Read The New York Times, Did You Hear the One About the Bankers?

Palin was right about the "collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest — to the little guys."

Just listen to a former lobbyist, who argued at his sentencing that Congress operates "in a corrupt Washington environment controlled by people with money." Read CBS New, Ring sentenced to 20 months in lobbying scandal.

No wonder Congressional approval ratings are in single digits.

Holiday Break at NoBullU

2011-11-15T07:58:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, work calls, so this blog is suspending posting for three months. Until I return, read some of these recent posts:

On the economy and federal budget, et al.:

I'm waiting, where's the balanced budget, don't hold you breath because the Republi-CONs Con the Tea Party, there'll be no $100 billion budget cut, and let's admit the obvious, the Republi-CONs are not serious about deficits, and who's responsible for the debt

To balance the budget, do nothing

One way to reduce the deficit

Still no sign of those 'invisible [Republi-CON] bond vigilantes'

Our politically induced economic stagnation, part of the Republi-CON war on the middle class

Hello globalization, goodbye jobs

It's China, stupid

The Republi-CON zombie myth that the government forced the banks to make bad loans

Told ya so: economic stimulus

The Republi-CON stimulus myth

The myth of expansionary austerity

About the Republi-CON war on the middle class

More on the Republi-CON war on the middle class

Better, not just less, government

The Republi-CON 'taxes and regulations are killing business' myth, now it dwarf tossing, what next, baby juggling?

Republi-CONs in their Delusion-land

The Great Stagnation' and our broken political system

The EuroMess

Would Jesus occupy Wall Street?

On the 2012 election, politics, and those waskly Republi-CONs:

And the Republi-CON Race is cont., to find America’s Not-Mitt

The audacity of grope-gate

Still searching for the ideal Republican candidate: conservative, interested, electable

They're back, with another debate

A NoBullU prediction: Romney-Cain in 2012

A Republi-CON 'my family escaped communism' myth

Is the RepubliCON race a joke?

Obama in 2012?

Déjà vu all over again, what to expect if it is Obama v. Romney

The Republi-CON 'Obama's a socalist' myth

Spreading slanderous lies, and supporting a group that massacres and enslaves women and children

Other current events:

Health Care Lawsuit Update

After reading two of the appellate opinions, it doesn't look good for the Republi-CONs

Republi-CON 'it's not Judicial activism, it's judicial engagement' hypocrisy

Does Palin have a point about the corrupt crony capitalism

Corrupt crony capitalism and Congress

and

An Iraq What-Might-Have-Been, and was it worth it

Did Steve Jobs' faith in alternative remedies kill him?

So You Don't Believe in Global Warming, Then Explain What Happens to 35 Gigatons of CO2 Each Year

Those not so good ol' days

CSI Dog Poop, the trial

Big brother is watching you,

The myth of voter fraud

Fun stuff:

Why dogs hate Halloween

Just in time for Christmas

Humor for English majors, and

Punnies

I'll be back soon to deprogram you.

Pity the 1%, They Control Only 43% of the Country's Wealth

2011-11-14T18:05:00.000-08:00

From CollegeHumor.com, We are the 1%:

The Myth of Voter Fraud

2011-11-13T07:37:00.000-08:00

UPDATE III: Doonesbury takes on the voter fraud myth:

UPDATE II: Read the Washington Post, Five myths about voter fraud and The New York Times, The Myth of Voter Fraud.

Let's admit the obvious, the Republi-con myth of voter fraud is just an effort to suppress votes that favor other parties.

UPDATE: "The foundation of Florida’s election-law changes, the bedrock belief that spurred major reforms this spring, was the notion that voter fraud is rampant. So the Legislature passed and Gov. Rick Scott signed into law a bill that limits early voting, makes it harder for some groups to register voters, and will cause headaches for voters who’ve recently moved. Their ballots might not even be counted.

And guess what? We’ve known for months the “voter fraud” excuse was phony.

Okaloosa County Supervisor of Elections Paul Lux and Susan Blackwell, president of the Okaloosa chapter of the League of Women Voters, told us in May that instances of fraud are rare. It just isn’t a big problem."

Read the Northwest Florida Daily News, The myth of Florida voter fraud.

From Colbert Nation:

And when people [Republi-CONs] don't like get elected, there's only one explanation.

SEAN HANNITY (10/29/2010): Allegations of voter fraud continue to pop up all across the country.

BILL O'REILLY (10/28/2010): ... voter fraud ...

FOX NEWS MALE (10/31/2010): ... voter fraud ...

