Bril!

The Obama campaign has seized upon a brilliant way to address the fictional character created by the right known as Barack X. Check out THE TRUTH TEAM.

This site is divided into three sections. The first is AttackWatch which takes all the comments that reside under the "Managing Fantasies" heading and addresses them head on. For example, the Republican Jewish Committee has made the false claim that the president is cutting funding to Israel. Click here and you will see what is actually happening in reality.

The second section, Keeping GOP Honest, looks at their policy points and breaks them down. For example, Mitt Romney has repeatedly said that he would've let GM and the auto industry to fail. Here is some information that illustrates the folly of that idea.

The third section should be dedicated to our very own last in line. Keeping His Word has a complete list of his accomplishments. Click on any of the six sections and see the benefits of his policies.

All in all, a very smart move considering what we all know is coming: more fictional history of the man named (dum dum DAH) Barack X!

If only John Kerry had been smart enough to do this in 2004 then he wouldn't now still be known as a French war criminal.

A Load of Papal Bull

I heard an interview on the radio today with Michelle Bachmann. During her rant against President Obama's decision on birth control, she characterized the regulation as an attack on religious freedom and democracy. But while pretending to call for religious freedom and democracy, Bachmann is actually giving a foreign dictator the power to control the most intimate part of American life.

The big stink began when American Catholic bishops complained about regulations requiring employers to pay for birth control. Obama relented and said that the insurance companies would pay instead. Why do the bishops oppose contraception? There's a papal bull called Humanae Vitae. It was issued by Pope Paul VI in 1968 and condemns artificial birth control.

In the Catholic Church one man dictates all policy. Tomorrow the pope could issue another bull and say birth control is fine and is necessary because we have fulfilled the commandments of the Bible. We have been so fruitful and so successful at multiplying that there are now seven billion of us. To be good stewards of the earth, he could say, we must prevent overpopulation. He could cite Leviticus and Exodus and justify birth control on the basis of the idea that the fields must be allowed to lie fallow for a time: once we've had two kids, we can use birth control. The bishops would reverse course and accept Obama's regulation the next day, with the proviso that they would only pay for contraception for married couples with children. Yes, this whole argument is that arbitrary and capricious.

It's estimated that between two-thirds and 99% of all American Catholics are using or have used artificial birth control. The majority of Catholics think the pope is wrong, and if they were allowed to vote on this issue the pope would lose. Several of the bishops themselves have disagreed with the pope on this issue in the past, but have been silenced by threats or replaced.


But, you say, the Church isn't a democracy. The people don't get to vote on this. Sorry, that's just not true. The people do get a vote, and they vote with their feet. That's why Moses left Egypt, Christianity separated from Judaism, why there was a Schism between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, and why Luther had a Reformation. The ban on birth control is a major reason why more than 20 million Americans are lapsed Catholics. That's enough to qualify them as the second-largest denomination in the United States.

Now, on the merits, the scriptural argument against contraception is tenuous a best, usually justified with the injunction to "be fruitful and multiply" and the case of Onan spilling his seed.


Onan's story is particularly interesting: when his brother died the law required him to give offspring to his childless widow to preserve the family line. Onan had sex with her several times, but since he didn't want her children to become his heirs he practiced coitus interruptus, "spilling his seed on the ground." For this Onan was sentenced to death. The Catholic Church cites this in their arguments against contraception and masturbation. But they completely miss the real point of this story.


The crimes Onan committed were lusting after another man's wife, incest, adultery, rape and breach of contract by failing to provide agreed-to natural insemination services. Onan was supposed to deliver the semen into her womb, but spilled it on the ground instead. This says nothing about birth control within marriage, or masturbation for that matter. 


In fact, the Catholic Church does not forbid all birth control—it encourages the use of "natural family planning," an updated version of the rhythm method. By monitoring a woman's cycle, temperature and cervical mucus you can attain 95-99% effectiveness, which rivals artificial means. Only 75-88% is typical, however, which is about the same effectiveness as the withdrawal method that Onan practiced.


If you limit sexual activity to even more specific times of the cycle you can be virtually guaranteed that pregnancy will not result. What is the difference between spilling seed onto the ground and into a womb that you know has no uterine lining and will not receive an egg for two weeks? Well, one could say, you might still get pregnant by a hitch in the woman's cycle or especially hardy sperm. But the same is true of withdrawal, the pill, condoms, diaphragms, and spermicides. All methods of contraception have non-zero failure rates—even the surgical means of tubal ligation and vasectomy.


If avoiding pregnancy by artificial means is a sin, is not the intent to avoid pregnancy by natural means the same sin? After all, if it's God's will that you become pregnant, condoms can break and pills can fail. And if God is demanding fruitfulness, isn't abstinence in marriage is just as much a violation of His will as contraception?


As the religious right keeps telling us, the institution of marriage is having a tough time. It's particularly galling that a pope who's never known the love of a woman thinks he knows what's best for married folks. Sex binds husbands and wives together. Without it they feel unloved, unfulfilled and alone. Just ask Newt Gingrich.


The three main causes of divorce are money, kids and sex. Since sex the papal way causes kids, and kids cost money, one could argue that it all goes back to sex. Couples with too many kids and not enough money are extremely stressed. Now the pope wants to add even more stress by telling these married couples that they can't have sex?


That's a load of papal bull.

Still A Massive Success

General Motors reported its highest profit in the history of the company. 2011 saw earnings of 7.6 billion dollars.Strong sales in the U.S. and China helped the carmaker turn a profit of $7.6 billion, beating its old record of $6.7 billion in 1997 during the pickup and SUV boom.

I wonder how this will be spun in the land where Barack X is president. Ah, I'll just wait for the comments below and I'll get my answer.

The Turning of the Fatherland

Man oh man, people are pissed about Fox News these days. Perhaps Roger Ailes and Co have discovered how far that bearing wall on the right goes before ratings start to suffer.

Adding insult to injury is the latest poll from FOX News. Check out how the president does against any of the contenders in the Dixie States of Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. And a 50 percent approval rating?

No wonder two thirds of the base want someone else to jump in the race.

Gay And Retarded

There's not a day that goes by that I don't hear the words "gay" and "retarded" in school. In fact, I myself have said them in the past on several occasions while out at the pub or some other such social occasion.. But something clicked in me many months back and I realized that I just didn't want to say them anymore. If you sit back and think about it, if something is "gay" that means it's stupid. That's connecting stupidity to homosexuality. And if something is "retarded," that's belittling someone who has a disability. So I stopped saying them. Most of my students still do although they know I don't like it. I might throw them a look or make a quick comment which usually elicits a quick apology. They don't really mean much by it and, sadly, it is part of their slang these days.

They may not mean much by it but, people being who they are, will always take things further. What happens at that point? Well, this.  I've had several requests to comment on this story and so here it is.

I'll start off by saying that the Anoka-Hennepin School District from the top down has done an awful job of handling this situation. Rather than focus on handling the bullying side of it and adopting a zero tolerance rule for such behavior (as is the case in both my district and my children's district), they chose to give a forum to people who talk of "radical homosexual agendas." (side question: Just what exactly is the "agenda that homosexual activists are seeking to advance?") This lead to the very justified entrance of GLBT and civil rights groups which, in turn, leads to a situation that is FUBAR. In playing the "Cult of Both Sides" game, they ended up losing.

What the school district should have done was tell the No Homo Promo crowd that, under no circumstances, will they tolerate people being treated poorly for any reason. As Howard Stern so eloquently explains at the end of this post, there should be zero tolerance for these people.

