The Question No One Is Asking

The question no one seems to be asking Mitt Romney is this: what are the values the president is "apologizing" for? Values that directly contradict respecting someone else's freedom to worship as they choose without fear of punishment? Values of a man who has been convicted of fraud and selling drugs? Values of mouth foaming bigotry?

These values that I mention are the ones inherent in the maker of the anti-Islamic video that started all the problems we have right now at embassies in the Middle East. This is what Mitt Romney is defending? I don't get it.

In addition, Mitt Romney seems to be living in some sort of time warp, as eloquently explained by Andy over at electoral-vote.com.

What Obama didn't say is that Romney's model of the world no longer holds. In the past, wars and attacks were governmental affairs. Country A invaded country B and then country B could send its army or air force to wreak havoc with country A. But like so many other government functions, in parts of the world, war has largely been turned over to the private sector. Al Qaeda, other terrorist groups, and jihadists who killed the American ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, are all private sector organizations, not government ones. As a result, you can't just bomb them because you can't find them. 

Mr. Romney lives in either 1958 or 1985. I can't tell which, to be honest.  He has very little understanding of what the world is like today and, so naturally, it must be (cue Made Up World) the president that really doesn't understand. Yeah, that's it...

I get why Governor Romney is saying what he is saying. His guys are telling him the only way he can win now is to go hard right and get out the base. They loathe the president to the core and will believe anything that is said about him. The bigger the lie, the more they believe.

It makes me sad because I wish we would have had a country where this would have happened after this horrible tragedy.

"Imagine if Romney had called President Obama, asked how he could be of assistance in this time of crisis, offered to appear at his side at a press conference to demonstrate that, when American lives are at risk, politics stop at the water's edge." Romney would have appeared presidential and Obama's equal at a joint press conference. Instead, he appears to be trying to profit from a tragedy. 

Wishful thinking, I know. But that's what you get when you have to deal with juveniles. 

The Apology Canard Again

Yesterday, Mitt Romney illustrated once and for all that he is completely incapable of handling the foreign policy of this nation.

He accused the president of giving sympathy to the protesters in both Libya and Egypt. His basis for this was a memo sent out by the US consulate in Cairo BEFORE the protesters showed up. I thought he might soften his stance a little after US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was killed but, instead, he doubled down, falling back on the "Obama is always apologizing" meme.

I don't get it. It's enormously frustrating to discuss this because it's so far from the truth that I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Honestly, I'd like to do both because what Romney said was in such poor taste given four people had just been killed. Couple this with the omission, from his acceptance speech in Tampa, of the word "Afghanistan" or any sort of salute to the troops and it's very clear that he has no clue whatsoever in the international political realm.

The president's words and actions, however, demonstrate that he does know what he is doing and has certainly never apologized for this country. His entire life, for crying out loud, is a testament to American exceptionalism. In fact, it's exactly what the GOP want people to be like...come from nothing, work hard, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and make a lot of money.

To show how ridiculous this accusation is, take a look at this, reprinted in its entirety here from the New Yorker.

4/4/09: Barack Obama: I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world.

8/20/10: Mike Huckabee: His worldview is dramatically different than any president, Republican or Democrat, we’ve had … To deny American exceptionalism is in ­essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation.

9/20/11: Obama: Michelle and I, we’re only here because somebody passed on this incredible notion, this exceptional American idea that it doesn’t matter where you come from, it doesn’t matter who you’re born.to.

10/8/11: Rick Perry: Those in the White House today don’t believe—they don’t believe in American exceptionalism. 1

1/12/11: Mitt Romney: We have a president right now who thinks America’s just ­another nation. America is an exceptional nation.

11/30/11: Obama: America is great not just because we’re powerful, but also because we have a set of values that the world ­admires … We don’t just think about what’s good for us, but we’re also thinking about what’s good for the world … That’s what makes us exceptional.

1/26/12: Newt Gingrich: If you are for ­American exceptionalism, you’re us. If you’re for European socialism and Saul Alinsky radicalism, you’re with Barack Obama.

3/8/12: Sarah Palin: Our president is not in this to unify America and to solidify our place as the exceptional nation in the world. He is trying to divide us.

3/31/12: Romney: Our president doesn’t have the same feelings about American ­exceptionalism that we do. 

4/2/12: Obama: My entire career has been a testimony to American exceptionalism.

4/30/12: John Sununu: It goes with ego. The man doesn’t understand that other ­presidents have made equally difficult decisions … He’s trying to make himself exceptional. Lou Dobbs: In embracing, if you will, ­American exceptionalism. Sununu: That is exactly right. That’s the last and only place he acknowledges it. 

5/23/12: Obama: The United States has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world affairs. It’s one of the many examples of why America is exceptional.

5/27/12: John McCain: This has to do with a foreign policy led by a president who does not believe in American exceptionalism.

6/7/12: Obama: There are a set of values that make this country extraordinary, that make this country exceptional.

6/26/12: Condoleezza Rice: I’m pretty certain I don’t see that same level of willingness to assert this, that the United States is indeed exceptional.

7/14/12: Obama: What makes us exceptional—it’s not just how many skyscrapers we have; it’s not how powerful our military is. What makes us special is this idea that in this country, if you are willing to work hard, if you’re willing to take responsibility for your own life, then you can make it if you try.

7/17/12: Romney: I’m convinced he wants Americans to be ashamed of success. I want Americans to welcome and to celebrate success and to encourage people to reach as high as they can … It’s the people of America that make America the unique nation, the exceptional nation it is.

Seriously, what reality does these people live in?

Robbing the Sick and the Dying

Even though Americans absolutely despise the constant haranguing of telemarketers, we're still the most generous country in the world, according to the Charities Aid Foundation. So it's truly disgusting to find that there are companies out there betraying that generosity to rip off donors and charities like the American Heart Association, Diabetes Association and Cancer Society.

An article on the Bloomberg site exposes the fraud being perpetrated by one such company, InfoCision Management Corp.:

Just 22 percent of the funds the association raised in 2011 from the nationwide neighbor-to-neighbor [American Diabetes Association] program went to the charity, according to a report on its national fundraising that InfoCision filed with North Carolina regulators.

But when call center workers (who often identify themselves "volunteers") contact potential donors they frequently lie on instructions from their boss:

According to documents obtained through an open records request with the Ohio attorney general, the Diabetes Association approved a script for InfoCision telemarketers in 2010 that includes the following line: “Overall, about 75 percent of every dollar received goes directly to serving people with diabetes and their families, through programs and research.” 

Yet that same year, InfoCision’s contract with the association estimated that the charity would keep just 15 percent of the funds the company raised; the rest would go to InfoCision.

Who's behind this fraudulent company? A man named Guy Taylor, who got his start raising money for evangelical preachers. In addition to stiffing legitimate charities like the American Lung Association and Diabetes Association he has also screwed over conservative causes:

The telemarketer was as stingy with Citizens United as it was with some of the charities: It kept $12.4 million, or 84 percent, of the money it raised for Citizens United, according to InfoCision filings with North Carolina. InfoCision has also worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Taylor is an ardent opponent of the Federal Do Not Call registry. He said:

The most pressing issue, without a doubt, is excessive governmental regulation. It seems that the politicians and regulators are ignoring the significant benefits we provide through job creation, economic growth and the goods and services we cost-effectively market for our clients.

