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.

How I Became a Pilot

From an email:

One of the questions from the career placement test given applicants for flight training and a military commission: Rearrange the letters P N E S I to spell out an important part of the human body that is more useful when erect!

Those who spell spine become doctors, the rest of us went to flight school.

The Fundamentalist Subculture of Ignorance That Embraces 'Discredited, Ridiculous and Even Dangerous Ideas'

UPDATE II: After the movie Game Change (based on the book with the same name), do you think that Palin is the problem, or just a symptom of the fundamentalist subculture of ignorance that embraces 'discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas'?

Read the Washington Post, Sarah Palin’s foolishness ruined U.S. politics.


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).

Save Us, Sarah, Save Us!

UPDATE IV: After the movie Game Change (based on the book with the same name), would you vote for Sarah?

Or has she "become a person who I think is filled with grievance, filled with anger who has a divisive message for the national stage when we need leaders in both parties to have a unifying message. . . . The lack of preparedness was a bad thing and the total disinterest in being more prepared and rectifying that is something that disqualifies"?

Read the Washington Post, Steve Schmidt’s brutally honest assessment of Sarah Palin.


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'.

To Republi-CONs, Women Who Use Contraceptives Are 'Sluts' and 'Prostitutes'

Just ask Rusty:

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

It is not hard to see how Rusty "has gone through four wives."

As Colbert noted, the apology only proved that Rusty "will do anything with his mouth for cash."

Republi-Cons Have No Shame, Judge Edition

UPDATE: Read The Huffington Post, Blinded by the Hate: The Real Problem With Judge Cebull's Email, which states:

"Earlier this week a Great Falls Tribune reporter found something startling in his inbox: a shockingly racist and misogynistic email forwarded from the most powerful federal judge in Montana, which 'joked' that the president of the United States was the product of his mother having sex with a dog. The story soon became national news, with groups like ours calling on Judge Richard Cebull to resign. . .

Attempting to explain his email forward, Judge Cebull told the reporter, John S. Adams,

The only reason I can explain it to you is I am not a fan of our president, but this goes beyond not being a fan. I didn't send it as racist, although that's what it is. Is sent it out because it's anti-Obama.

Judge Cebull is hardly alone in using the old 'I'm not racist, but...' line. In fact, his email was the result of an entire movement built on 'I'm not racist, but...' logic that equates disagreement with and dislike of the president with broad-based, racially charged smears. These smears, tacitly embraced by the GOP establishment, are more than personal shots at the president -- they're attacks on the millions of Americans who make up our growing and changing country.

Mainstream conservatives have genuine objections to President Obama's priorities and policies. But since he started running for president, a parallel movement has sprung up trying to paint Obama as an outsider and an imposter -- in unmistakably racially charged terms. Too often, the two movements have intersected.

The effort to paint Obama as a threatening foreigner sprung up around the right-wing fringe in the run-up to the 2008 election with the typically muddled conspiracy theory that painted him as both a secret Muslim and a member of an America-hating church. They soon coalesced in the birther movement, which even today is championed by a strong coalition of state legislators and a certain bombastic Arizona sheriff.

But the birther movement, the 'secret Muslim' meme and the idea that the president of the United States somehow hates his own country are no longer confined to the less visible right-wing fringe. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, until recently a frontrunner in the GOP presidential race, continually hammers on the president's otherness, most notably criticizing his 'Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.' Rick Santorum flatly claims that Obama does not have the Christian faith that he professes, and eagerly courted the endorsement of birther leader Sheriff Joe Arpaio. And before they dropped out, Rick Perry and Herman Cain couldn't resist flirting with birtherism. . .

When a federal judge has seen so much racially-charged propaganda against the president of the United States that he can claim not to know the difference between genuine disagreement and offensive personal smears, something in our discourse has gone terribly awry."

I posted the following comment:

"The hatred to which you refer to has been percolating on talk radio for years.

In April 2009 I received an email from the owner of a talk radio station titled 'Obama's Momma In Nude Porn Pictures? - not a joke'. I replied to the sender that I thought something like that was 'below even 'Republi-con' (my radio term for Republican hypocrites) low standards for newsworthiness. But I guess there is no shame for the sake of the party.'

