In, and Out

I voted today.

What did you think I was talking about?  Dirty bugger!

Anywho, I stopped in to vote today, on our actual Election Day.  Call me feckless, if you will.  But I figured with all the early voting over the last week, that it would be a breeze with all the voting stations in place, with a full complement of volunteers staffing a full complement of voting booths.

And as usual, I was right.

No line at the door.

I walked in, signed in, was handed my ballot, sent right to a booth, the pen worked, I went over to feed my 4 pages of ballot into the scanner, and got my "I Voted" sticker.

It took maybe ten minutes all told.  Of course, I already knew how I was voting on all the amendments, so that made it pretty simple.  If I'd had to figure out what each of the twelve amendments actually said from the ballot, I might still be there.

This means that I've earned the right to bitch about the government for at least another year.

Doesn't that give you a warm feeling?

Lyin' Ryan Sticks to the Broken Script.

What do you do when you have no legitimate issues to put forth with your campaign?  You lie.

And what do you do when your lies have been thoroughly debunked?  If you're Paul Ryan, you repeat the lie.  At least, that's what he was doing in Tampa yesterday.

“Here’s the dirty little secret about Medicare they don’t want you to know,” he said. “The  biggest threat to Medicare is Obamacare.”
--Tampa Bay Times, September 16, 2012

Of course, the truth about the Affordable Care Act is that it extends Medicare funding by eight years. 

It’s worth noting that there’s one area these cuts don’t touch: Medicare benefits. The  Affordable Care Act rolls back payment rates for hospitals and insurers. It does not,  however, change the basket of benefits that patients have access to.
-- The Washington Post, August 14, 2012

That's not entirely accurate: it also adds new benefits to to seniors currently enrolled in the program.  That's right; thanks to the Affordable Care Act, Medicare costs less, provides more benefits, and the funding lasts longer. Which is exactly the opposite of what Paul Ryan is claiming.

You see, back in 2003, the Medicare Modernization Act was passed, which underwrote the costs of many prescription drugs for seniors, and paid to put a number of seniors into private insurance plans, the theory being that by enrolling seniors in various private health plans, competition and market forces would lower the costs of care.  But costs for seniors in the private health plans rose, costing taxpayers an average of 117% compared to standard Medicare costs. 

The Affordable Care Act eliminates these over-payments to bring them in line with the rest of Medicare coverage costs by re-negotiating reimbursement rates to the insurance companies.  It also negotiated savings from health care providers, further lowering costs.  So there aren't any cuts in coverage, only cuts in costs; what you and I would actually call "savings" instead of "cuts."

The real "dirty secret" that the Romney campaign doesn't want you to know is that Paul Ryan  proposed to make exactly the same cuts in expenses.

...deciding who is cutting Medicare by $700 billion just requires looking at who is cutting Medicare by $700 billion. And at the moment, that’s both Obama and the Republican  budget.
-- The Washington Post, August 14, 2012

Well, not the only dirty secret.  They also don't want you to realize this:

What Romney/Ryan are saying is that they then take the money saved from their cuts to Medicare and put it toward deficit reduction while Obama takes that money and spends it on health care for poor people... But Romney/Ryan also add a trillion dollars to the defense budget. And they have trillions of dollars in tax cuts they haven’t explained how they’re going to pay for. So those decisions make future cuts to Medicare more likely.
-- The Washington Post, August 14, 2012

But this might be the most important thing Ryan has said so far:

"We're not going to spend the next four years blaming everything on everybody else. We're going to take responsibility," Ryan said.
--Tampa Bay Times, September 16, 2012

I have a great idea for you, Paul; why wait for the election?  Why don't you take responsibility for what Republicans have done to this country now?  Admit to three years of obstructing our economic recovery, own up to the damage done by the Bush administration and its record expansion of the national debt, accept that our current financial straits are the direct result of all the deregulation that the GOP has fostered over the last thirty years.

Why wait to take responsibility?  If you're truly proud of what Republicans have accomplished, start bragging - truthfully - about what you and your party have really been doing.

Time to Spurn Conventions

Here's an odd factoid: the Anti-Masonic Party started our tradition of holding a convention to choose the party's candidate for President back in 1831.  Samuel Hudson Fisher I, my great-great-great grandfather, was a founding member, and was one of the delegates from Pennsylvania at that convention.

The party itself was a single-issue organization; a reaction against the suspicious death of William Morgan, of Batavia, New York.  He was supposedly murdered by the  freemasons because he threatened to expose their secret rites.  It's "supposedly," because his body was never found.

But the man had indeed written an exposé, and he did vanish in 1826.  And that was enough to start hysteria.  It didn't last more than a few years, and its strongest influence seems to have been to undermine the campaign of Henry Clay.

But their legacy of the national party convention lived on, and for good reason. 

The practical telegraph would not be invented for another 6 years, and would take a couple of decades to come into common usage; so it was a time when information took weeks to propagate across the country.  Bringing all the delegates into one place to select the candidate made so much sense that the other major parties followed suit by the next presidential election.

Up through the twentieth century, no one really knew who the candidate would be until the national convention had hashed it out.  Often, candidates were completely unknown outside their own communities, let alone outside their state.  Getting all the party delegates together was really mandatory, in order to bring the number of candidates down to a figure that wouldn't overwhelm the ballot.

But with the advent of the information age, the convention has ceased to be a place where decisions are made and have devolved into a pointless show of affirmation.  The candidacy of Mitt Romney was really determined months ago.  Even John McCain's candidacy was a foregone conclusion.  Even George W. Bush wasn't that much of a longshot.

Instead of statesmanship, it is the most prominent example of how politics in the United States has become a dog-and-pony show.  In the last few Republican National Conventions, it's increasingly apparent that it's no longer an extension of democratic principles, but a time for everyone to toe the line - or get out.  When Maine sent some Ron Paul supporters with the delegation, they were not seated.  And that may be the only surprise decision to come out of it, and it sends a message we should take to heart:  the Republican Party cares so little for the voice of its own constituents, it's unlikely that they will respect those of non-Republicans.

Dictionary Fun with Rob Moore.

Yes, it's time for another round of Dictionary Fun!  Today, we'll be checking out the vocabulary skills of Rob Moore.

Rob Moore is the CFO for Murray Energy, a company that operates coal mines in West Virginia.  He's also a fucking thug colossal prick and a miserable excuse for a human being an uncaring company stooge a cold-hearted business man, as we'll see.