This guy has hit the trifecta of conservative buzzwords: "excessive governmental regulation," "job creation" and "economic growth."

The "excessive regulation" was enacted to stop him from lying to potential donors and prevent him from harassing people who no longer wish their privacy to be invaded.

The "job creation" is in minimum-wage dead-end call center jobs that have extremely long hours and have a 70% annual turnover rate.

The "economic growth" is totally his own: he gave the University of Akron $3.5 million to start the Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing (which has to be the most disreputable academic institution in the nation). He paid $10 million for naming rights for the university's stadium. And he owns three golf courses.

But his employees get paid squat and the organizations he claims to represent receive only pennies on the dollar—if anything—from the millions Taylor collects from unwitting donors.

Guy Taylor is a thief and a con man, stealing money from sick and dying people. Yet this the kind of "entrepreneur" that conservatives want to let loose on this country by removing the shackles of "excessive government regulation."

An Awful Reminder

Yesterday, the ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed along with 3 other members of the US staff during an assault on the US Consulate in Bemghazi, Libya. Apparently, there was some sort of assault on the compound and, as Ambassador Stevens was trying to get people out of the building, he was killed from automatic weapon fire. The attacks here (and the violent protest in Egypt) was the result of a short documentary film made with the support of preacher Terry Jones, the man who wanted to burn Korans as a protest awhile back.

This terrible tragedy should serve as a reminder of how the forces of religious extremism can fly quickly out of control in an instant. This is particularly true in the modern age where a YouTube video can be seen as representative of an entire nation.

Further, this event is illustrative of just how far we have to go in that part of the world. Arab spring may be in bloom but there are clearly some who do not understand what it truly means to have freedom of speech. It's going to take a long time...perhaps an entire generation...for them to understand the concept of disagreeing with someone vehemently and yet still be willing to die for their right to say it.

Mad About the Wrong Thing

It always confounds me how my dad can heap all this country's woes on lazy welfare queens and illegal immigrants, but is completely unfazed by egregious stories of abuses by the wealthy. Two juxtaposed stories in the news today reminded me of this.

The first one recounts how a whistleblower got a $104 million reward for exposing tax evasion that resulted in the Swiss bank UBS AG paying a $780 million fine. This is the sort of tax scam that Republican president candidate Mitt Romney may well have gotten amnesty for, considering his "investment strategy" using Cayman Island and Swiss banks. But since he won't release his tax returns for those years we can't know for sure.

The second story on tax fraud hits closer to home, as the perp lives in the same suburb I do.

A onetime Shakopee businessman has been sentenced to the workhouse for diverting nearly $1 million in taxes due to the IRS from his company over a time when he earned a healthy six-figure annual income and collected vintage cars and motorcycles. 

Stephen P. Clough, 65, of Minnetonka, was sentenced in federal court in St. Paul to four months in the workhouse, three years of probation and fined $25,000 for failing from 2003 to 2010 to pay federal income and employment taxes from workers at Gamma Vacuum, which makes industrial pumps and vacuums.

Clough's long-running crime resulted in losses to the IRS totaling more than $944,000. He pleaded guilty in May, and the company paid the employment portion of the total. 

In arguing to the court for prison time, prosecutors noted that Clough's personal wealth grew to more than $2 million and his income at Gamma was about $500,000 for each of last three years he worked there. He also owned two homes, several vintage cars and motorcycles and had a personal cash reserve.

Clough's defense countered in a presentencing motion that Clough should receive home confinement because his crime was motivated by trying to keep the company viable. 

His argument is that he had to commit $1 million worth of tax fraud to keep his company afloat while earning $1.5 million in salary. Didn't it ever occur to him to reduce his own compensation and that of his management team to make up the difference? He could have paid those taxes all by himself and still took home $160,000 a year, more than three times the median salary of the average American household.

A million dollars worth of tax fraud here in Minnesota, a few billion there in Switzerland, pretty soon we're talking real money. The IRS estimates that it loses more than $300 billion a year to tax fraud. This country has a huge debt, due in large part to all those wars we've been fighting in the Middle East and the Bush tax cuts, which mostly benefited people like Clough, Romney and other wealthy people who deposit their money in Swiss banks.

Clough's story is emblematic of what's wrong with American business. Though most execs don't blatantly cheat on their taxes, many — GE and Apple, for example — are abusing the system and pay next to nothing in taxes. But like Clough, when their companies are hit by hard times, it rarely occurs to them to take a cut in their multimillion-dollar paychecks. Instead, they slash employee wages, fire workers and close plants to prove to shareholders that they've got balls. And then they take home a big fat bonus.

That's what my dad should be getting mad about.

Are We Normal?

Eleven years after the 9-11 attacks, I'm wondering if we are normal again.

Obviously, we have severely incapacitated Al Qaeda's ability to carry out large scale attacks. Every week brings news of yet another major figure killed in an airstrike. Osama bin Laden is long gone and it really seems like most of the things we were told were going to happen (suicide bombers in shopping malls, WMD attacks) have not come to pass.

I have to admit that I feel pretty satisfied with how national security issues have been handled in the last four years. In fact, I think we owe a big part of how secure we are to everyday people who, since the attacks on September 11, carry with them a built in awareness that was not there before the attacks. This is particularly true in New York City. 

In this sense, we are normal because paying more attention to the details around us has become part of our daily lives...although people at the gym still think I'm nuts when I point out large, unattended black duffel bags. I suppose my time in Paris in the late 80s/early 90s will continue to have an effect on me. So, I suppose normal is a relative term.

Still, I can't help but feel an enormous amount of frustration and sadness on this day which, honestly, I think is going to continue for every subsequent September 11. This recent article details a level of incompetence that ended up costing lives and not just on 9-11. The conspiracy theories have gotten to be so outlandish and, quite frankly, in very poor taste that I have Facebook friends now making fun of people who don't believe in them. Worse, they poke fun at the relatives of the victims of the attacks simply because their self-righteous paranoia won't allow them to admit fault. And then there are the people who simply ignore this day and continue focusing on their shallow and vapid existence...I don't get it....

I guess I sound bitter but that's the taste that this day has always brought to my mouth. We're not normal but maybe we never have been. And, unlike they teach us kindergarten, sometimes that's not a good thing.

A Stag Party!

After the DeMatha Stags football team, from Hyattsville, MD, won their season opener in North Carolina Friday night, they had a real stag party. They hired three hookers and brought them into the hotel at 5AM. Five players have now been removed from the program.

Some commentators are shocked that it's so easy to contact prostitutes through web sites and cell phones. I'm not. This is old news.

No, the thing that really galls me is the reaction of the parent who reported the incident to the Washington Post:

My concern is where were the coaches and chaperones and how did this happen? These are boys, you should have been on them, knocking on their doors. . . .Why are there [18] coaches at this hotel and kids are able to sneak three prostitutes in at 5 a.m.?