In May 2009 the same person sent me the email the Judge received, it even had the same title 'A mother's love'. My reply was that the sender needed 'to get counseling. I am serious, your hatred for Democrats has warped your judgment.'

That talk radio station allows the pastor of Hickory Hammock Baptist Church two hours each Friday afternoon to promote what are now mainstream Republican ideas. The birther conspiracies, the 'secret Muslim' meme and 'Obama hates American' are regular topics on the show, with guests who parrot the ideas.

The talk-radio campaign of fear, anger and hatred has been fermenting since the last election. Rush Limbaugh's 'slut' comment is only the tip of the iceberg."

In April and May 2009 you may remember that I noted that there were no limits to shameless Republi-con hatred, as evidenced by emails circulated within Republi-CON circles.

Even a federal judge has been affected by the relentless Republi-CON campaign of fear, anger and hatred.

Read the Washington Post, A federal judge’s e-mail spreads racist venom about Obama.

What Next for the Republi-CONs

UPDATE IX: Obamney won Arizon by 20.7 percentage points, but only won his 'home' state by 3.2 percentage points. For analysis, read The New York Times, The Meaning of Michigan, which notes that:

"[T]he campaign will now shift toward less favorable terrain for Mr. Romney. . .

If Mr. Romney wins Ohio, for instance, a state that should be somewhat below average for him, that would provide a very strong suggestion that he has built a winning coalition in the Republican race.

If Mr. Romney loses Ohio, on the other hand, it would certainly revive questions about both his weakness in the industrial Midwest and his inability to close the deal with Republican voters. But after his wins in Michigan and Arizona, we might essentially revert to the status quo as it existed a few days ago, with Mr. Romney as a fairly weak front-runner, but a front-runner nonetheless. And in fact, the status quo is basically favorable to Mr. Romney. He leads in the delegate count, in the popular vote, in endorsements from elected officials, in the number of states won and in virtually every other conventional or unconventional measure of his standing in the Republican race.

Momentum has had fairly weak and unpredictable effects so far in this race. There is the possibility that it will shift against Mr. Romney over the course of the next week.

But how would this manifest itself? It is unlikely to cause Mr. Romney to lose Massachusetts or Virginia, where he and Ron Paul are the only candidates on the ballot. There was one poll that showed a fairly close result in Vermont, but I have trouble believing that Mr. Santorum could win such a socially liberal state, or that Vermont will come to be considered essential to a Republican’s path to the nomination.

Perhaps the worst-case scenario for Mr. Romney is that his wins are limited to those three states — Massachusetts, Virginia and Vermont. He loses everything else, including the several caucus state to vote on Super Tuesday — as well as Washington, which holds its caucus on Saturday.

Such an outcome undoubtedly would be damaging to Mr. Romney, and would make his nomination less assured. But Mr. Romney’s Republican opponents may now have missed their best opportunity to deliver a knockout blow to him. Michigan, Arizona and Florida were interesting precisely because losses there would have been hard to excuse for Mr. Romney — clear demonstrations that he does not have a majority coalition. And yet, his advantage was not quite so formidable in these states that it was impossible to conceive of him losing. . .

Mr. Romney could still lose the nomination, but his campaign is relatively well-equipped for a war of attrition, and would rather take that route than one where his candidacy seemed to be imploding and there was unambiguous evidence that he had been rejected by the Republican electorate.

His win in Michigan treads water at best; his win in Arizona was impressive. But Mr. Romney is doing just well enough (and not much better) to be on track for the Republican nomination.

His opponents might not have missed their last opportunity to upend him, but they may have missed their best one."

UPDATE IX: "After 5 caucuses, 6 primaries, 20 debates and $30 million in television commercials, Mitt Romney leaves here facing the same stubborn question: Can a onetime Northeastern governor with a history of ideological migration win the Republican presidential nomination in the era of the Tea Party, with all its demands of political purity and passion?" Read The New York Times, Romney Faces Stubborn Question, Despite Victories.


UPDATE VIII: To understand the Ham Rove hissy fit over the Chrysler ad during the Super Bowl, one must accept that Republi-CONs want further economic chaos, like '21% unemployment', to advance their election interest.

Why.

Because of "[t]he combination of the strong jobs report and comparisons between the inspirational commercial and Ronald Reagan’s stirring 1984 'Morning in America' campaign" Republi-CON election campaign around the country.