Mr. Moore came to our attention after a friend posted this photo on Facebook:

Hard to believe, isn't it?  But some research lead us to recorded talk radio show on West Virginia's WWVA 1170 AM. If you don't have the 20 minutes to listen to the program, The Raw Story gives us a thorough good recap of the story.

A group of coal miners in Ohio feel they would have been fired if they did not attend an Aug. 14 event with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and contribute to his campaign — and to make matters worse, they lost of day of pay for their trouble.

“Yes, we were in fact told that the Romney event was mandatory and would be without pay, that the hours spent there would need to be made up my non-salaried employees outside of regular working hours, with the only other option being to take a pay cut for the equivalent time,” the employees told Blomquist. “Yes, letters have gone around with lists of names of employees who have not attended or donated to political events.”

What did the company have to say about it?

Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore told Blomquist that the charges were untrue.

“There were no workers that were forced to attend the event,” Moore said. “We had managers that communicated to our work force that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend the event..."

Hmmm. Attendance was mandatory.  But the employees weren't forced.  But if it was mandatory, doesn't that mean that they had to go?  Isn't that what "mandatory" means?

Let's see what Merriam-Webster has to say about the word "mandatory:"

MANDATORY (adjective)  1: required by a law or rule : obligatory <the mandatory retirement age>

So, yes, if attendance was mandatory, they were indeed expected to go.  That was the, um, mandate they were given.

Moore did have more to say about the attendance:

"... but no one was forced to attend the event. We had a pre-registration list. And employees were asked to put their names on a pre-registration list because they could not get into the event unless they were pre-registered and had a name tag to enter the premises.”

Then why did you just say it was mandatory?  If there is confusion, Mr. Moore, it was created by Murray Energy, who told employees they had to attend, not the employees who are pissed that they were told they had to attend a political rally for someone whose record for labor is pretty dismal.

But to add insult to injury:

“Our management people wanted to attend the event..."

We have cause to suspect that the fact that their boss told them they'd better be there had something to do with it, but heck, we'll play the game that they were all willing volunteers who not coerced in any way by the owner of the company who has donated over $900,000 to the Republican Party over the last year or so.

So what's the problem with all the manager going to the rally?  Because there were no managers on site, the mine had to be closed for a day.  Or more precisely, because management closed the mine to attend a political rally, every miner working for them lost that day's wages.

The radio host asked them why the workers had to be punished for their management team's decision to close for the day:

I’m not saying pay then to attend the event, I’m saying, ‘Hey look, we have to close down the mine, if you want to attend this event, that’s fine, but you’re still going to get a day’s pay for the work that you would have done,’” Blomquist pointed out. “Why not do that?”

“As a private employer, it was our decision and we made the decision not to pay the people,” the Murray chief financial officer said.

A responsible company would have ensured that operations continued.  A company that gave a shit about its employees would have declared "it's great that everyone wants to meet Mr. Romney, but we're a business first, and there are people depending on their paycheck to pay their bills, to put food on the table, so we need to have enough managers on site to continue operations."

A truly benevolent company would have paid the employees for the day's wages; after all, there is no good reason for them NOT to be working other than the fact that the managers and administration of Murray Energy are selfish pricks who don't give a shit about their workers decided not to show up to work so they could do something else.

They could have done either of those things, and everyone would have been happy, and there'd be no reason for me and the rest of the blogosphere to rip Mr. Moore a new one.

But sadly, that's not what Murray Energy did:

“We’re talking about an event that was in the best interest of anyone that’s related to the coal industry,” Moore added. “I do not believe that missing an eight-hour day, when you put it into perspective, when you think about how critical — critical this next election is, and how critical it is that we get someone in this office that supports coal — to give up eight hours for a career, I just don’t believe that there is anything negative about that.”

Well, Mr. Moore, that's because you are a steaming turd of a person.

While I certainly can see that if you don't want to run your mine with all the proper safety protocols to keep your workers safe, and if you're an owner whose income puts you in the top 2% tax bracket, attending Mr. Romney's rally makes perfect sense.  But if you're one of the workers who's going to wind up paying a big tax increase so the owner can pay an even lower tax rate than his employees, if you're a worker whose safety depends on the regulations that Mr. Romney has promised to repeal, if you're an hourly employee whose wages have been lowered because of Republican policies over the last few years, the last thing you want to do is lose a day's pay to support the candidate who is doing everything in his power to reduce you to living in poverty.

And if you think I'm being too hard on Murray Energy, consider this; the last time they made the news was 2009.  That's when a mine they owned in Utah collapsed and killed six miners and 3 rescue workers.  This was after receiving 325 citations in five years for exactly the kind of safety violations that resulted in the collapse.  That's an average of one citation every week.   Once a week for five years.

Charles Dickens wrote of greed-driven men like Moore, and his sleazy boss Robert Murray, nearly 170 years ago:

"I wear the chain I forged in life,'' replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?''

Scrooge trembled more and more.

"Or would you know,'' pursued the Ghost, ``the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You  have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!''

The Ghost... set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.

"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,'' cried the phantom, "Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!''

"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,'' faultered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

"Business!'' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!''

It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

But I'm expecting too much of someone who doesn't even know what the word "mandatory" means.  These money-grubbing turds don't even own a dictionary, it's unlikely that they are bright enough to see how the parable of A Christmas Carol might apply to them.

George Washington on Government

A people who ignore their history are doomed to repeat it; we're already repeating parts of it, and not for the first time.  But all that means is that the words of our founding fathers are still relevant, if not merely "relevant again."

George Washington boast of our nation's liberalism in his letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, 1790:

If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good government, to become a great and happy people.

The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy — a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.

He also spoke of the importance of working together in his Farewell Address, 1796:

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth...

We haven't had any unity of government in the last two congresses; when the GOP got control of the House, the Republican leadership announced to its constituents that the party would no longer be working towards unity of purpose, but focusing solely on preventing the incumbent president from being re-elected.

To that end, the Republican Party has been flat-out demonizing the Democratic Party, and any who support it.  And Washington warned us of this, too:

...you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union... you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it... discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country... The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.

In Washington's times, factionalism was divided along regional origin; citizens tended to identify themselves by their state affiliation rather than Americans.  But the basic problem is still with us, even if we call ourselves "Democrats" and "Republicans" or "Liberals" or "Conservatives."  Washington was very clear that true patriots are Americans first, above and beyond any other affiliation.