In fact, the chaperones had done a bed check at 1:30 AM and were monitoring the hallway at 4:00 AM. The players had just figured a way around the security checks.

Do parents expect the players to be shackled to their beds? Forced to wear handcuffs? Uh, I guess not. That would be standard hooker hardware...

Do they think the coaches should sleep in the same room with these kids? Uh, I guess not. Not after Jerry Sandusky...

How can parents possibly blame the coaches for the behavior of their own kids? These punks committed a crime. Coming down on the coaches for this is a ludicrous abdication of parental responsibility.

People keep blaming teachers and the school system and the government for the failures of their children, but these kids have to be held responsible for their own behavior, and parents should be held responsible for their failure to inculcate morality and ethics in their children.

The President Gets A Boost

Now that the conventions are over, it's time to take an assessment of the race thus far.

Mitt Romney didn't get any bounce from the GOP convention. Maybe that's because no one can remember what he said but they do remember Clint Eastwood and the empty chair. I also seem to be the only one questioning how wise ti was to hold the convention the week BEFORE Labor Day. No one in America was paying attention.

The Democrats, however, put on a much more polished and effective convention and, as a result, the president got a decent bounce (and no, I'm not talking about pizzeria owner Scott Van Duzer (left) who lifted the president off the ground at a recent campaign stop). Take a look at the latest polls to the right of this post over at Electoral-vote.com.  If the election were held today, the president would win 347-191.

Take a look at the president'a approval ratings.  When Rasmussen has you at 50-45, that's a real bounce. Gallup had him at 52-42 over the weekend but there is something wrong with their methodology. For the truly wonky, Nate Silver's 538 blog on nytimes.com is great. The propeller on his head is larger than all the rest and for the latest on the state of the race, his site is a must.

Now, the question is will this bounce last? Most people think no but let's see what happens next week.

Both campaigns have now admitted that it's come down to nine states. They are: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. The Romney campaign has all but given up on Michigan and Pennsylvania. With the president outraising Governor Romney in August $114 to $112 million, they have to spend their money wisely. Privately, the GOP are admitting that the president has the advantage at present. 

If you take these nine states out of Andy's number above, that puts the numbers at 237-191. Essentially, the president has to get 33 EVs and he wins. Governor Romney has to get 79. Obviously, it's an uphill task for Mr. Romney and we've already seen him pivot (out of political necessity) to the middle slightly yesterday with his statements on keeping parts of the Affordable Care Act...the popular parts, of course. Folks like Mr Van Duzer are registered Republicans but they are voting for the president because the GOP has moved too far to the right.

Further, Mr. Romney is going to have to get more detailed about exactly what his plan is for the economy. The remaining undecideds aren't going to respond well to bloviating straw men arguments about socialism, Kenyans, and anti-colonial rage. Mr. Romney now says (yesterday on Meet The Press) he is not going to cut taxes for the wealthy and will remove some of their loopholes. Great. Which ones? And isn't that now the same thing the president is saying?

I'd like to see a plan for exactly how Governor Romney is going to stimulate demand. If not from the government, then from where? Since he has said, "We can't cut our way to growth" how do we get to growth? Recall, his tax plan was completely blown apart by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center for being vague and leaving several key points blank. He's going to have to fill in those blanks in the next two months or he has no chance at all. Why?

Because he's maxed out the part of his supporters that aren't so much supporting him but voting against the president. The only people left are the ones who need to be convinced to vote FOR Governor Romney and not against the president. In addition to getting specific about what he's going to do, he has the debates to possibly turn it around.

Can he?

A Frivolous Lawsuit?

Jesus Christ Files Lawsuit Against GOP For Slander

“For years Republicans have proclaimed their love for and loyalty to Jesus, yet their actions are highly contradictory to what Mr. Christ preached. Instead of helping the poor and the sick GOP instead punishes the poor and the sickly."

“Mr. Christ is entitled to his opinion, however the GOP believes that the underlying message in the Bible is that giving tax cuts to the wealthy is the true path to happiness. I don’t know where Mr. Christ thinks the Bible says to help the poor and the sick, but that sounds awfully socialistic to me, and we are not a socialist country.”

According to the suit “images that inaccurately depict Jesus Christ, who was born in Middle Eastern country, as a Caucasian man with light skin, can no longer be displayed by political officials who claim they understand the Bible.” 

Not In A Million Years

When you live in a world that begins and ends with material gains, generally speaking, you ascribe that perception to others. Take, for example, the erroneous notion that the anger directed at the wealthy of the world is based on envy. It usually brings people like this out of the woodwork.

"If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain," she said in a magazine piece. "Do something to make more money yourself -- spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working."

Yes, that's right. All poor people just laze around all day smoking and drinking. What an idiot.

I think I speak for many when I say, Gina, that there is no fucking way that I am jealous of you. I wouldn't trade places with you in a million years. To begin with, your physical appearance is a mirror image of your personality-mean, ugly, and obese. Further, your words are the living embodiment of sloth and greed so it's really not surprising you think the way you do.

And getting to be the richest woman in the world must have been hard work., eh? Oh, wait. No, it wasn't as you inherited all your wealth. According to her, though, "There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. Become one of those people who work hard, invest and build, and at the same time create employment and opportunities for others."

So why are people still poor?

Rinehart blamed what she described as "socialist," anti-business government policies, and urged Australian officials to lower the minimum wage and cut taxes.

Oh, right...that:) Playing the victim card again, are we?

People like Gina Rinehart fail to grasp the very simple notion that there many people who don't live for material gains. It's never bothered me that people have more money than I do. I have a great wife, wonderful children, great friends and , most importantly of all, good health in my family. Obviously, one needs a stable job and some money for a rainy day but beyond that, life is about so much more than having material things.

The failure of the Right to see that they are projecting their own perceptions of greed, envy and pettiness onto others is truly one of the finest examples of cognitive dissonance in modern times.

Subdued, Not Soaring

After three days of ridiculously awesome speeches, President Obama took the stage and delivered a good speech. Compared to his previous speeches, it was just alright. After all, he did set the bar fairly high on convention speeches in 2004 so it's understandable, given current circumstances, that it wasn't the level of stellar that we normally expect from him.

It's those circumstances that I believe drove him to give a more subdued speech than he could have given. The economy is sluggish and there are many people that are still unemployed. Does the country really need to hear soaring rhetoric right now? (btw, I'm sick of that word..."soaring"....far too overused...barf). The other speakers handled that job quite well.

The president did hit some notes that I thought were great. "This election wasn't about me. It was about you" was the line of the night and very illustrative of what his presidency has been like for the last four years and what it will be like should he be re-elected. The Right has a real hard time understanding this which I find amusing.

His comments on foreign policy clearly show his complete command of that arena and Mitt Romney's gargantuan naivete. How times have changed....:)

The most poignant line of the night, however, was this one.

While I'm proud of what we've achieved together, I'm far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, 'I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.