Read The New York Times, When Cars Meet Politics, the Clock Is Running, which notes that "[a]s soon as the monthly job report was released last Friday, one of [Romney's] advisers, the Harvard economist Gregory Mankiw, wrote in a blog post that the news increased the probability of Mr. Obama’s re-election by a full 2 percentage points."


UPDATE VII: "Republicans are expressing fresh concerns that Mitt Romney is limping toward the presidential nomination, suffering new blows at the very moment he needs to grow stronger if he is to take on President Obama in November.

Even before Rick Santorum’s surprising sweep of three contests on Tuesday, the Romney campaign was receiving a steady stream of advice — and warnings — from Republicans who are increasingly anxious about Romney’s performance, which has not improved over nearly six weeks since the state caucuses and primaries began.

One prominent adviser told the candidate to sharpen his use of conservative code words and create “small pictures” — vivid imagery, in other words — to connect with voters. Another flew to Boston to say that Romney’s message is too businesslike and broad to capture the passion of angry Republican voters. Still others have gone on television and written opinion columns to hammer home what is becoming a common theme this year: that Romney has not been able to ignite a cause when the GOP is primed to become part of one."

Read the Washington Post, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign stuck in lukewarm.

But the real reason for the lack of enthusiasm for Obamney, he's a Yes Man.

He tries "to please everybody but has ended up pleasing few. Just what David Riesman would have called an other-directed man."

Read The New York Times, The Crowd Please.

I made a prediction before, which I modify a bit here, if Obamney does not start exciting the Republi-CON base, 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 another nominee cripples the Republican brand.

And the question is, can he build enthusiasm when he's not really a Republi-CON (look the word up to understand what I mean) at heart.


UPDATE VI: Why is Ham Rove having a hissy fit over the "Chrysler ad during the Super Bowl, starring Clint Eastwood"? Read The New York Times, Uh-oh, It’s Morning in America, which notes that "behind the yelling lies, almost surely, a growing sense of panic":




UPDATE V: "In the aftermath of Rick Santorum’s clean sweep of Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, Mitt Romney is still, in fact, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. But the lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy among conservatives foreshadows a potentially ugly road ahead to Tampa and general election problems if he is nominee." Read the Washington Post, Mitt Romney and the enthusiasm gap.


UPDATE IV: Another twist in the 2012 election. "Santorum won the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and a nonbinding primary in Missouri on Tuesday, raising fresh questions about [Obamney]’s ability to corral conservative support."

"Whatever your perspective on how likely Mitt Romney was to lose the Republican nomination race prior to Tuesday evening, it should be acknowledged that he had about the worst results conceivable."

Read The New York Times, G.O.P. Race Has Hallmarks of Prolonged Battle, which notes that of the "five paths forward for the Republican nomination" after Romney's Florida victory "some implied a much longer and more difficult race, and some put him at a tangible risk of defeat.

The evidence [after Santorum’s clean sweep of Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri] was much more consistent with those scenarios, and much less so with those in which Mr. Romney wraps up the nomination easily."


UPDATE III: Obamney wins Nevada. So maybe Republi-cons will finally "settle in with Romney for the long haul. Or maybe they'll look again at Romney and see a transparently inauthentic conservative of convenience with a propensity for mind-boggling gaffes ('I'm also unemployed,' and 'Corporations are people, my friend,' and 'Well, the banks aren't bad people,' and so on.)"

Some still pine for a Not-Mitt White Knight. Alas, they should read U.S. News & World Report, GOP Shouldn't Hope for a White Knight or Brokered Convention.


UPDATE II: Read The New York Times, Five Paths Forward for G.O.P. Nomination, which stated that "[a]lthough Mitt Romney is the clear favorite to win the Republican nomination after his victory in Florida, the evidence is mixed as to how robust his advantage is. Below, we will draw on the Florida results and historical precedents to consider five different scenarios for the Republican race going forward.

Interpretation No. 1: It’s All Over but the Concession Speeches. . .

Interpretation No. 2: Florida Is the New Normal. . .

Interpretation No. 3: Anybody but Romney? Certainly Not Newt. . .

Interpretation No. 4: Rinse, Lather, Repeat. . .

Interpretation No. 5: Florida Was a Fluke. . ."

