Is Klondike Barbie available?

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Santorum opposes civil unions in addition to gay marriages

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Another case where Santorum wants to go backwards in time....  Note his comment that it's a decision to be gay!
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Santorum opposes civil unions for same-sex couples

By Leigh Ann Caldwell, February 22, 2012

[Videos available at the site.]

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a vocal opponent of gay marriage, said today he opposes civil unions, too.

In response to a question by Dean Reynolds for the "CBS Evening News," the former Pennsylvania senator said same-sex couples should work through the legal system to obtain rights similar to those enjoyed by legally married couples.

"I believe in people's right to be able to contract for whatever benefits that they have," Santorum told Reynolds.

"I believe in freedom of contract and people should be able to contract for hospitalization visits, being able to take insurance policies or life insurance," he added. "And I've encouraged folks if they want to build those relationships to do that."

Santorum has spoken out numerous times against gay marriage. In a January 2011 interview on CNN, Santorum said he supports a federal marriage amendment defining marriage between a man and a woman.

"Marriage cannot be defined differently from one state to another," Santorum said. "For the interest of children, for the interest of society and stability of men and women of families, marriage should be what it is and that's the union of one man and one woman."

During an August interview on Fox News, Santorum told host Megyn Kelly that he respects people's "decision" to be gay, but disagrees with them "vehemently about what is in the best interest of society with respect to our marriage laws."

"I have friends who are gay," Santorum told Kelly. "It's not personal; it's about policy."

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ThurstonBlog posts what the Olympian deletes!

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The Olympian apparently doesn't have the stones to leave CherokeeNative's "manifesto" up for the masses to read.  They deleted it but not before it was captured.
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CherokeeNative
This is my manifesto. I invite the citizens of Washington and our Nation to join me:

I have made a decision. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate "reparative therapy," as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality "deviant." 

I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that "we love the sinner but hate the sin." That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is "high-sounding, pious rhetoric." The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn't. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to "Roll on over or we'll roll on over you!" Time waits for no one. 

I will particularly ignore those members of my own Church who seek to allow pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go unchallenged. 

In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer. 

I will no longer act as if the Church is to be respected if it is either not willing or not able to inform and educate itself on public issues on which it dares to speak with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Church that seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world's population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it. I will dismiss as unworthy of any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable.

I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women? The time has come for politicians to stop hiding behind unjust laws that they themselves helped to enact, and to abandon that convenient shield of demanding a vote on the rights of full citizenship because they do not understand the difference between a constitutional democracy, which this nation has, and a "mobocracy," which this nation rejected when it adopted its constitution. We do not put the civil rights of a minority to the vote of a plebiscite. 

No one should ever again be forced to submit the privilege of citizenship in this nation to the will of a majority vote. The battle in our culture to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in our state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon. 

I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church's participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people. 

Life moves on. As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than a century ago: "New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth." I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever. 

This is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a public outpouring will help cleanse this nation of its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to our country. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to celebrate it.

I believe our state will stand strong for equal rights for all Washington families. The bottom line is the effort to repeal marriage equality through a public vote is a mockery to take away the rights of others and a divisive end-around to try and impose individuals' religious and moral views on others. Despite all of the protestations to the contrary, the underlying purpose of this movement is to discriminate against gays. Washingtonians do not discriminate against our neighbors. Many years ago, our country ended its discrimination. We do not want to go back there again. In 20 or 30 years from now, such a referendum would be as unthinkable as a referendum to forbid marriage between races or to prevent women from earning an equal wage.
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A New ThurstonBlog Feature

Larry_phill

There is a picture of a hand with an upraised middle finger at a local left wing blog, maybe it was them.

Send in your "no whining" quotes to uppaUS@wtf.com

 

Who could have known that breastfeeding is a "job killer"?

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Staples Co-Founder: Allowing Breastfeeding At Work Will ‘Kill Jobs’

By Michael Hayne, February 16, 2012

Staunch Republican donor and co-founder of Staples, Tom Stemberg, has a grave concern that might just throw the fragile economic recovery into the into a precipitous tailspin: breastfeeding. Indeed, the ever-so menacing and communist practice of a new mother providing natural enrichment and bonding with her newborn child (maybe because she doesn’t charge the kid a fee for service?) will hurt businesses.