Presidents can generally be divided into two categories: those that are alright and those that are awful. There is no such thing as a great president, really, if you think about it. By the time a problem gets to the president's desk, it's usually so FUBAR that whatever choice he makes is going to be bad for some people. That's what Lincoln meant when he spoke those words and Barack Obama, being the president, understands those words far better than Mitt Romney does right now.

In looking at both conventions, the Democrats clearly did a better job. They simply made better choices with speakers and timing. If you think I'm biased, does anyone remember what Mitt Romney said? Or do they remember Clint Eastwood and the empty chair?

Now, it's on to the debates and the general election!

You Are What You Eat

There's always a tendency for people to use scientific studies to justify their preconceived notions. Such is the case with the recent Stanford study that found that organic food doesn't provide any more nutrition than conventionally produced food. Writers like Roger Cohen of the New York Times call it the "Organic Fable."

There's a lot of hype about organic food, but no more than any other product. Reasonable people buy organic food not because they think it has more nutrients (though the study actually did find some organic food to be consistently more nutritious), but because organic food contains fewer contaminants and poisons.

The study found that conventional vegetables and fruit contain many more pesticides, while conventional meats contain hormones such as BGH and antibiotics used solely to increase weight. Similar studies have found that simply keeping animals in clean environments increases weight by just as much. The problem with using antibiotics in healthy animals is that it's creating superbugs, undermining the most powerful tool in our arsenal against disease. In fact, the Stanford study found:

[O]rganic meat contained considerably lower levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria than conventionally raised animals did, but bacteria, antibiotic-resistant or otherwise, would be killed during cooking.

And since cooks never touch the meat they're preparing, and everyone loves their steak well-done, it's impossible to be infected by such bacteria. Right?

Cohen falsely claims that the Stanford study found the level of pesticides "safe." The study only found pesticide concentrations to be within federal guidelines. Whether those federal guidelines are really safe is a different question. Cohen trusts that government regulators, who  are constantly under pressure by farmers, politicians, and lobbyists from the pharmaceutical, agriculture and chemical industries, have made all the right decisions. But unlike the authors of the study, regulators do not make decisions based solely on the science: they take into account production costs and accept that a certain number of deaths, diseases and deformities are inevitable.

Thus, there's a great deal of reasoned debate whether those federal guidelines for pesticide levels are too high, especially for pregnant women. Developing fetuses are extremely sensitive to environmental contaminants, especially herbicides like atrazine, which mimic sex hormones and can cause reproductive system deformities.

There are many other reasons to prefer organic production. Genetically engineered crops are modified to improve their resistance to pests or herbicides. There is evidence that such genetic modifications can jump to other species, specifically the weeds that herbicides are intended to kill. Insects and weeds also evolve resistance to pesticides and herbicides very quickly, even without cross-species pollination. These conspire to force the production of new and stronger chemicals, which present significant risks when these toxins are consumed by humans and animals.

Organic foods are typically produced in many varieties, including "heirloom" varieties. Most conventional tomatoes, for example, are a monoculture engineered for color, shipability and delayed ripening. Selecting for these characteristics often comes at the cost of taste and nutritional value, producing the infamous cardboard tomatoes. The use of a wider variety of plants in organic agriculture means that the risk of an entire crop being wiped out by disease is lower.

Conventional agricultural practices are extremely energy-intensive, using vast quantities of oil for tilling and fertilizers. Many organic practices are based more on traditional farming methods.

The question really is: would you rather eat food produced with minimal contaminants, or food that contains widely variable levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, pesticides, drugs and synthetic hormones that ultimately have unknown effects on your body and the bodies of your children?

Perplexed

I don't understand why the Right is up in arms over the disagreement over whether or not the word "God" should be included in the Democratic Party Platform. Or the disagreement over whether or not Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Huh?

It's a surprise that there are people in the Democratic party who believe God is a fairy tale for infant minded people? Heck, there are people in my comments section that think that.

It's a surprise that the Democratic party has Muslims in it that feel that the Palestinians have been treated unfairly by the Israelis? Perhaps here there is a hope that some undecided voters will be scared off by the Moose-lems!

Or is it a surprise that Democrats don't march in lockstep on an issue?

I guess my initial thought is that it's none of those things and the Right is simply doing what they always do...not taking responsibility for something (their own truly awful platform) and bloviating, "Well, their's is worser and stuff!!!!" in typical juvenile fashion.

I really don't get it. What's the dig supposed to be?

Hauling The Fucking Nail

The 42nd president took the stage last night at the DNC and reminded everyone why he has a 69 percent approval rating. Bill Clinton's speech, which can be seen in its entirety below, illustrated in detail the great job President Obama has done in his first term.

The Big Dog also showed what happens when you rip his party: you get taken out to the fucking shed. As I watched him completely demolish every single Republican talking point from the last four years, I couldn't help but wonder why the current administration has been out to lunch on this for the past four years. They've been putting out too many campaign surrogates (Axelrod, Plouffe, Cutter) and not enough elected leaders (Castro, Patrick, Strickland). Bill Clinton is proof positive that this is how the rest of the campaign should be run.

Two things stood out for me from President Clinton's speech last night...the first very serious and the second, not so serious but eerily familiar. His quiet moment describing what is going to happen to Medicaid if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have their way with it was seriously depressing. The "pro-life" party was shown to be the complete lie that it is as many families  will lose a very valuable resource in caring for those loved ones who cannot care for themselves. What is the GOP answer to this?

The second was my favorite quote from the night (which was extremely tough, given there were so many from which to choose).

When Congressman Ryan looked into that TV camera and attacked President Obama’s Medicare savings as “the biggest, coldest power play,” I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Key cuts that $716 billion is exactly to the dollar the same amount of medicare savings that he had in his own budget. It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.

Dude, that's the exact story of every political discussion I've had for the last 10 years! (see: Heading Off At The Pass). I still can't figure out if they do this on purpose or not but I do know that it's a vain attempt to make up for the fact that they have no substantive plans of their own.

There is no doubt in my mind that this speech will go down in history as one of the greatest political speeches of all time. Every high school speech and/or debate club should be using it as a shining example of perfection.

Uh....

And that would be why they call him the Big Dog...

Remember George Bush?

Remember George Bush? He's the guy who's responsible for this mess:

American senators visiting Iraq warned the Baghdad government Wednesday that it risked damaging relations with the U.S. if it is allowing Iran to fly over its airspace to deliver weapons to Syria.

An Iraqi government spokesman responded by saying Iran has told Baghdad the flights to Syria are only delivering humanitarian aid. He said the onus is on the U.S. to offer up proof that Tehran is shipping weapons.

Senator Joe Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut, said Iraq’s failure to stop the flights could threaten the long-term relationship with the U.S. as well as aid Iraq could receive as part of a 2008 strategic pact between the two nations.

Come to think of it, Joe Lieberman was also one of those guys who pushed so hard to invade Iraq on the pretext that they had weapons of mass destruction and were involved in 9/11. Turns out they were dead wrong on every count, got almost 5000 Americans killed, tens of thousand crippled for life, and perhaps hundreds of thousands affected by traumatic brain injuries.