UPDATE: Although "[t]he media ♥ Newt Gingrich", the journey may be near an end. Some predict that The Great Lecherer "will pull the plug before Super Tuesday, and maybe even within ten days." Read the Atlantic, Newt Exit Countdown: 10 Days?

In any case, as noted in October, Obamney's the inevitable nominee.

"Seven states will vote next month, although that includes a 'beauty contest' primary in Missouri that will not affect delegate allocation and several caucuses with nonbinding results." Read The New York Times, Advantage Romney in February, but Risks Abound, which describes the "general lay of the land" leading up to Super Tuesday, March 6, 2012:

"Feb. 4, Nevada caucuses. . .

Feb. 7, Minnesota caucuses. . .

Feb. 7, Colorado caucuses. . .

Feb. 7, Missouri nonbinding primary. . .

Feb. 4-11, Maine caucuses. . .

Feb. 28, Arizona primary. . .

Feb. 28, Michigan primary. . ."

The Republi-CON 'We Don't Need a Teleprompter' Myth

"Republicans mock Obama for using a teleprompter. But Romney uses a telepompter, too. He had two of them in Detroit":



Maybe Romney's using the teleprompters to connect with the 65,000 empty seats.

Class Today at NoBullU on WEBY

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: 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), and The spin of Pastor 2+2 Does Not = 4

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;


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


Local and regional: To toll or not to toll and be a hypocrite, major economic expansion and 100s of jobs at risk because of some snotty-nosed kids only in in Podunk-cola, 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

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

Did Obama save the economy?

Republi-CONs in their delusion-land

Republi-CON budget drama, much to do about nothing

All that talk about the federal deficit and debt is just a Republi-CON CON game

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

The myth of expansionary austerity

Still unemployed, it's the economy stupid!

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


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

Obama's New BFF

FL here were the Republi-CONs

What next for the Republi-CONs

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

CONservatism is a CON game, and the Republi-CON candidates are the result

Romney: 'I’m not concerned about the very poor, because 'I like being able to fire people'

Open Mouth, Insert Golden Spoon

Pity poor Obamney, McCain's Obamney playbook

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

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

Once upon a time, a story of fairy tale President

The myth of voter fraud

The good ol' days , dying in car crashes

For those who favor the Republi-con 'Every Man For Himself" myth

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

The Republi-CON 'Less Government, More Personal Freedom' myth


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.

Open Mouth, Insert Golden Spoon

Some of his best friends are NASCAR owners:

"Mitt Romney went to the Daytona 500 NASCAR race Sunday for what should have been a chance to show he's one of the guys. Instead, in casual conversation with an Associated Press reporter at the Florida track, he reminded people once again that he is not exactly a regular Joe.

Asked by the AP reporter if he follows NASCAR, Romney responded, 'Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners.'"

Read CBS News, Romney: I have friends who own NASCAR teams.

The Republi-CON 'We Have the Consistent Philosophy & Ideology' Myth

"Consider the partywide flips and flops of just the past few years:

— Supporting a temporary, deficit-financed payroll-tax cut as a stimulus measure in 2009, as Republican Sen. John McCain and every one of his colleagues did, put you on the right. Supporting a temporary, deficit-financed payroll tax-cut in late 2011 put you on the left. Supporting it in early 2012 could have put you on either side.

— Supporting an individual mandate as a way to solve the health-care system’s free-rider problem between 1991 and 2007 put you on the right. Doing so after 2010 put you on the left.

— Supporting a system in which total carbon emissions would be capped and permits traded as a way of moving toward clean energy using the power of market pricing could have put you on either the left or right between 2000 and 2008. After 2009, it put you squarely on the left.

— Caring about short-term deficits between 2001 and 2008 put you on the left. Caring about them between 2008 and 2012 put you on the right.

— Favoring an expansive view of executive authority between 2001 and 2008 put you on the right. Doing so since 2009 has, in most cases, put you on the left.

— Supporting large cuts to Medicare in the context of universal health-care reform puts you on the left, as every Democrat who voted for the Affordable Care Act found out during the 2010 election. Supporting large cuts to Medicare in the context of deficit reduction puts you on the right, as Republicans found out in the 1990s, and then again after voting for Representative Paul Ryan’s proposed budget in 2011.