RUSSELL PEARCE (6/9/2010): ... voter fraud ...

MATTHEW VADUM (6/2/2010): ... voter fraud ...

Yes, voter fraud! Take Ohio, a crucial swing state in the last few elections. There, a statewide survey of votes cast in 2002 and 2004 found that out of 9,078,000 votes, there were four instances of fraud. That is a jaw-dropping 44 one-millionths of one percent! Folks, our democracy is under siege from an enemy so small, it could be hiding anywhere!

Watch:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Handman's Fix-It Guide

2011-11-11T07:29:00.000-08:00

From an email:

Class Today at NoBullU on WEBY

2011-11-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

Local Business/Event Shout-Out: The 2011 Homecoming Air Show at Pensacola Naval Air Station,on Friday and Saturday, November 11 & 12, 2011. Gate admission is free. Gates open at 8 am each day. The show begins at 9 am, with the Blues scheduled to fly around 2 pm. The pilots do sign autographs after the show. Over 100,000 people are expected to view the show daily;

Follow-up: see below;

Fact-free fantasies of the shrieking hatemongers of right-wing rhetoric and partisan hackery: all part of the fundamentalist subculture of ignorance that embraces 'discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas'

And America's preference for rhetorical fairy tales to unpleasant realities

One was gays in the military, funny thing, the world's still turning, not even a hurricane, earthquake or an oil well

Coincidentally enough it wasn't the end of the world, again, just after the Fact-Free Friday Show with our so-claimed viral Pastor.

And don't be duped by the Birthers, including our very own Pastor Dred Scott (you may remember the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which asserted that African Americans were "beings of an inferior order" who "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." That ruling declared that African Americans could never be U.S. citizens and therefore could never be President),

See The Fogbow, "your best resource for debunking the lies of the 'birther' movement and discussing the birther antics" and WhatsYourEvidence.com, there is even a Birther Case Scorecard, 0-80 for the birthers;

Local and regional: hasta la vista, when do I get my hurricane insurance refund, and
Public defenders or criminals?;

National and international: I'm waiting, where's the balanced budget, don't hold you breath because the Republi-CONs Con the Tea Party, there'll be no $100 billion budget cut, and let's admit the obvious, the Republi-CONs are not serious about deficits, and who's responsible for the debt

To balance the budget, do nothing

One way to reduce the deficit

Still no sign of those 'invisible [Republi-CON] bond vigilantes'

Our politically induced economic stagnation, part of the Republi-CON war on the middle class

Hello globalization, goodbye jobs

It's China, stupid

The Republi-CON zombie myth that the government forced the banks to make bad loans

Told ya so: economic stimulus

The Republi-CON stimulus myth

The myth of expansionary austerity

About the Republi-CON war on the middle class

More on the Republi-CON war on the middle class

Better, not just less, government

The Republi-CON 'taxes and regulations are killing business' myth, now it dwarf tossing, what next, baby juggling?

Republi-CONs in their Delusion-land

The Great Stagnation' and our broken political system

The EuroMess

Would Jesus occupy Wall Street?

Great quote on so-called government wisdom

And courtesy of Tammy, a great quote on politicians and their corporate overlords

Also courtesy of Tammy, New World Order, Inc.

And the Republi-CON Race is cont., to find America’s Not-Mitt

The audacity of grope-gate

Still searching for the ideal Republican candidate: conservative, interested, electable

They're back, with another debate

A NoBullU prediction: Romney-Cain in 2012

A Republi-CON 'my family escaped communism' myth

Is the RepubliCON race a joke?

Obama in 2012?

Déjà vu all over again, what to expect if it is Obama v. Romney

The Republi-CON 'Obama's a socalist' myth

Spreading slanderous lies, and supporting a group that massacres and enslaves women and children

Health Care Lawsuit Update

After reading two of the appellate opinions, it doesn't look good for the Republi-CONs

Republi-CON 'it's not Judicial activism, it's judicial engagement' hypocrisy

Does Palin have a point about the corrupt crony capitalism

Corrupt crony capitalism and Congress

and

An Iraq What-Might-Have-Been, and was it worth it

Did Steve Jobs' faith in alternative remedies kill him?

So You Don't Believe in Global Warming, Then Explain What Happens to 35 Gigatons of CO2 Each Year

Those not so good ol' days

CSI Dog Poop, the trial

Big brother is watching you,

The myth of voter fraud

Fun stuff: Why dogs hate Halloween, Just in time for Christmas, Humor for English majors, and Punnies

and

Donate to a good cause: read "the story of a 9-year-old girl who teaches us adults about maturity truly renews our faith in humanity" at The New York Times, Rachel’s Last Fund-Raiser.

