WWJC ('What Would Jesus Cut?')

UPDATE IV:  The "Ryan budget, passed by the House, 'fails to meet' the moral criteria of the Church, namely its view that any budget should help 'the least of these' as the Christian Bible requires: the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the jobless. 'A just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons,' the bishops wrote.

In fact, Ryan would cut spending on the least of these by about $5 trillion over 10 years — from Medicaid, food stamps, welfare and the like — and then turn around and award some $4 trillion in tax cuts to the most of these. To their credit, Catholic leaders were not about to let Ryan claim to be serving God when in fact he was serving mammon.
'Your budget,' a group of Jesuit scholars and other Georgetown University faculty members wrote to Ryan last week, 'appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her call to selfishness and her antagonism toward religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love.'"

Read the Washington Post, A faith-based lesson for Paul Ryan.

UPDATE III:  Would Jesus 'crucify the poor' to pay for military spending and tax cuts for the wealthy?  Read thew Washington Post, The Gospel according to Paul Ryan.

UPDATE II: It has been asserted "that compassion is 'best fulfilled through Christian charity and spiritual counseling, not government programs.' If this is an affirmation that religious charities have unique advantages over public bureaucracies, it is noncontroversial. If this is an assertion that charity and counseling can replace public programs that provide school meals, AIDS treatment or health care for the poor, it is dangerously oblivious to the real world. The scale of private efforts is not sufficient to meet the demands of public justice — which gives government an important role." So says Michael Gerson, Bush's chief speechwriter. Read the Washington Post, Two parties pray to the same God, but different economists.


UPDATE: Christians should to "emulate the life of Jesus — especially his concern for the poor and oppressed — and confront social ills like racial oppression and environmental pollution." Read The New York Times, Evangelicals Without Blowhards.

"The poor is hated even of his own neighbour: but the rich hath many friends." -- Proverbs 14:20, King James Version

Read the Washington Post, Obama is urged by Christian groups to protect poor in debt limit fight.

Our Resident Pastor-to-the-Dictators (AKA Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins)) has waged a campaign of fear, anger and hatred by hosting professional purveyors of hate. But I wonder why he never talks of the poor.

Did you know that the "Bible contains more than 300 verses on the poor, social justice, and God's deep concern for both"?

Is the Answer Conservative Economic and Liberal Social Policies

"Amid all the grim economic news from Europe, it’s worth noting that there are also some success stories. Well, of course, you say: Germany. Okay. But there’s another conspicuous candidate, and it might seem surprising: Sweden. To many Americans, Sweden is a bloated, inefficient welfare state. But the reality and the stereotype don’t match."

Read the Washington Post, The Swedish model for economic recovery.

Watch Hedgehog News, Be Dumber Than the Ill-Informed

UPDATE II:  Here is Colbert's take on the silver spoon lie: where "Obama makes a cowardly statement about Mitt Romney's wealth, made all the more cowardly by the fact that he never said it." Watch The Colbert Report, Steve Doocy's Silver Spoon Subtext Reporting:

 

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

UPDATE:  The ignorance is due to all the Hedgehog News lies in the service to their Republi-con overlords.  Read the Washington Post, Fox News, Steve Doocy and the 'silver spoon' smirk. 

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."

Obama in 2012?, Another Forecast Model

UPDATE:  Don't put too much faith in predictive models based on older election results, says one commentator, because of the changed nature of the party coalitions.

"Today the party coalitions are much more stable, and the battle is fought almost entirely between the 45-yard lines of the field. We have not seen anybody win less than 45 percent in terms of two-party presidential vote in twenty years, and it has only happened once in the House vote (to the GOP in 2008). This means that both sides have secured a solid base of 45 percent, and the range from cycle-to-cycle in terms of two-party vote share is now half of what it once was: the average difference in two-party vote share from 1948 through 1984 was 10.9 percent; since 1988 it has only been 5.8 percent. What’s more, between 2000 and 2008 a total of 10 states voted Republican and Democratic for president at least once, but between 1964 and 1972 forty-three states voted for both sides at least once.

(In Congress, this transition from regional to ideological parties has created the polarization that Beltway pundits regularly bemoan. Really, it is just a consequence of 'Democratic' now meaning 'liberal' and 'Republican' meaning 'conservative.' Fifty years ago, that was not necessarily true.) . . .

This is a lesson not just for the wonky backwaters of predictive modeling, but a good lesson for moving forward through this presidential cycle. If the only real swath of persuable voters amounts to maybe 10 percent of the electorate, then we need to be careful in how we look at the horse race. After all, we are talking about a group of people that have virtually no partisan or ideological attachments, pay very little attention to politics, and often create the crazy swings we see in the horse race polls during the course of the cycle. They are at the least fickle and at the worst maddening, as they regularly tell pollsters they have settled opinions when in fact they do not!"

Read The Weekly Standard, 90 Percent of the Electorate Is Probably Locked In.

"Political scientists have long known that you can predict most of what will happen in a presidential election with just a few key pieces of information: how the economy does, for instance, and the incumbent’s approval ratings in the summer. If you have those two numbers — even before you know the opponent, the campaign strategies or the issues — you can usually call the winner.

What these models suggest, in other words, is that the ephemera of elections aren’t that important. Not that this stuff doesn’t matter at all: Elections are often close, and a few percentage points can mean the difference between defeat and victory. But these micro-scandals mostly serve to distract us from the things that really do matter. And I don’t want to spend the next seven months distracted."

Read the Washington Post, 'Scandals' don’t predict election results. But this formula might., which includes a forecast model that "uses just three pieces of information that have been found to be particularly predictive: economic growth in the year of the election, as measured by the change in gross domestic product during the first three quarters; the president’s approval rating in June; and whether one of the candidates is the incumbent.

And compare the results with The New Times forecast model discussed previously.

The Republi-CON Etch A Sketch Candidate

UPDATE VI:  Another move to middle, this one by a potential VP, "defending U.S. involvement in crises abroad," and admiting Obama's not doing such a bad job on foreign policy.  Read the Washington Post, Marco Rubio delivers foreign policy address with bipartisan tone at Brookings Institution.  

UPDATE V:  Shakin it up and makin that move to the middle:

First, a gay senior adviser, for the gay vote.  Read the Washington Post, Mitt Romney adviser Richard Grenell faces backlash over tweets, sexual orientation. 

Next, Obamney, "who vowed to veto the Dream Act, went on the campaign trail Monday with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who favors some legal status for those who would be covered by the act. Romney’s campaign says his claim during a primary debate that the Arizona law was a “model” for the nation referred only to the electronic verification of immigration status. (Alas for Romney, he endorsed the Arizona law more than once.) His campaign also tried recently to disown Kris Kobach, an immigration hard-liner, before admitting that the Kansas secretary of state is an 'informal adviser.'"  Read the Washington Post, Romney won’t be able to shake immigration debate, which notes that "[a]ficionados of the Etch a Sketch will recall a certain flaw in the toy: If you use it often, some of the lines drawn no longer disappear when you shake the device, instead leaving an indelible trace of where you have been."

