If you want people to respect your ideas, get better ideas.

Every so often, Kirk Cameron pops up from the "Where are they now?" category and makes derogatory comments about homosexuals. He did this again recently, calling homosexuality "unnatural and detrimental to civilization." With the RushSlut Flap in full swing, he got a little extra attention and, as most right wingers do, played the victim card in the EXACT same way in they bitch about and foam at the mouth.

I should be able to express moral views on social issues, especially those that have been the underpinning of Western civilization for 2,000 years — without being slandered, accused of hate speech, and told from those who preach ‘tolerance’ that I need to either bend my beliefs to their moral standards or be silent when I’m in the public square. 

Ironic that the "underpinning of Western civilization for 2,000 years" also includes the fear, anger, hate, and ignorance of a male dominated religious and moral system but let's set that aside for a moment and focus on the free speech side of his comment because I get the same rip about tolerance.John Scalzi sums it up quite well.

Well, Kirk Cameron, here’s the thing. You are correct when you say you should be able to express your moral views on social issues, and as a staunch defender of the First Amendment, I will defend to the death your right to say whatever ridiculous, ignorant and bigoted thing that has been fermenting in that cracked clay pot you call a brain pan. But the First Amendment also means that when you say such things, other people have the a right to mock you and the silly, stupid words that have dribbled out of your skull through that word hole above your chin. If you call someone “unnatural,” they might call you an “asshole.” That’s the deal.

To put it another way: The First Amendment guarantees a right to speech. It does not guarantee a right to respect. As I am fond of saying, if you want people to respect your ideas, get better ideas. 

Amen. 

If you are going to run your mouth and be an intolerant d bag, then don't whine about a word sack of hammers busting you across the chops, bitch.

Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.

Bill Defends Himself

I'll let Bill defend himself as he has been coming up in relation to the RushSlut Flap.

Not In Their Best Interests

A recent piece by Alexandra Pelosi (daughter of Nancy) doesn't really do much to relieve my somewhat permanent state of confusion as to why people in deep red states go against their best interest and vote Republican. In fact, she sort of makes me more perplexed.

Dominated by conservative politicians, Mississippi has the lowest tax burden in the nation but ranks fourth in per capita federal aid. Mississippi is also a leader of the GOP effort to gut Medicaid but ranks first in the percentage of its Medicaid program that is funded by federal matching funds. 

Seriously, WTF???

It gets worse.

In a state that wants to repeal "Obamacare," Mississippi leads the nation in a number of health care problems. It has the highest rate of heart disease and the second highest rate of diabetes in the country. Mississippi's cardiovascular disease mortality rate is the highest in the nation. Some counties in Mississippi rank among third world countries when it comes to life expectancy-they have the shortest life expectancies in the nation and many Mississippi residents suffer from a lack of health care access (some counties don't even have hospitals). It is ironic that the states suing to prevent the implementation of the Affordable Care Act are the ones whose residents need it most. Still, Republicans poll best in places where healthcare is worst.

And yet they are so stubborn as to refuse the solutions that would certainly help them.

Here's another bit of irony.

When it comes to education, adults in Mississippi have the highest rate of low literacy in the nation. On the National Assessment of Adult Literacy conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, 30 percent of adults scored "Level 1" (less than fifth-grade reading and comprehension skills). In 2011, only 21 percent of Mississippi eighth graders scored proficient in reading and 19 percent scored at least proficient in math. 

So, the state whose policies are dominated by Republican politics has positively horrid statistics when it comes to education.  Could it be that there are reasons other than the communist takeover of our schools that are more significant?

Ms. Pelosi offers this video as an explanation as to why the state continues to vote Republican.

Wow.

Energy Notes

An article published in today's Minneapolis paper illustrates the point I made yesterday about the Keystone XL pipeline:

As gasoline prices soar on the coasts, less expensive crude oil from Canada and North Dakota is easing the pain for Minnesotans. 

The average pump price in the state, running this week around $3.60 per gallon for regular, remains 75 cents behind California, where gas has been over $4 for weeks. It's the biggest price gap between the two states since 2009, according to data from AAA.

Once the pipeline is in, that Canadian oil will head to the Gulf of Mexico and from there to Asia. Which means that the people in the Midwest who have the pipeline running through their land—which will inevitably leak and foul their land and water—will get the "benefit" of paying higher gas prices.

In other energy news investigators in Ohio have determined that recent earthquakes there were in fact caused by injecting wastewater from fracking (hydraulic fracturing) into the ground. As the article notes, it's long been known that humans can cause earthquakes:

They point to recent earthquakes in the magnitude 3 and 4 range — not big enough to cause much damage, but big enough to be felt — in Arkansas, Texas, California, England, Germany and Switzerland. And in the 1960s, two Denver quakes in the 5.0 range were traced to deep injection of wastewater.

Which isn't to say that we should stop all fracking. We just need to do it better. In particular, wastewater injection should be banned. Instead, the water should be decontaminated and returned to the environment safely. Yes, that'll make the gas more expensive. But shouldn't the people who make a mess be required to clean it up? Drillers should not be allowed to pass the problem on to others in the form of earthquake damage and poisons in lakes, streams and water tables that cause death and disease in humans and animals alike.

Whither Uncertainty....

Remember all that talk last year of uncertainty and how the president's policies were muddying the economy?

Yeah, that's pretty much gone to the same place as all those folks who rushed out to buy guns and ammunition after the president won in 2008.

With the Dow at nearly 13,000 and 227, 000 jobs added in the month of February (marking the 17th straight month of job gains), the uncertainty narrative has now been shown to complete hogwash. Of course, this hasn't stopped the right from doing their darnedest to show how "awful" of a job the president is doing. According to Mitt Romney, he's "destroying free enterprise!" How is that possible with the Dow at more than one and a half times what it was when he took office?

A colleague of mine recently got back from a tour of Google and, while he couldn't exactly disclose the things he saw, he assured me that what they are doing out there is so ridiculously innovative that he actually swooned (yes, he is a giant tech geek). So, again, if Barack Obama is a socialist bent on destroying innovation, how is Google able to do what it's doing?

All of this raises an interesting question. What sort of tack will the eventual GOP nominee take without sounding like they are rooting against America?

Who's Really Pushing for Higher Gas Prices?

Republican candidates for president are making their quadrennial squawk about gas prices again. Their line is that President Obama wants high gas prices to "wean" us off oil. As the president asked in a press conference, does it really make sense for him to want prices to go up during an election? Or is it really the Republicans who are forcing gas prices higher by pushing for two more wars in the Middle East?

The fact is, domestic oil and gas production is the highest it's been in ten years. Obama has opened up more off-shore oil production, even after the disaster in the Gulf showed how bad it can be. The president was also on track to approve the Keystone XL pipeline after its route was corrected, but Republicans forced a showdown simply to make him look bad. Even after it's approved, it'll be years before any oil comes through, and most of that oil is heading straight for China. The Canadian company building Keystone XL wants an international market for its oil; it's not happy with the current state of affairs: it's stuck selling its crude to the Midwestern US for lower prices.

The price of gas goes up when there's low supply, high demand or uncertainty about oil producers. We've got a good supply and demand is moderate. Concern over supply is the main cause of high gas prices today.