They're Back

2011-11-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

UPDATE II: Read Politico, The GOP debate: 6 takeaways, which had this to say regarding the CNBC debate in Michigan:

"The 'oops' heard 'round the world . . .

The in-house crowd buoyed Herman Cain . . .

Mitt Romney’s good fortunes continue . . .

Newtmentum. Seriously . . .

Huntsman is inching up . . .

The candidates are still fine-tuning their messages on the issue of the day . . .

UPDATE: How truthfull were the candidates? Read the Washington Post, Fact checking the CNBC debate.

Also, check out their candidate Pinocchio Tracker.

"Debate season is back.

After a hiatus of several weeks, the Republican candidates for president will gather in Michigan on Wednesday night for a 90-minute exchange meant to focus on economic issues. . .

Wednesday night’s debate is likely to offer another critical stage moment for many of the candidates. With Mr. Cain’s scandal consuming a tremendous amount — if not all — of the recent media attention, the debate will be the first opportunity in almost two weeks for any of his rivals to break through with voters.

Here are five things to watch for as the night unfolds.

1. The Cain Accusations. . .

2. The Mitt Romney Pile-On. . .

3. The Obama Pile-On. . .

4. Perry’s Performance. . .

5. Where’s Huntsman? . ."

Read The New York Times, Five Things to Watch at Michigan Debate.

After Reading Two of the Health Care Lawsuit Appellate Opinions, It Doesn't Look Good For the Republi-CONs

2011-11-10T06:36:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: From the D.C. circuit panel majority opinion, here are "key excerpts:

'The mandate, it should be recognized, is indeed somewhat novel, but so too, for all its elegance, is appellants’ argument. No Supreme Court case has ever held or implied that Congress’s Commerce Clause authority is limited to individuals who are presently engaging in an activity involving, or substantially affecting, interstate commerce. ... To be sure, a number of the Supreme Court’s Commerce Clause cases have used the word 'activity' to describe behavior that was either regarded as within or without Congress’s authority. But those cases did not purport to limit Congress to reach only existing activities. They were merely identifying the relevant conduct in a descriptive way, because the facts of those cases did not raise the question–presented here–of whether 'inactivity' can also be regulated. In short, we do not believe these cases endorse the view that an existing activity is some kind of touchstone or a necessary precursor to Commerce Clause regulation.

In effect, the judges are dismissing the distinction between "activity" and "inactivity" as meaningless. That distinction, of course, is the foundation of the lawsuit. The relevant issue, Silberman goes on to say, is whether the mandate affects commerce that crosses state lines. It clearly does.

Elsewhere, Silberman cites precedents giving Congress broad powers over interstate commerce, including decisions that upheld parts of the New Deal and civil rights laws:

'That a direct requirement for most Americans to purchase any product or service seems an intrusive exercise of legislative power surely explains why Congress has not used this authority before–but that seems to us a political judgment rather than a recognition of constitutional limitations. It certainly is an encroachment on individual liberty, but it is no more so than a command that restaurants or hotels are obliged to serve all customers regardless of race, that gravely ill individuals cannot use a substance their doctors described as the only effective palliative for excruciating pain, or that a farmer cannot grow enough wheat to support his own family. The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute, and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems, no matter how local–or seemingly passive–their individual origins.'"

Read The New Republic, Obamacare Wins Another Round in Court.

You might not know it, given that "rulings in support of the law generally received scant attention from the Washington Post, New York Times, Politico, and the Associated Press, while rulings against the law were literally treated as front-page news," but it is now 3-1 for Obama Care in the appellate courts.

And two opinions are worth note, the 6th circuit panel majority opinion by a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and D.C. circuit panel majority opinion by a judge with a lengthy history of conservative legal thought, "[c]hief among them is his opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller , the case that found the District’s handgun ban to violate the Second Amendment. That opinion was upheld by the Supreme Court in a landmark 2008 ruling."

From Time, A Closer Look at Obama’s Big Legal Win on Health Reform:

"The majority opinion by a 6th circuit panel Wednesday upholding Obama’s health care reform law is a victory for the administration on its face. But to understand just how big a victory it is, you have to read the concurring opinion by Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton. Sutton, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and a powerful figure on the right wing of the 6th circuit, meticulously destroys the central and essential argument of the opponents of Obama’s healthcare law. . .