Now, to be fair, the situation isn't exactly as depicted as it was in the Rolling Stone article. We have this recent vote in which the policy was changed. And we have another look at the school district in which we see a different angle to what was originally reported. Some of what the school district officials say in this latter article ring true. The original article is distorted and the side of the story that isn't being told is seen in both of above links.

The fact of the matter is that teachers have far too much on their plate to talk as much about sex as all of the stories seem to illustrate. Other than health classes, there really isn't that much cause to talk about homosexuality and kids don't really bring it up-in a bullying environment or otherwise. There is some of random stuff here and there that goes on in most districts but, for the most part, this sort of thing isn't common. Essentially, the Anoka-Hennepin suicides (along with their recently reversed asinine policy) are an anomaly. Just like GSAs aren't "sex clubs," rampant bigotry leading gay kids to suicide is also an outlier.

There are far too many other mountains to conquer such as making sure students achieve state standards, perform well on the various standardized tests they need to take, and trying to inspire and motivate completely checked out parents to give at least one shit about the lives of their children. Tiptoeing around the issue of homosexuality isn't something that most educators have the time for these days. Hell, some days, the simple act of motivating a student to do a simple assignment on the Constitution is nearly impossible. Some are tired, some are ADHD, some are intervention, some are bored, and far too many simply don't care. Again, this all comes back to the parents of the Michael Jordan Generation expecting "The Help" to nanny their kids.

Still, it's tough not to get angry when you hear people like Barb Anderson, the founder of No Homo Promo, Rick Santorum, or Michele Bachmann, whose district is the home to Anoka-Hennepin schools, talk about homosexuals. They sound like fucking Nazis and I'm being kind in saying that. Part of me really struggles to say that this situation is an outlier and I shouldn't take it as the norm which is more or less the reason why I wrote what I did above...to convince myself. And the times they are indeed a-changin' as most younger people don't give two shits about whether someone is gay or not so I'd do better if I thought about that more often.

But 9 kids are fucking dead and people who think that it was their "gayness" that caused it are very, very dangerous people. Gay people used to be subjected to asylums and electro-shock therapy. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali said, "To be tolerant of intolerance is cowardice." Howard Stern expands on this point in this clip.



It's times like this when I have to have patience and remember that one of my biggest heroes is the non-violent Dr. King.

And that people like Barb Anderson, as history has always shown us, end up in a fucking bunker somewhere.

Well?

Using History to Lie

Usually politicians use statistics to lie, but the current crop of Republicans have turned to history. The other day Rick Santorum said:

When you marginalize faith in America,. when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine.

Despite what Santorum might think, the French Revolution had nothing to do with birth control: it was about overthrowing a corrupt and absolutist monarchy that was inseparable from the Catholic Church. Generations of Catholic French kings and Catholic bishops had persecuted and murdered thousands upon thousands of French Protestants. This oppression was one of the key elements that sparked the French Revolution.

President Obama is not starting a revolution here. All the regulation does is tell church-related organizations (not churches themselves, by the way), that they can't force their employees to obey the dictates of a bunch of crotchety old male spinsters who are beholden to a pope that lives in Rome.

The bishops who are whining about the new regulation all live in the lap of luxury and have life-time appointments to jobs that they'll never have to worry about losing. Men who, should they happen to lose those jobs because of a scandal like, say, covering up sexual molestation of children, will be able to toddle off to Rome to live out the rest of their days in sybaritic comfort. They don't have to make a decent living to feed their families. Because they don't have families. Many non-Catholics and tens of millions of American Catholics who do use birth control disagree with them on this impractical dogma against birth control. Kids cost money. If you have more kids, that's less money to spend on the kids you already have. Not everyone can afford (or survive) having 12 kids.

The fact is, hundreds of other denominations disagree with the Catholic Church about birth control and abortion on scriptural grounds. The compromise regulation requires insurance companies to pay for the birth control of employees who work for Catholic-aligned organizations. Not Catholic organizations themselves. Employees have religious freedoms too. My medical care shouldn't be dictated by my employer's beliefs.

On a practical level, the regulation helps people afford medical treatment that will reduce health care costs for all of us by preventing unwanted pregnancies. It will reduce the number of abortions. And reduce the number of single mothers and kids on welfare, and reduce the number of disaffected youth who become criminals because their single moms never wanted them. It's a win-win-win-win solution.

Now, if Santorum wants to talk guillotines, let's talk guillotines.

Just as Newt Gingrich does all the time, Santorum is making a historical reference in order to lie. He can do this because he knows that no one will understand the reference in its full context, or even bother to look it up. Like Gingrich, he makes the reference to pretend he's got the force of history on his side. When exactly the opposite is true.

During the Reformation, the Catholic Church was allied with the monarchy in France and used its power to oppress a competing religion that was making serious inroads into its base -- Protestantism, whose members in the 1980s made the Republican Party what it is today.

One famous example of Catholic abuse of power in France is the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, in 1572, when the Catholic king of France had thousands of Protestant Huguenots assassinated and murdered. The Catholic Church was also the biggest single land owner in the country and taxed people as if the Church were the government, while being itself exempt to taxes. The church was an oppressive employer that denied its subjects basic religious freedoms. Thus, the Catholic Church was no innocent bystander in the French Revolution: its persecutions of Protestants were one of the revolution's root causes.

In the broader context of the Reformation the Catholic Church tortured, beheaded, burned or hanged millions of Protestants throughout Europe. The Catholic Church burned people at the stake for saying that the earth orbited the sun. Sir Thomas More, the English Catholic saint, burned people at the stake for denying that the eucharist was Christ's flesh -- even though anyone with taste buds can tell it's not meat (unless the Pillsbury Dough Boy is the second coming of Christ). To be fair, Protestant rulers did the same thing to Catholics when they gained power: witness English history during the period from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I.

The modern secular nations of Europe -- which Republicans insist we are in dire danger of becoming -- have all outlawed the death penalty: their "marginalization" of religion has eliminated the guillotine. Most of the countries where the death penalty is still practiced -- the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia, China, Viet Nam, North Korea -- are dominated by absolutist conservative religions or doctrinaire ideologies.


Just to be clear, I'm not just picking on Catholicism. Other religions have murdered millions of people as well, and so did Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot. And, just to be clear, it's not the Catholic faith itself that demanded this murder and mayhem: it was the political hierarchy and moneyed interests who claimed its authority to enrich and empower themselves. Those who demand total obedience to an absolutist interpretation of a faith or ideology to strengthen their grip on temporal power are the ones who ultimately resort to murder to impose their will on others.

The president is doing exactly the opposite. He's saying, "People should be free to use birth control if they want and their employers shouldn't be able to stop them. And, by the way, I'm not gonna make the employers pay for it if they really don't want to."

President Obama is advocating religious freedom for all. The Catholic Church is interested only in promulgating its version of the faith, and denying certain freedoms to others.

Maps Are Always Helpful

Nope, no racism here, none whatsoever, please move along..

..

Oopsies!

John Flemming, Republican Representative from Louisisana, posted a link from the Onion as his status update recently thinking that it was a real story. The story, entitled “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex”, was completely fake (obviously) and Flemming falling for it is a darn fine example of what happens when the froth from the mouth foamers get's extra thick.

The Onion’s editor, Joe Randazzo, said the publication is proud to count Fleming as a reader. “We’re delighted to hear that Rep. Fleming is a regular reader of America’s Finest News Source and doesn’t bother himself with The New York Times, Washington Post, the mediums of television and radio, or any other lesser journalism outlets,” he said in a statement.