Not surprisingly, Stemberg is a longtime supporter of policies of Republicans like Mitt Romney, and he’s incessantly complaining about how Obama’s health care reform will force him to abide by such onerous laws as providing what he called “lactation stations” for new moms who need to breastfeed at work. So much for thinking that lactation station was a bosomy all-female rock group from the late 70s.

“Do you want [farming retailer] Tractor Supply to open stores or would you rather they take their capital and do what Obamacare and its 2,700 pages dictates – which is to open a lactation chamber at every single store that they have?” said a dyspeptic Stemberg.

Aside from it secretly fulfilling Stemberg’s warped sexual fantasy of watching a woman breast feed on a tractor, would Stemberg rather women be late for work and jeopardize day-to-day activities. Or would he quit pouting and let nursing female employees find a quiet and empty place to breastfeed. Stemberg is of course referring to the provision of health care reform that requires employers to give lactating mothers “reasonable break time” to nurse their child, as well as “a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public.

The place they provide for new moms doesn’t have to a special room just as long as it’s private and can be called into use when female employees need it. In other words, Tina the sales manager isn’t going to be affixing her newborn to her tete on the sales floor or forcing her male co-workers to endure the act as they scarf down some pre-digested, high-fructose crap of a pocket variety in the break room. So much for bringing your child to work day when your boss is an infant himself.

Stemberg, who has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Romney’s campaign and SuperPAC, ironically enough has urged repealing healthcare to be the first on the next president’s “to-do” list. It’s ironic considering that his candidate of choice, Mitt Romney, wrote the blueprint for Obama’s health care reform and has been assaulted for it by every one of the 2012 republican candidates.
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The "Blunt Amendment" is dangerous!

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Following is a letter from Elizabeth Warren, candidate for U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.  Yes, this concerns one senator's attitude, Senator Scott Brown, but keep in mind that he is only one of the Republican senators who support the Blunt amendment!  Do you want one of your expensive lifesaving drugs or medical treatments to be suddenly deemed "morally objectionable" and payment for it denied?  It could happen if the Blunt amendment is passed!

According to the National Women's Law Center, "The Blunt Amendment allows employers and insurance companies to refuse coverage of any health care service required under the new health care law based on undefined 'religious beliefs or moral convictions.'"
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An Attack on All of Us

By Elizabeth Warren, February 16, 2012

Like many of you, I was shocked to learn that Senator Scott Brown is supporting the Blunt amendment - a dangerous measure being pushed by Senate Republicans that would allow insurance companies and employers to deny health care coverage to anyone for any reason, just when people need it most.

I was even more shocked Senator Brown emailed his supporters just a couple hours ago attacking me personally - and basically everyone who opposes this radical bill - claiming that I had assumed "the mantle of oppressor."

Let me be clear: I support President Obama's solution to make sure that religious institutions are not forced to cover contraception but that women can get the health care they need. This new bill that Scott Brown is supporting is not about religious institutions - it's about something very different. It would allow any employer or insurance company to refuse to cover any person for any treatment. Not only is it an attack on women's ability to get the vital health care we need, it is an attack on every one of us.

Think about what this will mean to you and your family. Are you pregnant? Elderly? Disabled? Do you have a chronic problem like diabetes or heart disease? Do you go for routine screening tests or rely on daily medications? Any medical test, treatment or prescription your boss or HMO doesn't want to pay for could suddenly become morally objectionable - and under this amendment, your employer or insurance company would not have pay for it. You would lose your health care coverage.

Is this Scott Brown's idea of standing by the middle class? Is this what he means when he says he wants to make this the "People's Seat?" He wants to help families by letting employers and insurance companies take away health care coverage?

This election is about whose side you're on.

The economics around health care are huge for families. Skyrocketing costs have been a big factor in the financial squeeze facing middle-class families.

Despite all that, Scott Brown wants to give even more power to corporations and insurance companies to deny basic health care coverage and undermine a fundamental principle of the Affordable Care Act - namely that everyone in this country deserves a basic standard of health care coverage.