UPDATE IV:  The latest etch a sketch moment, appointment of a gay spokesman.  Read Mediaite, Anti-Gay Radio Host And Log Cabin Republican Argue Over Romney’s Appointment Of Gay Spokesman.

UPDATE III:  "Perceptions of ideological extremism are one of the few factors that influence voter perceptions of challengers, as George McGovern and Barry Goldwater discovered. So Romney persumably wants to move to the center on as many issues as possible, including the ones Democrats are pushing. And yet this isn’t easy, because Romney doesn’t want a civil war to break out in the GOP.

Dems are currently pushing votes on no less than three major issues, all of which are designed to force Romney to make difficult choices."

Read the Washington Post, The trap Democrats are laying for Mitt Romney.
UPDATE II:  It being general election Etch A Sketch time, watch Ann Romney become pro-choice as she says that politicians "need to respect choices women make." See The Daily Show, Mitt Needs Moms - Motherhood Is Hard, starting at the 1:15 mark.

And at the 1:50 mark, watch Obamney say just three months ago said that mothers should work.

UPDATE:  What will Obamney's position be on immigration, health care, global warming, abortion, foreign policy, or even stay-at-home mothers?  It depends.  Read the Washington Post, Which Mitt will we get?, which notes that "[t]he presidential debates shouldn’t be much of a chore for Obama this fall. He can just stand by while Romney argues with himself."

"In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece on Thursday, the veteran conservative journalist Fred Barnes offered Mitt Romney some advice for improving his campaign, including the sensible (and one might also say humane) suggestion that on immigration, the presumptive nominee 'would be wise to move away from his harsh position in the primaries.'

Then Barnes included this fascinating sentence: 'According to a Romney adviser, his private view of immigration isn’t as anti-immigrant as he often sounded.'"

Read the Washington Post, Tell us more about Romney's 'private' views.


I'm sure this post will be updated regularly with more of Obamney's 'private' views.

Voters Can't Handle the Truth And the Candidates Know It

Will "campaign rhetoric make it impossible for [Obama or Obamney] to be effective if elected president?"  You betcha!  Read CNN, Campaign rhetoric may tie next president's hands. 

So "[t]o corral unexcited base voters, both campaigns must rely less on positive messaging (what can they say?) and much more on galvanizing dislike and antipathy of 'the other side.' The dueling dog stories do that job perfectly. Which is why you'll keep hearing about them through the long weeks of electioneering ahead."  Read CNN, Why Obama vs. Romney is becoming a dogfight.

150 Years Later

UPDATE VI:  One hundred and fifty years ago [April 24-25, 1862], "Admiral Farragut's momentous, and surprisingly bloodless, conquest of the Big Easy."  Read The New York Times, The Fall of New Orleans.

UPDATE V: Read also The New York Times, The Meaning of Bull Run.


UPDATE IV: One hundred and fifty years ago today [July 21, 1861] "the first major battle of the Civil War." Read the play-by-play of Bull Run at The New York Times, Where Ignorant Armies Clash.


UPDATE III: The South seceded over states' rights you say? Wrong. "Confederate states did claim the right to secede, but no state claimed to be seceding for that right. In fact, Confederates opposed states' rights -- that is, the right of Northern states not to support slavery. " Read the Washington Post, Five myths about why the South seceded.


UPDATE II: One hundred and fifty years ago today [January 5, 1861] "armed secessionist insurgents from Mobile" overtook "Fort Gaines on the outer reaches of Mobile Bay." Read The New York Times, The Precarious Position of Lt. Reese, which notes that several months later, "as Charleston Harbor was lighted up during the bombardment of Fort Sumter, [Reese] was en route to Pensacola, part of a 500-man expedition headed to relieve Fort Pickens, which guarded the entrance to Pensacola Harbor and sat just 40 miles east of his previous post. The tiny garrison at Fort Pickens was one of the few forts to resist Confederate demands to surrender; with the timely arrival of Reese and the rest of the reinforcements, it managed to avoid the fate of Fort Gaines."


UPDATE: "One hundred and fifty years ago today [December 20, 1860] South Carolina declared its independence from the United States." For more on the intricate legal history that connected slavery to states’ rights — and how it led to secession, read The New York Times, Disunion: States’ Rights, but to What?

From November until April, follow the Civil War Sesquicentennial.

The Washington Post "commemorates the Civil War's 150th anniversary with commentary from experts, sesquicentennial news and an updating event calendar."

And The New York Times "revisits and reconsiders America's most perilous period -- using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded."

The Question Isn't Whether to Raise Taxes, It's Whose Taxes Will Be Raised

"Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Republicans are not against all tax increases. Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, thinks poor people might need a tax hike. . .

At the Politico event, Mr. Cantor was asked if broadening the base means tax increases for the poor. 'I'm saying that, just in a macro way of looking at it, you’ve got to discuss that issue,' he said. 'I've never believed that you go raise taxes on those that have been successful, that are paying in, taking away from them, so that you just hand out and give to someone else.'

There are many things wrong with this nonsense, but I’ll just point out one: Mr. Cantor and other Republicans who push this line have it exactly backwards. The problem is not that so many Americans don’t pay taxes. It’s that so many Americans are too poor to pay taxes."

Read The New York Times, A Dastardly Plot to Avoid Taxes.

Economic Mess for Non-Dummies

UPDATE VI:  As noted many times before, the Great Recession, AKA Lesser Depression, was caused by credit default swaps, deregulation and lack of government oversight.  Watch the special FRONTLINE four-part series, Money, Power and Wall Street.

"FRONTLINE finds plenty of blame to go around (Goldman Sachs and CEO Lloyd Blankfein take a particular bruising), but is most devastating in its dissection of the chummy collusion between bankers and the government leaders who should have been watch-dogging them," just as I have been saying for years.

UPDATE V: Despite Republi-con myths to the contrary, "[t]he 2008 financial crisis was . . . caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street . . . permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors, and risky bets on securities backed by the loans." Read The New York Tiems, Financial Meltdown Was 'Avoidable,' Inquiry Concludes


UPDATE IV: Is it the best documentary of 2010. Watch the preview:




UPDATE III: "Wall St. moguls, Washington polls, government regulators, rating agencies, unscrupulous lenders, or unqualified borrowers—who is free from blame.

There were those who were outright crooks. There were those who failed to do due diligence. There were those who were simply greedy. There were those who were too dumb to see what was going on. What McLean and Nocera have written is an indictment of all the devils involved, and everyone involved smells of the sulfurous pit. "

Read All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis.


UPDATE II: For other reviews of the movie, read:

San Fransico Chronicle, Who was responsible for the global financial collapse? Filmmaker Charles Ferguson finds out in "Inside Job"

Huffington Post, Will Inside Job Start a Popular Rebellion?

The movie is the economic horror film of 2010.


UPDATE: And still having a hard time understanding the economic mess. Then "you haven't seen "Inside Job," the new documentary about how our economic crisis evolved." Read the Washington Post, The economic crisis was an 'inside job'.