Why are people concerned? The threat of war in the Middle East. Everyone's worried Iran is building the bomb. Iran has threatened to block the Straits of Hormuz. All the Republicans at AIPAC were egging Israel on to preemptively bomb Iran, and bragging about how many aircraft carriers they would send to the Persian Gulf. John McCain and other Republicans are demanding we immediately bomb Syria.

If anyone wants the price of gas to go up, it's Republican politicians and their backers in the oil business. They profit both ways: it makes Obama look bad, and it puts billions more dollars in their coffers. Every time gas prices hit a peak due to concerns in the Middle East, oil companies post record profits without having to pump a single barrel more. It makes you wonder if they donate money to Republicans specifically to have them beat the drums of war to drive up gas prices.

You'd think that Republicans would have learned their lessons from the war in Iraq and their dealings  with North Korea. A war with Iran would make Bush's disaster in Iraq look like a cakewalk. The more bellicose we are toward Iran the more urgently they feel they need that nuclear deterrent. And higher gas prices are the main fallout in the meantime.

By using foreign policy in the Middle East as a political football to unseat the president Republican candidates are harming the long- and short-term interests of the United States. And they show how utterly unqualified they are to run this country.

Super Tuesday Post Mortem

Well, Mittens hasn't sewn it all up after all, folks. As I predicted, the waters are even muddier.

The problem is the southern, deep red voter. They just don't like or trust Romney. First, he's a Mormon and I don't think they like that at all. Second, and most important, they don't think he's a "real" conservative. Honestly, I don't think he is either. He's saying the things that he imagines a conservative would say but he doesn't really believe them.

That's why Rick Santorum is hanging around. He believes the things he says which I suppose in some ways makes him more frightening. Isn't it interesting that he has been outspent a zillion to one and yet Romney still can't put him away? I guess having all the money in the world doesn't really mean anything.

Newt Gingrich's speech last night should be time capsuled and remembered for being a fine example when someone is wondering in the future about the psychological makeup of right wing bloggers and commenters (see: Titanic Hubris). Good Lord...

And why is Ron Paul still in the race? He hasn't won a state yet and his message isn't really resonating with voters.

The next few contests are going to be a drag for Romney. Kansas is this Saturday. Alabama, Mississippi, and Missouri are all next week. If Santorum wins them all, what then?

It Always Takes A Few Dead Bodies

I'm happy to report that Anoka-Hennepin schools have reversed their awful bullying policy and now allow homosexuality to be talked about openly by resolving the pending litigation and civil rights issues. I'm not at all happy that, as is usually the case, it took dead bodies to effect any sort of change.

I may be in a different district than Anoka-Hennepin but when I became a teacher, the well being of all children became my responsibility. Those kids, just like the ones I teach, were my kids. I will always feel that loss every single day for the rest of my life. Anyone who seeks to undermine the well being of a student anywhere near my back yard is going to get me up their fucking ass morning, noon, and night until they back off and keep their views to themselves.

How it took this long is a fine example of what happens when we allow bigots and ignorant homophobes to set policy. More often than not, they simply don't think and this is the kind of bullshit that happens. People who take that extra step into action (based on their ignorant bias) should be immediately held legally accountable for their actions. Honestly, they should be put in fucking prison for civil rights violations and not one of those country club jails...FEDERAL pound me in the ass prison.

It worked in the 60s and it would damn well work now.

Yeah, Baby!

Super Tuesday Predictions and Prognostications

Tomorrow, GOP voters will go to the polls in Alaska, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia in what has become known as Super Tuesday. The current delegate count stands at 173 for Romney, 74 for Santorum, 37 for Paul, and 33 for Gingrich. 1144 delegates are needed to secure the nomination.

From the simple standpoint of math, Super Tuesday won't get any of the candidate even halfway to 1144. But decisive victories in many key states would mean that the air of inevitability would certainly be around said candidate. There's only one problem with this possible outcome.

It ain't gonna happen. In fact, the clear as mud GOP nominating contest will reach a new level of brown after Tuesday night. In looking at the states listed above, one can easily see Santorum winning 2 or 3 of them like Tennessee, Oklahoma, and/or North Dakota. Gingrich is going to win Georgia. Ron Paul could win Alaska. Romney will win Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia. To me, it looks like everything is going to be split.

Ohio is the one to watch tomorrow night. Both Romney and Santorum are in a statistical tie there and the race could go either way. Yet even if Santorum wins the popular vote, he still may have to split delegates with Romney which will add to the mud.

So, regardless of the outcome, the primary season is going to drag on. And, with many Midwestern and Southern states like Kansas, Missouri, and Mississippi on the calendar, Super Tuesday victories for Romney won't mean much at all.

Bril!

Keep The Secret Agent Man Talking

Right after Nikto put up his post yesterday, Rush Limbaugh apologized to Sandra Fluke. Right on the heels of his apology, Hell called and informed us earthlings that it had frozen over.

It's very serendipitous that all of this has happened. I'd been thinking about Rush of late and was about to do a column about him and how it was just about time for him to say something that would get him noticed again. I would say that this certainly qualifies.

So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here's the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I'll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.


My first thought after I heard this was...is Rush Limbaugh a secret agent for Barack Obama? There's no doubt that his ratings are higher when there is a Democrat in charge. Make it a black guy with a funny, Muslim-y name and we're talking pure gold here. Hell, not gold but platinum or onyx!

But this was so far over the top and played right to pissing off a key demographic that I had to wonder (and still do even though he has apologized) if Rush is helping the president with his re-election campaign. I know the conventional wisdom is that we need to all stop listening to Rush and then he will go away but now I don't think that's the case.

This, of course, adds another layer of fault to my line of thinking after the president won in 2008 when I spoke of the end of people like Rush fading into the sunset. After this recent gift, why on the heck would I want that? What was I thinking? How foolish of me....:)

I say, we need to keep him talking because he has to keep saying more and more offensive shit to be relevant in this day and age. Honestly, he doesn't really have a choice. The more he talks, the more independents run back to the president. That's why, in the face of departing sponsors, it's a good thing he apologized so now the very likely possibility of him losing control of himself again between now and the election remains intact.

Although I am little worried. Now that he has admitted fault, the perceptual framework that these folks have set up for themselves dictates that he is now weak and a pussy. Please don't let it be true!!!

Rush to Judgment

On Wednesday Rush Limbaugh said:

What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps.

What right does Rush have to judge this woman? What Sandra Fluke actually said is that women need to use contraceptives for more than one reason. In particular, Fluke has a friend who used the pill to control ovarian cysts, and not prevent pregnancy. The friend was denied coverage, couldn't afford the drugs. A cyst developed and grew to the size of tennis ball. It had to be surgically removed along with her ovary.

This whole argument over employers covering birth control is bogus. Practically speaking, since contraceptives are medicine, they need to be dispensed under the supervision of a doctor. Therefore they need to be part of health insurance, and it would be stupidly bureaucratic to require a separate policy to cover it. Aren't Republicans against stupid bureaucratic nonsense?