Iran and Iraq used to be bitter enemies before Bush and the neocons orchestrated the 2003 invasion. Now they're best buds. Turns out that the entire case for the invasion came from a phony informant named "Curveball," a guy the Germans had warned us was lying. And it turned out that the Iraqis pushing the US government to invade Iraq were led by Ahmed Chalabi, who was an Iranian spy. And the worst thing: the neocons that were behind that invasion are the same guys giving Mitt Romney foreign policy advice.

Republicans today are asking "Are we better off now after four years of Obama?" A better question is, "Are we better off with Obama than we would have been with McCain or any Republican?"

According to John McCain, if he had been president for these four years, he would still have hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq. He would be still be "surging" in Afghanistan instead of winding down. He would have sent ground troops into Libya, and that would have mushroomed into a major conflict. He would have started an air war against Syria, and we'd be well on our way to sending in troops. He would have either greenlighted an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, or had the USAF do it for them, starting us down a fifth war in the Middle East. And we would pay for all these wars by cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

Mitt Romney had been parroting the McCain line on the Middle East, but they're recently been mum on foreign policy because it involves bombing anyone who looks at us sidewise.

Except for Ron Paul, Republicans have never met a war they didn't like. Is it because all their pals are defense industry lobbyists? Do they have daddy issues? Phallic dimension disorder? Or they really think that bombing people back to the Stone Age spreads democracy?

Can They Outdo Themselves?

Compare the first night of the Democratic Convention to the first night of the Republican convention. Notice any differences? I sure did.

The first one was apparent immediately: energy level. I don't think the conservative base is all that enthusiastic about Mitt Romney. In contrast (and despite "liberal media" reports), the democratic base is very enthusiastic about the president.

We heard President Obama's name mentioned several times throughout all the speeches. The keynote address by Julian Castro, for example, talked about the strength of Obama's accomplishments whereas the keynote at the GOP convention, by Chris Christie, barely mentioned Mitt Romney at all.

And can anyone look at the two speeches delivered by Michelle Obama and Ann Romney and not wonder why such a poor job was done writing the latter? Ms. Romney did a great job delivering her speech but she still had to work with the words which were very short on content. She insisted that her husband understood the middle class but didn't really share, as Ms. Obama did, the stories that illustrate that.

Deval Patrick's speech was the best of the night. He hit on all the reasons why I am a Democrat.

The question is: What do we believe? We believe in an economy that grows opportunity out to the middle class and the marginalized, not just up to the well connected. We believe that freedom means keeping government out of our most private affairs, including out of a woman's decision whether to keep an unwanted pregnancy and everybody's decision about whom to marry. We believe that we owe the next generation a better country than we found and that every American has a stake in that. We believe that in times like these we should turn to each other, not on each other. We believe that government has a role to play, not in solving every problem in everybody's life but in helping people help themselves to the American dream. That's what Democrats believe.

Fucking A right!

Mr. Patrick, on the president's accomplishments.

This is the president who delivered the security of affordable health care to every single American after 90 years of trying. This is the president who brought Osama bin Laden to justice, who ended the war in Iraq and is ending the war in Afghanistan. This is the president who ended "don't ask, don't tell" so that love of country, not love of another, determines fitness for military service. Who made equal pay for equal work the law of the land. This is the president who saved the American auto industry from extinction, the American financial industry from self-destruction, and the American economy from depression. Who added over 4.5 million private sector jobs in the last two-plus years, more jobs than George W. Bush added in eight. 

It remains to be seen whether the rest of the convention will go as well as last night. With Big Dog going tonight and the president tomorrow night, can the Democrats actually outdo themselves?

I think we can safely say, though, that they will do a better job than the Republicans.

A North Carolina Primer

It's the Democrats turn this week and you can be certain that you will hear a lot about how we are better off now than we were four years ago. Here's why, with the most current information.

• The government reported Thursday that Americans spent at the fastest pace in five months in July, and personal income rose as well.
• Home prices rose in the first half of 2012 for the first time in nearly two years. Sales of both new and previously occupied homes also are up. 
• Employers added 163,000 jobs in July, the most since February. 
• U.S. exports, retail spending and factory production are all up.

Something else I hope the Democrats will highlight is this. 

Applications, a proxy for future work, rose to an 812,000 annual rate, exceeding the highest estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg and the most since August 2008. “Housing is one of the bright spots in the economy,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

This simple fact alone shows that the economy is turning around and the president has helped our country towards that end.

Expect to hear more about these facts throughout the week.

Back To Stiglitz

Being that it is Labor Day, I thought we'd jump back to my analysis of Joseph Stiglitz's book, The Price of Inequality. And, before I get to the next section (Chapter 3), I want to detail the four myths (per Stiglitz) that are perpetuated by the Right regarding inequality. These are pretty important to look at before we continue.

First, the Right argues that when inequality is examined, it is done so in a snapshot sort of way. If one looks at lifetime inequality, then it's not so bad. People start off poor and then they get rich. In fact, the opposite is becoming increasingly true. Chances are if you are born poor, you are going to stay that way the rest of your life. Lifetime inequality is, in fact, very large and it's almost as large as it is in each moment of time.

Second, the Right says that our poor must not have it that bad because they have Flat Screen TVs and X Box. That may have been a measure of wealth in 1980 when those items weren't made cheaply in China and sold at Costco but it's certainly not a measure by today's standards. As at National Academy of Sciences panel pointed out, one can't ignore relative deprivation. Rural India, for example, has enormous poverty but they have access to television and cel phones. How would selling a TV or cel phone provide for long term needs like food, access to decent health care and education? The value of these things aren't really that great in today's world.

Third, the Right likes to pick nits about statistics. They say that inflation may be overestimated and growth in income underestimated. Yet Americans are working longer hours and sometimes two or three jobs just to make ends meet. These jobs aren't very secure either. Details like this aren't really measured in quantitative analyses and that's why those studies must be juxtaposed with qualitative work. Clearly, the problem is growing worse as we saw in the latest Census report in 2010: poverty went up from 15.2 percent to 16 percent.

Finally, (and this is what is going to tie into my post about Chapter 3), the Right insist that it is moral for society to be unequal, even at ever increasing levels. Doing anything would "kill the golden goose," as Stiglitz puts it. This argument has two sides and both are wrong. The first is that if we tax the higher rate folks they will lose their incentive to work and tax revenue will drop. As Greg Mankiw (one of Mitt Rommney's main economic advisers), the Laffer Curve proved to be inaccurate. The second part of this argument states that helping the poor will only lead to more and increasing poverty. They too will not be properly incentivized. The poor have only themselves to blame, right? Why should they take away the "hard earned money" of the wealthy?

We aren't going to get anywhere with addressing these issue of inequality until we dispense with these four myths. They are not rooted in fact nor are they rooted in evidence. Moreover, they are detrimental to solving the problem of lessening inequality, the result of which (as Stiglitz notes) will create a more dynamic economy.

Well, It Had To Happen

I saw this one coming from a mile away.

Now, when we don't like facts, we attack the people that relate them. Then there is a big argument over bias that ultimately results in a lot of wasted time and before you know it, the actual debate over the issue is gone and replaced with a whole lot of smoke and mirrors.