After watching the documentary, the writer concludes "trying to assign blame to either Democrats or Republicans is pointless. Everyone is culpable. From the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan deregulated banks, through the two Bushes, Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama, each administration has endorsed -- and each Congress has helped tweak -- laws and rules that made systemic abuses and the meltdown not only possible but, looking back, inevitable."

Still having a hard time understanding the economic mess. My previous post, Economic Mess for Dummies, not challenging enough. Then read Charles I. Jones, A Supplement to Macroeconomics (W.W. Norton, 2008), The Global Financial Crisis of 2007–20??.

Also still wondering who's to blame. Read, NPR, Planet Money, He Blames Greenspan.

The Republi-CON 'Media Bias' Myth AKA 'Reporting Something I Don’t Like'

How did we get to the point that even Republi-cons are now complaining about the bias of right-wing media outlets like Fox News and National Review?

Last week in Delaware, The Great Lecherer told a "Tea Party crowd that 'CNN is less biased than Fox.' By deploying the media-bias charge against an institution developed to combat it, Gingrich [and others have] demonstrated just how meaningless the indictment has become."

Read The New York Times, The Boys Who Cried Fox.

A Republican Meteorologist on Republi-CON Truthiness About Global Warming

"Climate science shows that over a long period of time, the statistics have changed. Things that used to happen a lot, like consistent winter snow cover, are happening less reliably. Things that happened every now and then, like droughts and wildfires, are happening more reliably. And things that almost never happened -- such as the 15,000 new U.S. temperature records in March -- sometimes now do occur. And they can’t be explained with purely meteorological reasoning.

The changes we’re seeing, far more than I can list here, seem like an accumulation of coincidences. Pieced together, reveal the full puzzle: There’s more heat and moisture in the atmosphere, and our emissions are largely responsible for keeping it there.

The millennium’s first decade was the warmest on record and included nine of the 10 hottest years. Greenhouse gas levels are at their highest in 800,000 years. Less heat is escaping the top of the atmosphere in the wavelengths of greenhouse gases. For the first time, scientists have recorded both hemispheres are warming – and the global temperature spike can’t be linked to an astronomical trigger, such as solar variability. Great Lakes peak ice has seen a 71 percent drop since 1973. Winters are shorter. Lakes melt earlier. Plants are moving north.

Worldwide, 95% of land-based glaciers are losing mass. September Arctic sea ice has lost 10 percent of its area every decade. Sea levels are rising. Oceans are 30 percent more acidic. Flooding and extreme storms are spiking in frequency and intensity. Last winter was the 4th warmest on record, despite the cooling influence of a La Nina phase in the Pacific.

Extremes are becoming more extreme. And none of it has anything to do with Al Gore. . .

How did so much of the Republican Party enter perpetual denial? We’ve turned climate science into a bizarre litmus test for conservatism. To pretend that heat-trapping gases can be waved away with a nod and a smirk is political fairytale. No harm. No foul. Keep drilling.

I’m a Christian and ultimately come to Christ through faith. With climate change no faith is required. There is a large and growing body of evidence. The way nature works applies the same to Republican and Democrat, Christian and Muslim, animal, tree and stone. Why do people who profess to love and follow God roll their eyes? Luke 16:2 says "Man has been appointed as a steward for the management of God’s property, and ultimately he will give account for his stewardship."

Read Bloomberg Businessweek, Climate Change Has Nothing to Do With Al Gore.

And then explain what happens to 35 gigatons of CO2 each year.  

The Republi-CON 'We Are Better Than Europe' Myth

UPDATE:  We are the New Old Europe.

"Many countries have higher tax rates — and the United States has had higher tax rates — without stifling growth or encouraging the concentration of income in the hands of the very rich.

'In a way, the United States is becoming like Old Europe, which is very strange in historical perspective,' Mr. Piketty said. 'The United States used to be very egalitarian, not just in spirit but in actuality. Inequality of wealth and income used to be much larger in France. And very high taxes on the very rich — that was invented in the United States,' he said."

Read The New York Times, For Two Economists, the Buffett Rule Is Just a Start, which include this graph:

"The complexity of our tax code allows us to believe that we’re not a welfare state, but that’s false. . .

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently calculated how much each affluent country spends on social programs. When you include both direct spending and tax expenditures, the U.S. has one of the biggest welfare states in the world. We rank behind Sweden and ahead of Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Canada. Social spending in the U.S. is far above the organization’s average."

Read The New York Times, America Is Europe.

Where's All the Republi-CON Self-Righteous Indignation Now

 "Rush Limbaugh's 'slut' comment is only the tip of the iceberg."

Now an important Romney supporter "on team Mitt" is threatening Obama and calling Democratic women brain-dead, soulless idiots and varmints.

Read the Washington Post, Mitt Romney should denounce Ted Nugent, for women's sake. 

Make Your Own Tax Code

UPDATE:  Businesses make changes to the tax code all the time, it's called lobbying.  Read the Washington Post, Want lower tax rates? Hire a lobbyist., which notes that there is no direct "evidence linking the lobbying to the lower tax rates. But it would be fairly odd if they were spending all that money and getting nothing." 

So much for the the Republi-con 'it'll be easy to balance the budget' myth

 Just in time for tax day, read the Washington Post, Make your own tax code, which states:

"Think you could writer a better tax code than the one we've got? Here's your chance: The fine folks at Splitwise have a very cool interactive tax graphic where you can change the marginal rates on different income groups and eliminate various deductions and see the effect on the deficit. Go nuts."

A Palin What Might Have Been

"Would Sarah Palin have given Mitt Romney a tougher fight than Rick Santorum did?"  Read The New York Times, The Palin Counterfactual. 

In any case, it sure would have been a gift to comedians.  Read The New York Times, Come Back, Sarah Palin!

The Republi-CON 'It'll Be Easy to Balance the Budget' Myth

UPDATE:  Here is another example by a local Republi-cons

"Two projects totaling $3.5 million proposed by state Sen. Don Gaetz for Escambia County have been listed as 'budget turkeys' by Florida TaxWatch.

Those projects are:

» Port of Pensacola: $2 million for bulkhead repairs and other port improvements to make the port competitive in securing job-creating businesses.

» Baptist Health Care Lakeview Center: $1.5 million to provide graduate and under graduate training in caring for mental illness and substance abuse in rural and underserved areas of Northwest Florida."

Read the Pensacola News Journal, Florida TaxWatch labels three local projects labeled as 'budget turkeys'.

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.

Here are two examples, one local (our local elected officials are all Republi-cons), the other national, read the:

Pensacola News Journal, Library budget solution delayed, which discussed the effort of our local County Commission to cut the West Florida Public Library System's budget by 72 percent, and

Washington Post, GAO warns Congress again about Postal Service, which notes that the "Postal Service is losing billions of dollars annually amid declining mail volume and increasing labor costs . . . [but Congress has] delay[ed] the Postal Service’s move to a five-day delivery schedule by two years and [requiring] the agency to downsize, rather than close, its processing facilities."