He was also insistent that we must work together, and that facts must be considered over insinuations:

These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the Union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union, affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.

And in particular, we can't emphasize enough how dangerous he considered political parties:

One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other(s). You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community...

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Doesn't this ring familiar in the light of Citizens' United and the Koch Brothers? A small and well-financed group manages to subvert existing laws to flood the airwaves with patently false information, drowning out the truth in the cacophony of blaring commercials.

This election is a damning testament to the accuracy of George Washington's warning.

George Washingon on Political Parties

From George Washington's Farewell Address, 1796

On political parties:

"Let me... warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party...

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But... in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume."

While it is true that both of the major parties are playing fast and loos with the truth, the fact is that the Republican Party isn't merely exaggerating, or mis-stating, facts.  It's making stuff up out of whole cloth.  And lying isn't something any of us should support.

But whatever your opinions on the matter, they do not matter if you do not vote.  Be sure to cast your vote this election day.

Don't Jump On The GOP Bandwagon

...especially while we're trying to pull its wheels off.

People, when we embrace the methods of our enemy to win the goal, winning becomes pointless.  If the Democrats have to lie like Republicans to win the election, they've already lost everything that matters.

Lookin' good, but time to wash her mouth out with soap

While it will be a cold day in hell before I vote for Romney, he himself has always supported an exception for rape to any of the medieval anti-abortion laws his party has endorsed.  And he still does. Deborah Wasserman Schultz is indeed lying to voters when she insists otherwise. 

Does that mean that the GOP won't try to keep women barefoot and pregnant if we're stupid enough to elect him?  Of course not.  But we don't need to lie about Romney's stance on the matter.

Instead, we should be dissecting some of his ACTUAL stupid stances; like how he argued against the ACA's mandate that all health insurance plans offer birth control to women at no cost by claiming it violated the First Amendment. 

"I don't need facts while I carry this!"

And while Romney indeed made a joke about no one asking for his birth certificate during is visit to his home town, it's not the same thing as Sherrif Joe "I'm A Fucking Idiot" Arpaio insisting that the State of Hawaii was wrong when it verified the authenticity of a birth certificate issued by the Stage of Hawaii.  

Yes, Romney is strangely attractive to birthers.  But it seems he has never questioned Obama's citizenship, even while courting the lunatic fringe.

It was a joke.  Romney was joking, or trying to. Nobody accused him of jumping on the birther bandwagon last time,   so lighten up.

The only way we can change the tone of these damaging excuses for elections is to actually change the tone of them; we must turn our backs on lies and deception; for every whopping fib they tell, we must counter with a truth.  We must dazzle them with honesty.

We can't afford to keep having our leadership win by the expedience of telling more lies - or more credible lies - than the opposition; we need leaders who win by being better, not more devious.

Do Republicans Revere Rapists?

A little while back, we listed out some of the problematic things that the Republican Party has actively promoted; things like increasing the national debt, limiting our civil rights, violating the Constitutional prohibition against establishing religion in our government, de-emphasizing the sciences in education, and obstructing effective governance.

Sure, the GOP claims to be against all those things, but in fact they've been actively working to make all these things happen.

But we only touched upon the contempt that the Republican Party expresses towards women.  But it's out in the lime light, now that Tod Akin has blurted out a shockingly ignorant opinion - and elicited support from the more extreme fringes of the GOP - there is little room for doubt that today's Grand Old Party is setting out to deny women any rights over their own reproductive system.

BTW, the "ignorant opinion" is not the belief that a woman should be forced to carry a baby that is the result of rape to term - although I do find that a loathsome opinion.

No, it's the defense of that loathsome opinion with an argument knitted out of whole cloth and bolstered by bald-faced deception. 

“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Mr. Akin said of pregnancies from rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”
-- Fox2Now.com 08/19/012

Of course, there isn't a medical doctor worth his salt that would make such a ridiculous statement.  Millions of women wind up pregnant as the result of their rape.  There isn't a magic gate on her cervix; her body doesn't erect a barrier to sperm.

But please, don't take MY word for it:

Each year in the US, 10,000–15,000 abortions occur among women whose pregnancies are a result of reported rape or incest. An unknown number of pregnancies resulting from rape are carried to term. There is absolutely no veracity to the claim that “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down.” A woman who is raped has no control over ovulation, fertilization, or implantation of a fertilized egg (ie, pregnancy). To suggest otherwise contradicts basic biological truths.  
-- American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Akins then tried to clean it up.  He didn't mean to use the word "legitimate."

 "[I was] making the point that there were people who use false claims, like those that basically created Roe v. Wade."
-- ThinkProgress.org 8/21/12

So, he didn't mean that there's legitimate rape or to imply that sometimes rape is OK, he just meant that women usually lie about getting raped so they can get an abortion. 

And the sad part about it is that he really believes that that is not an offensive position; and worse, neither does a large number of Republicans in his home state.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Sharon Barnes, a woman AND a Republican AND a Missourian, came to Akin's defense, referring to the results of rape as "God's Blessing" of the violent act against one of his children.

“The congressman is totally, firmly, solidly pro-life,” Sharon Barnes, a member of the state Republican central committee, said, adding that Mr. Akin believed “that abortion is never an option.” ...she added that “at that point, if God has chosen to bless this person with a life, you don’t kill it.”

“That’s more what I believe he was trying to state,” she insisted. “He just phrased it badly.”
-- NY Times, 8/21/2012

No, Ms. Barnes, he didn't phrase it badly.  It's the belief that if you're the victim of a violent rape you should be forced to bear the rapist's child that's the issue.  Many of us believe that a woman should be able to choose what goes in and what comes out.  I understand that your religious views don't permit you to grasp this.  And really, that's fine.  As long as you don't try to force me to live according to your religious beliefs.

But the thing is, making the rest of us live by your religious beliefs is exactly what you're doing.

Huckabee's Right Hook

Conservative pundit and former Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee also defends Mr. Akin and his view that women should be forced to carry the child of the man who brutally attacked them.

“Ethel Waters, for example, was the result of a forcible rape,” Huckabee said of the late American gospel singer. One-time presidential candidate Huckabee added: “I used to work for James Robison back in the 1970s, he leads a large Christian organization. He, himself, was the result of a forcible rape. And so I know it happens, and yet even from those horrible, horrible tragedies of rape, which are inexcusable and indefensible, life has come and sometimes, you know, those people are able to do extraordinary things.”
-- latimes.com 8/20/2012

So, that makes rape just fine with Mr. Huckabee.  It's not a gross violation of a woman's body, it's a channel to bring really neat people into the world.