Right now, while Scott Brown is fighting to eliminate health care reform, I'm fighting for families to keep that coverage. I'll fight for it now, and you can be sure I'll keep right on fighting for families in the Senate.

Massachusetts families deserve better - and they need health care. Stand with me and join this fight.

Thank you for being a part of this,

Elizabeth Warren

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Oh, come ON! Santorum, you're an ass!

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Santorum says Obama agenda not "based on Bible"
By Samuel P. Jacobs | Reuters – 8 hrs ago


Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum challenged President Barack Obama's Christian beliefs on Saturday, saying White House policies were motivated by a "different theology."

A devout Roman Catholic who has risen to the top of Republican polls in recent days, Santorum said the Obama administration had failed to prevent gas prices rising and was using "political science" in the debate about climate change.

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

When asked about the statement at a news conference later, Santorum said, "If the president says he's a Christian, he's a Christian."

But Santorum did not back down from the assertion that Obama's values run against those of Christianity.

"He is imposing his values on the Christian church. He can categorize those values anyway he wants. I'm not going to," Santorum told reporters.

A social conservative, Santorum is increasingly seen as a champion for evangelical Christians in fights with Democrats over contraception and gay marriage.

"This is just the latest low in a Republican primary campaign that has been fueled by distortions, ugliness, and searing pessimism and negativity - a stark contrast with the President who is focused everyday on creating jobs and restoring economic security for the middle class," said Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.

The campaign's response signaled a new respect for Santorum. Until this week, the Obama campaign appeared exclusively focused on Mitt Romney. Republicans are waging a state-by-state contest to pick a candidate to challenge Obama in November's election.

At a campaign appearance in Florida last month, Santorum declined to correct a voter who called Obama, a Christian, an "avowed Muslim."

Santorum told CNN after that incident, "I don't feel it's my obligation every time someone says something I don't agree with to contradict them, and the president's a big boy, he can defend himself."

[snipped]
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Romney’s analysis of bailouts-- given in bad faith

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"Natural order"?  Yeah, sure-- only if you're one of the fat cats (like Mitt)!
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You want to know something the federal government is good at?
By Rich Yeselson, February 18, 2012

Temporarily taking over dysfunctional, yet critical industries (or even entire industrial sectors) and improving their efficiency and bottom lines.

The other day Mitt Romney repeated his opposition to the restructuring of GM and Chrysler using public money.. As many have remarked, including former Washington Monthly super blogger, Steve Benen, this would almost sound sensible except for the fact that—hello!—there was a monster financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. The entire international credit system was frozen—there was no private capital interested and available for such a massive project. If Bush and Obama had followed Romney’s advice, we might have had a bonfire of the liquidators and stuffed the 10 cents on the dollar cars with five cent on the dollar books from Borders. It’s almost painful to also observe, as Benen does, that Romney’s analysis is transparently given in bad faith, so as to somehow mete out the pathological criticism of Obama that the party base requires even when his policies have succeeded.

But it’s even worse than that (isn’t always with Romney?). If you actually know the history of similar interventions in American history (including the Chrysler bailout of just thirty years earlier) as spelled out in this great Phillip Longman essay in this magazine from 2009 it turns out that the federal government has regularly salvaged companies vital to the nation’s economic ecology—and done so with great success.

Indeed, progressive fascist Woodrow Wilson even nationalized the entire national rail system during World War I, at a time when rail was, arguably, even more significant to the American economy (because it controlled almost all interstate commercial transportation) then the automobile is today. And Secretary of the Treasury, Williams Gibbs McAdoo, was appointed Director General of the nation’s railroads, which was like having the power of the God of Thunder, Mighty Thor, compared to the mere “Czars” and their little fiefdoms that pollute the Obama administration.

And McAdoo improved the efficiency of the railroad industry. Then, after the Armistice, Wilson turned around and gave to Congress the task of reconverting the railroads to private ownership, which was completed in just 18 months.

And years later, Mitt Romney was still permitted to pay under 14% of his income in federal taxes—and, thus, the natural order was restored.

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The times, they are a-changin'.....

http://www.people-press.org/2012/02/07/growing-public-support-for-same-sex-marriage/?src=prc-headline

ThurstonBlog is proud to announce...