More on That Fundamentalist Subculture of Ignorance

As noted before, there exists in the country a fundamentalist subculture of ignorance that embraces 'discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas'. Many are Republi-cons. Case on point, from the Washington Post, Tennessee Republicans throw a wrench:

"Republican Gov. Bill Haslam has allowed the Republican legislature's creationism bill — also known as the 'monkey bill,' after the famous 1925 Scopes Trial, also in Tennessee — to become law.  The new law allows schools to teach creationism and to point out 'flaws' in  such a  widely held scientific consensus that global warming is occurring and is man-made."

Next up for the Republi-cons, the theory of gravity.

Republi-CON Fear, Anger and Hatred Payback Time

Here are two good stories to start ya off, read :

U.S. News & World Report, "Dogs Against Romney" Upset Again, which notes:

"Dogs Against Romney, a grassroots organization formed after founder Scott Crider discovered Romney once strapped the family Irish Setter, Seamus, to the roof of a station wagon for 12 hours, says the GOP front-runner can't seem to avoid associating himself with animal cruelty. [See a collection of political cartoons on the Republican party.]

"I don't think Mitt Romney is purposefully trying to do that, but I think he should more careful about who he aligns himself with," Crider says.

Romney will earn donations at a lavish campaign fundraiser Monday hosted by campaign donors Fred and Marlene Malek. Mr. Malek, the president of Marriott Hotels and former finance committee co-chair of John McCain's presidential bid, was once affiliated with a gruesome animal cruelty case.

A 2006 story in the Washington Post detailed how in 1959, Malek was one of five men arrested for killing and barbecuing a dog in a Peoria, Ill. Park."

And Time, The Story Behind Lawrence O’Donnell’s Apology to Mormons, which explores claims that "Mormonism was created by a guy in upstate New York in 1830 when he got caught having sex with the maid and explained to his wife that God told him to do it. Forty-eight wives later, Joseph Smith’s lifestyle was completely sanctified in the religion he invented to go with it, which Mitt Romney says he believes."

As noted before many times before, fear, anger, and hatred is a great campaign strategy.

The Health Care Debate in One Comic Strip

From This Modern World, Health Care Reform, A Brief Glossary of Terms:

Isn't It Over Yet!

UPDATE XII:  He's not the best candidate or the most conservative candidate, but the Republi-cons now believe with some of their heart that, now more than ever, someone should run, and after checking if "anybody else jumping in, no, did you check, last chance, okay," the settle on Obamney.  Watch The Colbert Report, Settling for Mitt Romney:

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

UPDATE XI: Obamney "is ahead in the Republican delegate race. But what does he need to do to clinch the nomination? Use the interactive calculator below to determine how well Mr. Romney must do in order to get a majority of the delegates or to just prevent anyone else from getting a majority of delegates," at The New York Times, Romney’s Magic Numbers.


UPDATE X: When "asked on CNN whether he is concerned that Romney might be forced by his Republican opponents to take extreme positions during the primary that could alienate moderates in a race against President Barack Obama [Eric Fehrnstrom, a trusted Obamney advisor replied:]

"I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign, everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again."

Read the Washington Post, 'Etch a Sketch' comment creates new doubts about Romney.

"After talking to Satan about Rick Santorum, [WaPo] was lucky enough to secure an interview with an Etch a Sketch about Mitt Romney." Read the Washington Post, Mitt Romney and the Etch a Sketch.


UPDATE IX: Jeb Bush is tired of the whole thing also. Read Read The New York Times, Jeb Bush Backs Romney and Urges End to G.O.P. Battle.


UPDATE VIII: So much for the hope of a brokered convention.

"Mitt Romney’s big victories in Illinois and Puerto Rico this week have expanded his lead over Rick Santorum by roughly 60 delegates, putting him ahead by 300 delegates over all.

Increasingly, the nomination race is entering an endgame stage in which it is less a two-man contest between Mr. Romney and Mr. Santorum than one that pits Mr. Romney against himself. How certain is Mr. Romney to get the 1,144 delegates required to clinch the Republican nomination? And if he gets them, how soon will he do it?"

Read The New York Times, G.O.P. Nomination Becoming a One-Man Race.


UPDATE VII: "Whatever weaknesses people ascribe to Romney or Santorum as candidates, the Republican race is turning on the economic and religious divides in the GOP coalition. That’s why states like Illinois, Michigan and Ohio are difficult for Santorum and states like Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee were hard for Romney." Read the Washington Post, Santorum-Romney battle reveals stark divide in the GOP.

Read also, USA Today, Contention, confusion mar Missouri caucuses.


UPDATE VI: "Now that the Republican presidential field has been effectively whittled to two, each of the front-runners has laid out a detailed plan to beat the other.

This much is clear: Whoever wins is going to win ugly."

Read the Washington Post, Whether Romney or Santorum wins, the road to the nomination will be ugly.


UPDATE V: Obamney "is still the Republican front-runner by virtue of the delegates he relentlessly piles up. But [Obamney] keeps failing to bring this slugfest to a close. No matter how much he panders and grovels to the party’s right, its supporters will never see him as one of their own.

One senses that the conservative ultras are resigned to having to vote for [Obamney] in November against President Obama. They are determined not to vote for him twice, using the primaries to give voice to their hearts and their guts. They will keep signaling their refusal to surrender to the Romney [Obamney] with its torrent of nasty advertisements and its continuing education courses in delegate math designed to prove that resistance is futile.

The more they are told this, the more they want to resist. . .

But having decided to run, [Obamney] must wage a campaign of denial. He buries his old Massachusetts self and misleads about what he once believed. He even tries to run to Santorum’s right. Recently, he denounced Santorum for voting in favor of federal support for Planned Parenthood, a group to which [Obamney]’s family once made a donation. It is an unseemly spectacle.

Bush’s efforts to craft a 'compassionate conservatism' friendlier toward those in the political middle collapsed into ruins years ago. This year’s Republican candidates almost never speak Bush’s name. It is to Santorum’s discredit that he did not dare defend his perfectly defensible vote in favor of Bush’s No Child Left Behind education program. Santorum, too, fears the pitchforks wielded by those who see any exertion of federal authority as leading down a road to serfdom.

And so it is on to Illinois, the next place [Obamney] has to win to keep the resistance at bay."

Read the Washington Post, Mitt Romney meets 'peasants with pitchforks'.


UPDATE IV: From the Washington Post, 5 lessons learned from the Alabama and Mississippi primaries:

“Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum’s dual wins in Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday night hands his campaign some real momentum although he continues to fall further behind former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in the race for delegates.

What did we learn — or, more accurately, re-learn — from the votes last night in the South as well as in Hawaii and American Samoa? The five biggest lessons from the votes are below. . .

1. It’s a two-man race . . .

2. The math is the math . . .

3. ...But perception matters . . .

4. Illinois=Battle Royale . . .

5. It’s a game of 'Survivor' now . . .

Santorum is already pointing to the March 24 Louisiana primary where he will now be heavily favored and, as we have written before, April looks to be Romney's best month yet in terms of the state’s set to vote. May holds good news for Santorum. June looks to be a good Romney month.

