Crist, moderate Republican, endorses Obama!

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Former Fla. governor Charlie Crist endorses Obama
by Vanessa Williams, August 26, 2012

Former Republican Florida governor Charlie Crist, writing in Sunday’s Tampa Bay Times, endorsed President Obama, calling him “the right leader for our state and the nation.”

Crist lost a bid for the Senate two years ago to tea party favorite Marco Rubio in a bitter battle that divided the state’s Republican Party. The moderate Republican ran as an independent in the general election after polls showed him losing the GOP primary to Rubio.  

In his endorsement, Crist continued to criticize what he says is a Republican Party “pitched so far to the extreme right on issues important to women, immigrants, seniors and students that they’ve proven incapable of governing for the people.”

Crist also brought up last week’s GOP crisis over comments made by Senate candidate Todd Akin (Mo.) about rape and abortion: “Look no further than the inclusion of the Akin amendment in the Republican Party platform, which bans abortion, even for rape victims.”

 A draft of the platform calls for a constitutional amendment protecting human life, but includes no specific language about exceptions for victims of rape.

Read Crist’s full op-ed piece here.

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The "purple" South

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'Solid South' no longer just all-red or all-blue
By Bill Barrow, August 20, 2012

The "Solid South" was a political fact, benefiting Democrats for generations and then Republicans, with Bible Belt and racial politics ruling the day.

But demographic changes and recent election results reveal a more nuanced landscape now as the two major parties prepare for their national conventions. Republicans will convene Aug. 27 in Florida, well established as a melting-pot battleground state, to nominate Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Democrats will toast President Barack Obama the following week in North Carolina, the perfect example of a Southern electorate not so easily pigeon-holed.

Obama won both states and Virginia four years ago, propelled by young voters, nonwhites and suburban independents. Virginia, long a two-party state in down-ballot races, had not sided with Democrats on the presidency since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Jimmy Carter in 1976 had been the last Democratic nominee to win North Carolina. Each state is in play again, with Romney needing to reclaim Florida and at least one of the others to reach the White House.

Southern strategists and politicians say results will turn again this year on which party and candidates understand changing demographics and voter priorities.

"The transformation of the South seems to never end," said Mo Elleithee, a Democratic campaign consultant with deep experience in Virginia and federal elections. "Now it's beginning to emerge, at least parts of it, as solidly purple."

New citizens, birth rates, and migration patterns of native-born Americans make high-growth areas less white, less conservative or both. There is increasing urban concentration in many areas. African-American families are moving back to the South after generations in Chicago, New York or other northern cities.

Young religious voters are less likely than their parents to align with Republicans on abortion and same-sex unions. Younger voters generally are up for grabs on fundamental questions like the role of the federal government in the marketplace.

"I wouldn't say the South is any more ideologically rigid than anywhere else in the country. Certainly, it's complicated," said former Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee. Bredesen, a Democrat, won twice while Republican George W. Bush occupied the White House. Before that, Bredesen was a two-term mayor of Nashville.

Republican Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a former national party chairman and two-term governor, said the demographics are important but can be overemphasized. He acknowledged GOP concerns that Hispanics will vote Obama in proportions Romney cannot overcome "if the election for them is only about immigration." But, he added, "Never mind that their unemployment is so much higher than the national average. ... If the election for them is about the economy, we can do well."

Virginia grew from 7 million people to 8 million from 2000 to 2010, according to the census. North Carolina went from 8 million to 9.5 million. Both states were 65 percent white, a drop from 72 percent in each state. Native North Carolinians made up 58.6 percent of the population, a proportion that topped 70 percent two decades ago. Virginia is now half transient or immigrant.

"The North Carolina that Sen. (Jesse) Helms ran in was certainly different than today," said GOP campaign strategist Brian Nick, referring to the cantankerous five-term Republican senator. Nick worked for Helms' successor, Republican Elizabeth Dole.

Similar growth, migration and race trends are evident in Tennessee and Georgia, though they haven't yielded the same party outcomes. In those states, white voters still break strongly forRepublicans.

Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia said "it would be dishonest" to argue race is not a prominent consideration in historical party identification, but he said race and demographics are not a primary driver in the state today. Isakson said it was new residents in metro Atlanta who helped the GOP take near total control of state government, with their votes based more on unseating entrenched powers than anything to do with social conservatism or old alliances based on race.