This isn't an issue that just popped up; the entire Republican Party is rotten with people who simply assume that women's views simply don't enter into the equation, and has been for quite some time

Any resemblance to Hannibal Lector is coincidental, probably

Back in March, Chuck Winder of Idaho, the sponsor of that state's "double ultra-sound bill" (raped women must undergo an invasive ultrasound procedure in which their vagina is penetrated and they are forced to look at the image of the result of the violence perpetrated against them before they can have an abortion), simply assumes that women lie about it.

"I would hope that when a woman goes in to a physician with a rape issue, that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was this pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage or was it truly caused by a rape. I assume that's part of the counseling that goes on.”
-- The Spokesman-Review, 03/09/12

Let's tally what these Republicans have said about rape so far:

• Women can't ever get pregnant from rape, because we don't understand the human reproductive system.
• And they are probably lying about getting raped to justify their abortion.
  
• When your rapist impregnates you against your will, it's a blessing.
• Even though you were raped, the child of the vicious thug who violated you might be a nice person.
• You weren't raped, you lying slut.
  

Something to consider about every statement made so far; not one of them address the actual victim: the woman who was raped.  Not one of these Republican pols seems to care about the woman who was brutalized; they only care about the child of a violent criminal.  Even though Mr. Akin did call for us to "punish the rapist," he concluded with "...and not the baby."  But what about the mother, Mr. Akin?  Why must she suffer?

And they haven't dealt with the reality of the results of being raped.  "Save the baby" is all they've considered.

Chicago lawyer Shauna Prewitt bravely steps into the fray, and recounts her own experience of being raped in college:

"You see, nine months after my rape, I gave birth to a beautiful little girl. You could say she was conceived in rape; she was. But she is also so much more than her beginnings. I blissfully believed that after I finally had decided to give birth to and to raise my daughter, life would be all roses and endless days at the playground."
-- CNN 8/22/12

Perhaps you think that she is justifying everything the Radical Right has been saying;  she accepted the life as a blessing, and moved beyond the origin of the seed.

But Ms. Prewitt learned what these politicians haven't been addressing; that even if you accept that life begins at conception, the story of a pregnancy does not end with a birth; especially not for victims of rape.

"It would not be long before I would learn firsthand that in the vast majority of states -- 31 -- men who father through rape are able to assert the same custody and visitation rights to their children that other fathers enjoy."
-- CNN 8/22/12

So even if a woman decides to accept "the blessing" and carry the child to term, to try to convert a sadistic act of humiliation and degradation into something postive, these same thoughtless legislators have done absolutely nothing to end the cycle of pain and abuse perpetrated by rapists.  How is it that felons can have parental rights to offspring they forced onto their victims?  Can it be that these misguided right wingers hope that the woman will come together with her abuser and create a family unit? 

It's time to recall that one of Paul Ryan's failed bills was one he co-sponsored with Mr. Akin.

Two peas in a pod.

Representatives Ryan and Akin, in fact, have voted in lockstep on abortion matters since Akin joined Ryan in the House in 2001. Moreover, they teamed up on a controversial bill defining life as beginning at conception.
-- Christian Science Monitor, 8/21/12

I am forced to conclude that yes, it seems that the Republican Party, or at least a significant part of it, appears to favor the rights of rapists over the rights of their victims.

Remember, when you vote for a party, you vote for everyone it in it, and support its entire agenda.  Be very certain who and what you stand for when you vote in the next election.

The Problem with "Anyone But..." Part 2

In a discussion about the Republican Party and its tendency to bolster its positions with whopping lies, the other party confessed that they didn't particularly care for Mitt Romney.  "But anyone but Obama will be a better choice."

This is a flawed argument, one only held by those too lazy to actually think it through.  So let's continue to examine the folly of voting for "Anyone But."  We've examined some of the fallout from Florida's gubernatorial election when people voted for "anyone but Alex Sink."  Now it's time to look at the bigger picture.

Anyone But Obama

"Anyone but" Obama is another disaster waiting to happen.

"...voting Republicans is not necessarily a vote for all of the above, it's simply a vote AGAINST Obama. I am in favor of women's right, prescription contraception, etc..."
 - my right-wing relative

Here's the thing; in the United States, we do not have a mechanism for "voting against" a candidate.  You can only vote FOR candidates. 

And when you vote FOR a candidate, you are not only indicating that you support that candidate, you are standing behind their party, and their party's platform.  All of it.  There's no cherry picking; when you vote for a turd, you're getting in bed with it. You are stating implicitly that your ideals are those of the turd. That's the system.

For now, we won't discuss the merits of Obama - and yes, he does have a list of accomplishments that should qualify him for a second term.  After all, Republicans are not actually repudiating any of them, they're just ignoring them and pretending they don't exist.  And for now, so will I.  And we'll save an examination of the Republican candidate for later; after all, the convention hasn't happened yet: it's remotely possible that they won't select Romney after all.



But let's take a look at what you're really getting with "anyone but Obama;" the Republican Party itself. Let's look at what the Republican Party REALLY stands for, not by listening to Romney spout off his nonsense, not by reading what they've put up on their website, but by looking at what they've actually been doing.



What The Republican Party Really Stands For:

Increasing the Deficit
Catches you by surprise, doesn't it?  They all keep saying that they're fighting the deficit.  But in fact, while they didn't create it, they've been supporting it since the 1970s. They call it "starving the beast," and the theory is that rather than reduce spending to save money, reduce revenue to force less spending.

"Let us remember that the basic purpose of any tax cut program in today's environment is to reduce the momentum of expenditure growth by restraining the amount of revenue available and trust that there is a political limit to deficit spending."
- Alan Greenspan to Senate Finance Comittee, July 14, 1978

"The focus of the fight to restrain government has shifted from limiting government spending to limiting government receipts..."
George Will, July 27, 1978

Think of it as a diet plan; the GOP was going to force America to reduce its deficit by starving it of revenue.  After all, you can't spend what you don't have, right?

Well, no.  As we've found, spending has continued.  Ronald Reagan, who rolled "starve the beast" into his Reaganomics package, embraced the cuts, but didn't curtail spending.  In fact, in his first term, federal spending ballooned to 23.5% of GDP.  By the end of his term, Reagan had realized that the approach wasn't working, and raised taxes through the rest of his administration, but the damage had been done.  Republicans have become programmed to believe that reducing revenue will lower the deficit, even though this is clearly not the case. 