In short, the next three months could well amount to the equivalent of two boxers standing in the middle of the ring exchanging haymakers with neither man able to knock the other one down much less out. Both will have to weather bad patches in which a series of losses will force them to live off the political land for a time. Both will have streaks in which they appear to be unbeatable."

UPDATE III: What should The Great Lecherer do? He "lost the only chance he had at creating a rationale for his candidacy. [He] is a great rationalizer, so it will be interesting to see how he explains his current circumstances. Unless he admits he is staying in the race to help Romney, there is no point to his campaign."

Read the Washington Post, Is Mitt Romney still inevitable?


UPDATE II: "Once again, Americans are waking up to headlines about multiple primary-night victories for Rick Santorum over the man who is still widely considered to be the most likely Republican nominee this year, Mitt Romney.

But Mr. Santorum’s victories on Tuesday in Alabama and Mississippi raise a pivotal question: Can he build on his night of triumph to emerge as a true alternative to Mr. Romney and a credible standard-bearer for his party, or will he remain just an obstacle for Mr. Romney to maneuver past on his inevitable path to the 2012 Republican presidential nomination?

The answer will in no small part depend on what Newt Gingrich does from here. Late Tuesday night, at least, Mr. Gingrich indicated he would not drop out, vowing to continue on “toward Tampa,” where the party will hold its convention in August. In that case, Mr. Santorum will continue to share the anti-Romney vote and see his chances dim that much more.

If Mr. Gingrich changes his mind in the light of day — or is marginalized in the remaining primaries by conservative voters who judge that their cause is better served by rallying around a single rival to Mr. Romney — Mr. Santorum will get the “two-man race” he says he can win.

Even then, his chances of stopping Mr. Romney could come down to difficult delegate math."

Read The New York Times, Road for Santorum Depends on the Next Move by Gingrich.


UPDATE: "Ever since he swept three contests on a single night in February, Rick Santorum has argued that the Republican presidential nomination battle is effectively a two-man race between himself and Mitt Romney. Tuesday’s primaries decisively turned that claim into reality. Now Santorum must prove that ideology can trump electability with GOP voters who are hungry to defeat President Obama in November.

Santorum’s victories in Alabama and Mississippi once again shook up the Republican contest, although they may not have fundamentally altered its trajectory. Even in losing the two primaries, Romney has still won more states and still holds a significant lead in the race for delegates.

But with former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) unable to win either state in his home region, Santorum clearly earned the opportunity to try to consolidate the party’s conservative base, which has been resistant to Romney’s candidacy. The former senator from Pennsylvania must now convince Republicans in other regions that his brand of conservatism would make him a stronger nominee against Obama.

Santorum will have three chances in the next week to demonstrate that he can win that argument and that he can defeat Romney. The most important will take place on Tuesday in Illinois. The primary there could become a rerun of the battles Romney and Santorum waged in Michigan and Ohio. Santorum fell just short in both. That makes Illinois pivotal to his hopes of overtaking his main rival.

Before that, caucuses will be held Saturday in Missouri, where the former senator won a beauty-contest primary last month. On Sunday, Puerto Rico will hold its primary. Santorum and Romney will both campaign there beforehand."

Read the Washington Post, Rick Santorum hoping ideology will trump electability.

It's all part of the Republi-CON civil war between the establishment and the angry base (AKA 'peasants with pitchforks').

"It’s hard to say who is going to win in Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday night. Polls in these states have a poor track record, and they project a close race anyway, although Rick Santorum is somewhat off the lead lap in Mississippi.

But if the confusing polling situation makes pre-election analysis more challenging, it ought to make analysis easier after the fact. Tuesday night’s contests are mostly about who wins — and not who clears some arbitrary bar based on pre-election expectations.

There are six possible permutations of the winners in these states, assuming that we regard victories in Alabama or Mississippi as being interchangeable. We will consider each possibility briefly down below.

Permutation #1: Mitt Romney Wins Both States . . .

Permutation #2: Newt Gingrich Wins Both States . . .

Permutation #3: Rick Santorum Wins Both States . . .

Permutation #4: Romney and Gingrich Each Win a State . . .

Permutation #5: Romney and Santorum Each Win a State . . .

Permutation #6: Santorum and Gingrich Each Win a State . . ."

Read The New York Times, What’s at Stake in Alabama and Mississippi.

Which Poltical Party Maintains That a Health Care Responsibility Law Is Unconstitutional, But Torture Is Not

Can you say Republi-CONs.

To understand why, read the Washington Post, The Supreme Court vs. the Commerce Clause, which notes:

"Wickard v. Filburn is the case in which the federal government fined Roscoe Filburn for growing wheat in excess of the quotas set out in the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. They also forced him to destroy the excess wheat, even though he said it was only for personal use. The Supreme Court backed the government. Key quote:

    Even if appellee’s activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as ‘direct’ or ‘indirect.’

This is, I think, the most honest way to present the argument. Based on existing precedent, the individual mandate is clearly constitutional. Free riders in the health insurance market clearly have 'a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce.'"

The read The New York Times, Bush-Era Torture: A Dissenting View, which comments on a memo that Bush administration ignored, and later "tried to collect all the copies of [the] memo and destroy them":

"We know that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their lieutenants did not like dissenting viewpoints. The justification for the invasion of Iraq depended on the muzzling of anyone who doubted the existence of weapons of mass destruction, and for the most part political appointees fell into line—Jack Goldsmith excepted.

Now there’s evidence that another important voice in the Bush administration resisted certain, shall we say, constitutional excesses. Philip Zelikow, a high-ranking State Department lawyer, argued in a Feb. 15, 2006 memo that international law prohibited waterboarding and other so-called 'enhanced interrogation techniques' by any American official – whether he was a military interrogator at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, or a C.I.A. operative at a 'black prison' hidden in some foreign country."

Don't Be Duped

As noted before, there exists in the country a fundamentalist subculture of ignorance that embraces 'discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas'. Some call it right-wing media.

"[R]ational thinking and common sense hold little sway in the hearts and minds of those who fervently believe secretive forces within our armed forces and the government they are sworn to protect are capable of nefarious deeds. Conspiracy theories are not a new phenomenon; many commonly held conspiracies actually date back centuries. But the Internet [and right wing media allow] a thought to reach millions with a single keystroke, [and] has made it much easier for conspiracy theories to develop and flourish."

Don't be duped. "[R]esist believing everything you read. . .

To help you determine the accuracy of information you come across on the Web, plenty of sites provide tools for fact-checking and getting background material," read MOAA, Truth-Testing on the Internet.

The Republi-CON 'Carter & the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Caused the Housing Crisis' Myth

As I've said over and over and over and over again, it's a lie.

It's a regular Republi-con zombie lie.

And the only way to kill a zombie is with a head shot, preferably followed by a corpse burning.

Read the Washington Post, No, the affordable housing push didn’t cause the subprime crisis, which reference an earlier article, Barney Frank didn’t cause the housing crisis and now a new study published by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, Did Affordable Housing Legislation Contribute to the Subprime Securities Boom?