What's more, as I (and Jon Stewart) have pointed out before, the employer is paying for birth control whether it's through health insurance or the employee's salary. This is inconsistent, unless they're also arguing that they have the right to fire anyone who uses contraception. Is this moral objection to birth control really just the first domino in the conservative plot to allow employers to discriminate against people they don't like, be they contraceptive users, Muslims, Baptists, Mormons, atheists, blacks, Latinos and women?

It's particular ironic that Limbaugh is making a big deal out of this. In 2009 Limbaugh was stopped by customs when he returned from the Dominican Republic for having a bottle of Viagra that was made out in his doctor's name. (He should have used the alias "Rash Limp-bough".) This was after he was caught abusing prescription drugs, doctor-shopping and skirting banking laws by withdrawing cash from his banks just below the threshold that would require it to be reported. He then sent his housekeeper out with shoeboxes full of money to buy prescription drugs illegally to support the addiction that may have cost him his hearing, requiring him to have cochlear implants.

At the time of the Viagra bust Rush had been divorced from his third wife for five years and was seeing the woman who would become his fourth wife, Kathryn Rogers, who is 26 years younger than he is. They have no children, so, as Rush would, I'll just assume that she was using the pill to prevent pregnancy (I can't imagine someone like Limbaugh even considering a condom or diaphragm). I'll also assume her employer was paying for her health insurance, which in Limbaugh's fantasy world would mean she is a slut and a prostitute, her employer is a pimp and he is a john. As well as a fornicator.

Why isn't Rick Santorum holding up Rush Limbaugh as Exhibit A for all society's ills?

Sandra Fluke's motivation for speaking out appears to be outrage over the injustice that caused her friend to lose an ovary. Rush Limbaugh's motivation seems to be to slap down another slutty "feminazi" because she dared speak up instead of just lying there and taking it.

No wonder this man has gone through four wives.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

The best answer yet to Rick Santorum's snob comment....

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A Friday Challenge

John Waxy, a sadly seldom author here, is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin. He's also an owner of a 20 million dollar manufacturing concern there but that's a post for another day (see: intimately familiar with the concerns of business owners in the 21st century even though a few mouth foamers who post here are under the mistaken impression that I am not).

John an I have known each other for 33 years and I count him as my closest friend. We talk at least once a week and, sadly more often than not, he tells me the same story about his Intro To Anthropology class that he teachers every semester and it goes something like this: A few weeks into the quarter, a third of his class will be failing. When I ask him why, he tells me that those failing students all essentially have the same problem.

They don't "believe" in evolution.

In fact, many of these students have told John that they needn't bother learning the required class because "It's all lies."

So when I saw this post  on Kevin Baker's site, The Smallest Minority, I became curious as to what his response would be to such willful ignorance by John's students, given that his protestations fall along his usual line of  "Every School Is Failing Everywhere Because of the Communist Take Over of Schools And Look At How Stupid The Kids Are As A Result of This and The Coddling." Certainly, this does not fit Kevin's (very much fictional) narrative!

Yet, if recollection serves me, there was a post a while back about the Constitution and how it was also being destroyed by liberals, commies, proggies, and the Ladies Auxiliary of New Prague, MN. I hadn't commented in a while but honestly felt it was necessary given how (ahem) off the mark he was in his assessment.

During the course of comments, I got the Sybil-like "You're a chicken"-"Get the Fuck Out of Here" nonsense that I always get so I put it to a vote: Yes, for me to stay...No, for me to go and never comment again. The vote was for the NO's 2-1 with several people abstaining. I will, of course, continue to abide by that decision and since have noticed several commenters (including Kevin once) posting here.

Despite this, Kevin continues to put up posts about education which he clearly does to bait and taunt me, trying to get me to comment. Other commenters mention my name and do the same. Don't they know that I am a man of my word and would not comment unless a new vote is taken and I am voted back on the island?

Of course, my promise does not extend to this site (my own, after all) and that's why today I am commenting on his last post on education. In fact, I'm going to do much more than that. I am officially challenging Kevin and any other commenter from his site or here to an ongoing debate on education. It's come to the point where I simply can't allow such a colossal amount of lying to go on by someone who very clearly has not set foot in a school in a long time. That goes for most of his commenters as well. You want to know why schools are failing? Ask me. I'm a teacher so I am an authority as to what is going on. And then go spend a week in a school (preferably a junior high for the real action) so you can gauge if what I am saying is true.

To put it simply, start learning something, get some actual first-hand experience, and then you can run your mouth. After that, I'm hoping that we can have a substantive discussion about how much our society has changed and how incredibly naive (see: FUBAR) it would be to try to "go back to the old days."

To kick off this challenge, let's get back to that video he put up. First, anyone ever hear of the concept of editing? Obviously, it can make people look at stupid or smart as possible. Jay Leno does it all the time. In this case, it's stupid and, because Kevin eternally embraces confirmation bias (especially when it comes to schools), he believes that all students are this "stupid." I guess I'm wondering what ended up on the cutting room floor and how many answered the questions correctly.

Second, for every school that is "failing," there are schools like this one that are turning around. 

Booker T. Washington High School’s graduation rate went from 55% in 2007 to 81.6% in 2010. The school has taken steps such as establishing separate freshmen academies for boys and girls to help students adjust to the school culture and creating an atmosphere where teachers take personal interest in seeing students take pride in their schoolwork. Students can now take AP classes, learn about engineering through robotics competitions, and earn college credits. 

Every time Kevin puts up something on his site about "failing schools," I'll be putting up a post here about successful ones. I have plenty. This is going to happen even if my challenge is declined or ignored. Because the simple truth is that there are many schools that are doing well already or improving. If he and the others set aside their irrational hatred of  Barack X, they would see that he and Secretary Duncan are pursuing many of the same goals as they are. If they did that and spent some time in a school, then they would see that this remark from the comments of that post

They are not being taught history anymore. It's all part of the Socialist Plan.

is beyond laughable. In fact, I question whether or not it was intended in jest.

So, the challenge has been extended. The gauntlet has been thrown down. This is a chance here (and in future education related threads) to have a dialogue with someone who has been in the education system for the last 9 years (public and private).

If you really care about the future of education in this country and are serious about improving the system, this is an opportunity to do so.

Wow.

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At least now, Fox News is admitting it...

And I wonder what last in line thinks about the guy from Fox saying, "Regardless of the numbers, it's how you feel..."

Stunned

The news just came over the wire that conservative blogger Andrew Brietbart, whose name I invoked quite a bit in comments, has died. He was only 43 years old. The cause of death is unknown. Apparently he does have some underlying health issues and he suddenly collapsed so hopefully we will know more soon. 

My thoughts and prayers are with his family as should all of yours. I am very much going to miss his hyperbolic appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher.

Snowe Fall

Mark expressed pleasure at the announcement that Olympia Snowe is retiring, but I wish she could stay. And I wish there were more Republicans like her. With the fall of the last Republican moderates, I fear more deadlock in Congress in the near term, but the eventual fall of the Republican Party in the long term.

It's a common trope that both the Republican and Democratic parties are gathered at the extremes of the political spectrum, but it's the Republicans that have all clustered in the deep end of the ideological pool. The truth is, there are almost no liberals in the Democratic Party anymore.