— Decrying the filibuster and considering drastic changes to the Senate rulebook to curb it between 2001 and 2008 put you on the right, particularly if you were exercised over judicial nominations. Since 2009, decrying the filibuster and considering reforms to curb it has put you on the left.

— Favoring a negative tax rate for the poorest Americans between 2001 and 2008 could have put you on the right or the left. In recent years, it has put you on the left.

I don’t particularly mind flip-flops. Consistency is an overrated virtue. But honesty isn’t. In many of these cases, the parties changed policy when it was politically convenient to do so, not when conditions changed and new information came to light. . .

In many of these cases, the parties changed policy when it was politically convenient to do so, not when conditions changed and new information came to light."

Read the Washington Post, What 'left' and 'right' really mean.

CONservatism is a CON Game, And the Republi-CON Candidates Are the Result

UPDATE II: Who said: "I used to be a conservative, and I watch these debates and I’m wondering, I don’t think I’ve changed, but it’s a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people’s fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective, and that’s kind of where we are."

Read Politico, Jeb Bush says 2012ers are 'appealing to people's fears'.


UPDATE: It is said that "a gaffe is when a politician accidently tells the truth. That’s certainly what happened to Mitt Romney on Tuesday, when in a rare moment of candor — and, in his case, such moments are really, really rare — he gave away the game.

Speaking in Michigan, Mr. Romney was asked about deficit reduction, and he absent-mindedly said something completely reasonable: 'If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy.' A-ha. So he believes that cutting government spending hurts growth, other things equal."

Read The New York Times, Romney’s Economic Closet.

I've said it for years, now the man won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics last year agrees, the Republi-CONs are caught up in their own con:

"Romney is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, and whatever his personal beliefs may really be — if, indeed, he believes anything other than that he should be president — he needs to win over primary voters who really are severely conservative in both his intended and unintended senses.

So he can’t run on his record in office. Nor was he trying very hard to run on his business career even before people began asking hard (and appropriate) questions about the nature of that career.

Instead, his stump speeches rely almost entirely on fantasies and fabrications designed to appeal to the delusions of the conservative base. No, President Obama isn’t someone who 'began his presidency by apologizing for America,' as Mr. Romney declared, yet again, a week ago. But this 'Four-Pinocchio Falsehood,' as the Washington Post Fact Checker [link added] puts it, is at the heart of the Romney campaign.

How did American conservatism end up so detached from, indeed at odds with, facts and rationality? For it was not always thus. After all, that health reform Mr. Romney wants us to forget followed a blueprint originally laid out at the Heritage Foundation!

My short answer is that the long-running con game of economic conservatives and the wealthy supporters they serve finally went bad. For decades the G.O.P. has won elections by appealing to social and racial divisions, only to turn after each victory to deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy — a process that reached its epitome when George W. Bush won re-election by posing as America’s defender against gay married terrorists, then announced that he had a mandate to privatize Social Security.

Over time, however, this strategy created a base that really believed in all the hokum — and now the party elite has lost control.

The point is that today’s dismal G.O.P. field — is there anyone who doesn’t consider it dismal? — is no accident. Economic conservatives played a cynical game, and now they’re facing the blowback, a party that suffers from "severe" conservatism in the worst way. And the malady may take many years to cure."

Read The New York Times, Severe Conservative Syndrome.

The Republi-CON 'America is a Christian Nation' Myth

UPDATE: For those who pine for the good ol' days, when for "those who didn’t follow rules handed down by God through man, these New World authorities could cut out your tongue, slice off your ears or execute you," read The New York Times, Theocracy and Its Discontents.

Did you know that "the conflict over the proper relationship between church and state is the oldest in American history. The 1st Amendment now defines this relationship, but understanding the full meaning of the amendment requires understanding its history, for the amendment was a specific response to specific historical events and was written with the recognition that freedom of religion was inextricably linked to freedom itself. . .

Eight years after the Constitution's adoption, the Senate confirmed this view in unanimously approving a treaty. It stated: '[T]he government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.'"

Read the Los Angeles Times, A Puritan's 'war against religion'.