For decades after post-Civil War Reconstruction, the Lincoln Republicans were unwelcome in the South. Democratic loyalty intensified under Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. But the civil rights movement marked a split. "Dixiecrats" walked out of the 1948 nominating convention. In 1964, after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, Republican nominee Barry Goldwater's margins in a handful of Deep South states looked like FDR's three decades before.

From then until 2008, only Carter of Georgia and Bill Clinton of Arkansas managed Democratic victories in states that once belonged to the Confederacy. Both are native Southerners. Bredesen, a New York native, said he was called a "carpetbagger" in his earliest campaigns.

Heading into November, the former Confederate states have just five Democrats in the Senate and only a handful of white Democrats in the House. The GOP has a majority in one or both legislative chambers in all of those states except Arkansas.

There are outliers.

Kentucky re-elected a Democratic governor last year after sending tea party favorite Rand Paul to the Senate. While Republican presidential nominees rolled in North Carolina, Democrats Jim Hunt and Mike Easley were successful governors. Then, after Obama won the state, Republicans in their next cycle took both legislative chambers. Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue isn't seeking re-election and Democrats could lose half of their U.S. House seats, including two vacated by incumbents.

In Virginia, counties outside metropolitan Washington, D.C., and along the Atlantic coast helped elect a succession of Democratic governors and U.S. senator and swung to Obama in 2008. Then they went solidly for Republican Bob McDonnell in the 2009 governor's race.

The lesson, Nick and Elleithee said, is to know your audience.

Nick, the North Carolina Republican, said Democrats like Hunt and Easley talked effectively about education and maintained good relationships with the state's banking, technology and research sectors. Now, he said, Republicans are learning to talk about "kitchen-table issues" and economic security, rather than leaning on social issues.

Elleithee, the Democratic consultant on Virginia races, noted the influence of federal contracting in driving the economy of northern Virginia, where votes often settle the statewide result. Debates over spending and the deficit play differently than in other parts of the country. "People hear a 'cuts only' approach and think, 'that's my job' or 'that's my neighbor's job,'" he said.

Bredesen, along with Rep. Heath Shuler, one of the North Carolina Democrats who isn't running again, said even with advantageous demographic shifts, their party should still try to reclaim native white Southerners.

Shuler, a member of the Blue Dog caucus, said Southerners aren't as divided as it sometimes appears. He lamented a hyper-partisan atmosphere in Congress that he said spills into party primaries that, in turn, yield extreme options for a general election. Given much of the region's conservative bent, that dynamic has helped Republicans, he reasoned.

Nationally, Bredesen said, Democrats lost their connection with many small-town and rural whites because of a confluence of issues beyond race: Vietnam War protests, gun control, abortion, Supreme Court appointments, gay marriage. "I think the extent to which the national party has made a crusade out of some of these issues has driven people away," he said. To connect with distinct urban, suburban and rural populations, Bredesen said, parties must "appreciate the whole diversity of experiences Americans have in this country."

Barbour said Republicans should win over the growing nonwhite population based on policy. "The change in the South has been evolutionary, and I expect it to continue," he said. "But people in demographic groups evolve, too. Besides African-Americans, who are pretty firm (forDemocrats), most other groups ebb and flow."

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Wingers' obsessions

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Mitt Romney and the Temple of Womb
By Karl Frisch, August 22, 2012

Republicans today are absolutely obsessed with micromanaging women’s — cover your eyes my right-wing friends — vaginas.

Had I said that word aloud on the floor of the Michigan state legislature, I would likely have been banned from speaking any further by the Republican Majority just as it did to Rep. Lisa Brown in June when she dared to utter the ominous “v” word.

Daryl Cagle / NBCNews.com 

While the GOP may cringe at the word’s use, it certainly has no trouble crafting public policy that would tie women’s lady bits up with red tape.

Sure, Missouri’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin made waves this week when he absurdly claimed women are somehow biologically equipped to block pregnancies following instances of what he deemed “legitimate rape,” but how far off are his archaic views on women from that of Mitt Romney and the rest of the grand old man’s party?

Not very.

In Congress, Akin got an assist with his bizarre machinations concerning rape from none other than Romney’s Vice Presidential running mate Paul Ryan who co-sponsored legislation with Akin to redefine the definition of rape. Apparently “no means no” was not clear enough.

If Republicans, including Romney, really wanted Akin to abandon his Senate bid as they now insist, should they not be telling Ryan to pack it in and move back to Janesville too?