[Judger Sutton writes] a 21-page proof that the Constitution doesn’t limit Congress power to regulate inaction the same way it regulates action. First, he says, 'the relevant text of the Constitution does not contain such a limitation.' Second, distinguishing between inaction and action under the healthcare law is harder than it seems. What if someone previously had healthcare and then dropped it so he could free-ride on the system? Under the plaintiff’s own argument, it would be constitutional to make him buy healthcare because he had already 'entered the stream of commerce'. Third, precedent exists for regulating people who aren’t actively participating in a market: one of them, a case outlawing growing marijuana for personal use, was written by Scalia. Fourth, everyone agrees Congress could force someone to buy health insurance the moment they seek care at an emergency room because they would then be entering the market; 'Requiring insurance today and requiring it at a future point of sale amount to policy differences in degree, not kind,' says Sutton. Fifth, the breadth of the challenge to the law means that some cases where it might be constitutional would be thrown out with others that the opponents say are unconstitutional: better to let the law go forward and have the individual cases come up rather than issue a broad opinion that overstates a constitutional limit. Sixth, Sutton argues, the 10th amendment protection of state and personal power doesn’t overrule Congress’ enumerated power under the commerce clause."

And from the Washington Post, The conservative judge who upheld health reform:

"The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has just ruled the health reform law constitutional in a 2-1 decision . . . What’s more notable than the verdict, however, is its author. Justice Laurence Silberman, who wrote a full-throated defense of the health reform law, has a lengthy history of conservative legal thought. . .

What makes this even more notable is Silberman’s previously rulings, which have been both influential and conservative. Chief among them is his opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller , the case that found the District’s handgun ban to violate the Second Amendment. That opinion was upheld by the Supreme Court in a landmark 2008 ruling, the first time the court had taken up the issue of whether the Second Amendment protects rights to bear arms for self-defense.

What Silberman wrote in today’s opinion hews very closely to the legal argument that the Obama administration has pushed in the courts: The federal government has a constitutional right to regulate an individual’s choice not to purchase insurance, because that decision has an economic effect on others. Here’s what Silberman writes on that issue:

'It suffices for this case to recognize, as noted earlier, that the health insurance market is a rather unique one, both because virtually everyone will enter or affect it, and because the uninsured inflict a disproportionate harm on the rest of the market as a result of their later consumption of health care services.'

Silberman goes on to compare the individual mandate to issues of civil rights. He concedes that the mandated purchase of health insurance 'certainly is an encroachment' on freedom, but 'no more so than a command that restaurants or hotels are obliged to serve all customers regardless of race.'"

Read the decisions and some of the other court documents.

Told Ya So: Economic Stimulus

2011-11-09T07:43:00.000-08:00

UPDATE VII: On a related note, a "financial planner recounts how he and his family fell victim to the housing boom and bust and how they survived the ordeal." Read The New York Times, How a Financial Pro Lost His House.

UPDATE VI: More proof that we should have addressed housing, I suggested Remortgage America.

Read The New York Times, Gloom Grips Consumers, and It May Be Home Prices.

Also read the Washington Post, How much would mass refinancing do for the economy?

But thank Bush, Obama, and all you suckers out there -- we saved the Banksters and their bonuses.

UPDATE V: Maybe yes again.

A "bipartisan consensus for mass refinancing may be emerging. " Read the Washington Post, How about Refi.gov?, which notes that homeowners "could use the lower rates engineered by the Federal Reserve to reduce annual payments by an average of $2,500 a year. . . [by ordering] Fannie and Freddie to reduce its fee [and refinance] any fully paid-up loan that it already guarantees. The process would be streamlined, eliminating appraisals and income verification."

UPDATE IV: Then again, maybe not.

"President Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan got generally good reviews from economists on Friday, though several noted one glaring omission: The plan does not include a comprehensive way to address mortgage debt, which many see as the central drag on the U.S. economy." Read the Washington Post, Obama jobs plan: Economists give good reviews but say more needed on mortgage debt.

UPDATE III: FINALLY! Years after we first discussed it, "[t]he Obama administration is considering a program to let millions of homeowners refinance at today’s rates." Read The New York Times, U.S. May Back Refinance Plan for Mortgage.

UPDATE II: 'Cash for clunkers' is/was a great stimulus for the auto industry. Imagine what Remortgage America might have done for housing.

But thank Bush, Obama, and all you suckers out there -- we saved the Banksters and their bonuses.