We can demonstrate the fallacy of the approach; the Clinton administration pushed through a big tax increase, resulting in a drop in federal spending to 18.2% of GDP by the end of his second term, clearly disproving the notion that higher taxes lead to more spending.  But that didn't stop George W. Bush from slashing taxes, driving spending up 20.7%.  Other studies have since confirmed that lower tax rates actually increase spending and spending costs.

And before you blame the Democrats for not decreasing spending, you should be aware that the Republican Party has rejected Pentagon proposals to retire unnecessary aircraft and ships.  In other words, the military doesn't have a use for these vehicles, but the GOP wants them to remain in service anyway.  In fact, the Republican controlled House Armed Services Committee is pushing a budget $4 billion more than the Pentagon itself says it needs!

From Defense News, May 10, 2012:

Asked about the proposed missile defense site during the briefing, U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “I don’t see a need beyond what we submitted in the last budget” and the current “suite of ground-based and sea-based interceptors” is sufficient.

At the same time, the House Appropriations defense subcommittee chairman C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., has developed a 2013 defense spending bill that comes in $3.1 billion above the Pentagon’s request.

So clearly the Republicans aren't trying to cut down on spending.  If the GOP was really serious about reducing the deficit, they'd raise taxes, agree to budget cuts proposed by government agencies, and raise or remove the $100,000 cap on the Social Security contribution.  They'd also seriously consider ending the expensive and wholly ineffective War on Drugs.  By de-criminalizing drugs, we'd save the money spent trying to stop them, and gain revenue from new taxes on the production.  It worked for alcohol, there's no reason it couldn't work for drugs.

But the GOP isn't considering any of these things, therefore we can conclude that they are not interested in reducing the deficit, even though they claim they are.  Actions speak louder than words, and the actions are damning.

Government Intrusion
While they claim to believe that government must be limited, the Grand Old Party sure has put a lot of effort into pushing government into the most private moments of our lives.

A prime example of this are all the initiatives mandating invasive ultrasound procedures on women.  These procedures serve no medical purpose whatsoever.  They are intended solely to shame women out of having abortions, a private decision that is already difficult and painful enough for most women.  But the Republican Party has pushed laws in several states requiring that before they can undergo an abortion, they have to have a plastic wand shoved up into their vagina and view the resultant image.

Isn't this just what you want to have done to you following a rape?

It just doesn't get much more intrusive than being penetrated against your will in order to force you to see something you already know is there and have already decided to remove, in my humble opinion.  But it doesn't end there; Republicans in several state legislatures have been pushing "personhood," which defines human life beginning not at the moment a fertilized ova implants itself in a woman's placenta, but at the moment of fertilization.  Unstated is the fact that since most oral contraceptives work by preventing the ova from attaching to the placenta, most forms of female oral contraception could be declared illegal.

The GOP is getting right into our bedrooms, and literally forcing their way into a woman's private parts.

Limiting Equal Rights - They're Not For Everyone
Shockingly, 40 years after John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, which mandated that someone doing the same job should receive the same pay, Senate Republicans blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act, intended to strengthen protections against pay inequities.  It's hard to believe that anyone could reject the concept of equal pay in this day and age, but there it is.

“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”
― Thomas Jefferson

Republicans have also been working hard to disenfranchise voters.  In Florida, Governor Scott has been pushing for clerks to purge voters from the rolls using a badly flawed list of suspects; so far, less than 1% of the supposedly illegal voters have turned out to be actually illegal voters.  But that hasn't slowed him down any.  He's ignoring cease and desist orders from the Department of Justice, and has ordered a legal defense of his purge.

To date, 22 statutes and 2 executive actions have been approved in 17 states since 2011, and as many as 74 similar bills are pending around the country. 

As noted in the Washington Post, April 30 2012:

If photo ID laws were going to be the solution, though, Republicans had to invent a problem. The best they could come up with was The Menace of Widespread Voter Fraud.

It’s a stretch. Actually, it’s a lie. There is no Widespread Voter Fraud. All available evidence indicates that fraudulent voting of the kind that photo ID laws would presumably prevent — someone shows up at the polls and votes in someone else’s name — just doesn’t happen.

This is born out time and again; in Florida, for example, out of a list of about 1,600 suspected ineligible voters, only 13 were found to have actually been ineligible to be on the voters' rolls, and only 8 of those people had ever actually voted.

Republicans are also firmly opposed to the rights of gays to marry.  They call it The Defense of Marriage Act, but it does little to defend anything; all it does is prevent some people from enjoying rights enjoyed by millions of other Americans.  Worse, there are moves to amend the constitution to make gay marriage illegal in the handful of states that do allow it. 

The thing about our bill of rights; any amendment is supposed do one of two things, and preferably both: 1. It must protect a citizen from harm.  2. It must improve the life of a citizen, or allow them greater opportunities to have justice, domestic tranquility, safety, and improve their general welfare.  A ban against gay marriage does none of these things.  The only purpose of such an amendment would be to stop someone from having rights.  That is about as great an assault on American values as I can imagine; an amendment that exists for the purpose of preventing some people from having rights granted to others. 

"The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it."
--Thomas Jefferson to M. van der Kemp, 1812.

Fuck the Constitution, Let's Have a State Religion
Another problem with this movement is that the "traditional definition" the GOP adheres to is on derived from a religion; specifically Christianity.  Other religions have other definition; for example, they permit multiple spouses.  That means that in order to define marriage as "a union between one man and one woman," the state must adapt a specific religious view, a de facto violation of the First Amendment, which clearly states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

If we are to follow a strict Constitutional approach to the matter, the State should treat all marriages in the same manner as any contract under contract law; they should simply record the fact of it.

Time and again, Republicans seek to sneak Creationism, that is, the biblical story of where everything came from, into our educations system.  They feel that evolution, the scientific explanation of how life developed from simpler forms into the myriad organisms we have now, should be downplayed in favor of their religious views. 

Their tactics are actually as pathetic as they are blatant; try to diminish evolution by emphasizing that it's "only a theory" and elevate Creationism by claiming, well, let's quote Republican Senator Stephen Wise:

"If you're going to teach evolution, then you have to teach the other side so you can have critical thinking."