Hee Hee...:)

The Still Not Dead Yet Narrative

The numbers are in on how many people ditched their banks last November and, I have to say, it's pretty impressive. Over 5 million people switched from the big banks to local and community banks and credit unions. Around 600,00 said it was because of Bank Transfer Day. Increased fees were cited as the main reason for people leaving their banks.

“Banks are facing difficult times on multiple fronts: Profits are being squeezed, regulators are more demanding, foreclosures remain problematic, and consumers are fighting back on fees. On top of all this, many banks are losing customers, including defections prompted by grassroots efforts like the recent Bank Transfer Day," ACSI founder Claes Fornell said.

The Occupy camps may be closed down but the banks are still feeling the effects of the movement and, honestly, I think it's going to be permanent. People aren't looking all that kindly at Wall Street and the big banks these days and it's likely going to stay that way.

The Fence and the Market

Remember the vaunted border fence that would protect us from Mexico? Well, it has a few problems.

Because the border between Mexico and the US is defined by a river prone to flooding, the fence actually has to be built some distance from the border. Which means some Americans wind up on the other side. And that means they have to have a way to get back and forth between their land and the rest of the United States.

The solution is to install gates:

The arrival of the gates will reveal whether the government's solution for this border fence problem will work. Can sliding panels in the fence controlled by passcodes allow isolated workers to cross when they need to while keeping intruders out?

How will the gates work?

Gates will roll open on a metal track after a passcode is punched into a panel on or near the fence. Landowners would have permanent codes and could request temporary ones for visitors. Customs and Border Protection has begun testing its first two gates and plans to install 42 more in South Texas this year at a cost of $10 million.

So, there will be hundreds if not thousands of people who will have the codes to open these gates. And they would never accept bribes for the codes, or could never be coerced on pain of death to reveal them. Brilliant.

And how does the fence work in general?

But farmers point out that there is a lot the agents can't stop. They point out dusty footprints scaling the columns and say illegal immigrants can climb the barrier in seconds flat. 

"It's the biggest waste of taxpayer money," said Leonard Loop at his produce stand east of Brownsville, where his family farms and some relatives' homes are in an area between the fence and the river.

I guess that's why Herman Cain wanted an electrified fence and a moat with gators. But unless there are guards along the entire 2000-mile length of the border, even the more severe obstacles are trivial to breach. If Cain were still in the race at this point he'd be suggesting we lay Claymores along the border.

Now, I know what you're thinking: why was Obama so stupid to build the fence on our side of the border? Why didn't he just steal land from Mexico? Well, first off: the fence was started under Bush. And second: taking land from other countries is a dandy way to start a war. Sure, we could win a war against Mexico. But we already had two wars going. And after we won the war against Mexico we'd have to build a giant embassy in Mexico City and spend a trillion dollars rebuilding their infrastructure. And then we'd have to deal with pesky Mexican terrorists for the next century.

So, why are we building the fence again? Generally there are two answers:

1) To keep out illegal aliens out who are willing to do jobs that Americans won't at the wages American employers are willing to pay.

2) To keep out evil murdering drug smugglers who fill the incessant demand of Americans for cocaine and marijuana, while smuggling weapons back into Mexico.

Both these problems seem to be within our control. Illegal aliens wouldn't come here if American employers refused to hire them. And drug traffickers wouldn't smuggle drugs here if we didn't buy them, or smuggle guns into Mexico if we didn't make it so easy to get guns.

These are issues of simple market-based supply and demand. If we eliminate the demand for illegal alien workers and illegal drugs, the supply will dry up. The magic of the marketplace will make the problem disappear.

What, you think getting Americans off illegal cocaine and marijuana is harder than putting down dozens of criminal gangs financed by billions of dollars in foreign drug money and armed by lax American gun laws? You think getting American employers to obey employment law is harder than correcting centuries of intractable poverty and illiteracy?

If we really want to solve these problems, we've got to make hard decisions that require serious tradeoffs. One of them is pretty straightforward: end the war on drugs. Let non-violent drug offenders out of prison, put them into treatment and save billions of dollars a year on prisons. That also ends most gang warfare in the United States and reduces our murder rate. It does increase the unemployment rate. Well, can't win 'em all.

The illegal alien problem is harder, but there are still options: we can more strictly enforce employment laws, which will force many farmers, slaughterhouses, restaurants, motels to either go out of business or raise their prices so that they can afford to employ Americans who need to make a living wage. That would also help reduce the unemployment rate, at the cost of more expensive food, lawn care, restaurant meals, hotel stays, etc.

Or we can reform immigration laws and open the flood gates to accommodate American businesses who want to hire cheap migrant labor while millions of Americans can't find work that pays enough for them to live on.

Or -- and I know some of you are thinking this -- we could take those non-violent drug offenders from problem one and form work camps, selling prison labor to the highest bidders in the private sector. Then we can be just like communist China, using slave labor to do the dirty jobs no one else wants to do.

Or we could let the non-violent drug offenders out of prison on work release and have them do the jobs usually reserved for illegal aliens. Even if the salary needed to be subsidized to make it a living wage, it would still be cheaper than keeping them under lock and key 24/7.

These solutions have trade-offs and winners and losers. But as it stands now, we've got both sides of these problems and none of the benefits. The winners are the drug cartels and private prison industry, while the rest of us are the losers.

Good Grief...

While I'm always sad at the passing of someone, America...please pull your head out of your overly corporate media influenced ass and get some fucking priorities. 

 And people wonder why our children don't know who holds the office of vice president.

And the 2042 Nobel Prize for Physics Goes to....

At the bottom of this post is a list of the 40 finalists in the 2012 Intel Science Talent Search. The competition is sponsored by Intel and Society for Science & the Public, the publisher of Science News. It was started in 1942 as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. The purpose of the search is to find the scientists of the future:

The finalists “exemplify the promise of young people to bring creativity and innovation to bear to create a better world,” says Elizabeth Marincola, publisher of Science News and president of Society for Science & the Public, which has operated the Science Talent Search since 1942. “We applaud their hard work and creativity, and look forward to their continued contributions to human advancement.” 

The 40 students selected were winnowed from 300 semifinalists, who were chosen from a pool of 1,744 entrants. These math, engineering and science achievers join a select group of scientific luminaries: Past finalists have earned seven Nobel Prizes and four National Medals of Science. Physicist and Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow was a finalist in 1950; in 1980 Harvard University string theorist Lisa Randall was selected. Actress Natalie Portman was a semi-finalist in 1999.

If you examine the names carefully, you'll immediately notice a pattern: most of them are Asian. It's hard to determine actual ethnicity by names -- especially for blacks and American Indians, whose original family names were long ago stripped by slave owners or government edict. So some of the names I've identified as European may actually belong to people who consider themselves non-white. But by my rough estimate only six of the finalists are males of European descent. Five are females of European descent. The rest are mostly Chinese, Indian or other apparent Asian ethnicity.

Thirty or forty years ago, and certainly in 1942, nearly all these finalists would have been males of European descent. Though non-Hispanic whites still comprise 64% of the population of the United States, 73% of the 2012 STS finalists appear to be Asian, who comprise only 4.7% of the population.

This says something pretty dire about white American males: they're getting less education and they're less competitive at the higher levels. Where they used to dominate the fields of science and technology, they're barely keeping ahead of white girls, who have historically shunned math, science and engineering.