You need look no further than President Obama for an example. Republicans insist he is a radical socialist, but he has compromised on dozens of issues, agreeing to solutions Republicans once embraced wholeheartedly just a few years ago. Including, but not limited to, the health care mandate, which Obama strongly opposed during the 2008 election campaign but agreed to in a compromise with the health care industry.

Democrats generally reflect the political bent of the districts they represent, ranging from right of center (there are dozens of Blue Dog Democrats like Jim Cooper of Tennessee, Collin Peterson of Minnesota, Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona until she resigned, and so on), to liberal few (Dennis Kucinich). Even though they don't agree on every little issue, the common thread among Democrats is that they want government to work for the people they represent.

But the vast majority of Republicans in government are now radically conservative no matter where they come from. They have either always been that way, or have been forced to change (like John McCain) or face being "primaried" by the Tea Party and Grover Norquist. Republicans like Snowe and Arlen Specter are being drummed out of the party. The only real exception is Scott Brown, because half a Republican senator from Massachusetts is better than none. (But if he loses, Republican pundits will say it's because he was too liberal and didn't do enough to "differentiate" himself from Warren.)

Republicans constantly carp about "political correctness," but they've got their own ideological enforcers who will viciously destroy any Republican who dares stray from the one true faith of Grover Norquist.

There are dozens of pro-life Democrats in Congress, but almost no pro-choice Republicans. Even though a thoroughly convincing libertarian argument can be made against the government telling you what you can do with your own body. There are hundreds of anti-gun control Democrats, but no pro-gun control Republicans. There are hundreds of Democrats in Congress who agree that we need to do something serious about Social Security and Medicare to avoid a future default, that we need to plan for balancing the budget and reducing the deficit, that we need a strong defense. But there are essentially no Republicans who will admit that real taxes on corporations (not the official rate, which almost no one pays) and the wealthy—especially capital gains taxes—are too low and a combination of budget cuts and selective tax increases are needed to fix our long-term problems.

The dictatorial nature of the Republican Party does not bode well for its long-term survival. Americans actually believe in freedom, and will grow tired of being constantly lectured about it by people who want to take their right to self-determination away, to be told when and with whom they can have sex, when and how they can have kids and who they can marry.

If one good thing comes of the bile and sewage the Republican primary campaigns and their Super PACs spewed over the airwaves, it will be a reversal of the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision. Perhaps then Republican candidates can focus on what their constituents want and need, instead of the demands of the cabals at Grover Norquist's Wednesday meetings, corporate board rooms and Fox News.

It's A Fine Line, My Friends, A Fine Line...

Breaking...

Maine Senator Olympia Snowe has announced she is retiring which puts Maine in play now for the Democrats. I'd say there is a very good chance they take that one back. They are certainly going to need every chance they have with the way things are looking in the Senate.

Goodbye Hello!

Well, I had to wait 15 years and, even though it was due to redistricting and not an election, I am FINALLY represented by a Democrat, Keith Ellison. And the 1st Muslim in the US Congress!

Goodbye CD3. You are now more conservative and Erik Paulsen will be your representative for as long as the Democrats continue to nominate people who have never been elected to public office. Hello, CD5, perhaps you may end up being too liberal for me?

The Anti-College Crusade

The other day Rick Santorum said:

Not all folks are gifted in the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands. Some people have incredible gifts and ... want to work out there making things. President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob.

The fact is, Obama said that he wants everyone to go to a university or two-year community college or vocational school of their choice. In this modern world of computerized cars and highly-automated factory floors that require the people running those machines to have programming skills, you need to know more than just readin', ritin' and 'rithmetic. After the tea-party crowd finished applauding, Santorum continued:

There are good decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his.

Santorum went to Penn State (I wonder if he knew Jerry Sandusky?). He also got an MBA and a law degree. He seems to have escaped his indoctrination by liberal secular state university professors. Santorum also seems to be unafraid of his own children being indoctrinated: his two oldest have started college, though they're taking a break to work on his campaign.

The fact is, on average people with college educations make a lot more money than people who don't. The unemployment rate among the college-educated is half that of the rest of the nation. Their divorce rate and out-of-wedlock birthrate is much lower. They have better health and live longer. People make connections at college that will set them up for life, even if they drop out like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.


For a long time now Republicans seem to have been striving to become the party of stupid. Now they have a candidate who's actively denigrating getting a college education. It seems crazy for the party of the rich and soon-to-be rich to advocate against the best track to wealth and influence.

Is Santorum off his rocker? Or has he unwittingly revealed the Republican party's real agenda?

Two camps of Republicans have long been at odds. The first camp is big business and its frontmen, guys like Rick Perry, George Bush and (until recently) John McCain. These businesses have relied on large numbers of illegal aliens to pick tomatoes, clean hotel rooms and butcher chickens. The same group has been relentlessly busting unions, most recently with states like Wisconsin and Indiana gutting the ability of unions to even exist.

The second camp is relatively uneducated lower- to middle-income, blue-collar, union-hating, anti-amnesty Republicans who are afraid that illegal aliens will steal their jobs. Because the only real qualification the aliens lack is the ability to speak English. So they want the aliens out now, though they aren't interested in taking the aliens' jobs because they don't pay enough to live on.

Is the real Republican agenda to encourage the economic descent of the average American so that they will fill the void left by all those deported illegals? To get this to work, Republicans have to make low-wage blue-collar Americans feel smug and superior and that they're somehow more authentic than college-educated politicians (and their multi-millionaire CEO buddies, but let's not mention them). Santorum and Sarah Palin seem to be doing just that.

Or would we be better served by sending more people to college who will study computer science and engineering to fill the hundreds of thousands of current high-tech job vacancies here in the United States? Jobs that are now going to foreigners with college educations. These well-educated Americans could start companies that build machines that pick tomatoes, butcher chickens and clean hotel rooms, eliminating the need for illiterate aliens who can't speak English. Maintaining and programming those machines would create decent-paying jobs for Americans who like to work with their hands. This would also increase the productivity of the American economy and allow us to beat out China, which still relies on prison slave labor and low-wage workers stacked eight to a dorm room.

Will all these Tea Party Republicans still feel proud and smug when it's their kids lopping off their fingers on the meat-packing floors instead of illegal aliens or shiny metal robots?

Maher on the Bubble

This is the bubble they live in. It's hard to get actual facts into this impermeable membrane. They are running against a fictional president. A president who has slashed defense, who has raised taxes, who goes around the world apologizing to different countries, who coddles terrorists, all of which, of course, never happened. But that's who they think the president is. And it's very, very hard. That's why we have this bubble we built on this show to physically illustrate this.---Bill Maher on "The Bubble."

It's Not Just Fox News

I'd add in the Right Wing Blogsphere as well. In fact, it's really more appropriate for them:)

Interesting....

The Keystone Fight Is Uniting Tea Partiers With Environmentalists. 

I knew it was only a matter of time before there was some crossover. It makes sense when you really sit back and think about how one could make a case for the government failing to protect property rights.

Uh...Huh?

Some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them? Into what exactly? Someone who can think for themselves? Good grief...