The moderation team of ThurstonBlog proudly announces that there is a new playtoy for the children on this blog.  We recognized that those with a low IQ and no life whatsoever still need something to amuse themselves, so we created an appropriate button just for them.  Now the proof of the pudding will be whether they have the guts to use it!

Takes one to recognize one?

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Santorum to Mainline Protestants: You Are Satan’s Spawn
By Ed Kilgore, February 17, 2012

Kyle Mantyla of People for the American Way’s indispensable Right Wing Watch has come up with an audiotape of a Rick Santorum address to the students of the conservative Catholic Ave Maria University in Florida, delivered in 2008. It’s an altogether remarkable speech depicting Rick as a leader in a “spiritual war” against Satan for control of America. Much of its [sic] involves the usual right-wing stuff about the conquest of academia (outside bastions like Ave Maria) by the forces of moral relativism, but then there is this Santorum assessment of mainline Protestantism:

[O]nce the colleges fell and those who were being educated in our institutions, the next was the church. Now you’d say, ‘wait, the Catholic Church’? No. We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.

Now there is no uniform definition of “mainline Protestantism,” but most people would understand it as including the religious denominations affiliated with theWorld Council of Churches (which claim 560 million members), or in the U.S., with the National Council of Churches (about 45 million members). That’s a lot of church-going Christians. And while it’s not unusual to hear the occasional Protestant fundamentalist or Catholic traditionalist mock us mainliners as morally and theologically lax, excessively “secular,” too “liberal,” too friendly to feminists and sodomites and so on and so forth, you don’t hear many politicians publicly talk that way, much less suggest all these Christians are really in the grasp of Satan.

I’d say Rick needs to be held accountable for these remarks, unless he chooses to repudiate them. I hope the Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ, Congregationalists, etc., who encounter him on the campaign trail ask him about it. It’s not as though the man can claim he believes in a strict separation of religious and political viewpoints.

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To be a true "severe conservative" demands suspending disbelief

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Republicans: The Severe Conservatives
By Tina Dupuy, Feb. 15, 2012

Part of being a Democrat is acting like you’re losing even when you’re winning.  Part of being a Republican is acting like you’re winning even when you’re losing. The phrase “silent majority,” that brilliant bit of Nixonian rhetoric, is a way to augment Republican numbers and voices. “Nearly all people agree with me and they’re not only in my imagination … you just can’t hear them.”

Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) has an odd obsession with ill-fitting metaphors. He famously proclaimed his only reason to kill the Affordable Care Act was to annihilate the president politically. “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him,” said the tea-touting Senator. DeMint has a pre-existing condition; he thinks an enemy’s high casualty melee is comparable to the inability to pass a sensible, relatively mild, reform bill. Well, at least when he’s talking about Democrats. As the kick-off speaker at this year’s CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) DeMint used a somewhat softer analogy: football. Specifically these two teams DeMint sees have different goals. “We don’t have shared goals with the Democrats…Compromise works well in this world when you have shared goals.”

In football the teams are never expected to go in the same direction with the best interests of the fans in mind. Also in football, no team threatens to shut down the country as a strategy to win the game.

But maybe DeMint is correct: It’s really tough to compromise with a group that’s solitary goal is destroying you. Apparently taking the same oath to uphold the same Constitution, in the same country, drawing the same paycheck, in the same office building, in the same city and being of the same religion, sharing the same language and being mostly (85 percent) male, white and wealthy isn’t enough common ground for Republicans to even entertain working with those alien Democrats. It’s even tougher to compromise with a group who you could totally agree with but retroactively become against their own ideas once you propose them. Like say, the individual mandate every GOP candidate was for before he was against it. (Yes, except Ron Paul, keep your emails.)

Enter the “severely conservative.” This was the description Mitt Romney bestowed upon himself at this year’s CPAC. “I was a severely conservative Republican governor,” said the oft-frontrunner. “Severe” is a word normally associated with pain or really bad weather. With today’s GOP, not only do Republicans refuse to have the same goals — they deny all similarities to their enemy. “The President is not like us.” This is severely conservative.

In the same speech Romney promised to repeal ObamaCare even though it’s nearly identical to the plan Romney signed into law in Massachusetts, dubbed RomneyCare.