Not all these kids will become Nobel prize winners, but they will hold many of the high-paying jobs in medicine, science and technology. They will be the ones developing new medical treatments, new patents and new products. The next generation of technology will be designed by Asian Americans. That means they're going to starting new companies. And running them. And making lots of money.

When we think of the the high-tech nerds who made personal computers, the Internet and mobile computing revolution possible we think of white guys like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. (But, come to think of it, Steve Jobs was actually half Syrian, wasn't he?) Those days appear to be over.

As Charles Murray has noted, lower class whites are falling into the same trap that American blacks fell into decades ago. Conservatives like to blame government largesse, laziness and licentiousness. But we're all living in the same culture with the same access to government support, mind-numbing drugs, sex, sports, television and video games. Yet recent Asian immigrants -- who are almost certainly not very rich -- are able to ignore all that and still strive to work hard and get an education, while whites on the same rung of the economic ladder are falling behind. Why?

The culture of failure became ingrained in black America because no matter what they did, they were kept down. They weren't allowed to vote, get a decent education, hold good jobs or even sit at the same lunch counter as whites. How could anyone succeed in an environment where you're told every step of the way that you're inferior, or strung you up if you just looked at a white girl?

The culture of failure seems to have become ingrained in lower-class white America. Beginning with Henry Ford and the unionization of the work force, lower-class uneducated whites had opportunities to live well and their kids had the opportunity to move up the economic ladder. But for decades now those Americans have seen their lives fall apart. First it was steel mills to Japan, then automobile manufacturing to Japan and Mexico, then general manufacturing to China, then high-tech manufacturing to Asia. Unions have been essentially destroyed and real wages have been in decline for decades. We thought we'd be safe with the high-paying white-collar jobs in technology and finance, but with the rise of the Internet it has become trivial to outsource any job: engineering design, software development, medical imaging analysis, legal research, finance and on and on.

Two and three generations of lower-class white kids have now seen their dads sitting home with nothing to do after losing job after job to foreigners who make 31 cents an hour. How can anyone succeed in an environment where your family's entire life experience proves that no matter how many hours of overtime you put in, the bossman will take it away and give it to someone who's even more desperate than you are?

2011 Intel STS Finalists (listed by state, name, hometown and high school)

ARIZONA Scott Boisvert, Chandler, Basha High School

CALIFORNIA Amol Aggarwal, Saratoga, Saratoga High School;Xiaoyu Cao, San Diego, Torrey Pines High School; Bonnie Lei,Walnut, Walnut High School; Jonathan Li, Laguna Niguel, St. Margaret’s Episcopal School; Selena Li, Fair Oaks, Mira Loma High School; Andrew Liu, Palo Alto, Henry M. Gunn Senior High School;Rohan Mahajan, Cupertino, The Harker School; Evan O’Dorney,Danville,Venture School; Nikhil Parthasarathy, Mountain View, The Harker School; David Tang-Quan, Rancho Palos Verdes, Palos Verdes Peninsula High School; Chelsea Voss, Santa Clara, Cupertino High School

CONNECTICUT Jenny Liu, Orange, Amity Regional High School;Shubhro Saha, Avon, Choate Rosemary Hall

FLORIDA Eta Atolia, Tallahassee, Rickards High School; Elaine Zhou, Winter Park, Lake Highland Preparatory School

ILLINOIS Krystle Leung, Naperville, Naperville Central High School

MASSACHUSETTS Sung Won Cho, Lexington, Groton School

MICHIGAN Shubhangi Arora, Novi, Novi High School

MINNESOTA Prithwis Mukhopadhyay, Woodbury, Woodbury High School

NORTH CAROLINA Si-Yi Lee, Charlotte, North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics; Matthew Miller, Elon, Western Alamance High School

NEBRASKA Emily Chen, Omaha, Brownell-Talbot School

NEW JERSEY Alison Bick, Short Hills, Millburn High School; Joshua Bocarsly, Plainsboro, The Lawrenceville School; Wenyu Cao, Belle Mead, Phillips Academy

NEW YORK Jonathan Aaron Goldman, Plainview, Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School; Jan Gong, Garden City, Garden City High School; Michelle Hackman, Great Neck, John L. Miller Great Neck North High School; Bryan He, Williamsville, Williamsville East High School; Matthew Lam, Old Westbury, Jericho High School; Grace Phillips, Larchmont, Mamaroneck High School;Alydaar Rangwala, Loudonville, The Albany Academies

OREGON Laurie Rumker, Portland, Oregon Episcopal School; Yushi Wang, Portland, Sunset High School

PENNSYLVANIA Benjamin Clark, Lancaster, Penn Manor High School; Keenan Monks, Hazleton, Hazleton Area High School

TEXAS Madeleine Ball, Dallas, Ursuline Academy of Dallas; Rounok Joardar, Plano, Plano West Senior High School; Sunil Pai, Houston, The Kinkaid School

Yeah...Just What I Thought

When it comes right down to it, most of the people that bitch a lot about the government are really the ones that benefit the most. Sort of like...hmmm...oh...I don't know...teenagers who bitch about their parents who pay the bills and provide them with a nice place to live?

Sunday Funnies

Here are a few cartoons that caught my eye this week that are perfect for a Sunday morinng.

Virtually no doubt in my mind that today's conservative would continually criticize Jesus.  

Hee Hee

Can anyone explain to me how guys like Paul Ryan and Steve King can claim that Christ is their savior and also espouse Ayn Rand? 

The Big Three

Thomas Friedman hit a grand slam with his recent column in the New York Times entitled, "We Need a Second Party." In so many ways, he echoes much of the analysis that I have been discussing on here for the last few years.

There’s a reason for that: Their pile is out of date. The party has let itself become the captive of conflicting ideological bases: anti-abortion advocates, anti-immigration activists, social conservatives worried about the sanctity of marriage, libertarians who want to shrink government, and anti-tax advocates who want to drown government in a bathtub. 

Sorry, but you can’t address the great challenges America faces today with that incoherent mix of hardened positions.

Damn straight.

I predicted after the president got elected that we were seeing the end of the Republican Party. I was wrong in the timing of my prediction and didn't take into account the hate, anger, and fear that would bubble up after we elected Barack Obama. Obviously, I was naive in thinking that we were (ahem) past certain things but we aren't. I also failed to consider such low voter turnout in the midterms (42 percent or less in most areas). That always means a problem for the Democrats as old people are the ones who always turn out and vote and many of them are Republican.

Yet today the writing is on the wall. We are seeing it now with their nominating process in the presidential primaries. They can't seem to settle on one candidate and are now desperately trying to spin their chaos as some sort of fight that will make them all stronger. That's not going to happen.

Instead, what we see are the very serious cracks in a coalition that is at war with itself and cannot survive. Sure, they'll always be able to have a decent showing in Congress but with the current edition garnering the lowest approval ratings ever, how long will even that last? As Friedman notes,

Because when I look at America’s three greatest challenges today, I don’t see the Republican candidates offering realistic answers to any of them.

That's right. Because they are too bent on winning the argument and proving the other side wrong. In short, they are being childish.

Friedman lays out a series of points which I am going to issue as challenges to my regular, conservative/libertarian readers. Here they are.

1. Respond to the challenges and opportunities of an era in which globalization and the information technology revolution have dramatically intensified, creating a hyperconnected world. How would you foster education, innovation in talent for our country? What would you do to be a HIE (high-imagination-enabling countries) as opposed to a LIE (low-imagination-enabling countries)? Do you agree with Friedman's answer? Why or why not?