Truth be told, if the GOP were that consistent, you would be hard pressed to find a Republican on the ballot this fall, especially in the race for the White House.

Both Romney and Ryan support so-called “personhood” amendments that define human life as beginning when a human egg is fertilized. Many on both sides of the abortion debate have roundly criticized such amendments because they could outlaw various forms of birth control, open doctors up to criminal prosecution if an embryo does not survive in vitro fertilization, and subject women who suffer miscarriages to criminal investigations to make certain a “human life” was not murdered.

In Mitt Romney’s America, women would not even be able to turn to birth control to prevent unplanned pregnancies. Not only does Romney believe that states should be able to outlaw all forms of birth control, but he and his choice for Vice President would cut all government funding for Planned Parenthood, which spent more than one third of its $11.4 million budget on contraception in 2009 and just three percent on abortions.

It seems the Republican standard bearer would prefer women take the advice of Foster Friess, his multi-millionaire super-PAC patron, who said women should use “aspirin for contraceptives” by holding the little pill “between their knees.”

If past is prologue, women who do decide to start a family would not fare much better with Romney in the oval office.

As Governor of Massachusetts, Romney vetoed funding and asked for deep cuts to child care centers, cut funding that supported mothers at-risk of violence in the home, andproposed deep cuts to programs that assist new teenage moms.

When it comes to supporting the rights of women, about the only thing team Romney is willing to offer up are shallow promises to create jobs. With women earning 77 cents on the dollar for the same work as men, you would think Romney would have selected a running mate who supported the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which gave working women additional legal routes to receive equal pay. Paul Ryan opposed the common sense, bi-partisan measure.

Romney and Ryan have taken to describing their ticket as “America’s Comeback Team.” In a certain sense, I suppose they are right. The [sic] will come back for women’s choice, women’s health, and women’s pay, and they will not stop until all of the progress made in the fight for women’s equality over the past fifty years has been erased.
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Akin: the legitimate embarrassment

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Akin Apparently Not Too Legit, Too Legit To Quit
By Michael Kindt, August 21, 2012

According to a number of influential conservative voices, Representative Akin plans to legitimately drop out of the Missouri Senate race.

Akin, who is running for Senate in Missouri and who recently said that legitimate rape could not result in pregnancy, will legitimately withdraw from the race tomorrow. This is according to several legitimate big and small wigs, including CNN’s Erick Erickson and Richard Grenell, Romney’s former foreign policy spokes-guy.

The announcement is planned for today.

Shortly after stating that pregnancy could not result during a legitimate rape, Akin went on Mike Huckabee’s right wing radio propaganda show to legitimately apologize.

“I’ve really made a couple of serious mistakes here that were just wrong, and I need to apologize for those,” he said. He then rambled on, saying, “Well, I understand from watching other people who’ve made mistakes that, you know, nobody wants to own your mistake. And I don’t think anybody should. And that’s why I’m apologizing for what I did wrong. And so, on the other hand, there are certain basic principles that we believe in, and that I’m just completely committed to, and that is the fact that people and that life are tremendously valuable. That’s what’s made America such unique country — it’s because we believe that life is something that comes from our Creator. We’re made in his image, and all across America you see Americans that have a respect for life. It’s not a political debate, it’s not words, it’s how they live their lives,” which if you read through it a second time, turns out to be completely meaningless.

At one time, Akin was legitimately beating his Democrat opponent, Senator McCaskill, in the polls. His rape comment, however, shot that to shit. Akin was once part of the Republican plan to recapture the Senate, but no more. Apparently, he has become a legitimate embarrassment by stating what the radical (and controlling) wing of the Republican Party legitimately believes.

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Extrication from evangelical Christianity

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From Bible-Belt Pastor to Atheist Leader

By ROBERT F. WORTH, Published: August 22, 2012

Late one night in early May 2011, a preacher named Jerry DeWitt was lying in bed in DeRidder, La., when his phone rang. He picked it up and heard an anguished, familiar voice. It was Natosha Davis, a friend and parishioner in a church where DeWitt had preached for more than five years. Her brother had been in a bad motorcycle accident, she said, and he might not survive.

DeWitt knew what she wanted: for him to pray for her brother. It was the kind of call he had taken many times during his 25 years in the ministry. But now he found that the words would not come. He comforted her as best he could, but he couldn’t bring himself to invoke God’s help. Sensing her disappointment, he put the phone down and found himself sobbing. He was 41 and had spent almost his entire life in or near DeRidder, a small town in the heart of the Bible Belt. All he had ever wanted was to be a comfort and a support to the people he grew up with, but now a divide stood between him and them. He could no longer hide his disbelief. He walked into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. “I remember thinking, Who on this planet has any idea what I’m going through?” DeWitt told me.