It's almost as if they can't admit fault and have no real solutions of their own....hmm....

Creatures of Hollywood

The Republican Party has long pretended to disdain Hollywood, alternately blaming it for the decline of American moral standards and filling children's heads with a communistic concern for the environment.

Republicans have decried frivolousness of Hollywood celebrities, implying that their party is too serious and substantial for fluff. But Republicans have elevated Ronald Reagan, a total creature of Hollywood, to godhood. Reagan, a former Democrat and union president, was apparently already suffering from Alzheimers in his first term when he told Yitzhak Shamir in 1983 that he helped free Jewish prisoners from concentration camps, though he never left Hollywood during WWII. He made a movie about it, so it must have been true.

Republicans love to rewrite Reagan's history. These days when they tell the story of his inauguration day they say that the Iranians released the hostages from the US embassy because Iran was afraid Reagan would nuke Tehran (which would have, of course, killed those same hostages). They neglect to mention that Reagan secretly exchanged seven hostages for hundreds of TOW missiles with the Iranians in 1985 and 1986 (Israel helped too), while at the same time publicly supporting Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. They neglect to mention that after the 1983 bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 299 American and French servicemen, tough-guy Reagan pledged never to back down, but within a few months he ordered American forces out of Lebanon.

And though they disparage celebrity endorsements, Republicans constantly coo about John Voight, Ted Nugent, Clint Eastwood and Jenna Jameson's endorsements of Mitt Romney.

And the "special guest" at the Republican convention? Clint Eastwood, talking to an empty chair.

Starting in Reagan's first term the Republican Party completely dispensed with reality, replacing it with fanciful Hollywood scripts: supply-side economics is a Christmas fantasy in which Santa collects lower taxes but receives more revenue. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were a Bob Hope Road pic that paid for themselves with the scads of oil money the Iraqis would repay us for liberating them. The global recession was a Mel Gibson conspiracy flick in which the entire world economy was intentionally destroyed by Barney Frank and several thousand black people who got adjustable-rate home loans they couldn't pay back.

The ethical basis for Paul Ryan's budget was created by Ayn Rand, a Russian emigre and Hollywood script writer. In the pre-Reagan age this atheist crusader against altruism and ardent supporter of abortion rights would have been roundly denounced by Republicans as a cold-hearted, selfish, self-serving bitch.

Finally, the selection of Mitt Romney himself is the ultimate Hollywood Republican script. Nobody, except maybe his family, actually wants Mitt Romney to be president. All the Republicans hate him because he's a closet liberal, he's the godfather of Obamacare, he's a Mormon, his dad was born in Mexico. You get the picture.

But Romney is the guy from central casting that looks like a leading man, so he beat out terribly flawed character actors like Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Ron Paul and Rick Perry. Now that the Romney script gone through several rewrites—from Mormon draft dodger in France, to heartless executive at Bain, to savior of the Olympic games, to moderate governor of Massachusetts—Republican script writers have finally retooled the robotic Romney character into a T1000 Terminator that can morph into any shape required to win the election.

But in their heart of hearts Republicans all know what happened to that T1000 at the end of that movie. And they expect Romney to tank in November like a bad sci-fi flick.

Open Mic Night

Well, the GOP convention has come to a close and it's time for the post mortem? What were the highlights? The lowlights? The good, the bad, and the ugly?

Mainly, I thought that it was not very well done. Compared to 2008, it really sucked. At least in that year, we saw good speeches that stayed on message with no real head scratchers. Sarah Palin may have been (and still is) not intelligent or competent but she gave a great speech and hadn't flopped yet.

This year, however, seemed like open mic night for 2016. Chris Christie's keynote address was awful. He didn't even mention Mitt Romney until the very end of his speech. And it didn't contain any of the colorful attitude that he has displayed previously in public. He looked too restrained. Several new stars (Kelly Ayotte, Rick Santorum, and even Paul Ryan) seemed to be there for their own purposes, not Mitt's.

Speaking of Ryan, he wasn't the only one lying his ass off this week. John Thune said


The big-government bureaucrats of the Obama administration have set their sights on our way of life. Instead of preserving family farms and ranches, President Obama’s policies are effectively regulating them out of business. His administration even proposed banning farm kids from doing basic chores!

Obama's also building an army of killer robots with the express purpose of stealing our luggage! The Washington Post has the truth on this (ahem) issue. 

Rob Portman also had this ditty

Then you have Barack Obama, who never started a business — never even worked in business.

Not true.

He worked briefly at Business International Corp. in New York after college, and then also was an associate and a partner at a law firm for 11 years.

Now, Paul Ryan's private sector experience is very minimal and has been a life long politician so I'm not sure why he brought this up.

And then there was the weird. First up, Clint Eastwood....WTF??!!?? I love the guy but perhaps he should have talked about how, as a senior, Mitt was going to help him with his benefits while the president wouldn't. Instead, we got the empty chair. I love Clint and all his films (even the ones with the monkey) but seeing an old man scold an empty chair pretty much sums up the demographic of the GOP in 2012.


Another weird one...I had no idea what Mike Huckabee was talking about when he ripped Deb Wasserman-Schultz. Her VOICE is irritating? Really? And then to follow it with "bless her heart"...good grief...

If there was any good to be found, I thought the Ron Paul folks really made it known that they are the future of the party when the geezers sail off into the sunset. Ann Romney's speech was great. Why isn't she running? Condi Rice brought a touch of class to the week that was sorely needed.

Otherwise, though, I thought it was terrible. The placing of the non white convention goers in the most prime camera spots was hilariously illustrative of how the GOP is really shitting themselves over their demographics problem. Time is indeed running out...

Lyin' Ryan

Paul Ryan unleashed a giant load of wordy squirts last night that truly bring new meaning to breaking the ninth commandment. From FactCheck.org

• Accused President Obama’s health care law of funneling money away from Medicare “at the expense of the elderly.” In fact, Medicare’s chief actuary says the law “substantially improves” the system’s finances, and Ryan himself has embraced the same savings. 
• Accused Obama of doing “exactly nothing” about recommendations of a bipartisan deficit commission — which Ryan himself helped scuttle. 
• Claimed the American people were “cut out” of stimulus spending. Actually, more than a quarter of all stimulus dollars went for tax relief for workers. 
• Faulted Obama for failing to deliver a 2008 campaign promise to keep a Wisconsin plant open. It closed less than a month before Obama took office. 
• Blamed Obama for the loss of a AAA credit rating for the U.S. Actually, Standard & Poor’s blamed the downgrade on the uncompromising stands of both Republicans and Democrats.

And this is they guy who the right thinks is thoughtful and intelligent?

Well, at least the "liberal" media has decided not to fall asleep on this one.

"Special"

Language is funny. Sometimes words become euphemisms for their opposite. Case in point: special. Special used to mean exceptional or superior. For example, "Special Agent Fox Mulder." But now special has come to mean something completely different, particularly when pronounced that special way.

Last May a special-education teacher in Winona, Minnesota was charged with slapping a student. She has now pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault, resigned her job and will be on a year of non-supervised probation. What exactly happened?