2. Offer a realistic answer to our debt and entitlement obligations. Do you agree with Friedman's answer? Why or why not?

3. How would you power the future? Again, realistic answers not the current dogma being spewed by conservatives. Do you agree with Friedman's answer? Why or why not?

These are Big Three in a perfectly concise nutshell. What I've seen so far from the split pea soup that is the GOP these days doesn't even come close to addressing any of these issues seriously. I'm hoping that my right leaning readers are better than that and can honestly look at some real solutions.

Well?

What He Did

Not Coming Back

About a year ago,  a diner was held in Silicon Valley with many of the prominent innovators of our time gathered together. During Steve Jobs' talk, a question was raised by the special guest of the evening.

"What will it take to make iPhones in America?" President Barack Obama asked.

"Those jobs aren't coming back," Steve Jobs replied.

If I had to pin down one major criticism of the president, it's that he isn't being fully honest with the American people about jobs. Those jobs, indeed, are not coming back because we live in a global marketplace now (thanks largely to our leading the rest of the world in adopting free markets and liberal economic theory). I understand why he's not being honest. No one wants to hear that the pool of labor is so great in the world that demand is very elastic and American workers are now a small part of a larger chorus. And, with such a tenuous economic situation, even the slightest perception of negativity can have a major effect on the world markets....especially coming from the leader of the free world.

Most importantly, it's hard to explain to the millions out of work that this is better for the world in the long run.

Of course, the president is not the only one that can't admit what's going on. Paul Krugman, in his recent piece in the Times, can't seem to do so either. 

We should reject the attempt to divert the national conversation away from soaring inequality toward the alleged moral failings of those Americans being left behind. Traditional values aren’t as crucial as social conservatives would have you believe — and, in any case, the social changes taking place in America’s working class are overwhelmingly the consequence of sharply rising inequality, not its cause.

As he tries to answer Charles Murray's arguments on morals and inequality, which I commented on the other day, he completely fails to note that the main reason why there is so much rising inequality and the real reason why those jobs aren't coming back. How is it possible that a man so smart can't see the very obvious economic truths?

Instead, he proceeds to one of the things that really piss me off about liberals: make lite of certain moral arguments by those on the right that do actually have some merit.

Mr. Murray and other conservatives often seem to assume that the decline of the traditional family has terrible implications for society as a whole. . Suddenly, conservatives are telling us that it’s not really about money; it’s about morals. Never mind wage stagnation and all that, the real problem is the collapse of working-class family values, which is somehow the fault of liberals.

First of all, it's technically not the "fault of liberals." He might be able to poke several large holes in Murray's argument if the focused on how he and Niall Ferguson blame the government for every little problem we have. And making fun of the "family values" crowd is really bullshit when it comes to inequality because these are the people that do actually help the poor through their churches and communities. They might have a weird and phobic blind spot when it comes to government but that doesn't mean they are all bad.

This is why the left really needs to take Murray's arguments seriously. They have merit. I see the results in school every day. Children do better when they are raised by two, loving and committed parents who make the time to help them develop. And communities and peer groups need to also step it up and do a better job of caring for the development of our children. That's what we all mean by "morals."

No doubt, this is not an easy task and will take some time. As we work on this issue on the local level, we really need to cut the BS and just admit that those jobs aren't coming back. That needs to be the starting point because everything else is really moot if we are not accurately identifying the problem.

A Fine Piece of Fiction

It makes complete sense to me that Thomas Sowell is so beloved amongst the (ahem) intellectuals and the ones who think they are (see: right wing bloggers) on the right. Take a look at this recent paragrapah from his latest piece for Investor's Business Daily.

But a far more serious issue is ObamaCare, perhaps the most unpopular act of the Obama administration, its totalitarian implications highlighted by its recent attempt to force Catholic institutions to violate their own principles and bend the knee to the dictates of Washington bureaucrats.

Ah, nothing like playin' the hits, eh? Well, he's certainly a good merchant who knows that his audience will pay top dollar for these sorts of comments so you have to give him credit for that.

More importantly, though, this is a fine example of the "fictional Obama." First of all, health care is not the "most unpopular act" of the Obama administration. Polls show a variety of opinions, depending on how the question is asked, and the split is around 50-50. I'd say his most unpopular act (or almost) was the new EPA rules that he ended up caving on in the end.

And totalitarian? Good grief. When will the managing of paranoid fantasies cease to be a part of our political discourse? The recent flap over birth control coverage under the PPACA is completely ludicrous. To begin with, the government isn't forcing anyone to get birth control. The new law simply states that if you are an organization that offers health care, you must provide free coverage for birth control. For some reason, the mouth foamers think that translates into forced birth control for their employees. Users still have A CHOICE as to whether or not they want to use birth control and these religious organizations still have A CHOICE to tell their members that birth control is against their beliefs and they shouldn't use it.

And, in what has to be one of the finest examples of hypocrisy I've seen in awhile, DePaul University and other Catholic institutions already offer free contraception as part of their organizations. So, the screaming by the right is because the government is "forcing" them to do something they are already doing? Huh?

We're basically at the point now where these adolescent power fantasies about government are a gross impediment to progress. We all have to stop what we are doing (see: adults trying to fix real problems) and deal with this bullshit.

Any chance we can get Sowell and his true believers to maybe do some yoga or take a jog to clear their head?

Komen VP Gets Pink Slip

The big flap at Susan G. Komen for Cure, the breast cancer charity, is coming to an end with the resignation of Karen Handel. Last November Handel, the recently hired vice president for public policy, engineered a funding cut for Planned Parenthood through backdoor coordination with Republicans in Congress. Handel proposed, and Komen's board adopted, a policy that would cut off funding for organizations that were "under investigation." That included politically motivated "investigations" launched by partisan Republicans in the US House of Representatives.

As a failed candidate for governor of Georgia and a strong opponent of abortion, Handel's claims that the defunding of Planned Parenthood was apolitical were disingenuous. After a massive protest that sparked a flood of donations directly to Planned Parenthood, Komen's policy was reversed and Handel resigned.

The policy was poorly considered from the get-go. It violated due process because funding would be cut off as soon as an investigation was started, not when any convictions were made or improprieties were found. Since Handel was a former Republican gubernatorial candidate and her policy was so obviously politically motivated, what if the US Senate or the attorney general had started an investigation into the ostensibly non-profit Komen Foundation's ties to overtly political organizations? Would Komen have to stop funding itself?

I'm glad to see this over with, but it stands as stark example of the problems this country faces.

Planned Parenthood and the Komen foundation have similar goals: the improvement of women's health. Komen focuses on breast cancer, while Planned Parenthood focuses on broader women's health issues, and reproductive services in particular. Planned Parenthood is the country's primary abortion provider not because they love abortion, but because they are one of the few organizations brave enough to weather the political attacks and death threats from abortion opponents.

Planned Parenthood, by its very name, shares Karen Handel's goal to reduce the abortion rate. Not by outlawing abortion, but by preventing unwanted pregnancies. Planned Parenthood wants everyone to have free access to reliable birth control and to use it rigorously. They want emergency contraception to be freely and immediately available when condoms break, people get carried away, or rape and incest occur. All these things will reduce the need for abortion, something which everyone can agree is a good thing.

But instead of seeking common ground and working together with Planned Parenthood on shared goals, Karen Handel instead joined forces with religiously motivated ideologues who wish to sabotage and destroy Planned Parenthood.