That study concluded:

"No. [Using] a regression discontinuity approach to investigate whether affordable housing policies influenced origination or affected prices of subprime mortgages . . . [and] merged loan-level data on non-prime securitized mortgages with individual- and neighborhood-level data for California and Florida[, w]e found no evidence that lenders increased subprime originations or altered pricing around the discrete eligibility cutoffs for the Government Sponsored Enterprises' (GSEs) affordable housing goals or the Community Reinvestment Act. Our results indicate that the extensive purchases of risky private-label mortgage-backed securities by the GSEs were not due to affordable housing mandates."

How the Fear of Their Own Lie Causes the Very Lie That They So Feared

Watch Colbert explain the Republi-con psyche with this example: How "[t]he fear of not being able to buy guns during a second Obama term leads to Americans buying so many guns that now they can't buy any guns, just like they feared." Watch The Colbert Report, Barack Obama-Gun Control Conspiracy:

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

The Republi-cons are "always one step ahead of where [Obama] is not planning to go. . . and the total lack of evidence is all the evidence [the Republi-cons] need."

Health Care Lawsuit Update, the Supreme Court Edition

UPDATE VII: "If the individual mandate goes, the government is going to put its hands all over your health care.

The individual mandate requires consumers to purchase health insurance in order to eliminate the problem of free riders — people who don’t purchase insurance until they get sick or injured or those who never purchase insurance and end up passing on to the rest of us the costs of care they can’t afford. Detractors argue that the mandate unconstitutionally infringes on personal liberty by forcing Americans to purchase health insurance. But compare it to three ways of addressing the free- rider problem in health care that are clearly, indisputably, constitutional."

Read the Washington Post, There was a reason conservatives once supported the individual mandate.


UPDATE VI: It's all about politics. So says "Charles Fried is a professor of law at Harvard University. From 1985 to 1989, he served as President Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general. He specializes in constitutional law and is the author of many books on the subject, including 2004’s 'Saying What the Law Is: The Constitution in the Supreme Court.' He also wrote a brief on behalf of 104 law professors arguing that the individual mandate is constitutional." Read the Washington Post, Reagan’s solicitor general: ‘Health care is interstate commerce. Is this a regulation of it? Yes. End of story.’

The article includes this question and answer exchange:

EK: To focus on Barnett’s argument, however, is it possible that the government can buy us insurance using our tax money but can’t compel us to buy insurance using our own money?

CF: I’ve never understood why regulating by making people go buy something is somehow more intrusive than regulating by making them pay taxes and then giving it to them. I don’t get it. It was comical to read the Heritage Foundation’s brief attempting to explain why they were changing their position on this. Something needed to be done about this problem. Everyone understood that. So, the Heritage Foundation said let’s do an individual mandate because it keeps it within free enterprise. The alternative was single payer. And they didn’t want that, and I’m in sympathy with that. So now all of a sudden the free-market alternative becomes unconstitutional and terribly intrusive where a government imposition and government-run project would not be? I don’t get it. Well, I do get it. It’s politics.

EK: On that, there’s been a real change from early on, when almost all Supreme Court observers thought this case was a joke, to now, when it seems truly up in the air. Did people underestimate the seriousness of the constitutional questions here, or did they underestimate the politicization of the judiciary?

CF: Politics, politics, politics. You look at the wonderful decision by Jeff Sutton, who is as much of a 24-karat gold conservative as anyone could be. He is a godfather to the Federalist Society. Look at his opinion. Or look at Larry Silberman’s opinion. I don’t understand what’s gotten into people. Well, I do I’m afraid, but it’s politics, not anything else.

As I stated before, this case should not be decided by "the justices’ politics." I've said since the start of the court challenges, and the parties and outcomes so far (with few exceptions) have reaffirmed my belief, the case involves a political question ("a question of whether or not the court system is an appropriate forum in which to hear the case"). The Supreme Court should simply dismiss the challenges as beyond "its judicial authority" to decide.


UPDATE V: The Supreme Court heard "two hours of oral arguments on the most-contested part of the nation’s health-care law: The requirement that Americans purchase health insurance or pay a fine. The individual mandate is easily the Affordable Care Act’s least popular provision, and the rallying cry of those who want to repeal the law. Here’s a Wonkblog guide to what it does, why it matters and where it came from." Read the Washington Post, Individual mandate 101: What it is, why it matters.


UPDATE IV: If you don't have time to listen to the complete court arguments, visit SCOTUSBlog, We listen to the whole AIA argument, so you don’t have to.

For a more in-depth review, visit the SCOTUSBlog Health Care page.


UPDATE III: A reporter that frees herself from the journalistic convention that there are two identifiable sides to a story and fresh from reading the main briefs in the case to be argued before the Supreme Court next week believes that that the "constitutional challenge to the law’s requirement for people to buy health insurance — specifically, the argument that the mandate exceeds Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause — is rhetorically powerful but analytically so weak that it dissolves on close inspection. There’s just no there there." Read The New York Times, Never Before.

I posted the following comment:

"I'm just an attorney in NW Florida who has never had any success in convincing the local federal courts (or the 11th Circuit for that matter) to impose any Commerce Clause limitations in federal criminal cases. But I think there is an easy way for the Court to decide this case 9-0 (OK, maybe 8-1, the one being Thomas) and to show that this case will not be decided by "the justices’ politics." I've said since the start of the court challenges, and the parties and outcomes so far (with few exceptions) have reaffirmed my belief, the case involves a political question ("a question of whether or not the court system is an appropriate forum in which to hear the case"). The Supreme Court should simply dismiss the challenges as beyond "its judicial authority" to decide.

UPDATE II: "The survival of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law may come down to wheat, pot, guns — and a nagging question about broccoli." Read Politico, Health law may hinge on wheat, pot and broccoli.

I posted the following comment:

You forgot body armor/bulletproof vests. See Alderman v. United States (09-1555, 1/10/2011).

UPDATE: "On March 26, the Supreme Court will begin three days of oral arguments over President Obama's health-care overhaul, pitting the Obama administration against 26 states that say Congress exceeded its authority by requiring Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty. [For a] look at the issues the Supreme Court will be considering — and how they fared under the lower courts", see the Washington Post, Obama health-care law before Supreme Court.

If you've been following the health care lawsuits, you know that several are now pending before the Supreme Court.

"If the Supreme Court decides to review President Barack Obama’s health reform law, it will also have to choose which issues it wants to hear — and that decision could have a significant impact on the law’s final fate.

There are four lawsuits pending before the court, and the Obama administration and five opponents of the law — a group of 26 states, Virginia, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Thomas More Law Center and Liberty University — have all filed competing petitions asking the court to take their cases and their issues.

All six certiorari petitions ask the court to review a key question: Is it constitutional for Congress to require nearly all Americans to buy health insurance? But several of them also ask the court to review other pieces of the law, too, such as the Medicaid expansion and requirements for employers.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide as early as next month which case or cases it will accept and which issues it wants the parties to argue. It could decide to hear only the challenge to the individual mandate or combine pieces of the other cases.