No Shit

Sunday's Epistle

Social issues have once again come up in the political dialogue and with many states taking up the issue of gay marriage now and in the fall, Lisa Cressman's recent piece in the StarTribune is quite timely. More than that, it's wonderfully welcome in its elegant way of expressing several simple truths. And, coming from an assistant priest at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Lake Elmo, MN, it carries with it a great deal more weight.

Gay marriage opponents had put up a questionnaire titled ""Six questions for supporters of same-sex marriage to answer" and so, Cressman did. I have decided to reprint her entire response here as it is just that good.

1. Were our ancestors all dumb and bigoted? 

Our ancestors knew many truths, but not all. A common example of what our ancestors held to be self-evident, biblically sanctioned truth, which we now hold in abhorrence, is slavery. It's appropriate to ask ourselves whether a particular societal tradition is the best way for us to continue. 

If the Bible condoned slavery, doesn't that mean that the authors may have not been completely accurate about everything?

2. Don't our sexual organs exist for reproduction? 

Reproduction is one of their purposes, but so is intimacy. If our sexual organs existed solely for reproduction, couples would have sex only at the times necessary for procreation. Moreover, if this were the case, physical fulfillment in marriage wouldn't be enjoyed by couples who cannot have children (for medical reasons or by virtue of advanced age) or who choose not to do so. 

3. Do we just give in to our sexual desires? 

Our sexual desires have been channeled through the worthy tradition that people choose one mate and make a promise of fidelity through marriage. A mutual, joyful and public commitment, permanently held, one to another, is the healthiest way to build stable families and a stable society. This would argue for encouraging members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community likewise to make a commitment of marriage as the appropriate avenue for their sexuality. 

4. Adultery, pedophilia and bestiality are wrong. So homosexuality? 

Adultery is a problem because of the trust shattered when marriage vows are broken. Pedophilia and bestiality are anathema because there cannot be mutual consent -- an adult always holds power over a child or an animal. Homosexual commitment is mutual between consenting adults. 

Consenting adults is the key here. You don't have that with children, animals or inanimate objects.

5. Changes in norms require universal acceptance. Prevalent homosexuality will not work. 

Many changes in our country have taken place without universal acceptance. Indeed, many laws in our country were designed to protect the very people who do not receive universal acceptance. As to prevalent homosexuality, the long-held estimate is that roughly 10 percent of the population is homosexual. No law has the ability to increase or decrease those numbers. 

Civil rights, anyone?

Now the best one...

6. The religious question: Shouldn't we be trying to encourage others to repent of a wrong? 

The assumption is that homosexuality is wrong. Assumptions are fair to question, even religious ones. We understand now, in a way our biblical ancestors could not, that medically and psychologically, homosexuals are born, not made. Would a loving God deliberately create someone who is fundamentally a mistake?

This is the very essence of the debate. Gay people don't learn to be gay or give in to their "sinful desires." They are born that way. That's how God made them.

If it's a question about "love the sinner but hate the sin," the way we discern whether something is, in fact, sinful, is to look at its consequences. The consequences that result from committed homosexual relationships are as positive as they are for committed heterosexual relationships: stable, tax-paying, caring-for-one-another-through-thick-and-thin families. These are the kinds of consequences that benefit all of society.

This brings up an issue that I have never understood. If the anti-gay crowd thinks homosexuals are engaging in deviant behavior, why are they against them trying to change that into something much more healthy? Like a marriage?

Personally, I think it's because the anti-gays are (surprise surprise) paranoid that accepting homosexuals will push they themselves over the edge into sin. You know how those folks love to have people all thinking the same way (due to massive insecurity).

Marriage matters to the GLBT among us as much as it does to the rest of us. Surrounded by family and friends, to make a promise to cherish that one other person until parted by death, matters. 

This is a big change, surely. I am persuaded, however, that change based on a commitment, a lifelong commitment of mutual joy, will benefit us all. 

It's obvious that those benefits are quickly becoming economical:)

Gay hair stylist drops New Mexico governor as client because she opposes same-sex marriage 

Man, I love the free market!

Why is it OK when he says it?

If You Are Really Concerned About The Debt and The Deficit...

...then the person you should be supporting is Ron Paul. After that, it's Barack Obama.

A recent report by the non partisan U.S. Budget Watch, a project of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, showed that Mr. Paul's plan would only add less than 500 billion dollars to the deficit by the end of 2016. President Obama would add just a little more than that with 649 billion.

Yet, Mitt Romney would add 700-800 billion dollars to the deficit with 2.6 trillion added to the debt by 2012.  Rick Santorum would add over 1 trillion dollars to the deficit by the end of 2016 with the debt rising to 4.5 trillion dollars by 2021. The worst offender, Newt Gingrich, would add 1.5 trillion to the deficit with a whopping 7 trillion dollars added to the debt by 2021.

So, why so much under the plans of the GOP hopefuls? Tax cuts. Well, they worked so well before...

Now that I think about it, they did work. The tax cuts have enabled the right to blame President Obama for all our economic problems.

Have All the Wrongs Been Righted?

Recently the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on affirmative action at the University of Texas. The legalistic argument usually made against affirmative action is that racial preferences are bad no matter what, even if they exist to right historical wrongs.

But when you dig a little deeper, the general sentiment of many who oppose affirmative action is actually, "Get over it! Slavery ended almost 150 years ago. How long are you going to make us feel guilty for what our great-great-grandfathers did?"

But the surprising fact is that slavery did not really end until 1941! The Thirteenth amendment abolished it, but left an exception for punishment, which was widely abused in the South until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. At which point Roosevelt ordered a crackdown to avoid a propaganda attack by the Axis. The Thirteenth Amendment states:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. 

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Everyone knows about chain gangs and share-croppers in the South, which were effectively slave labor. But after Reconstruction whites in the South used the Constitutional exception to falsely imprison millions of blacks and force them into slavery in industries such as logging, manufacturing, construction and mining.

This practice, known as convict leasing, is the subject of a PBS documentary called Slavery by Another Name. It's based on a book by The Wall Street Journal's Atlanta bureau chief Douglas Blackmon. Blackmon, a white southerner, wrote an article in 2001 about how many companies, including U.S. Steel, used convict leasing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He expanded his research into a book in 2008.

It worked like this: whites passed laws against vagrancy, loitering, gambling, spitting and so on. They also turned lesser crimes, such as stealing a pig worth one dollar, into felonies. Blacks were stopped on the street and if they couldn't prove they were employed, they were arrested on the spot. The state then sold the labor of prisoners, the vast majority of them black, to companies for a few dollars a month. The slave economy was back in full force, just in time to create an economic boom in the South as the industrial revolution hit.

Convict leasing was in some ways worse than slavery. It's in the best interests of slave owners to avoid abusing slaves because they have a lot of economic value: a slave can labor for decades. But convicts were leased by the month. If one died you just got another one. Many convicts were forced to work for 16 and 20 hours at a stretch at filthy, dark, cold, and wet jobs at coal mines, lumber camps and railroad lines. Overwork and mistreatment killed them by the thousands.