This heightened polarization in politics and society is extremely corrosive to civil discourse and good government. By eliminating any possibility of working together, compromise that benefits all Americans becomes impossible.

The Founding Fathers were able to write the Constitution not because they agreed on everything -- they disagreed fiercely among themselves. Their genius was their ability to pull together and come to a reasonable accommodation.

Absolutist anti-abortion, anti-birth-control zealots like Karen Handel and Rick Santorum are nothing like the Founding Fathers. They more resemble Jefferson Davis and the southern secessionists who started the Civil War. With their crusade against abortion and birth control, Handel and Santorum wish to take away our hard-won freedoms and force us to be slaves to biology.

Last Night's Surprise

It was caucus night last night in my home state and I'm happy to report that my group unanimously supported President Obama in his re-election bid. We also vowed to defeat the gay marriage ban amendment in Minnesota as well as the voter ID law. Our caucus included a man who recently gained his US citizenship after moving here from Kenya (chuckle, chuckle). He was elected our associate chair of the caucus and will be going on to the Senate District convention as a delegate.

I also found out that I might be redistricted into Keith Ellison's district. Goodbye Erik Paulsen and hello someone who actually represents me and my interests. I'll find out soon if that's going to happen.

After listening to Rick Santorum's victory speech last night (and after I spent a significant amount of time scratching my head in bewilderment that people think this guy would make a competent president only to come to the conclusion that this is what happens when you believe instead of think), I'm curious, once again, about this Barack Obama of whom he spoke. Not anyone that exists in reality. Here are some of his quotes from last night, on President Obama.

But then again, I wouldn't be surprised if he isn't listening. Why would you think he would be listening now? Has he ever listened to the voice of America before? 

Yes, he does Rick, but it's the majority of the citizens of this country who live in reality. Not the ones that live in the bubble with you and the rest of the apocalyptic cult.

When it came to the problems that were being confronted on Obamacare, when the health care system in this country, did President Obama, when he was pushing forward his radical health care ideas, listen to the American people?

Radical health care ideas...that came from the Republican party.

When it comes to the environment, did the president of the United States listen to the American people, or did he push a radical cap- and-trade agenda that would crush the energy and manufacturing sector of the economy?

Yes, radical, like when he approved off shore drilling only to see it completely bite him in the ass when BP flooded the Gulf of Mexico with oil.

He did say one thing that was pretty interesting, though.

Because I do care about not 99 percent or 95 percent. I care about the very rich and the very poor. I care about 100 percent of America.

(Ahem) Narrative still not dead.

As I watched Santorum's speech, inspiration struck me! If you look down at the labels, you will see a new one called "Fictional Obama." When a GOP candidate says something about the president that is a complete lie or obviously outside of reality, I'm going to put up the quote and illustrate how completely insane it is. Obviously, I won't do this every time this happens as I only have so much time during the day:)

Yeah, Baby!

In addition to being caucus day in my home state, yesterday the 9th Circuit Federal Court in California struck down Proposition 8, stating that

Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.

As long as the government ties certain rights to marriage, two consenting adults should allowed to be married. It seems very likely that this case is going to end up in the Supreme Court but the issue of gay marriage as an amendment on a ballot for everyone to vote on is illustrative of another point that I make on here continually: people don't always act in their own self interest.

As it was with voting for equal rights for blacks, the general population should not be allowed to vote on measures such as this largely because of their ignorance. Most Americans don't take the time to consider the ramifications of how these sorts of laws can affect their fellow citizens and themselves. A ban on gay marriage is clearly in violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

It doesn't get any plainer than that.

So, a ban on gay marriage means that around ten percent of our population has less civil liberties than others. This, in turn, may cause them to make economic decisions like moving their business to states that don't have a ban on gay marriage. Obviously, this would have a financial impact on the state with the ban. 

It's going to be interesting to see how this affects the Gay Marriage Ban Amendment here in Minnesota that will be on the ballot in the fall.

The Family Meal

By today's standards, my family is strange and quite odd. Every night, we sit down and have a family meal. ALL of us. Occasionally some sort of activity may interfere but we seem to always be able to adjust our individual schedules to be able to all sit down together and share time together over dinner.

We go around the table and share what our favorite part of the day was and that usually ends up leading to a broader discussion. We laugh, we work out problems, and we make plans for upcoming events. When I tell people this, virtually all of them can't believe that it happens. Whether they are conservative or liberal or somewhere in between, their comments invariably lead to the same question.

"Where do you find the time?"

I thought about our family meal when I read Niall Ferguson's recent piece "Rich America, Poor America." His thoughts and comments contained therein reveal a much needed alternative to the left's explanation and protestations regarding inequality in this country.

He starts out by detailing the obvious truth.

Adjusted for inflation, the income of the average American male has essentially flatlined since the 1970s, according to figures from the Census Bureau. The income of the bottom quarter of U.S. families has actually fallen. It’s been a different story for the rich. According to recent work by Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, the share of total income going to the top 1 percent of families has more than doubled since 1979, from below 10 percent to a peak of nearly 24 percent in 2007. (It has since fallen, but not by much.) The share going to the super-rich—the top 0.01 percent—has risen by a factor of seven.

Americans used to be proud of their country’s reputation as a meritocracy, where anyone could aspire to get to the top with the right combination of inspiration and perspiration. It’s no longer true. Social mobility has been sliding in the United States. A poor kid in America now has about the same chance of becoming a rich grown-up as in socially rigid England. It looks like Downton Abbey has come to downtown U.S.A.

I'm very pleased that someone who identifies as a conservative can recognize this as fact. Looking at the work of Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute, we see further evidence of this acceptance by the right.

Murray is no apologist for Wall Street. Looking at the explosion in the value of the total compensation received by the chief executives of large corporations, he pointedly asks if “the boards of directors of corporate America—and nonprofit America, and foundation America—[have] become cozy extended families, scratching each others’ backs, happily going along with a market that has become lucrative for all of them, taking advantage of their privileged positions—rigging the game, but within the law.” There is not much in those lines that the OWS protesters would disagree with.

Rigging the game, but within the law. That's pretty much it and this simple sentence offers an area of ideological overlap between the Tea Party and the OWS movement. Sadly, I doubt that either will take advantage of it especially now that the Tea Party has been more or less co-opted by the Koch Brothers and the rest of the "cozy family" of which Murray speaks.

So, now that we have accepted the problem, how did we get here? Where Murray goes next offers a greater width of vision that I think is somewhat lacking on the left. Murray looks at two towns (Belmont and Fishtown) and compares social trends.

Marriage has declined in both, but it has declined further in Fishtown, where a much larger proportion of adults either get divorced or never marry, so that a far higher share of Fishtown children now live with a lone divorced or separated parent. Unlike Belmont, Fishtown has a sad underclass of “never-married mothers”—who also happen to be the worst-educated women in town.

I have many students in my classes that are "from Fishtown." They are the worst behaved and invariably get the worse grades. Their parents are either exhausted from work or terribly lazy. For whatever reason, they are COP (checked out parents) and the results are lower test scores and a continued feeding of the underclass. Murray speaks of this as well.

Industriousness has scarcely declined in Belmont, but it has plummeted among Fishtown white males, an amazing number of whom are unable to work because of illness or disability, or have left the workforce for some other reason, or are unemployed, or are working fewer than 40 hours a week. The big problem here is not so much a lack of jobs as a new leisure preference (“goofing off” and watching daytime TV). The work ethic has been replaced by a jerk ethic.