As his wife slept, he fumbled through the darkness for his laptop. After a few quick searches with the terms “pastor” and “atheist,” he discovered that a cottage industry of atheist outreach groups had grown up in the past few years. Within days, he joined an online network called the Clergy Project, created for clerics who no longer believe in God and want to communicate anonymously through a secure Web site.

DeWitt began e-mailing with dozens of fellow apostates every day and eventually joined another new network called Recovering From Religion, intended to help people extricate themselves from evangelical Christianity. Atheists, he discovered, were starting to reach out to one another not just in the urban North but also in states across the South and West, in the kinds of places­ DeWitt had spent much of his career as a traveling preacher. After a few months he took to the road again, this time as the newest of a new breed of celebrity, the atheist convert. They have their own apostles (Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens) and their own language, a glossary borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous, the Bible and gay liberation (you always “come out” of the atheist closet).

DeWitt quickly repurposed his preacherly techniques, sharing his reverse-conversion story and his thoughts on “the five stages of disbelief” to packed crowds at “Freethinker” gatherings across the Bible Belt, in places like Little Rock and Houston. As his profile rose in the movement this spring, his Facebook and Twitter accounts began to fill with earnest requests for guidance from religious doubters in small towns across America. “It’s sort of a brand-new industry,” DeWitt told me. “There isn’t a lot of money in it, but there’s a lot of momentum.”

Not long ago, the atheist movement was the preserve of a few eccentric gadflies like Madalyn Murray O’Hair, whose endless lawsuits helped earn her the title “the most hated woman in America.” But over the past decade it has matured into something much larger and less cranky. In March of this year, some 20,000 people marched through a cold drizzle at the “Reason Rally” in Washington, billed as a political debut for the movement. A string of best-selling atheist polemics by the “four horsemen” — Hitchens and Dawkins, as well as Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett — has provided new intellectual fuel. Secular-themed organizations and clubs have begun to permeate small-town America and college campuses, helping to foot the bill for bus and billboard ad campaigns with messages like “Are You Good Without God? Millions Are.”

The reasons for this secular revival are varied, but it seems clear that the Internet has helped, and many younger atheists cite the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as a watershed moment of disgust with religious zealotry in any form. It is hard to say how many people are involved; avowed atheists are still a tiny sliver of the population. But people with no religious affiliation are the country’s fastest-growing religious category. When asked about religious affiliation in a Pew poll published this summer, nearly 20 percent of Americans chose “none,” the highest number the center has recorded. Many of those people would not call themselves atheists; “agnostic,” which technically refers to people who believe that the existence of a higher being can’t be known by the human mind, remains the safer option. The godless are now younger and more diverse than in the past, with blacks and Hispanics — once vanishingly rare — starting to appear in the ranks of national groups like the United Coalition of Reason and the Secular Student Alliance.

The movement has also begun cultivating a new breed of guru in men like DeWitt and Nate Phelps, the son of Fred Phelps, the leader of Westboro Baptist Church, which pickets military funerals and gay-pride events with signs declaring “God Hates Fags.” Nate Phelps, a big, barrel-chested man who delivers fierce rebuttals of his father’s theology and narrates the agonies of his fundamentalist upbringing, has become a star speaker at atheist rallies and gay-pride events around the country. At the Reason Rally, crowds cheered as he declared that the Sept. 11 attacks played a critical role in blasting away his lingering belief in any sort of deity.

Because they started out as fervent Christians, unlike Dawkins and Hitchens and company, Phelps and DeWitt are seen as heroes within the movement. They tend to live and work in the country’s most Bible-soaked places. “I think what’s happening is that nontheists are realizing we can’t just leave this cause to Ivy Leaguers and intellectuals,” DeWitt told me. “We’ve got to convey the secular worldview in a more emotional way.”