Another common practice in the South was peonage, or indentured servitude, where people were enslaved to work off debts. This practice was common in Mexico and supposed to be illegal in the United States. But in the South it was common for debtors to be forced to sign contracts to provide labor. Even worse, there were cases where law enforcement would round up blacks, claim they owed them money, get a justice of the peace to falsely "legalize" the claim, force them to sign a "contract," and then force them into slavery for money they never owed.

In one famous case in the early 1900s the U.S. government convicted the leader of one of these gangs, John W. Pace, of peonage. On appeal Pace claimed he was innocent because the people he enslaved didn't really owe him money, so he couldn't be guilty of peonage. And since there was no actual law against slavery—Congress didn't think to pass one since it was a Constitutional amendment—Pace's lawyers said he'd done nothing illegal. Teddy Roosevelt later pardoned Pace who went back to using peons.

Now, blacks weren't the only victims of these outrageous crimes, through they were in the vast majority. In 1923 a North Dakotan named Martin Tabert was arrested in Florida for vagrancy by Sheriff J.R. Jones. Jones had a contract with Putnam Lumber: he received $20 (plus expenses) for each prisoner he turned over to the company. Tabert had pleaded guilty to riding a freight train through Tallahassee, and was sentenced to pay $25 or serve three months of hard labor. He didn't have the money and was sent to the prison camp, where they worked him from 4 AM to 6 PM. One Friday Tabert was whipped 100 lashes for failing to keep up with the other prisoners as they marched back and forth to a swamp where they often worked in hip-deep water. He died four days later. Perhaps the worst thing is that Tabert's parents had wired their son some money but, as Sheriff Jones wrote in a letter, "it was sent in his name—I therefore returned it."

This sort of thing happened every day to blacks. But only when convict leasing killed a white man from North Dakota did it draw the attention of the New York Times (the full story is behind a paywall at the Times), and things start to change.

Perhaps the most vile aspect of this whole sorry episode in American history is the corrosive effect convict leasing had on the general impression of blacks. The PBS program points out that before the Civil War blacks were perceived as loyal and hard-working (as they are portrayed in movies about the era). Afterwards, subjected to massive unemployment and false arrest on trumped-up charges, they came to be viewed as lazy and criminal. Which makes me ask: was the pattern of absentee black fathers that society has decried for the past 50 years set in place when young black husbands were abducted off the streets by white sheriffs and sent off to slave labor camps?

There are Americans still alive today who were once enslaved by our justice system. There are Americans still alive today who were systematically prevented by their government from voting and using the same lunch counters, restrooms, buses, classrooms and drinking fountains as the rest of us. And there are Americans still alive today whose fathers and husbands were systematically murdered by their white neighbors while law enforcement participated or stood by and watched. Hell, these lynchings have occurred in my lifetime.

That means there are Americans still alive today who perpetrated those crimes. Can we really say all wrongs have been righted when there are still Americans alive today who feel those crimes were justified?

Barack Obama's Army Of Gun Grabbing Robots

Remember when all those people ran out to buy guns and ammo when President Obama got elected because they were afraid he would take away their guns?

Yeah, that never happened.

But at least the guns and ammo places weren't hurt too much by the recession. I wonder if they will thank the president....

Moreover, my own home state legislature just voted to give the use of deadly force anywhere the thumbs up. This is one of many examples in which the president has largely left the issue of gun rights up to the states. The results of this hands off policy has seen a great loosening of gun laws that honestly haven't been seen in decades. So you think they would be happy, right?

Nope. 

They say that President Obama is a Muslim, but if he isn’t, he’s a secularist who is waging war on religion. On some days he’s a Nazi, but on most others he’s merely a socialist. His especially creative opponents see him as having a “Kenyan anti-colonial worldview,” while the less adventurous say that he’s an elitist who spent too much time in Cambridge, Hyde Park and other excessively academic precincts. 

Yeah...which is it again? I can't keep track.

Whatever our president is, he is never allowed to be a garden-variety American who plays basketball and golf, has a remarkably old-fashioned family life and, in the manner we regularly recommend to our kids, got ahead by getting a good education. 

Isn't he a model that we should point to and say to our kids, "Hey, be like this guy?" After all, he fulfills the checklist of the base in terms of family values and working hard to get himself ahead. In so many ways, he is illustrative of the opportunity that comes with this great country. And yet, they shit all over him.

It’s simply astonishing that a man in his fourth year as our president continues to be the object of the most extraordinary paranoid fantasies. A significant part of his opposition still cannot accept that Obama is a rather moderate politician quite conventional in his tastes and his interests. And now that the economy is improving, short-circuiting easy criticisms, Obama’s adversaries are reheating all the old tropes and cliches and slanders. 

That's my favorite bit of the whole piece. It's so fucking accurate. And so fucking sad. It's likely that the rest of this election year is going to see them descend into deeper and heretofore unfathomable paranoia.

But there is something especially rancid about the never-ending efforts to turn Obama into a stranger, an alien, a Manchurian Candidate with a diabolical hidden agenda. Are we trying to undo all the good it did us with the rest of the world when we elected an African American with a middle name popular among Muslims?

Yes. Yes, they are. Why? Because THEY LOST THE ARGUMENT AND ARE CHILDISH.

It makes me wonder what will happen if the president wins a second term. I honestly wouldn't be surprised they started saying that the president is building an army of killer robots that are going to take away their guns.

Another Energy Milestone

For the first time in more than 60 years, The United States has become a net fuel exporter."It looks like a trend that could stay in place for the rest of the decade," Dave Ernsberger, global director of oil at Platts, told The Wall Street Journal. "The conventional wisdom is that U.S. is this giant black hole sucking in energy from around the world. This changes that dynamic." All of this is happening because of new sources of oil in North Dakota and Texas as well as new opportunities in Canada.

But......anyone notice a drop in gas prices?

Nope.

That's because, as I have stated many times, world demand has been rapidly rising in emerging markets. Brazil used to export fuel to the United States but now they import over 100,000 barrels a day. Singapore has quadrupled its imports from the US.

So, while this is a wonderful opportunity for oil companies, we won't see any difference at the pump, as the Wall Street Journal notes.

But U.S. drivers aren't seeing much benefit in the form of lower prices because refineries on the Gulf Coast are shipping much of their output to places where demand is strong, keeping prices high.

So, we can "drill, baby, drill" all we want but with demand falling off here in the US and rising abroad, it won't matter one bit how much fuel we export.

Suddenly, As If Out of Someone's Ass...

A recent discussion regarding racism prompted me to do a little research on the phenomenon known as denial. I chuckled when I ran across the concept of DARVO which stands for Deny the abuse, then Attack the victim for attempting to make them accountable for their offense, thereby Reversing Victim and Offender.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Further, psychologist Jennifer Freyd explains. 

The attack will often take the form of focusing on ridiculing the person who attempts to hold the offender accountable. [...] [T]he offender rapidly creates the impression that the abuser is the wronged one, while the victim or concerned observer is the offender. Figure and ground are completely reversed. [...] The offender is on the offense and the person attempting to hold the offender accountable is put on the defense.

Exactly. This is essentially what happens when folks bitch about "playing the race card." Suddenly (as if out of someone's ass), the person who is obviously being racist is now the victim. How ingenuous!

A Serious Commitment

Lost in all the political news over the last few weeks was this announcement.