Let’s put it this way: If Romney “repealed and replaced” the “job-killing ObamaCare” with RomneyCare, no one would notice. If there were a taste test and you covered the labels — no one could tell the difference. You’d have a 50/50 chance of guessing which reform you were actually enjoying.

But to be a true severe conservative demands suspending disbelief. What must you be willing to accept? The economy buckling while a Republican was in the White House never happened. Bush never bailed out the banks or the auto industry. Deficits suddenly matter. Clint Eastwood is a hippie. And if the country continues to struggle it’ll be great for the GOP.

It reminds me of King Pyrrhus’ quote which sums up the term Pyrrhic victory: “If we are victorious in one more battle, we shall be utterly ruined.”

And well, these severe conservatives are acting like they’re winning.

That should tell us something.
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ThurstonBlog regrets to announce....

The moderation team of ThurstonBlog regretfully announces that there will no longer be a playtoy for the children on this blog.  We know that those of the low IQ and no life whatsoever needed something to amuse themselves, but we no longer have the time to fuck around.

Those who will be impacted by this decision can kiss my old white wrinkled ass.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, you are above the age of 6 and have an IQ above 6.

GOP lemmings going over the cliff

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So, local Repuglicans, which wing of the GOP do you belong to? "The Hope America Fails Republicans?" "The Blame Americans First Republicans?" Or "The Help China Win Republicans?"
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The GOP death march
By Brent Budowsky - 02/15/12

In a sign of how far the conservative movement has fallen, Mitt Romney, the Jay Gatsby of the 2012 campaign, told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) the magnificent lie that he was a “severely conservative” governor of Massachusetts. The CPAC delegates then voted for Romney as their presidential vision of modern conservatism.

Then, while the GOP that suffers a gender gap of intergalactic proportions became the first Republicans in history to seek a partisan religious war over women and contraceptives while opposing pay equity for women, with today’s Republicans being the first in GOP history to attack collective bargaining and seek mass firings of police and firefighters and teachers, Mitt Romney as Jay Gatsby adjourned to his latest home state of the month.

As President Obama has hit his stride since his Theodore Roosevelt speech in Kansas and continues on an upward curve, Romney has become downright incoherent, and the GOP nastiness is now turning against itself.

Mitt Romney claims credit in Michigan for opposing the highly successful auto industry recovery program of Obama, while quoting George Romney, who spent a lifetime standing for a nobler conviction politics than the shallow convenience politics of his ever-pandering son, and standing for a more American brand of business than what Rick Perry called vulture capitalism.

George Romney would have respected the Obama way to save the auto industry. Mitt Romney preferred more mass layoffs, more bankruptcies, more pain and more suffering to create more profits for the very few.

To fully understand the magnitude of what could be a GOP death march in 2012, consider the column Wednesday, on this page, by my colleague Dick Morris, who appears to almost hunger for America to fail, and appears almost desperate that data have begun to show America is coming back.

Morris’s column is a calling card for what I call the “Hope America Fails” wing of the Republican Party. They’re betting their fortune that the American economy fails, which is a perilous place for a great party to be. These Hope America Fails Republicans look mournful after good economic news and gleeful after bad economic news.

The words “death march” occur to me when the GOP is reduced to attacking Clint Eastwood when Eastwood is talking up America.

Students of history know that my line of argument closely tracks the line of argument from conservative icon Jeanne Kirkpatrick when she supported Ronald Reagan.

The Hope America Fails Republicans are joined by the Blame Americans First Republicans, who say the jobless want to be jobless and the poor want to be poor, and the Help China Win Republicans, who attack the president’s support for new energy while the Chinese government is mobilizing investments to dominate this business.

There is a great common denominator to what could become the GOP death march of 2012:

The Republicans have become so consumed and blinded by the intensity of their obsession against the president and their pure lust for power that they stand for nothing, and offer nothing to voters, except the intensity of their obsessions, ideologies, hatreds and dislikes.

GOP leaders have forgotten the lesson of Richard Nixon’s farewell address. Nixon warned that those consumed with animosity for their enemies will ultimately destroy themselves.