The flaw in this reasoning is that creationism isn't "another side."  It's a religious conviction, period.  It has no place in science, even if you substitute "creationism" with "intelligent design."  It's similar to insisting that children be taught the parable of the loaves and fishes as an alternative to "2+2=4".

Fuck Science, Too.
Here is what qualifies Evolution as a valid scientific theory; first, we can devise experiments to test it, and second, we can make predictions based on it.  You can't do that with Creationism. 

Evolution predicts that organisms adapt over time so they can survive; an example of that is the flu virus.  Each year, the Centers for Disease Control have to update flu vaccines because the various strains of the flu evolve so that they are not affected by prior versions.  We're having a minor crisis with infection due to the over-use of anti-biotics.  Dish soap may kill 99.9% of bacteria initially, but that leave room for the .01% to breed.  And sure enough, we're now seeing strains of bacteria that aren't affected by our current inventory of anti-biotics.

Creationism can't be tested in this manner; no predictions can be made using it, not even if you call it "Intelligent Design."  That's because it's not science, it's a religious conviction.

Republicans have expanded their pro-religion anti-science stance to the weather: I'm talking of course about Global Warming.  When a state appointed science panel issued a report warning that sea levels could rise as much as 3 feet, North Carolina Republicans responded by introducing legislation that would mandate that flood rates could only be calculated by a single state agency, and that that agency could only use the historical record back to 1900 to calculate those rates and would be forbidden from referring to the best current data on the subject.

Not since the Pope excommunicated Galileo for stating that the earth revolves around the sun have we seen such a misguided attack on science. 

Preventing effective Government
Politics has been described as "the art of the compromise." And in fact, Congress itself is the result of a compromise; half the founding fathers wanted representation based on the population of each state, which would result in states with larger populations having more sway than smaller states. The other half wanted each state to have an equal voice, allotting each state the same number of representatives, regardless of population.  In the end, both sides compromised, adopting both plans.

Larry David described compromise as "a solution leaving both parties equally dissatisfied."

But so-called Tea Party Republicans have deadlocked our government by refusing any compromise.  In years past, Democrats and Republicans would work with each other to come up with bi-partisan solutions, where each side compromised so that effective legislation could be enacted.

Of course, many Republicans will state that it's the Democrats who haven't compromised; but this is largely because Republicans aren't using the same definition as everyone else.

Republican Tea Party Senator Richard Mourdock is a clear illustration of this.  His take on what it means to be "bi-partisan" is intriguing, to say the least:

"I hope... that bipartisanship becomes Democrats joining Republicans to roll back the size of government, reduce the bureaucracy, lower taxes  ..."

Demanding that the other side adopt your point of view is  not bipartisanship, and it's certainly not compromise. 

As self-proclaimed conservative David Brooks noted, Democrats have compromised:

"The Democrats have agreed to tie budget cuts to the debt ceiling bill. They have agreed not to raise tax rates. They have agreed to a roughly 3-to-1 rate of spending cuts to revenue increases, an astonishing concession.
...
Moreover, many important Democrats are open to a truly large budget
deal. President Obama has a strong incentive to reach a deal so he can
campaign in 2012 as a moderate. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid,
has talked about supporting a debt reduction measure of $3 trillion or
even $4 trillion if the Republicans meet him part way.
...
But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no. "
-- The New York Times, July 5 2011

The Washington Post was even blunter:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
-- The Washington Post, April 27, 2012

What "Anyone But Obama" Means For Us

So to sum it up, here's what a vote for "Anyone But Obama" is actually supporting:

• No end to the deficit.
• Government intruding into our personal lives.
  
• Renewed abuses of our civil rights.
• A de facto end to freedom of religion by advancing the causes of one religion over others.
• Stifling scientific achievement if it contradicts currently held views of the reigning party
• Ensuring that effective governance can't occur by refusing to work with the opposition.
  

Maybe this won't change your mind; maybe you even approve of the actual agenda of the Republican Party.  But one thing is certain; if you vote for "anyone but Obama," you'll be contributing to this glorious mess.

No, he's not sitting.

Santorum Lies To Public

CNN reports that Santorum is trying to clarify his position on contraception in the wake of an interview where he stated that not only does he not believe that all health plans should include access to it, no one should use it; not even married people:

One of the things I will talk about that no President has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, “Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s okay.”

It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also [inaudible], but also procreative...  if you can take one part out that’s not for purposes of procreation... you diminish this very special bond between men and women... 

...I think it’s important that you are who you are. I’m not running for preacher. I’m not running for pastor, but these are important public policy issues. These how profound impact on the health of our society.
- TIME, February 14, 2012

That's his opinion, and he's welcome to it.  Of course, it's not the opinion of a vast majority of Americans, 80% of whom approve of contraception, in and out of marriage.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that he seeks to backtrack, and re-state his position that it won't alienate 80% of the voting public come election day.

Rick Santorum sought to bring some clarity to his birth control position on Friday, which he said has been misconstrued by opponents which have put him on both sides of the issue.

"My position is birth control can and should be available," the former senator from Pennsylvania said at a campaign event in Columbus, Ohio.
- CNN, February 17, 2012

That's pretty clear and to the point, isn't it?

But it's also a complete and total lie.  

We know it's a lie because on his website, he clearly outlines his agenda if elected president, and it includes:

• Repeal Clinton-era Title X family planning regulations...
• Repeal Obamacare mandate for contraceptive services in healthcare plans
• Advocate for a Personhood Amendment to the Constitution

Title X ensures that low-income families have access to family planning services and related preventive health services (protection against STDs, for example).

I think we're all familiar with the recent mandate that ALL health plans include access to contraceptives, but if you're not, that's all it does.

The nefarious Personhood Amendment calls for the definition of human life to begin not with the onset of pregnancy, but at the fertilization of the egg.  Since the most popular contraceptives are designed to prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb, this amendment would effectively ban most common contraceptives, including the pill, Norplant, and IUDs.

The bottom line; you can't claim to support someone's right to have access to birth control when several of the planks of the platform you are running on specifically eliminates birth control or access to birth control.

Rick Santorum is many things; but "liar" should probably be listed first, to put the rest into proper perspective.

Speak for Yourself, 'Nos Populus'

A conservative relative who shall remain nameless sent me a link to this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=JVAhr4hZDJE&vq

This video just came out & it already has over 6 Million Hits

This is without a doubt the best video that has come out and apparently 6 Million others think so too because there have been 6 million hits in 4 days.