UPDATE: Read the Washington Post, Mortgage Delinquency Reaches Record High.

Read The New York Times, More Homeowners Facing Foreclosure.

Then reread my solution for the economic mess

I think that the economy would be better off if the government had spent the money used to bail out Wall Street financial institutions (some call them banks, but I think that using the term banks when referring to those institutions is a misnomer), and instead had spent it on stabilizing the housing market with a program like Remortgage America, as we discussed at length on several programs.

Of course, all the government officials who own stock in Government Sachs would be poorer, ergo, the looting of the treasury by the robber financial institutions.

Health Care Lawsuit Update

2011-11-09T07:37:00.000-08:00

UPDATE V: "An appeals court on Tuesday upheld a lower court decision that had dismissed a challenge to President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law and found the minimum coverage requirement was constitutional." Read The New York Times, Appeals Court Backs Health Care Law.

That make it 3-1 for Obama Care in the appellate courts.

And remember you can check the status of any of the "26 federal lawsuits seeking to overturn the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" at the Kaiser Health News scoreboard.

UPDATE IV: From The New York Times, Court Blocks Suit Against Health Law:

"The Fourth Circuit confronted two opposing lower-court decisions. One, in a case filed by Virginia’s attorney general, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, had overturned the law’s insurance requirement. The other, in a case filed by Liberty University, a Christian college in Lynchburg, Va., upheld the same provision, which is considered central to the act.

In a unanimous opinion written by Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, the Fourth Circuit panel concluded that Mr. Cuccinelli did not have standing to sue because Virginia’s case relied on a state law intended to undermine the federal act. Unlike in the Liberty case, which included individual plaintiffs who might someday be directly affected by the mandate, Mr. Cuccinelli structured his complaint as a conflict between state and federal law.

The Virginia Health Care Freedom Act, enacted one day after Mr. Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, declares that no Virginia resident 'shall be required to obtain or maintain a policy of individual insurance coverage.'

But Judge Motz wrote that states cannot grant themselves standing to challenge federal laws simply by passing legislation that declares those laws invalid. A state, she wrote, does not 'acquire some special stake in the relationship between its citizens and the federal government merely by memorializing its litigation position in a statute.' Mr. Cuccinelli said Thursday that he would appeal to the Supreme Court.

In the Liberty case, Judge Motz wrote for a 2-to-1 majority in rejecting the appeal on entirely different grounds. In that case, she wrote that Liberty could not seek to strike down the individual mandate before it took effect because doing so would, in effect, usurp the government’s right to collect a tax.

That, she said, would run afoul of the long-established federal Anti-Injunction Act, which bars litigation seeking to restrain the assessment or collection of a tax.

The question of whether the law’s penalties constitute a tax has been considered in a number of the court challenges because the Constitution grants Congress broad authority to levy taxes to support the nation’s general welfare. On Thursday, the Fourth Circuit panel ruled that while the health care act refers frequently to penalties, the fines for noncompliance are in fact taxes.

The dismissal of the appeal on the tax question blocked the panel from fully considering the constitutionality of the individual mandate. But Judge Motz’s colleagues offered personal opinions.

Judge James A. Wynn Jr. wrote in a concurring opinion that he would have upheld the act based on Congress’s authority under its taxing powers. Judge Andre M. Davis, who dissented from the conclusion that the federal courts did not have jurisdiction, wrote that he would have upheld the mandate under Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce.

All three randomly selected judges on the panel were appointed by Democratic presidents, including two by Mr. Obama himself."

UPDATE III: "In a surprise move, a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court based in Virginia has tossed out one of the most prominent challenges to the health reform law.

This is the first appeals court to toss out a case for lack of standing after a lower court had ruled on the merits. It leaves the Affordable Care Act with an even scorecard in the courts, with one appeals court ruling in favor of health reform’s constitutionality and one against it."

Read the Washington Post, Appeals court tosses health reform challenge.

Or read the decisions and some of the other court documents.

That make it 2-1 for Obama Care in the appellate courts.

P.S.

You may remember, more than two years ago, "I predict[ed] the most likely outcome in the district court is dismissal, with court declining to rule in the case because the matter in controversy is a political question."

The political question doctrine is related to the issue of standing.

UPDATE II: "A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court based in Atlanta on Friday ruled the health-care overhaul law’s individual mandate is unconstitutional, in one of the largest legal challenges to the Obama administration’s signature achievement. . .