According to a criminal complaint, a classroom aide told Winona Senior High School principal Kelly Halvorsen late last school year that [teacher Theresa] Kersting had slapped a 19-year-old male special-education student in early April after he grabbed Kersting’s glasses and threw them on the floor. Halvorsen subsequently contacted the Winona Police Department, which initiated an investigation. 

According to a police report, the boy is not verbal and was not able to give an account of the incident.

Huh? Why is someone who can't even talk in high school? He's "special."

Special-ed students cost almost twice as much as regular students: in 1999-2000 it was about $12,474 as compared to $6,556 for regular students, which amounted to $50 billion in the United States.

Don't get me wrong: I'm down with wheelchair-accessible schools, extra tutoring for dyslexic kids, ESL classes, free breakfast, whatever it takes to get the little buggers to learn. But "mainstreaming" kids who just don't have the mental capacity to learn at grade level is a waste of everyone's time and money, especially when these kids are extremely disruptive and require their own full-time classroom aide to constantly baby-sit them.

Special ed and the IDEA act used to be a favorite whipping boy in conservative circles, especially in the South, since it was aimed at the problems of disadvantaged minority children. But Sarah Palin's big splash with her Down Syndrome son Trig has muted conservative criticism.

Conservatives like Rick Santorum want to ban prenatal testing for such conditions and force women to bear children who have severe mental and physical deformities. They don't say, however, where people are supposed to get the money for the huge medical bills, the time for all the special care required, and the courage to deal with children who will never grow up, never have a job, never have children of their own, and will ultimately die young, often suffering excruciating pain their entire abbreviated lives.

But dumping these kids in public schools should not be the solution. Don't saddle taxpayers and the public education system with a problem that education can't solve.

I Wonder What Would Happen...

...if a supporter of Barack Obama or the president himself owned a boat and flew the flag of another country.

Seriously, Stuff Like This Is Still Happening?

What does it say about the Republican national convention that the following incident occurred there?

Two people were removed from the Republican National Convention Tuesday after they threw nuts at an African-American CNN camera operator and said, “This is how we feed animals.”

Sure, there are bad apples in every bushel. But when the party's candidate continues to make jokes about the president's birth certificate, and the Republican propaganda machine continues to lie about recent changes to welfare that the Obama administration allowed states to make in order to improve efficiency and cost effectiveness?

This is supposed to be the most tightly controlled party convention in the history of party conventions. Everyone is supposed to be on message that Mitt Romney is a human being that doesn't bleed greenbacks when he cuts himself shaving.

But some Republicans aren't having it. Ron Paul delegates are furious with the high-handed tyrannical  tactics the Romney people are using to prevent them from speaking. Some Paul supporters were so disgusted with the treatment they have received that some of them shouted, "Romney cannot beat Obama!" on the convention floor.

Was this just frustration with the lousy treatment the Oberst-Gruppenführer running the convention was giving them, or is it one of those accidentally-told-the-truth moments?

Four Biggies Out of Tampa

FactCheck.org has a new page up with four very blatant lies that have come out of Tampa so far this week. They are:

• A misleading statistic about women’s job losses that has grown so stale it is now wholly false. 
• More bogus claims about “raiding” Medicare and the doctor-patient relationship under Obama’s Affordable Care Act. 
• A completely false claim that more than half of the younger generation is unemployed. (Actually, 86 percent who want work have it.) 
• More false claims that Obama blocked the Keystone XL Pipeline. Construction has already begun on the southern leg of the project, and the company says it expects approval for the Canada-to-U.S. leg early next year.

It's pretty sad that they have to lie to such a great degree like this. Why don't they talk about their accomplishments?

If Karl Rove is Saying it...

...then Mitt Romney has a problem.

This is an issue that has hurt Romney because again it’s fed up people who already have an instinct and a suspicion about him [that] he’s a rich guy, [and] must be hiding something. But I’ve also been a little bit mystified about Romney’s response.

We all are as well, Karl.

Shovel To The Head Stunned

I didn't it was possible to cram so much truth into six minutes before!

Just Out of the Gate and Already Out of Gas

Last week Mitt Romney offered an energy plan that promised "energy independence." In reality it was just hot air:

The Romney energy plan, laid out in a 21-page white paper, relies heavily on creating deeper partnerships with Mexico and Canada. Mexico could use technical help to reverse its declining oil production, he said, and "Canada has oil sands. We're going to take advantage of those, and build that Keystone pipeline and work with Canada to make sure we have advantage of their great energy sources."

All told, that would dramatically boost oil and gas production, the candidate said. 

"I will set a national goal of ... North American energy independence by 2020."

So, let me get this straight: Romney's plan to make America "energy independent" relies completely on Canada and Mexico. Any plan based on a direct contradiction of its basic premise isn't a plan, but a big fat lie.

At its core this plan is doomed to abject failure because it focuses almost solely on gas and oil. These fossil fuels are global commodities. That means Canada and Mexico — and every American oil company — will be able sell their gas and oil to whoever offers the best price. And that means we can't be energy independent if China is willing to pay more for our (and Canada's) oil than Americans are. The Chinese will simply eat our lunch. Canadian and American oil companies will make out like bandits, but we won't be able to drive to work without paying an arm and a leg. That is, unless the government restricts or heavily taxes exports of oil. Which we know the Koch brothers won't let happen.

Thus, Romney's talk of "energy independence" by depending on fungible Canadian and Mexican commodities traded on world markets is either hopelessly uninformed about the basic economic laws of supply and demand, or mendacious and deceptive campaign rhetoric.

True energy independence can only come from energy resources that will last for centuries at minimum, that come directly from the United States, which cannot be diverted to foreign countries with deep pockets. Romney's plan fails on all counts: North American sources of oil will be depleted within my lifetime, they come mostly from Canada and Mexico, and booming Asian economies will be able to outbid us for them.

There are, however, energy resources that can provide true energy independence: wind, solar, hydroelectric, nuclear and to a lesser extent, coal. Other forms of energy (certain types of biofuels, but not corn-based ethanol) hold promise but can't be counted on yet.

To be truly independent we need to shift to renewable energy sources for basic electricity generation, long- and short-haul rail transportation and short-haul small vehicle transportation. We should hold non-renewables like coal in reserve for peak-demand power generation, and oil and natural gas for long-haul small-vehicle and air transportation. And as a bonus, we'd also cut down on air pollution, reducing the incidence of asthma, emphysema, heart disease and cancer, as well as reduce the effects of climate change.

This country needs a real energy plan, not Romney's marketing strategy for the oil and gas industry.

Family Values

As the convention in Tampa gets under way today, check out this story from CNN about how excited the industry of dance is that the GOP is coming to town. 

I guess they don't make as much money off of Democrats. What does that tell you?

Acceptable Collateral Damage?

On Friday Jeffrey Johnson shot a former co-worker to death on a New York street. Then he walked to the Empire State Building, still holding the gun, where police killed him. The police also shot nine other people on the street.