Ahh, yes, a lot of people looked at it, therefore, they must support it and adore it.  Of course, Castro stormed Cuba with less than a hundred men, and had the entire country behind him within a week, and you might have heard something about how that turned out. But I digress.

So of course, I have to dissect this little propaganda video created by the great scholar, Nos Populus.

I'll use screen caps, so you don't have to run the video while reading this. 

Cue overtly patriotic music, and zoom in over the Constitution of the United States.  Scroll text!

The problem with this is that Nos Populus don't speak for all people; and come election day, we'll see if they even speak for most people. If they didn't want to lie, they should have stated "We, SOME people..."  Because based on this video, he sure as shit doesn't speak for me.

My relative scoffed back at me; "Well, the Constitution reads 'we, the people.'"  And yes, the Constitution does in fact start with the phrase "WE, The People..."  But the people who wrote the Constitution were duly elected representatives of The People. They were given the right to speak on our behalf.  Nos Populus is some right-wing conspiracy nut with access to a computer; he or she or they can only speak for his or her or their own self.

But since most every thing else they claim wanders from merely vague to outlandishly false, I guess we can't be too surprised.

Isn't this from the cover of Dianetics?  I'm sure it's off some religious tract.  But at least we're starting from a point we recognize; hope and change.

Subjugation?  Who the hell is being subjugated?  I mean, besides this vaguely fake looking guy in the photo. Are they talking about those (current) Iranian hostages?  The Cuban people?  Chinese academics?  They never say.  But we'll stipulate that no one likes subjugation.  Well, except for those crazy whips and chain people fetishists.  They actually like it to a degree that I'm personally uncomfortable with, but to each his-or-her own.

So what's next?

He "violated the Constitution." How did he do that, exactly?  This pale Ann Coulter impersonator giving us a "thumbs-down" isn't a terribly compelling argument.  In fact, it's not an argument at all.  It's just a claim without any foundation.

After all, it's not like he's trying to get prayer into our taxpayer funded public classrooms, which is a clear violation of the Constitution.

My relative stomped and snorted that there so many examples of egregious violations "I don't know how he hasn't been impeached."

My relative has a point; Clinton was impeached, and he didn't even violate the Constitution once.  He did, however, violate his wedding vows.  Which also isn't impeachable.

And here's Obama, who has committed "so many egregious violations of the Constitution" that my relative could not list even a single one, and no one has tried to impeach him.

Perhaps they should play louder patriotic music, dress the model in Revolutionary costume.  That ought to do it.

What do they got next?

They claim he's "seized private industry" but again, fail to list even a single example of an industry he's seized. You'd think it would be hard to miss this, but I can find no record of it. If he has actually done this, I'd condemn it, but somehow it's never made the news.

I have a friend whose family fled Cuba; her grandparents owned a factory.  Castro seized it, and then put a price on their heads for having the audacity to claim that he was stealing it.  A "dead-or-alive" price, which is just what that sounds like.  Which is why they had to flee, of course. 

I find it hard to believe that our government could seize an entire industry and not one news outlet caught wind of it. But you can't argue with the strident voice over patriotic music and a woman with TWO thumbs down.

They also claim Obama's "destroyed jobs" and "perverted our economy" (whatever THAT means).

Again, a pretty woman giving us the "thumbs-down" doesn't actually tell us anything about how he's "perverting" anything.  Did he pull a Rocky Horror on our economy?  Did he get it all tramped out in fishnets and high-heels?

And yes, we've lost jobs, and might have lost a lot more if not for some of his actions. But "destroyed?"

Here's a subject near and dear to my heart:

Since Obama has been elected, I have marched three times to support free speech; once against the City of Fort Lauderdale's misguided attempt to make a movie production happy, and twice against a private security company who failed to read directives from Miami-Dade County. No connection to anything Obama has done. Did someone finally arrest Rush Limbaugh?  Glenn Beck?  Howard Stern?

Republican Governor Rick Scott has kicked the shit out of free speech - he booted all the non-Republicans from one bill signing, and spent much of his first year in office avoiding the press - but I haven't seen one example of Obama or his administration "curtailing" free speech.

And the wildly unfounded claims march on;

He's "corrupted our currency." Again, I don't even know what that means. Did he get our currency drunk and take its virginity?  Did he get it strung out on Ecstacy and drop it off naked at a frat party? Did he wipe his ass with dollar bills and then buy ice cream with them?

My personal favorite bald-faced lie: "he weakened our security." Let's see if we can figure this one out, shall we?

Did he do it by killing Osama Bin Laden, the biggest threat to our security, perhaps? Bin Laden, of course, is the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, who eluded President Bush during his administration.  But Bush bravely vowed he would find the murderer, and searched every golf course in California.

No, wait; that was O.J. Simpson.  Sorry. Honest mistake.

Oh, wait, it's got to be when he helped Libyans overthrow General Mohamar Ghaddafi, the tyrannical dictator who helped terrorists blow up Pan Am 103. Yeah, freeing a country from a fascist dictator who sheltered terrorists certainly made us less safe.

He was also killing his own citizens if they said anything negative about him.  Things like "Our town's well ran dry"  or "You killed my mother for saying the well ran dry."


HEY!, I just realized - THESE must be the jobs Obama's destroyed; "despot," tyrant," "evil dictator" and "terrorist leader."  I have to admit, he certainly destroyed the fuck out of Osama Bin Laden.  And the Taliban has taken a beating, too.

Gotta say, though, I'm just fine with that.  Maybe we can destroy those Somalian pirates, next.

As the music swells, the action is too fast and furious for screen caps to make sense of it.

They claim he's compromised "cultural, legal and economic institutions" which directly results in children not leading our quality of life. Again, do they mention which institutions those are, and how they are compromised? No.  I do have to point out that it wasn't Obama or his party who keeps trying to cut funding to one of our greatest cultural institutions, the National Endowment for the Arts.

"Generational theft?" I've been watching conservatives rail against the EPA, which has reversed the pollution that was choking us.  A couple of Republican candidates have promised to shut the EPA down; if that isn't attempting to steal our future, I don't know what is.

But they are correct about our military. Yes, the brave souls of our armed forces absolutely lay their lives on the line to protect our freedoms. Something Obama has certainly acknowledged in no uncertain terms. And I for one am glad that he's getting them out of the morass of Iran and Afghanistan and bringing most of them home. I have very good friends serving over there.