The appellate court, did, however, overturn part of the lower court’s ruling by declaring that the rest of the law could continue to stand without the individual mandate." Read the Washington Post, Health-care law individual mandate ruled unconstitutional by 11th Circuit appeals court.

Read all 304 pages of the court decision, or some of the other court documents in the Florida district court case.

And as for what might happen next, read the Washington Post, Three possible futures for health-care reform.

UPDATE: "In the first ruling by a federal appeals court on President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, a panel in Cincinnati affirmed Wednesday that Congress can require Americans to have minimum insurance coverage." Read the Washington Post, Federal appeals court in Cincinnati upholds Obama health care law, becoming 1st to rule.

And read The New York Times, Appeals Court Upholds Obama’s Health Care Law.

Better yet, read the court decision.

"Lawyers for the 26 states challenging the constitutionality of the nation’s new health-care law squared off against the Obama administration in an appeals court in Atlanta on Wednesday, where a panel of three judges asked tough questions of both sides." Read the Washington Post, Legal battle over Obama’s health-care law moves to Atlanta courtroom.

Public Defenders or Criminals?

2011-11-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: "IN Exclusive: Victim in Henderson scandal speaks out" and seems to deny key part of the story in the Sunday paper. Read Rick's Blog, She’s not a stripper, pill-head or deadbeat.

When asked "who was behind this story going public" the alleged vicitm's boyfriend replied "Whoever is wanting to run against Owens is pushing this very hard."

It will be interesting to see if the Pensacola New Journal prints a retraction.

"The No. 2 attorney at the Public Defender's Office is being investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement after a former client's accusation that he requested sexual favors in exchange for effective legal services.

Tony Henderson, whom Public Defender James Owens named chief assistant public defender following Owens' 2008 election, is accused of making harassing telephone calls and lewd comments to the woman he was representing in a prescription drug fraud case.

The FDLE has investigated allegations of sexual misconduct involving both Henderson and Owens on two previous occasions in the past 13 years, and the Public Defender's Office conducted another inquiry of Henderson with Owens as a supporting witness 19 years ago."

Read the Pensacola New Journal, No. 2 public defender faces possible misconduct probe.

Sub Today at NoBullU on WEBY

2011-11-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

Usually on Thursdays you can listen to me, the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- no political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

But the FSU game begins at 7 pm CT and the pre-game begins at 5 pm, so Mike will sub today. But I plan to call in.

And I'll be back next week to deprogram you.

Americans Prefer Rhetorical Fairy Tales to Unpleasant Realities

2011-11-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: A cartoon recommended by Tammy:

Regarding federal budget deficits and debt, "[t]here’s no culture of moral accountability. There’s no sense that political leaders, retired from office seeking, should come clean with the public. The essential nature of the country’s budget problem — the dominance of spending on retirement benefits and uncontrolled health costs — was no secret to either Clinton or Bush. It would be healthy for the country if they confessed that their dodging of unpopular choices helped create today’s mess.

Their silence contributes to continued public confusion and political stalemate. Polls consistently show that Americans want budget deficits closed but dislike the policies that would close them: higher taxes on much of the public; cuts in retirement benefits; reductions in other government programs. On both left and right, myths persist of painless solutions: “eliminating waste” or 'taxing millionaires.'

It’s true, as Democrats charge, that Republican rigidity on taxes obstructs agreement. But that’s not the only obstacle. Democrats’ intransigent defense of Social Security and Medicare reflects the programs’ utility as a partisan vote-getter. Republicans 'have launched an all-out war on Medicare and Social Security' says a new fundraising mailer from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Why sacrifice this pitch even if it’s untrue?

Congress’s 'supercommittee' — charged with reducing budget deficits — is reportedly floundering. Small wonder. Our political system prefers rhetorical fairy tales to unpleasant budget realities."

Read the Washington Post, Where are the Clinton and Bush apologies for our budget crisis?

That last sentence is worth repeating: Our political system prefers rhetorical fairy tales to unpleasant budget realities.

Why Dogs Hate Halloween

2011-10-31T08:52:00.000-07:00

Updated and reposted:

For other photos, click here.

2011 Halloween Light Show

2011-10-31T08:46:00.000-07:00

"4 singing pumpkin faces, tombstones, hand carved pumpkins, strobes, floods and thousands of lights":

Happy Halloween!!

2011-10-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

Nana - Nana - Nana! I got you first! and you can't get me back!

You've been mooned!!

One rule to this game.... You can NOT get someone who has already gotten you! Now go out there and get as many people as you can, before they get you!

And remember, we do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.