Republicans today have no George Romneys, Ronald Reagans, Jack Kemps or William Buckleys who promote conservative ideas with a politics of good will. They have few ideas. They offer no good will. Their champion’s own father would be appalled by his pandering to extremism and his Gatsby-like reinventions without any core of lasting values. He is opposed by second-rate pretenders who are neither true conservatives nor qualified for the presidency.

At least Gatsby’s reinventions were to pursue his timeless love for Daisy, while Romney’s are to pursue his next career move.

As Republicans now turn their venom against one another other, their death march advances and it is springtime for Obama.

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Aspirin as birth control? Gimme a break!!

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I'm with Andrea Mitchell, trying to catch my breath after this guy's absolutely ignorant statements!
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Santorum backer Foster Friess: In his day, ‘gals’ used aspirin between their knees for birth control
By Liz Goodwin | The Ticket – 2 hrs 30 mins ago

In an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC Thursday, billionaire Santorum backer Foster Friess said that debates over the candidate's personal objections to contraception are overblown, adding that, in his day, "gals" used aspirin as birth control.

In a rather strange joke, Friess said: "This contraception thing, my gosh it's so inexpensive. Back in my day they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives, the gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly." Friess is presumably saying all women who didn't want to become pregnant were abstinent and thus had no need for birth control.

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell stuttered for a moment before saying, "Excuse me, I'm just trying to catch my breath from that."

Earlier in his comments, Friess dismissed the debate over Santorum's personal objections to birth control as a waste of time, saying that America has bigger problems to face. But his colorful comments suggest birth control will not be leaving the headlines any time soon.

Conservative reporter Matt Lewis wrote yesterday that Santorum's earlier comments about birth control will make trouble for Santorum's campaign, and suggested that the candidate might need to have a "contraception speech" to clarify his position. "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," Santorum said in October about contraception, though he has also said that he supports individuals' choice to use it.

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"If you're rich, Republican is the only way to vote"

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Obama Aide's Chimichanga Comment was the Gospel Truth
By Andrew Riggio | Yahoo! Contributor Network – 4 hrs ago

COMMENTARY | Jim Messina is in hot water over tweeting The Washington Post's Dana Milbank's comment about chimichangas being, "the only thing republicans have left to offer Latinos," according to CNN. While the tweet and the comment have been called insensitive, there is a broader truth to be learned from it: The Republican Party might have virtually nothing left to offer anybody who isn't a rich, white, conservative, a corporation or a radical Christian group.

The Republican candidates across the board endorse policies that benefit people who are already so wealthy they are set for life thousands of times over. Browsing the campaign websites of the remaining candidates reveals they want to reduce or eliminate taxes that apply to the super-rich.

They want to reduce the top tax bracket, which only benefits wealthy people. They want to reduce or eliminate capital gains and dividend taxes, the main source of wealth for the richest Americans. They want to eliminate the inheritance tax so all the wealth hoarded by the rich stays in their families, ensuring they never need to support the nation that provided them with opportunity. None of those really help the poor, but if you're rich, Republican is the only way to vote.

Republicans also want to reduce or eliminate corporate taxes. They say this will create jobs, but Americans know it isn't so. Reducing corporate expenses only means they fatten up their bottom lines. They pass that money on to shareholders rather than start incessant hiring waves. Reduced taxes mean more money to wealthy investors, nothing more. If you run a big corporation, donating to Republicans is the smart call.

Republican politicians also want to impose their Christian religious morality on everyone. They want to overturn Roe v. Wade. They want to stop equal marriage rights for homosexuals. They want prayer in schools and evolution out of the science classroom. Best of all, they don't care how wrong that may be since they feel they're acting on behalf of a deity. If you're a televangelist or a fringe group of wackos like the Westboro Baptist Church you're probably praying for a republican win.

As far as the right wing is concerned, though, regular people of every ethnic background shouldn't even get that chimichanga.

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Since when did Santorum care about harm coming to women?

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Yeah, and his stance on birth control is harmful to his political aspirations.
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Santorum: Birth control ‘harmful to women’

By Jennifer Rubin, Feb. 15, 2012

Yesterday I speculated on some of the reasons Rick Santorum has problems with women voters. This interview from 2006 sure isn’t going to help

For starters, does he realize that married women (men too!) use birth control? The impression that Santorum finds the prevalent practice of birth control “harmful to women” is, frankly, mind-numbing. If he meant to focus on teen sexual promiscuity, he surely could have, and thereby might have sounded less out of touch.