At the same time, DeWitt is something of a reality check for many atheists, whose principles rarely cost them more than the price of “The God Delusion” in paperback. DeWitt refuses to leave DeRidder, a place where religion, politics and family pride are indivisible. Six months after he was “outed” as an atheist he lost his job and his wife — both, he says, as a direct consequence. Only a handful of his 100-plus relatives from DeRidder still speak to him. When I visited him, in late June, his house was in foreclosure, and he was contemplating moving into his 2007 Chrysler PT Cruiser. This is the kind of environment where godlessness remains a real struggle and raises questions that could ramify across the rest of the country. Is the “new atheism” part of a much broader secularizing trend, like the one that started emptying out the churches in European towns and villages a century ago? Or is it just a ticket out of town?

[snipped]

But DeWitt also hurled himself into his new role as a faith healer in reverse. He became the first “graduate” of the Clergy Project, discarding his anonymity and giving the clandestine preachers’ group its first dash of publicity. It was formed in early 2011 with a few dozen members, mostly recruited through Dan Barker, a former pastor who is co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and through Linda LaScola, who in 2010 co-conducted a study of nonbelieving pastors with Daniel Dennett, the atheist philosopher. The project now has more than 300 members, with about 80 applicants awaiting clearance (the group is very careful about admissions, to secure the members’ privacy).

DeWitt also became the executive director of Recovering From Religion, formed in 2009 by Darrel Ray, a Kansas-based atheist proselytizer. The group grew quickly under DeWitt’s leadership and now includes at least 100 local chapters scattered across the country, each one typically with 10 to 12 participants. Like other public figures in the movement, DeWitt also serves as a one-man clearinghouse for religious doubters via Facebook and e-mail. During the four days I spent with him in DeRidder, he was almost constantly checking his cellphone and tapping out messages.

There is more involved in this work than sympathy. The transition away from faith may start with an intellectual epiphany, but it runs through a difficult reinterpretation of your own past. For believers, this often involves what DeWitt calls a “hook,” or a miraculous story that helps anchor your faith. He gave me an example: he was born again in Jimmy Swaggart’s church thanks to his former elementary-school teacher, who persuaded him to come along with her to Baton Rouge. He later discovered that his teacher almost died while she was being born, and that she had emerged safely from the womb only after a preacher from a neighboring town was roused from sleep to offer a blessing in the delivery room. That preacher was DeWitt’s paternal grandfather. This coincidence had seemed providential to DeWitt, a sign that he was meant to be a preacher himself.

“This story has kept you feeling that God has a destiny for you,” DeWitt said. “So now how do you reconcile that? How do you make sense of your life? It’s not easy.”

[snipped]

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GOP: strict anti-abortion plank-- "Legitimate" or not??

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Republican Party approves strict anti-abortion platform, earning rebuke from Scott Brown
By Glen Johnson and Noah Bierman, August 21, 2012

The platform committee for next week’s Republican National Convention today approved a strict anti-abortion plank that prompted a rebuke from Senator Scott Brown as the GOP tries to contain fallout from Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin’s comment about rape and abortion.

Brown, a Massachusetts Republican locked in a close reelection campaign with Democrat Elizabeth Warren and eager to demonstrate his political independence, sent a letter to party Chairman Reince Priebus urging a more accommodating position.

“I believe this is a mistake because it fails to recognize the views of pro-choice Republicans like myself,” the senator wrote to Priebus. “Even while I am pro-choice, I respect those who have a different opinion on this very difficult and sensitive issue. Our party platform should make the same concession to those of us who believe in a woman’s right to choose.”

Warren warned anew today that Brown’s reelection could turn the Senate over to Republicans who oppose abortion rights, seek to defund Planned Parenthood, and want to repeal President Obama’s health care law.

“He’s trying to advance a group that would have a profound effect on women,” Warren said during an event at the Omni Parker House on Beacon Hill. “Republicans are laying out their larger agenda and women must pay attention.”

The 110-member platform panel, meeting today in Tampa, Fla., passed a so-called Human Life Amendment that calls for a ban on abortion, without mention of the more common exceptions for victims of rape or incest.

“Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed,” said platform language obtained by CNN. “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”

It is similar to language included in the GOP platform in both 2004 and 2008 but it has become even more politically loaded since Akin, a US House member from Missouri, was criticized for the answer he gave when asked if abortion were legitimate in cases of rape.

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down,” Akin said during a television interview aired on Sunday.

The differentiation between forms of rape prompted a swift rebuke not just from his Democratic opponent, Senator Claire McCaskill, but presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan. Romney initially urged Akin to spend 24 hours reconsidering his continued candidacy.

In a statement today, Romney said he now agreed with former Missouri Senators John Ashcroft, Kit Bond, John Danforth, and Jim Talent that Akin should quit the race.