Here are six issues the Supreme Court could decide to hear:

The individual mandate . . .

Severability . . .

The Anti-Injunction Act . . .

The Virginia law . . .

Medicaid . . .

Employer mandate . . ."

Read Politico, High court zeroes in on health care.

And remember you can check the status of any of "the 22 cases challenging the health-care law" at the Kaiser Health News scoreboard.

What Goes Around Comes Around, Sexual and Reproductive Health Edition

UPDATE: "A site called Government Free VJJ has launched 'The Snatchel Project' with tips on how to 'knit or crochet a vagina or uterus' and send it to men in Congress. 'If they have their own,' the site says, 'they can leave ours alone!'" Read CNN, Vagina enters stage left -- or is it right?

With all the medical restriction on female sexual and reproductive health choices, why no government restrictions on the male part of the relationship?

In "in the arena of sexual and reproductive health, [aren't men] usually the other half of the equation and bear equal responsibility"?

Never fear though, in Ohio, a women has introduced a bill to "make it much more difficult - and embarrassing for many, many men - to get” anti-erectile-dysfunction drugs.

Read the Washington Post, Viagra and the little blue bill of Ohio.

The Road to the Congressman's House

"Congressman Jeff Miller, Republican from Chumukla Florida who took thousands from local taxpayers to pave a road to his house isolated in the country. Taxpayers who couldn’t get their own roads paved without paying for the process themselves wound up paying for a five mile section of highway in Santa Rosa County that ended at his residence with no other residences on that stretch of road. This was while the local DOT could not afford lights in rural areas that would help local residents from being run down by tourists along US98 and US90 both of which are also vital hurricane evacuation routes but had to defer to 'his' project first when funds were very limited a few years back."

Read RedState.com, On Congressman Jeff Miller (R-Fl).

Millions in farm subsidies, and now a paved road, courtesy of the federal government?!! It should be Republi-CON Jeff Miller, R-Hypocrite-ville.

The Republi-CON 'Cutting Taxes Stimulates Growth That Offsets Lost Revenue' Myth

UPDATE: Of course, Ryan's budget proposal "not now and has never been remotely serious." Read The New York Times, Flim-Flam Fever.

The budget proposed by Paul Ryan would 'reduce taxes for the wealthy, shift health care costs to the private sector, and increase the deficit and the debt far more than projected.' Read The New York Times, NYT, The Limits of American Exceptionalism.

The Republi-CON Modus Operandi: Taking Words Out of Context

Obamney learned from the best when misquoting others. Read The Atlantic, Quote of the Day: Karl Rove's Dishonest Reporting and/or Forbes, Shocker! Karl Rove Endorses Obama in WSJ Op-Ed. (Not) Really!

All part of the Republi-CON "not intended to be a factual statement" and "misinformation" propaganda industry.

The Republi-CON 'Obama's To Blame For Higher Gas Prices' Myth

UPDATE III: The "problem with politics in the age of searchable online news archives is that it’s the opposite of an Etch a Sketch: Nothing ever disappears." Read the Washington Post, Romney: For high gas prices before he was against them.


UPDATE II: "U.S. energy policy has very little effect either on oil prices or on overall U.S. employment. For the truth is that we’re already having a hydrocarbon boom, with U.S. oil and gas production rising and U.S. fuel imports dropping. If there were any truth to drill-here-drill-now, this boom should have yielded substantially lower gasoline prices and lots of new jobs. Predictably, however, it has done neither. . .

Why, then, are Republicans pretending otherwise? Part of the answer is that the party is rewarding its benefactors: the oil and gas industry doesn’t create many jobs, but it does spend a lot of money on lobbying and campaign contributions. The rest of the answer is simply the fact that conservatives have no other job-creation ideas to offer."

Read The New York Times, Natural Born Drillers.

Actually the title of the article should be Natural Born Liars.


UPDATE: "Who's to blame for gas prices now hovering near a national average of $3.80 a gallon? Take your pick: Iran, market speculators, oil companies, India.

India? Really?

Yes. Already the fourth largest energy consumer in the world, India's demand for oil looks set to rise inexorably as more of its people buy cars and take to the road. Ditto for China and other emerging markets. Their rising demand is pushing up prices for everyone."

Read the Christian Science Monitor, Gas prices too high. Blame India?

The graph says it all. From the Washington Post, Nope, more drilling won’t bring back $2.50 gasoline:



As the article notes:

"[O]il prices are set on a world market, and there are a whole bunch of factors that affect prices. A healthier global economy means more global demand for oil. That pushes prices up. A new wave of middle-class consumers in China and India have been replacing their bikes with automobiles. That pushes prices up. Oil fields are declining in countries like Mexico. That pushes prices up. Saudi Arabia seems to be running low on spare capacity. That pushes prices up. Tensions in Iran have prompted traders to set oil aside for potential supply disruptions in the future. That pushes prices up.

America’s domestic oil production, by contrast, is a small part of the global picture. Dean Baker lays out some numbers: 'U.S. production is roughly 8 million barrels a day, it accounts for less than 9 percent of a world-wide market that is close to 90 million barrels a day. Even if U.S. production could be increased by a third (an almost impossible increase) it would only increase world supply by 3 percent. This would lower the price of oil by 7-8 percent. This is not trivial, but it is not the difference between $2 a gallon gas and $4 a gallon gas.' Yes, more drilling could allow us to reduce our oil-import bill, and that’s no small thing. But drilling alone can’t bring back $2.50-per-gallon gasoline.

At best, there are only a few minor things the United States could try to do to influence gasoline prices right now. U.S. diplomats could try to resolve the conflict with Iran, which would calm the jittery markets. The White House could order a release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, although analysts say this likely wouldn’t have a signficant [sic] impact on oil prices. If Congress really wanted to get creative, it could even shell out a bunch of money to prevent gasoline refineries from going bankrupt. (Okay, that last one isn’t a serious proposal, but refinery closings have helped nudge up gas prices in states like Pennsylvania.)

By and large, though, the country’s main option is the hard, boring option — the United States could try to become less dependent on oil, so that rising prices aren’t quite as difficult to cope with."

The best defense to rising oil prices, increasing efficiency (AKA conservation), which the Republi-CONs fight tooth and nail.

The Spin of Pastor 2+2 Does Not = 4, AKA Pastor Dred Scott or Pastor Truthiness (Formerly Known as Pastor Poppins)

UPDATE VII: Birthers rely on "a lie wrapped in an absurdity swaddled in paranoia."

The lie: the birth certificate is a fake.

The absurdity: Obama is not constitutionally qualified to be president.

The paranoia: religious intolerance and racism.


UPDATE VI: For resources to respond to the birther baloney, 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.

Another resource is Native and Natural Born Citizenship Explored, "[w]here native and natural coincide."

UPDATE V: Pastor Egomaniacal (AKA Pastor 2+2 Does Not = 4, Pastor Dred Scott, Pastor Truthiness, and Pastor Poppins), continued to well advance his "relationship with conspiracy entrepreneur Jerome Corsi, who would very much like to sell you a copy of the birther book he has co-authored with Michael Zullo, the volunteer investigator who took the leading part in the sheriff’s recent press conference. There is a booming business in birther baloney."