NRC approves first new nuclear plant in a generation.

It's actually two nuclear reactors that will be located in Georgia. Thomas Fanning, Southern Co.'s chief executive Officer, called the license a "monumental accomplishment" and said the new Vogtle plants would provide cheap, reliable power to Southeast residents for years to come.

The Obama administration has offered Southern and its partners $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees as an incentive. Fanning said he expects the U.S. Energy Department to finalize the loan in the second quarter of 2012. For those of you keeping track, that's 16 times the amount that was loaned to Solyndra and ultimately lost.

I'd say that represents a more serious commitment to nuclear power and energy overall considering that this plant will be the first since 1979.

The Maltese Candidate

Remember the creepy bad guys in The Da Vinci Code, the ones who flagellated themselves and wore spiked chains called cilice to inflict pain on themselves? Well, those guys aren't some mad conspiratorial raving of Dan Brown—they're a real organization called Opus Dei, which is Latin for the work of god.

In 2002, while a US senator, Rick Santorum went to Rome to celebrate the centenary of Opus Dei's founder, Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer. At the meeting he held an interview with the National Catholic Reporter:

[Santorum] told NCR that a distinction between private religious conviction and public responsibility, enshrined in John Kennedy’s famous speech in 1960 saying he would not take orders from the Catholic church if elected president, has caused “much harm in America.” 

“All of us have heard people say, ‘I privately am against abortion, homosexual marriage, stem cell research, cloning. But who am I to decide that it’s not right for somebody else?’ It sounds good,” Santourm said. “But it is the corruption of freedom of conscience.”

Santorum told NCR that he regards George W. Bush as “the first Catholic president of the United States.”

Brown's fictional depiction of Opus Dei contains exaggerations, according to an ABC story from 2006. But the reality isn't much better:

There have also been claims of excessive control. Tammy DiNicola was a freshman at Boston College when she went on her first Opus Dei retreat. She says what began as as opportunity to deepen her faith quickly accelerated into involvement in an all-controlling group.

"Everything becomes gradually controlled," DiNicola said. "Your mail is read. Your salary's handed over. Your reading matter and your movies, all of this is controlled." 

Opus Dei acknowledges that many members hand over portions of their salaries, but says that there is no truth behind allegations of excessive control and that its only intention is to teach and coach.

It sounds very much like a cult. And the cilice? They're a form of hair shirt, and members of Opus Dei really do wear them, though usually only two hours a day.

According to the NCR article, Santorum isn't a member of Opus Dei, just an admirer of its founder. But Santorum is a member of the Knights of Malta, an organization that goes back to the Crusades.

In 2004 Rick Santorum and his wife Karen were invested in the Knights of Malta as Knight and Dame of Magistral Grace. The full name of the organization is "Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta^SM". At the time Santorum was still a US senator representing Pennsylvania.

The Knights of Malta, or Knights Hospitallers, originally provided medical care for Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem. In the First Crusade they became a full-fledged military order. After they were ejected from the Holy Land, they governed the island of Rhodes as a sovereign state, and then the island of Malta. After Napolean kicked them out, they went to Rome.

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) claims to be a sovereign state in the same way that the Vatican does, though it has no actual land other than its offices:

SMOM has formal diplomatic relations with 104 states and has official relations with another six countries and the European Union. Additionally it has relations with the International Committee of the Red Cross and a number of international organizations, including observer status at the UN and some of the specialized agencies. Its international nature is useful in enabling it to pursue its humanitarian activities without being seen as an operative of any particular nation. Its claimed sovereignty is also expressed in the issuance of passports, licence plates, stamps, and coins.

SMOM issues passports, currency and license plates! It has diplomatic relations with Italy, Spain, all of South America, almost all of Eastern Europe, including Russia, and half of Africa and Central America.

This means that Rick Santorum accepted a title of nobility from a self-proclaimed sovereign state, whose sovereignty is recognized around the world. Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution states:

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.

Now, since the United States does not recognize the SMOM's sovereignty claim, so Santorum may not technically be in violation of the Constitution. (And Congress may have consented to it and I simply can't find it on the net.)

But SMOM is a foreign organization that purports to be a sovereign state. And it has the express intent of influencing political outcomes in the United States. If you look at look at the PDF file announcing Santorum's knighthood, you will find it filled with condemnations of gay marriage, dictates over end-of-life care, and overt political statements such as the following:

MAY CATHOLICS VOTE FOR A PRO-ABORTION CANDIDATE? There are several
non-negotiable tenets of the Catholic faith which hold, unequivocally, that these actions,
which involve the destruction of innocent human life, are intrinsically evil and, therefore,
are prohibited:
• abortion at any stage of life
• embryonic stem cell research (from fetal tissue)
• euthanasia/assisted suicide
• human cloning

Curiously absent from this "pro-life" list is any mention of the death penalty, "preventive" war like Iraq, shooting guys who ring your doorbell, and similar acts which the Catholic Church is supposed to oppose. It's fine to vote for politicians who condone killing living, breathing human beings, but blastocysts are sacred! The pro-life proclamations are really just a very narrow agenda to restrict individuals'—and especially women's—health care choices.

A lot of Americans are uneasy about Mitt Romney's Mormon faith. But Santorum's connections to Opus Dei and SMOM put him ever further out on the fringe.

Does Santorum think of himself as a latter-day crusader? Would he literally be taking marching orders from the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in Rome? Would he have an Opus Dei consigliere at his right hand and a papal nuncio on his left? Would he be incapable of separating his fealty to the Catholic Church from his loyalty to the Constitution of the United States of America? Is Rick Santorum a Manchurian Candidate, brainwashed by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta?

Many will complain that asking questions like this about Rick Santorum is a blatant attempt at character assassination and guilt by association. But Perry's now-defunct campaign did the same thing to Romney with his Mormon faith, and Newt Gingrich and the Republicans have been doing this to Obama incessantly for years, trying to link the president to Saul Alinsky (who died when Obama was 10), Jeremiah Wright, and Obama's dead Kenyan father's Muslim roots.

The difference is that Obama has consistently disavowed or disparaged the very ideas that Republicans try to link him to. Obama has time and again shown that he will work out a reasonable compromise to try to accommodate other Americans' views, though his efforts are constantly thrown back in his face by Republicans who feel that eternal political conflict is beneficial to their cause.

Santorum, on the other hand, has parroted the standard Catholic line, and worked tirelessly to force his beliefs on the rest of the country, especially in the area of women's health care.

When John F. Kennedy answered the question about his fealty to Rome and his loyalty to the United States, he answered forcefully and forthrightly: he was an American first. By repudiating Kennedy, Santorum has answered the question equally clearly.

The Church of The Blessed Skeptic

Rick Santorum on climate change

An absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life.

Hmph. Sounds exactly like the voices inside my head that post here.

President's Day Calvacade

President's Day Calvacade

President's Day Calvacade

President's Day Calvacade

President's Day Calvacade

Mind-Reading Republicans

After apologizing on CBS' Face the Nation for saying that President Obama had a "phony theology" Rick Santorum said:

This idea that man is here to serve the Earth as opposed to husband its resources and be good stewards of the Earth--I think that is a phony ideal. I don't believe that that's what we're here to do. That man is here to use the resources and use them wisely, to care for the Earth, to be a steward of the Earth. But we're not here to serve the Earth. The Earth is not the objective. Man is the objective. And, I think a lot of radical environmentalists have it upside down.