Now, he qualifies his religious views by saying he doesn’t vote against contraception “because it’s not the taking of a human life” (in other contexts he has emphasized that as a legal matter he has no problem with contraception). But how does that square with his professed belief that a candidate’s values are essential to understanding and predicting his behavior? Perhaps that’s an abortion-only rule. (And really, where are George Stephanopoulos’s questions on this topic when you need them?)

In any event, this sort of thing undermines Santorum’s electability argument. (Current polling match-ups between President Obama and each of the two frontrunners, before the GOP has a nominee and before Santorum’s record is out there, are virtually useless.) This is how, in part, he lost Pennsylvania — by appearing extreme and schoolmarmish, too far to the right of average voters in a purple state. If he is the nominee in 2012, he might get some blue-collar fellows, but what about those women in Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc.? And what about more secularized suburban communities? Fuggedaboutit.

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The 9th Circuit ruling

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Another one that deserves to be preserved for posterity:
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CherokeeNative

Those of you who are following this issue here in Washington might find it interesting to read the 9th Circuit' ruling in Perry v. Brown, http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1593339.html?DCMP=NWL-pro_family   It is interesting that many if not all of the reasons argued here by readers were arguments made in this case and the Court addressed each of them:

The 9th Circuit in holding that Prop. 8 violated the Equal Protection Clause stated: 

Absent any legitimate purpose for Proposition 8, we are left
with “the inevitable inference that the disadvantage imposed is born of
animosity toward,” or, as is more likely with respect to Californians who voted
for the Proposition, mere disapproval of, “the class of persons affected.”
Romer, 517 U.S. at 634. We do not mean to suggest that Proposition 8 is the
result of ill will on the part of the voters of California. “Prejudice, we are
beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone.” Bd. of
Trustees of Univ. of Ala. v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356, 374 (2001) (Kennedy, J.,
concurring). Disapproval may also be the product of longstanding, sincerely
held private beliefs. Still, while “[p]rivate biases may be outside the reach
of the law, the law cannot, directly or indirectly, give them effect.” Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429, 433 (1984). Ultimately, the “inevitable inference” we must draw in this circumstance is not one of ill will, but rather one of disapproval of gays and lesbians as a class. “[L]aws
singling out a certain class of citizens for disfavored legal status or general
hardships are rare.” Romer, 517 U.S. at 633. Under Romer, we must infer from
Proposition 8's effect on California law that the People took away from gays
and lesbians the right to use the official designation of ‘marriage’—and the
societal status that accompanies it—because they disapproved of these
individuals as a class and did not wish them to receive the same official
recognition and societal approval of their committed relationships that the
State makes available to opposite-sex couples. 

It will not do to say that Proposition 8 was intended only to disapprove of
same-sex marriage, rather than to pass judgment on same-sex couples as people.
Just as the criminalization of “homosexual conduct ․ is an invitation to
subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the
private spheres,”
Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 575, so too does the elimination of the right to use the
official designation of ‘marriage’ for the relationships of committed same-sex
couples send a message that gays and lesbians are of lesser worth as a
class—that they enjoy a lesser societal status. Indeed, because laws affecting
gays and lesbians' rights often regulate individual conduct—what sexual
activity people may undertake in the privacy of their own homes, or who is
permitted to marry whom—as much as they regulate status, the Supreme Court has
“declined to distinguish between status and conduct in [the] context” of sexual
orientation. Christian Legal Soc'y v. Martinez, 130 S.Ct. 2971, 2990 (2010). By
withdrawing the availability of the recognized designation of ‘marriage,’
Proposition 8 enacts nothing more or less than a judgment about the worth and
dignity of gays and lesbians as a class.