I'd actually take this a step further. The "jerk ethic" is there even with people that put in 40 hours of work a week or more. Rather than spend time with their family, many of these parents play video games or wank on their smart phones all night, further detaching themselves from their children's lives. Later in the article, Ferguson mentions a lack of incentive to work (due, of course, to the government but I'll get to that in a little bit) but even the folks that are working full time and providing for their families have a lack of incentive to do little else. People simply aren't active in their communities any longer.

Religiosity has declined in both towns, but much more steeply in Fishtown. Contrary to popular belief, Murray argues, it’s not the elites who have become secularized and the working class that has remained devout. In fact, church attendance is much lower in Fishtown than in Belmont.

Most of you know that I would never behave like many on the right who seek to insert themselves between an individual and the Lord, forcing Republican Jesus on the citizens of the United States. Having some sort of religious outlet, whatever faith that may be, is demonstrably vital to social cohesion. Murray's studies show that this is unequivocally true.

To put all of this simply, it's family values. And the results are plain for anyone to see.

As a consequence of these trends, the traditional bonds of civil society have entirely atrophied in lower-class America. There is less neighborliness, less trust, less political awareness, less of that vibrant civic engagement that used to impress European visitors, less of what the Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam, in Bowling Alone, called “social capital.”

And that, Murray concludes, is why poor Americans are, by their own admission, so very unhappy. Man is a social animal who can only really be happy in four social domains: family, work, local community, and faith. In poor America, all four are in a state of collapse. That is why “Fishtown” is such a wretched dump—the kind of benighted place where gangs of feral teens hang around on street corners trying to figure out what part of the local infrastructure they haven’t yet vandalized. We all drive through such places from time to time. Murray’s point is just how many Americans have to live in them.

All of this ties in to what I talked about in The Michael Jordan Generation. The four domains listed above are essentially the same as four of the five main areas of socialization which have been severely eroded by the corporate owned media. Far too many people have allowed themselves and their children to lose touch with these four pillars and have been completely overwhelmed by the fifth. This is where Murray and Ferguson lose sight of the cause of all this. Sadly, they fall back on all to predictable conservative dogma, blame liberal policies, add to the fictional Obama narrative, and offer the usual panic rip about our country becoming like Europe. In other words, it's all the fault of the government...even though it was this same governemnt that created Social Security which has reduced poverty in the elderly by over 40 percent.

One can only blame our society's institutions so much (and that includes the corporate owned media). For me, it comes down to how you answer the question posed above by nearly everyone I know.

"Where do you find the time?"

It's simple.

You make the time.

In the final analysis, it's up to us.

Fiction V. Reality

ELIZABETH B. WYDRA at Politico put a great piece up yesterday entitled, "Constitutional fairy tales and the Affordable Care Act" that really deserves as much of an audience as possible so I'm linking it here. Like they do with The Bible, conservatives yell and foam at the mouth about how they (and ONLY they) know the true meaning of the Constitution. The argument I've heard lately is "because we can read." It's as at this point I find myself waiting for a more in depth answer only to hear the sound of crickets.

Wydra makes her case quite simply.

The current nationwide health care crisis, which involves close to 20 percent of the U.S. economy, is exactly the sort of problem the founders would have wanted the federal government to solve under the powers given to Congress by the Constitution. The Affordable Care Act addresses issues of national concern — involving the states as partners but offering federal mechanisms of reform where necessary.

Yep, pretty much. I've always been struck by how many right wingers, when asked what they would do, say, "Do nothing." And their answer to rising costs is..." And their answer to inelastic demand of many health care markets is....? Crickets.

In 1783, soon after the Revolutionary War was won, Washington wrote to Hamilton, “unless Congress have powers competent to all general purposes, that the distresses we have encountered, the expences we have incurred, and the blood we have spilt in the course of an eight years’ war, will avail us nothing.” Washington elaborated on this in a 1783 circular to the states. A sufficiently energetic national government was necessary, he wrote “to regulate and govern the general concerns of the Confederated Republic, without which the union cannot be of long duration.” 

If they wanted a small, limited government with no power, than the Articles of Confederation would have been just fine. Perhaps that's what the Tea Party wants. Why, exactly?

Anyway, what does this all have to do with PPACA?

But while the grants of federal power may be “few and defined,” where such authority is given — it is substantial. For example, from these few enumerated powers come the ability to regulate interstate commerce and to tax and spend for the general welfare. Add to that the grant of constitutional authority to pass laws “necessary and proper” to carrying out these “few and defined” powers, and the Constitution’s enumerated powers add up to the energetic federal government our founders thought was necessary to govern the United States. The Affordable Care Act respects this constitutional balance of power by providing federal mechanisms for achieving national health care reform — including the minimum coverage provision and expanded Medicaid coverage. But it also maintains the states’ ability to shape key reform measures that do not need to be uniform, to achieve the act’s legitimate goals.

Exactly. To borrow from Washington, our union cannot be of long duration if we continue to ignore basic truths about health care, particularly the "expences." This is the exact reason why the federal government was created. As Wydra concludes...

The idea that the federal government does not have the power to address a national problem — like the current health care crisis — is a tea party fairy tale with no basis in the Constitution’s text and history.

Fairy tale, indeed. Will there ever be a time when those of us that want to actually solve our nation's problems (using Constitutionally mandated powers) be allowed to do so without interference from people who play dress up and make believe?

The more I think about it, the more I realize that perhaps this election is going to be about fiction versus reality.

Go Ahead, Make His Day

That's because President Obama's policies were a success.

He Said....What??!??

First of all, David, I don’t think you’ll ever find me talking about an age of austerity. I don’t think that’s the right solution. I am a pro-growth Republican. I’m a pro-growth conservative. I think the answer is to grow the economy, not to punish the American people with austerity. 

---Newt Gingrich, 5 February 2012, Meet the Press

What do you suppose he means by this?

Like!

President Obama's Job Creation Record

So, if you live in the bubble, what goes through your head when you see this data?

Download this image and save it on your desktop.The next time anyone needs an answer on Obama's policies, this should be one of your top answers.

Are Foreigners Buying the Election?

The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision allowed unlimited amounts of money to be injected into American elections. The contributions of Sheldon Adelson and his family are now raising very troubling questions about the wisdom of that decision.

Adelson gave $5 million to Gingrich's Super PAC, Winning Our Future, allowing Gingrich to pull an upset in the South Carolina primary by hitting Mitt Romney with a barrage of negative TV ads filled with every dirty trick in the book. Later Adelson's wife, Miriam, gave another $5 million. After Adelson bought the desired result in South Carolina, Romney's Wall-Street-financed Super PACs returned fire and destroyed Gingrich in Florida, outgunning his TV ads in some markets by as much as 40 to 1.

Adelson is a billionaire who made his money in Las Vegas casinos. It is somehow fitting that Gingrich, the man with the most questionable morals in the Republican party, is bankrolled by a man whose billions are just as morally questionable.

Now it turns out that of the $2 million Winning Our Future received in 2011, half came from Miriam Adelson's daughters and son-in-law, Sivan Ochshorn, Yasmin Lukatz and Oren Lukatz. The daughters are from Miriam's first marriage to a Tel Aviv physician.

Citizens United allowed American citizens and corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money. It's still illegal for foreigners and foreign corporations to give money to American elections.