The most "coercive government" in living memory - and I'll specify the most coercive US Government - has to be the one we had during Senator McCarthy's hearings on Un-American Activities (which, of course, I only know about from historical accounts).  They were so vile that they are now known as the McCarthy Witch Hunt Trials.

McCarthy would force you to testify before Congress.  He'd demand that you describe all the political leanings of your friends.  If you didn't, he'd accuse you of being anti-American, and you'd be blacklisted.  People wouldn't hire you, because maybe you were a Commie.  But even if you weren't, if they hired you, people would think they were Commies, and stop doing business with them.  Better not to hire you.  Or be seen with you.

That's what I call "coercive." What do the makers of this video consider coercive? They don't say.  They simply make the claim over patriotic music, and you're just supposed to accept it.

The sleazy weasels who authored this little musical smear are masters at pulling heart strings; they know full well that no one can dispel vague accusations with the harsh light of reality. While it's clear that they don't have any facts to back up their claims, the fact that they don't supply any facts means that there's nothing solid for anyone to dispute.

Setting their unfounded accusations to patriotic music and compelling images, speaking their gibberish in strident tones may give the illusion that they make a credible case, but in fact, this video makes not a single coherent argument. It's only gibberish.

I promise to stand up for liberty, too. And I'll do it by fighting against the sleazy lying scumbags who created this video, and those who swallow its hollow bile as some sort of valid manifesto. Those people are the real threat to our freedom; because they believe any empty lie they are told without question.

Newt Gingrich Caught Lying About Romney's Lying

OK, I wasn't going to start in on the race to select the next Republican candidate for President.  I figured I'd wait until they select one.  First, because none of the candidates are very good choices, and second, I figure "why not let them select the worst of the lot and make Obama's campaign a slam-dunk?"

Of course, I'm less confident of that since shitheads like Frank Paruas elected Rick Scott as Florida's governer, even though they thought he probably really was guilty of the largest Medicare fraud in the nation's history, because "he was the Republican candidate."

But now Newt Gingrich of all people is questioning someone else's honesty. That's right, Mr. "Sorry you're fighting for your life against cancer but I'm leaving you for this woman I've been cheating on you with" thinks he has some moral high-ground in this campaign.

From the CNN article:

In particular, Gingrich cited claims in Romney ads that he resigned in disgrace from the House in 1999 after being cited two years earlier for an ethics violation.

"I did not resign in disgrace," Gingrich declared, and he also rejected the assertion that the $300,000 he paid to cover the cost of the investigation against him was a fine.

Oh, really.  So I suppose Newt would have us believe he resigned in victory.

ABC News also spoke with Gingrich:

“It’s fundamentally false,” Gingrich told me Sunday on “This Week.”  “It’s typical of [Romney's] whole campaign.  He knows… that this is a purely phony charge.”
- Jake Tapper's ABC News Blog

What a shame that we can't go back in time, back to 1998, to see what... wait a minute - WE CAN!

Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the charismatic soul of the Republican Revolution whose members turned on him after unexpected losses in Tuesday's election, announced yesterday he will quit as speaker of the House.
- Washington Post, November 7, 1998

I guess they "turned on him" in adulation, huh?

Sources say Gingrich made the choice when he was told that as many as 30 Republicans would refuse to vote for him on the floor of the House. A close associate of Gingrich said the speaker did not want to be the center of attention and distract his party for the next two years.

Earlier Friday, Oklahoma Rep. Steve Largent announced he is seeking to replace House Majority Leader Dick Armey in the No. 2 House leadership post.

"On November 3rd the Republican Party hit an iceberg. And I think the question that is before our conference today is whether we retain the crew of the Titanic," said Largent, an ex-pro football player and member of the Hall of Fame.  "Clearly the last two years are nothing to be proud of."
- CNN, November 6, 1998

It seems that Newt wants us to believe that Largent was comparing Gingrich to the team responsible for the worst shipwreck in recorded history in a good way.

 "At least Newt didn't kill 1,517 people"

But those are his jealous co-workers; members of his own party that Newt could reasonably argue had an agenda to frame his resignation in negative terms.  What did the American people think of his untimely resignation?

Americans overwhelmingly gave a thumbs up to Newt Gingrich's resignation...

The poll showed 70% of respondents favor Gingrich's departure... Ninety per cent said Republicans should find a speaker who tries harder than Gingrich did to work with the Democrats, not against them.
- NY Daily News, November 9, 1998

I dunno, when everyone is glad you're gone, comparing your leadership to that of the Titanic's, I don't see how you can say there isn't some element of shame in there.

Oh, wait, what about the $300,000?  Was it a "fine," or merely a "reimbursement" as he claims?

First, let's determine what a "fine" actually consists of:

fine (noun);
3 a: a sum imposed as punishment for an offense
   b: a forfeiture or penalty paid to an injured party in a civil action
- Merriam-Webster.com

OK, so a fine is a sum imposed as a punishment, or a penalty paid to an injured party.  What did the media say about it at the time?

The House voted overwhelmingly yesterday to reprimand House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and order him to pay an unprecedented $300,000 penalty, the first time in the House's 208-year history it has disciplined a speaker for ethical wrongdoing.

In addition, five Democrats voted "present," many of them saying they believed the sanction was not severe enough. "If Newt Gingrich did what they said he did, he should have been censured," said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), one of the five who voted "present." A censure, second only in severity to expulsion, would have threatened Gingrich's speakership.

The speaker was barely visible yesterday, staying away from the House floor during the 90-minute debate and vote on his punishment.
- Washington Post, January 22, 1997

So Newt is lying his cheating little ass off when he claims that he wasn't fined for his ethics violations.  And he's lying when he says that Romney is lying about it.

When you examine the facts, when you look at the history, it's clear that Newt Gingrich was found guilty by his Congressional peers, that he was charged a massive penalty - which he did pay, by the way - and that he did resign in shame a year later.

Everything that Gingrich claimed was "fundamentally false" is in reality "factually correct."

Fact - his Congressional peers found him guilty of ethics violations.
Fact - the $300,000 was a fine intended to punish him.
Fact - he did resign under a cloud that would have shamed any man of conscience.

Gingrich said something else:

"You cannot be president of the United States if you cannot be honest and candid with the American people," Gingrich said.
- CNN, January 29, 2012

Well, I hate to say it, but I agree with Newt on this one.  Newt, I expect you to withdraw from the campaign by the end of the week. It's the honorable thing to do.

Which is why I won't hold my breath waiting for you to do it.