This is a tragedy, of course. But it also exposes the fantasy is that guns provide "protection." Every time there's a shooting, like in a movie theater in Aurora, or a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, or a strip mall in Tucson, some gun-hawking numbskull insists that lives would have been saved if only more people carried concealed weapons. The shootings on Friday show exactly what would happen if more people were carrying guns: more innocent bloodshed. Or, as the NRA apparently believes, acceptable collateral damage.

The police are trained in the use of weapons in pressure situations. In this case the shooter was standing on the street in broad daylight with a gun (unlike the darkened smoke-filled theater in Colorado). Yet the cops hit nine other people on the street. And the shooter did not even fire at the police:

[Police Commissioner Raymond] Kelly added: “As far as shots being fired yesterday, we had a witness that said that Johnson fired at the police. But the final count of the shells, it appears that that is not the case.”

Why were so many innocent people hit in the crossfire? (Well, since the guy didn't fire at police, I guess it wasn't really crossfire.) Most rounds fired from pistols miss their target. Pistols are inaccurate even at relatively short range and accuracy is further reduced in pressure situations. Bullets often pass through their targets and hit others. Ricochets can give bullets multiple chances to hit innocent victims.

Which means it's almost certain that if others actually did have concealed weapons and brought them out, there would have been many more dead and wounded. There's no way to tell crazed gunmen from pistol-packing vigilantes after the shooting starts: untrained vigilantes would be even more likely than the police to hit unintended targets. And then  the cops, who may have had no idea who the original aggressor was, would start shooting at them. And then the vigilantes would return fire at the cops. And then you have a big pile of corpses in front of the Empire State Building. And the original shooter may simply escape in all the confusion, smoke and blood.

Now, I'm guessing that this happened because mass shootings are in the forefront of everyone's mind. The cops, hearing gunshots in a crowded place, automatically assumed this guy was nutso and trying to take out as many people as possible. But it looks like Johnson wanted only to kill his lone archnemesis. The police apparently used maximum force to stop him as soon as possible, assuming that he was about to start shooting everyone around him.

I'm not going to criticize the cops here because there's still not enough information to know exactly what happened, and what information they had at the time, or exactly what Johnson might have said or done. Eyewitnesses at the scene may have given the cops bad information. We don't know yet, and we may never know.

But the main point is that more guns in this situation could have made a bad situation into a total bloodbath. For that reason, cities like New York, Washington and Chicago should be able to make their own laws about who can have and use guns. Gun laws that make perfect sense in rural Texas and Montana make no sense whatsoever in crowded cities like New York. If you don't like big city gun laws, don't go to big cities.

We should register each gun sale with at least as much rigor as we register voters. And make gun owners take personal responsibility for what happens to the guns they buy.

It's perfectly reasonable for a Texas rancher to carry a pistol, but a gun owned by a New York housewife will almost never protect her. It will far more likely be used to commit suicide, shoot her or her estranged husband during a domestic spat, kill one of her children when they find it loaded and play with it, or be stolen while she's at work and used to rob a liquor store, or kill a cop.

Police in big cities have long fought against liberal concealed carry laws. That's because they know how unreliable guns are as protection, and they don't want to shoot the wrong guy in a already dangerous situation.

Or get shot in the back by some vigilante who thinks he's the second coming of Clint Eastwood.

Breaking Even

If 316,000 jobs are added between now and November 6th, the president will break even on jobs since he took office. Included in their 13 slide display on the basic facts of the Obama economy, CNN illustrates in a very plain and simple way, where the president stands on jobs.

Here's the math: 4.316 million jobs were lost in the first 13 months of Obama's presidency. Since he took office, 4 million net jobs have been added back.

Given that the job losses occurred during the first year of his presidency, it's obvious that he's done a great job cleaning up the mess that was left for him.

The slide show contains several key data points for those of you who truly want to gauge the president's performance and the effect on the economy that his policies have had.

Romney Says Big Business Is Doing Fine: He Should Know

This week at a campaign fund raiser in Minnesota Mitt Romney committed a classic gaffe. He accidentally told the truth:

"Big business is doing fine in many places," Romney said during a campaign fundraiser Thursday. "They get the loans they need, they can deal with all the regulation. They know how to find ways to get through the tax code, save money by putting various things in the places where there are low tax havens around the world for their businesses."

Mitt should know: he's been evading taxes by parking his money in Swiss and Cayman Island tax havens for years. When President Obama said that the private sector was doing fine earlier this summer Republicans howled like a troop of wounded baboons.

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul tried to cover for her boss, saying Romney "has long said we need to simplify the tax code, close loopholes and create a more level playing field for American businesses."

But the simple fact is, Romney's campaign and the Super PACs that are carpetbombing the country with negative ads against President Obama are funded by Sheldon Adelson's Macau casinos and other big businesses that use those overseas tax havens to evade taxes that should pay for the US Defense Department, among other things.

Romney's tax proposal has been quite specific about lowering corporate and capital gains taxes, but he categorically refuses to say which loopholes he'd close. Independent analysis of his plan concluded the only possible way to make his budget numbers work was to eliminate the "loopholes" that middle-income earners use: mortgage interest deductions, employer health care deductions, deduction of state income and property taxes, municipal bonds, and so on.

Does anyone seriously believe Romney would bite Sheldon Adelson's hand after Adelson spends a hundred million bucks to put Romney in the White House? Get real...

Civil War?

Well, another one of those right wingers has gone a little funny in the head. 

Lubbock Country Judge Tom Head (no, I am not making up the name) said that President Obama will "try to give the sovereignty of the United States away to the United Nations. What do you think the public's going to do when that happens? We are talking civil unrest, civil disobedience, possibly, possibly civil war. ... I'm not talking just talking riots here and there. I'm talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms, get rid of the dictator. OK, what do you think he is going to do when that happens? He is going to call in the U.N. troops, personnel carriers, tanks and whatever."

I haven't heard a good mouth foam about the UN in a while so this was certainly a breath of fresh air. I wonder if he is one of Kevin Baker's regular commenters?

A Perfect Summation

Andy over at ElectoralVote has a great paragraph up about Mitt Romney's taxes.

Gawker.com has published 950 pages of internal Bain Capital documents involving Mitt Romney's finances and investments. The information is extremely complex but shows that one of Romney's driving forces was (legal) tax avoidance at all costs through the use of exceedingly complex financial instruments (often in the Cayman Islands), use of the carried interest provision in the Internal Revenue Code, and other similar maneuvers. 

Even if all these things are legal, one can ask the question of whether a person who has apparently devoted much of his life to paying the absolute minimum tax possible by using every trick in the book is setting a good example for everyone else. The document dump also exposes the lengths to which the very wealthy will go to avoid paying taxes by using methods available only to the very wealthiest Americans. It also raises the question of whether the laws should be changed to prevent this kind of tax avoidance.

I couldn't have said it better myself!

God Bless America

Despite the continued efforts to get the country to believe that our economic woes are the fault of the president, our middle class blames Congress, the finance sector, private corporations, the Bush Administration, and foreign competition before they blame the president...just as they should.

Perhaps I need to rethink some of the themes of my posts. The people of this country aren't buying the bullshit that is being spewed about Barack Obama so why do I need to discuss it?

Argument over.