Just as a “desire to harm ․ cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest,”
Moreno, 413 U.S. at 534, neither can a more basic disapproval of a class of
people. Romer, 517 U.S. at 633–35. “The issue is whether the majority may use
the power of the State to enforce these views on the whole society” through a
law that abridges minority individuals' rights. Lawrence, 539 U.S. at 571. It
may not. Without more, “[m]oral disapproval of [a] group, like a bare desire to
harm the group, is an interest that is insufficient to satisfy rational basis
review under the Equal Protection Clause.” Id. at 582 (O'Connor, J.,
concurring). Society does sometimes draw classifications that likely are rooted
partially in disapproval, such as a law that grants educational benefits to
veterans but denies them to conscientious objectors who engaged in alternative
civilian service. See Johnson, 415 U.S. at 362–64. Those classifications will
not be invalidated so long as they can be justified by reference to some
independent purpose they serve; in Johnson, they could provide an incentive for
military service and direct assistance to those who needed the most help in
readjusting to post-war life, see id. at 376–83. Enacting a rule into law based
solely on the disapproval of a group, however, “is a classification of persons
undertaken for its own sake, something the Equal Protection Clause does not
permit.” Romer, 517 U.S. at 635. Like Amendment 2, Proposition 8 is a
classification of gays and lesbians undertaken for its own sake.

The “inference” that Proposition 8 was born of disapproval of gays and
lesbians is heightened by evidence of the context in which the measure was
passed.26
The district court found that “[t]he campaign to pass Proposition 8 relied on
stereotypes to show that same-sex relationships are inferior to opposite-sex
relationships.” Perry IV, 704 F.Supp.2d at 990. Television and print
advertisements “focused on ․ the concern that people of faith and religious groups
would somehow be harmed by the recognition of gay marriage” and “conveyed a
message that gay people and relationships are inferior, that homosexuality is
undesirable and that children need to be protected from exposure to gay people
and their relationships.” Id. These messages were not crafted accidentally. The
strategists responsible for the campaign in favor of Proposition 8 later
explained their approach: “ ‘[T]here were limits to the degree of tolerance
Californians would afford the gay community. They would entertain allowing gay
marriage, but not if doing so had significant implications for the rest of
society,’ “ such as what children would be taught in school. Id. at 988
(quoting Frank Schubert & Jeff Flint, Passing Prop 8, Politics, Feb. 2009,
at 45–47). Nor were these messages new; for decades, ballot measures regarding
homosexuality have been presented to voters in terms designed to appeal to
stereotypes of gays and lesbians as predators, threats to children, and
practitioners of a deviant “lifestyle.” See Br. Amicus Curiae of Constitutional
Law Professors at 2–8. The messages presented here mimic those presented to
Colorado voters in support of Amendment 2, such as, “Homosexual indoctrination
in the schools? IT'S HAPPENING IN COLORADO!” Colorado for Family Values, Equal
Rights—Not Special Rights, at 2 (1992), reprinted in Robert Nagel, Playing
Defense, 6 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 167, 193 (1997).

When directly enacted legislation “singl[es] out a certain class of citizens
for disfavored legal status,” we must “insist on knowing the relation between
the classification adopted and the object to be attained,” so that we may
ensure that the law exists “to further a proper legislative end” rather than
“to make the[ ] [class] unequal to everyone else.” Romer, 517 U.S. at 632–33,
635. Proposition 8 fails this test. Its sole purpose and effect is “to
eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California”—to dishonor a
disfavored group by taking away the official designation of approval of their
committed relationships and the accompanying societal status, and nothing more.
Voter Information Guide at 54. “It is at once too narrow and too broad,” for it
changes the law far too little to have any of the effects it purportedly was
intended to yield, yet it dramatically reduces the societal standing of gays
and lesbians and diminishes their dignity. Romer, 517 U.S. at 633. Proposition
8 did not result from a legitimate “Kulturkampf” concerning the structure of
families in California, because it had no effect on family structure, but in
order to strike it down, we need not go so far as to find that it was enacted
in “a fit of spite.” Id. at 636 (Scalia, J., dissenting). It is enough to say
that Proposition 8 operates with no apparent purpose but to impose on gays and
lesbians, through the public law, a majority's private disapproval of them and
their relationships, by taking away from them the official designation of
‘marriage,’ with its societally recognized status. Proposition 8 therefore
violates the Equal Protection Clause.

http://www.theolympian.com/2012/02/08/1982400/house-sends-gay-marriage-to-governor.html#storylink=cpy

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