The quote is from an article, Conspiracy, Again, in the National Review (which was founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr. and describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for Republican/conservative news, commentary, and opinion." It is usually considered the center of intellectual activity for the American Conservative movement in the twentieth century.")

As the article states, conspiracies "are long-lived because the underlying mental pathologies are long-lived: As T. S. Eliot put it, 'Humankind cannot bear very much reality.'"

In the meantime, based upon the Pastor's self professed 10-year law enforcement background and experience, I'm waiting for the arrests that he claims are imminent.


UPDATE IV: Chase learned yesterday that if you disagree with Pastor 2+2 Does Not = 4 then he'll accuse you of attacking him personally.


UPDATE III: Someone just called me regarding the show this morning and during the discussion of the Pastor's egomaniacal nature, I had an epiphany, Carl Gallups is the leader of a cult, the Cult of Carl (hereafter C Squared, because squaring is so much more than adding).

The proof, listen to the Pastor and his sycophants. It's all about Carl and his alter ego, PPSIMMONS.

He and the ego often state the fundamental tenants of his/their belief system and then claims that those who do not share those very specific beliefs are not 'true believers.'

Ironically enough, the Pastor defines a cult as a group that requires adherence to a specific belief system.

In other words, he acknowledges he belongs to a cult.

And don't try to argue with him. The video includes numerous text warning that if a comment is posted that disagrees with the Pastor, the commenter "will be permanently blocked from commenting."

Just ask Randy.


UPDATE II: I called out Pastor 2+2 Does Not = 4 and he responded claiming that he doesn't mind discussing and debating the issues.

Therefore, I issue a challenge to him to debate the issues. (FYI, I'm not available til mid March.) I'll try to set aside a week for our initial debates. The first issue: the delusion of the birthers. If he's not crying mercy at the end, we can continue regular debates.

How about it Pastor, Mike can moderate.

WARNING, expect a no mercy take-down of his fact-free fantasies, right-wing rhetoric and partisan hackery (all part of his fundamentalist subculture of ignorance that embraces 'discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas'. He panders to fear, anger and hatred.

If you are one of them, watch out because I don't favor America's preference for rhetorical fairy tales to unpleasant realities.

But alas, I expect he's a chicken and will refuse the challenge.


UPDATE: Love listening to Pastor Dred Scott spin the loss. Unfortunately a long time listener, Randy, didn't know better and tried to talk reason with the Pastor.

Randy, remember what Lincoln once said, "If a man won’t agree that two plus two equals four, you will never win the argument because facts don’t matter."

And that's the reason Randy that the Pastor hangs up on people who don't agree with him.

As I've warned before, don't be duped by the Birthers

Well, the Birthers finally got a hearing, and no one appeared for Obama, and no evidence or argument was entered into the record on behalf of Obama. Nevertheless, "a state law judge flatly rejected legal challenges that contend he can not be a candidate." Read The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Judge: Obama eligible to be Georgia candidate.

Can't wait to hear 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) (AKA Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins) spin this one.

Expect a missile sighting somewhere over the U.S. to distract you from the news.

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

UPDATE III: "The White House and House Republicans don’t hold many similar views on how to reform health care, but as of Rep. Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget, they do agree on the goal: Both have outlined plans that would slow the growth of health costs. Both try to hit a target of slowing Medicare’s growth to just 0.5 percent faster than the rest of the economy. And if you dig into how they would get there, the policies start looking pretty similar." Read the Washington Post, What Paul Ryan learned from Obamacare.


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 Government Isn't Banning Incandescent Light Bulbs

UPDATE: "It’s a cheap political shot for Romney to blame 'Obama’s regulators' for a proposal that was signed into law by a Republican president and was broadly supported at the time. Moreover, we don’t see how higher efficiency standards translates into a 'ban,' especially when light manufacturers have embraced the new standards.

Three Pinocchios"

Read the Washington Post, Mitt Romney’s misfire on light bulb standards.

"The House of Representatives on Tuesday voted to keep energy efficiency standards for light bulbs, which passed in 2007 and are set to phase in beginning next year.

So, do you have to stockpile those old-school, soft white incandescent bulbs now?

No. Congress hasn't banned them. All it has said is that, starting in 2012, light bulbs must use less power to create the same amount of light, saving the country electricity and Americans cash. Light bulb makers already have familiar-looking soft white incandescent bulbs for sale that meet the federal regulations, so you don't have to use extremely efficient compact fluorescent or LED bulbs if you don't want to. Continuing innovation, meanwhile, promises to make tougher rules easier to meet in later years.

The Natural Resources Defense Council calculates that these light bulb efficiency standards will eventually save Americans $12.5 billion a year in lower energy bills, reducing consumption by the equivalent of the output of 33 large power plants and slashing greenhouse and other pollution along the way. Newer bulbs are more expensive than the old clunkers, but often not by much, and they more than pay for themselves in decreased energy use."

Read the Washington Post, Tea Party 0, Rational Policy 1.

So many lies, so little time to refudiate.

For Those Who Favor the Republi-con 'Every Man For Himself' Governing Philosophy

UPDATE: "[T]he wealth of a country is most closely correlated with the degree to which the average person shares in the overall growth of its economy. . .

[I]ncentives matter . . . If national institutions give even their poorest and least educated citizens some shot at improving their own lives — through property rights, a reliable judicial system or access to markets — those citizens will do what it takes to make themselves and their country richer.

Read The New York Times, Why Some Countries Go Bust.

Before the modern era, life was nasty, brutish and short.

But you don't have to read history to see that. There are many countries you can visit today characterized by "social-Darwinist brutishness" where profound poverty exists next to fabulous wealth and the "economic system is geared to reward motivated and resourceful individuals with personal wealth" while others trade garbage.

Where do garbage traders feel lucky and "gain their sense of upward mobility by contrasting their lot with that of their less fortunate neighbors," 'miserable souls' who 'trap rats and frogs and fry them for dinner' or 'eat the scrub grass at the sewage lake’s edge'?

Where does the poverty of "[m]igrants fleeing a crisis-ridden agricultural sector cause an oversupply of cheap labor" such that a "boy whose hand is sliced off by a shredding machine turns, 'with his blood-spurting stump,' to assure his boss that he won’t report the accident"?

Where is this land that has the 'government economic and social policy' of an "insider network of patronage in which the powerful flourish""'to preserve and consolidate' their 'established privilege vis-à-vis those without privilege'"?

And where do 'maggots breed in the infected sores of the garbage scavengers and gangrene inches up fingers, calves swell into tree trunks, while fellow scavengers "'kept a running wager about which of the scavengers would be the next to die'"?

Where is this land of opportunity that "accrues to the already privileged in the age of globalization", this "hollowed-out democracy [of] mean-minded new capitalism", this utopia of laissez-faire free enterprise unburdened by government regulation or health care?

Closer than you think.

Read The New York Times, Fighting for Scraps.