The Republi-CON 'Less Government, More Personal Freedom' Myth

"A Virginia bill states that any woman seeking an abortion must first lie back in a chair with her feet in stirrups and a 10-inch ultrasound wand in her vagina." Watch The Daily Show, Punanny State - Virginia's Transvaginal Ultrasound Bill:

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Also, only Republi-CON approved men may testified before Congress about birth control insurance coverage.

Republi-CONs In Their Delusion-land

UPDATE III: There is a "surprising amount of criticism being directed at Bush by the GOP candidates 'reflects how much more conservative the Republican Party has become.'

Indeed, nowhere is this truer than in the case of the auto-bailout. The perceived imperatives of the GOP primary require that this obvious success story — this clear-cut example of government intervention staving off a massive economic disaster and saving thousands of American jobs — must be explained away by any means necessary.

The last Republican president — one who was in office less than four years ago — says that if government had failed to bail out the auto-makers, it would have led to '21 percent unemployment' and a 'depression.' But today’s GOP candidates just don’t want to hear it."

Read the Washington Post, George Bush, crony capitalist.


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."

When Did Slavery End?

Did you consider the forced labor practices that helped extend slavery long after the end of the Civil War? Watch PBS Newhour, 'Slavery by Another Name' Relays the Forgotten Stories of Post-Civil War Slaves, which discusses a new PBS documentary that "tells the story of how American citizens freed by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution remained under lock and key for decades afterward. 'Slavery by Another Name,' based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, tells the story of the thousands of African-Americans who were arrested on trumped-up charges and forced to work as convict labor."

The news report notes that "through most of the period of time that this was happening, these forced labor camps tended to be 80 or 90 percent African-Americans. And the mortality rates in them were often as high as 30 or 40 percent. . . [It wasn't until] "the truly modern time, to 1970, and this really - that's really the first point in time that we can really say African-Americans on a large scale begin to have real access to the mechanisms of achievement in America. "

Call the Republi-CON Bluff

UPDATE VII: "There is a strange redness to America’s safety net. Why do the regions that need the helping hand elect politicians who want to tear it down?" Read The New York Times, Moochers Against Welfare, which notes that "the vast bulk of entitlement spending goes to the elderly, the disabled, and working families, so any significant cuts would have to fall largely on people who believe that they don’t use any government program. . . . [and so-called conservative] voters would be both shocked and angry if such politicians actually imposed their small-government agenda."


UPDATE VI: The number of bills paid by the federal government each month was misunderestimated. It is not 80 million, it is around 200 million!! Read the Washington Post, The government sends out more than 80 million checks a month - a lot more.


UPDATE V: "You choose: who gets paid (and who doesn't)

On August 2, the federal government will not have enough cash to pay for all of its programs and obligations. The U.S. will take in a total of $172.4 billion in revenue during the month, but its total payments exceed $306 billion, resulting in a $134 billion shortfall. If a debt-limit increase is not approved, the U.S. Treasury will have to choose among 80 million monthly payments and prioritize which programs are funded and which ones are not.

Which programs would you choose to pay? Make your choices" here.


UPDATE IV: What if the debt ceiling is not raised? Who would be paid, and who would not? Ask your favorite Republi-CON. From the Washington Post, With no debt deal, Obama would face tough choices Aug. 3 about what bills to pay:

"On Wednesday night, several Republican leaders were briefed on the Bipartisan Policy Center report as concern grew in the party about the potential impact of not raising the debt ceiling.

According to the center’s analysis, the government would have to cut 44 percent of spending immediately. Through August, the government could afford Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense contracts, unemployment insurance and payments to bondholders.

But then it would have to eliminate all other federal spending, including pay for veterans, members of the armed services and civil servants, as well as funding for Pell grants, special-education programs, the federal courts, law enforcement, national nuclear programs and housing assistance.

After the debt ceiling was breached, there would be no delay in the tough decisions.

On Aug. 3, the Treasury is set to receive about $12 billion in tax revenue — mainly from people paying their taxes late — and is slated to spend $32 billion, including sending out more than 25 million Social Security and disability checks at a cost of $23 billion, according to Powell’s analysis.

Obama could decide to pay half of the Social Security checks and ignore other bills coming due that day, which include $500 million in federal salaries and $1.4 billion in payments to defense contractors.