Yes, Rick, it's phony because you're presenting a phony strawman. President Obama has never said that we're here to serve the Earth like satyrs servicing Mother Gaea.

Does Santorum believe he's reading Obama's mind to learn the president's secret thoughts about man's place in the universe? All Republicans -- Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich -- claim the supernatural ability to channel the president and tell us what his ultimate goal is, be it death panels, reeducation camps and massive gun confiscations. Well, let me get out my crystal ball and see if I can read the president's mind too.

Ommm... Mene, Menu, Tekel u-Pharsin. Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres. Yes, it's becoming clearer now...

President Obama believes that the Earth is the place where we live. He believes we shouldn't foul our own nest. The president wouldn't fill his basement with toxic sludge from a coal-fired power plant, incinerate mounds of trash in his kitchen, store radioactive waste in his refrigerator, run an oil pipeline through his living room, or frack for natural gas in his front yard, poisoning his well water. But the president knows that all of these things have to happen in someone's back yard, and he thinks we should take a conservative approach and exercise discretion and judgment when considering such developments, rather than letting power plant owners and oil companies ram through whatever projects they want for a quick buck regardless of what's good for the long-term health of the country.

In fact, my crystal ball tells me that Obama thinks exactly the same thing that Rick Santorum is saying about being a good steward of the Earth. And it tells me that 99.9% of environmentalists think the same thing.

What Santorum and his ilk completely misunderstand about environmentalists and climate science is that it's not really the Earth that they're concerned about. It's about us and our kids, and the kind of place we'll live in. Heavy metals from leaded gas and coal plant emissions cause brain damage in children and those fetuses that Santorum is hell-bent on protecting. Polluted air causes asthma, emphysema and heart disease. Lakes, rivers and groundwater tainted with toxic chemicals cause cancer and other insidious diseases. Heavy industry produces poisons that sicken and kill people as well as frogs, snail darters and cute baby seals with big eyes.

No matter how much crap we put into the air and water, the Earth will still be here, it will heal itself over the millennia, and some form of life will survive, evolve and eventually thrive again, just as it has after several asteroid strikes and massive volcanic eruptions. But if we screw things up bad enough, our complex technological civilization will collapse.

Climate change will cause severe weather, floods, drought, famine, rising oceans, and mass migrations. Coupled with global pandemics, mutated tropical diseases, fuel shortages, depleted natural resources and ultimately global war, billions of people may die. If the war goes nuclear the planet could be shrouded in a cloud of radioactive dust that ushers in a new ice age.

On the grand scale of things, I don't really care if the last polar bear dies off. I'm more concerned about the welfare of future generations of Americans and their place in a world of ever-declining resources where the population is pushing nine or ten billion people. So does the president and so does Rick Santorum.

There are plenty of real ways for Santorum to disagree with the president. There's no need to invent phony ones.

Yep.

Click on image for larger size.

Well, That Didn't Take Long

We knew it was only a matter of time.

Santorum says Obama agenda not 'based on Bible'

No, that's not a headline from the Onion. It's real, folks!

Obama's agenda is "not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your jobs. It's about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology," Santorum told supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement at a Columbus hotel.

This sounds so familiar....I can't quite place my finger on it...hmm....oh yeah....

10. Invoking the Christian God. This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and "real Americans" (those are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not. Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn't love those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It's a cheap and easy technique used by all totalitarian entities from states to cults.

We're The Ones Who Should Bitch (But We Don't)

A few days back I posted this graphic which ruffled a few feathers. I always chuckle when this happens because the more acute the mouth foaming, the closer I know I am to reality, facts and bursting the bubble that surrounds the conservative utopia that the base has created for itself. The land where Ayn Rand and Jesus are worshiped side by side every night while the Constitution and the Bible are never EVER questioned. And liberals are statist thugs bent on penetrating that bubble-taking away guns, rights, and letting their women use contraception in their never ending pursuit to bankrupt this country with social welfare programs that take the fruit of hard earned worker's labor and give it to black people who use it to get a flat screen TV.

The simple fact is, as I pointed out the other day, the people who bitch about government handouts are usually the ones that benefit from them the most. 

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.

Oh really? Was this before or after he made his Tea Party T-Shirts? In fact, it was both.

More interesting is this map which shows the areas of the country that take the most money from the federal government. Let's see we have darker red in Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona (really, Jan Brewer?), Florida, Texas, Alaska (hee hee), Kentucky, Tennessee, and Oklahoma-states that always or mostly deep GOP. Scroll over Oklahoma, for example, and see the various counties that are receiving over 30 percent of personal income from programs like food stamps and Medicare.

Dean P. Lacy, a professor of political science at Dartmouth College, has identified a twist on that theme in American politics over the last generation. Support for Republican candidates, who generally promise to cut government spending, has increased since 1980 in states where the federal government spends more than it collects. The greater the dependence, the greater the support for Republican candidates.

Conversely, states that pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits tend to support Democratic candidates. And Professor Lacy found that the pattern could not be explained by demographics or social issues.

As I have suspected, these people are completely full of shit. Bitching about the government is like a hobby for them and, if their little slice was taken away, they'd shit themselves silly. Of course, this is another shining example of the adolescent who bitches about his parents but then comes running to mommy and daddy when he or she gets into trouble.

Lately, the government has been very good, indeed. The county, with federal financing, bought a corner of Mr. Peterson’s farm to build a new interchange for Interstate 35. He used the money to open a gas station at the edge of the farm in 2008 to serve the traffic that rolls off the new ramp. The business is prospering, and he no longer worries that he will need to depend on Social Security.

Yeah, they're "independent" alright.

Given this data, shouldn't Democrats be the ones that bitch considering that OUR taxes are actually paying for several million conservatives on the dole? Nope.

Because we understand what it means to be a grown up.

Yeah...No...Not Really

If I had a buck for every time I heard a conservative whine to me in the last couple of years about how "the president and the Democrats haven't passed a budget in a thousand days," I'd be a millionaire (and I'd still be a Democrat with all my money:)). The problem with this ripe of piece of poo (like most of the other things they say) is that they aren't really telling the whole story and (as usual) are being childishly dishonest.

To begin with, budget resolutions aren't binding. They're simply parameters for the House Appropriations Committee to use when they actually pass their various bills and spend money. Their actions are what ultimately execute the budget and guess what? They've been doing it all along even with all the acrimony that's been taking place since the GOP took back the House.

More importantly, when the Senate passed the Budget Control Act last summer that resolved the debt limit battle, they passed an actual binding bill that set binding appropriations caps for this fiscal year and the next and instituted a mechanism to contain spending on domestic discretionary programs — education, research, community health programs and the like — through the next decade. This would be why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won't bring the president's budget to the floor of the Senate: it's redundant.

So, the next time you hear some ass hat foaming at the mouth about how the Democrats haven't passed a budget in a thousand days, point out these two facts to them.

And remind them that the Republicans did the same thing 1998, 2004, and 2006.