But reading about Miriam Adelson's daughters makes me wonder if they're real Americans. By real I don't mean that they live in a small town, like NASCAR, and drive a pickup truck. No, I mean real Americans in the sense that they were born and raised in the USA and owe their allegiance to the United States Constitution. According to the Post article:

Little is known about Lukatz, who began making contributions to Republicans in 2007 and is listed in federal reports by campaigns as a homemaker or an executive at the Venetian. According to Haaretz.com, Yasmin Lukatz returned to Israel “to do for military service as an officer in the Israeli Air Force. Afterward she attended Tel Aviv University, studying law and business administration. 

Yasmin’s husband, Oren Lukatz, did not make any campaign contributions to federal candidates or committees until late 2010, records show. But since then, he has made nearly $400,000 in donations, including the recent PAC gift. 

His Twitter bio says that he was “born and raised in Israel, educated in Europe and in the United States.”

Oren also served as an officer in the Israeli military. Given their parentage and history, I wonder whether these people have American, Israeli, or dual American-Israeli citizenship. If it's the first, everything's fine. If the second, they're clearly violating the law. But if it's the last, are they real Americans?

Many people have dual citizenship, as it may be thrust upon them as children automatically by birth or by marriage. But by definition, anyone who has citizenship in more than one country has divided loyalties, and cannot be considered a real American.

When you're naturalized as an American you must take the following oath:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

So, are Ochshorn and the Lukatzes Americans by convenience only? Are their loyalties really to Israel, and not the United States? If so, their donations to Gingrich's Super PAC would be legal by only the thinnest of technicalities, by the legal fiction that they are Americans.

If you're going to vote or get involved with American politics your allegiance to the United States should be explicitly stated, and you should take an oath to renounce your citizenship in any other country.

I'm not just picking on Israel. The same should apply to people with dual American-Mexican, American-Canadian, American-Australian or American-British citizenship. You can't be half American.

And this exposes the real problem with Citizens United. The most obvious reason is that corporations cannot be citizens. They cannot take oaths. They cannot vote. They cannot be held responsible for their actions. They cannot hold office. They cannot be imprisoned. They cannot serve in the military. They can be bought from or sold to foreigners in a flash. And often we can't even find out who really owns or controls them.

One of the shell companies that contributed to Romney's Super PAC existed for only four months, but that was long enough to donate a million bucks. It appears this company was set up by a Romney crony at Bain (its address was listed in the same building as Bain).

Given how simple it is to form shell companies and the lax requirements for certain Super PAC disclosures, there's no way to be sure that foreign companies and governments aren't buying American elections. If we can't find out who's really donating to a Super PAC, it's impossible to eliminate the appearance of corruption, and therefore impossible to eliminate the existence of corruption.

Hmm...

Hmm...Today, Mitt Romney was hanging out in Vegas with Donald Trump while Barack (the Kenyan Muslim Socialist who wants to destroy America) Obama was at a prayer breakfast talking about Billy Graham, loving thy neighbor, and reminding us that Jesus said, ""for unto whom much is given, much shall be required."

Amen

Not What He Fucking Said!!!

This is going to be a long election year and the media is going to drive me to pull out what little hair I have left on my hair. Currently, many of the news networks are reporting that Mitt Romney said, "I don't care about the very poor." That's not at all what he said. Here is the FULL quote.

I’m in this race because I care about America. I’m not concerned about the very poor, we have a safety net there, if we need to repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who are struggling, and I’ll continue to take that message across the country.

It's complete bullshit that they are leaving out the rest of the quote. I have no problem with criticizing Mitt for his fictional rants about President Obama, his clear lack of what to do foreign policy wise, or his ever changing position in many policies. But can we please cut him a break and not twist around every single thing he says especially if it's something reasonable like this?

In addition, he's made his point very clearly about his health care plan. It's good for a state but not good for the country. I don't agree with him but (again!) let's please cease with the twisting around of his health care plan and make believe that it's exactly like the PPACA. It isn't because it's a state level initiative.

I know this will fall on deaf ears but we simply have so much other BS to deal with that this is a serious waste of time.

A Matter of Historical Context

A recent post in comments gave me an epiphany.

If you actually bothered to read the Constitution, Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers, etc., you will find that none of the Founding Fathers supported anything even approaching the power of the Federal government from the New Deal onward. Claiming that just because they disagreed about how much power the Federal government should have relative to the States and the People, no more means that Hamilton and the other Federalists would've supported Obama's vision of Federal power than that the Anti-Federalists (and most of your commenters) wanted no government at all. That's just more of your dishonest, dick-headed, asinine Calvinball "logic". Hamilton wanted a national bank? Well then obviously he would've supported nationalized/socialized healthcare and all the other apparatus of a semi-socialist state. Riiight. If he or any others did, it should be quite easy for you find where they actually said something like that, right? Right?

Let's take a closer look at the part of the statement I bolded (Obama's vision of Federal Power) because that raises the question: what would the Founding Fathers have thought of Obama's vision of Federal Power? The answer is quite simple and it reveals, quite starkly, why sentences that begin with "The Founding Fathers would have never..." are completely full of shit and (surprise, surprise) have no place in reality.

The Founding Fathers wouldn't given an ounce of thought to Obama's vision of Federal Power because our current president, in their time, would have been three fifths of a person. Granted, this designation was largely used for political purposes but the general view of black people at the time was that they were "less than." Some of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, owned slaves and very likely wouldn't have even been able to get past the fact that a black man was president.

This is why discussion of what the Founding Fathers would have thought about government today are generally ridiculous. Their views on government were a product of their time and their circumstances with England. Certainly, the Constitution and the decisions made by each of them while they were leading this country are excellent foundations from which to work. But they are not intended to be so limiting that they ignore reality...reality in 2012. Health care is a great example of this. How the system currently works is not at all in the best interests or general welfare of the people. It's become a for-profit industry with out of control costs that it would seem completely alien to Josiah Bartlett, Matthew Thornton, Benjamin Rush or Elbridge Gerry. It's nearly impossible to say what they would think of Medicare and it's likely that they wouldn't have the first clue because our historical place would be completely foreign to them.

Yet, we can look to some examples of their time and compare it to our time and see if there is a precedent or similarities. We can also see how difficult it is for words to match actions at times. With health care, one need only look at An Act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen (passed in 1798 and signed by John Adams) which ordered private seamen to pay 20 cents out of their wages to pay for medical care of sick and disabled seamen. Does this translate into a nation wide system of Medicare? I don't think it's possible to answer this because the Founding Fathers would have no adequate frame of reference. They only knew what was crucial to their young country at the time and that was clearly socialized medicine. This also shows how concepts of limited government work in theory but not necessarily in action. Being products of the Age of Enlightenment, they would likely have the humility to admit that they couldn't make an judgement due to ignorance. Heck, the term "economics" wasn't even in regular use during their time! And health insurance?

Of course, if they were all around today, their thirst for knowledge and wisdom (something on which we call all agree) would propel them to eliminate that ignorance and the likely result would be continued debate with the fathers split into various factions...just as they were at the outset of our country's journey. Some would argue that the states should decide. Others would argue over the necessity of insurance and explore free market options of direct consumer to seller relationships. Some would look at the improvement of general welfare because of our social programs (from the New Deal onwards) and find it hard to argue with success.

In the final analysis, we only know what they thought of federal power during their time in history and, as I've demonstrated three times now (the first national bank, the whiskey rebellion, and mandated health care for seamen), even the people that wrote the Constitution didn't rigidly follow it. That includes ALL of their context and virtually NONE OF OURS.