Or he could decide not to make any Social Security payments and instead hoard tax revenues to pay investors in U.S. bonds. A failure to pay those investors would severely destabilize the financial system, analysts say. (Some also argue that the Treasury could engage in a never-before-tried swap of government bonds that would allow it to pay for Social Security. But Treasury officials say it is highly unlikely to work and may not be legal.)

Aug. 4 could prove even more difficult. The government is slated to spend $10 billion and raise only $4 billion in revenue.

More worrisome for government officials is the $100 billion in Treasury bonds that come due on Aug. 4 and must be paid off. Ordinarily, Treasury would pay off those bonds and issue new bonds.

But if the debt ceiling isn’t increased, Treasury could run into trouble “rolling over” this debt. Ratings agencies are threatening to downgrade U.S. bonds if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. If the bonds are downgraded, many investors — such as retirement funds — can’t buy them.

As a result, there could be far fewer buyers of Treasury bonds and the U.S. government would have to pay much higher interest rates.

Government officials and analysts say a spike in rates would dramatically increase the cost of funding the government and lead to far higher interest rates on mortgages, credit cards and other types of debt."

UPDATE III: Republi-CONs ready to fold, but rae trying to shift the blame for any debt-limit increase to the Naive-ocrats. The question is, will the Naive-ocrats play the chumps again?

"Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell moved Tuesday to head off a potentially disastrous U.S. default by offering President Obama new authority to raise the federal debt limit without cutting government spending...The proposal would transform the political dynamics of the debate, placing the entire burden for raising the $14.3 trillion debt limit on Obama. Republican lawmakers would be spared from voting to raise the limit and could shift their campaign for unprecedented spending cuts to the congressional appropriations process, where the risk of stalemate is shutting down the government instead of capsizing the U.S. economy."

But some have taken to calling it the "Pontius Pilate Pass the Buck Act of 2011".


UPDATE II: "Is the Republican Party so blinded by its tax-rate fixation that it misses the chance to exchange a few revenue increases for huge spending cuts?" Read The New York Times, The Mother of All No-Brainers.


UPDATE: What if the debt ceiling is not increase? Eighty million bills are paid by the federal government each month!! Who will not get their federal check?

"Since the Treasury has never had to make these decisions before, no one quite knows how they’ll be made. The BPC estimates a 44 percent drop in federal spending, but can’t precisely estimate where that drop will happen. "

Read the Washington Post, What failure to raise the debt ceiling will look like.

"Bear in mind that G.O.P. leaders don’t actually care about the level of debt. Instead, they’re using the threat of a debt crisis to impose an ideological agenda. If you had any doubt about that, last week’s tantrum should have convinced you. Democrats engaged in debt negotiations argued that since we’re supposedly in dire fiscal straits, we should talk about limiting tax breaks for corporate jets and hedge-fund managers as well as slashing aid to the poor and unlucky. And Republicans, in response, walked out of the talks.

So what’s really going on is extortion pure and simple. As Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute puts it, the G.O.P. has, in effect, come around with baseball bats and declared, 'Nice economy you have here. A real shame if something happened to it.' . . .

And the reason Republicans are doing this is because they must believe that it will work: Mr. Obama caved in over tax cuts, and they expect him to cave again. They believe that they have the upper hand, because the public will blame the president for the economic crisis they’re threatening to create. In fact, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that G.O.P. leaders actually want the economy to perform badly.

Republicans believe, in short, that they’ve got Mr. Obama’s number, that he may still live in the White House but that for practical purposes his presidency is already over. It’s time — indeed, long past time — for him to prove them wrong."

Read The New York Times, To the Limit.

As I stated before, the Naive-ocrats have been too stupid to call the bluff -- give the public what it claims it wants until they don't want it anymore.

Once Upon a Time, A Story of Fairy Tale President

The story of a 19-year old young lady who "was mysteriously offered [a White House] internship out of the blue — she never applied — a year after she briefly met the president while visiting the White House for a story for her prep-school newspaper. He seduced her over daiquiris her fourth day on the job." Read the Washington Post, JFK mistress Mimi Alford: Secret trips, Ted Kennedy, Cuban Missile Crisis — and why she did it.

Also read The New York Times, Sure, Mr. President, if You Really Want Me To, which notes that the book includes "a couple of truly vile episodes in which the president humiliated Mimi by telling her to service other men sexually."

Hardly the 'Camelot' image perpetuated by the Kennedy family.