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:

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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:

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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.