“As I said [Monday], Todd Akin’s comments were offensive and wrong and he should very seriously consider what course would be in the best interest of our country. Today, his fellow Missourians urged him to step aside, and I think he should accept their counsel and exit the Senate race,” Romney said.

Brown was among the first Republicans to call for Akin to drop out of the race, doing so in a statement on Monday morning.

Brown supports abortion rights, while Romney and Ryan oppose them. Romney would make an exception for rape and incest, but Ryan would do so only when the health of a mother would be jeopardized by a continued pregnancy.

The reelection committee for Obama, an abortion rights supporter, pounced on the platform vote.

“Several Romney supporters and advisers were present and stood silently while this vote took place. This should come as no surprise, as Mitt Romney supported this exact language in the 2004 and 2008 Republican platforms and Paul Ryan fought to ban abortion even in cases of rape,” Obama spokeswoman Lis Smith said in a statement.

“Women across this country should take note of the Republican Party’s position, and not trust any of the false promises made by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan on the campaign trail,” Smith added.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, chairman of the RNC’s platform committee and an abortion opponent, thanked the committee for “affirming our respect for human life” today before moving onto other platform issues.

The platform will come up for a vote of the convention delegates on Monday. ..................................................................................................................................

Ryan: "I did not request any stimulus money"

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The Paul Ryan Story Everyone Missed
Jason Stanford, August 20, 2012

Potomac Fever doesn’t just affect the politicians in Washington. The journalists get infected, too. When reporters get jobs inside the Beltway, they start valuing process over substance and sometimes miss the real story entirely. D.C. reporters are much more likely to write about what someone said about what is happening than what is actually happening. The Sunday morning political talk shows are veritable quarantine zones for what I’m talking about.

The latest example of this frustrating malady is the kerfuffle over Paul Ryan both opposing the $787 billion stimulus bill as a “wasteful spending spree” and then repeatedly asking the Obama administration to send some of that sweet stimulus money to a few of his constituents. It is a pretty run-of-the-mill example of political hypocrisy, even for someone like Ryan who casts himself in the bronze of ideological courage.

This already came up in 2010 when Ryan denied to a Boston radio host that he would “write to the government to ask them to send us money” after he opposed the stimulus bill. “I did not request any stimulus money,” he added, telling a lie on par with Sarah Palin’s boast that she said “Thanks but no thanks’ on that bridge to nowhere.”

When this came up last week in Ohio, Ryan went once more to the well of mendacity, first denying that he had requested stimulus funds from the Obama administration for constituents and then adding ludicrously, “I don’t recall.” Ryan tried to inject some unreasonable doubt by blaming his staff, but the liberal blog Daily Kos pointed out that he had personally signed the letters he sent to the Energy Secretary.

“After having these letters called to my attention I checked into them, and they were treated as constituent service requests in the same way matters involving Social Security or Veterans Affairs are handled,” Ryan said. “This is why I didn’t recall the letters earlier. But they should have been handled differently, and I take responsibility for that.”

Unlike his lies about requesting stimulus funds, saying, “I take full responsibility” after blaming staff is a Washington lie. The words contradicted the facts but lacked the intent to deceive. In this context, it’s almost an admission of guilt, and it served to put the press hounds off the scent.

So what did we learn after Ryan lied in 2010 and essentially repeated the lie in 2012? To paraphrase Captain Renault, should we be shocked, shocked to find that hypocrisy is going on in Congress? As fun as it is to watch a politician squirm in the spotlight, I would argue that the journalists forgot their Prime Directive: Follow the money. Therein lies the treasure of meaning in politics, and we even have a map leading right to it. They’re called campaign finance reports, and anyone can look them up at the Federal Election Commission’s website. Even you. In fact, especially you.

While the Washington press corps was documenting hypocrisy, it ignored the possibility that Ryan was guilty of far worse: corruption, albeit the legal variety.

Three of the letters Ryan wrote to the Energy Secretary sought money for the Energy Center of Wisconsin, a nonprofit that promotes more efficient energy use of energy. Wisconsin utilities belong to the Energy Center, including Alliant Energy and Xcel Energy. Together, Alliant and Xcel’s political action committees have donated $32,900 to Congressman Ryan since 1998, including $10,000 after he wrote those letters. And you don’t need to be Woodward and Bernstein to think that’s probably why he wrote the letters in the first place and why he lied about it later.

Thanks to Ryan’s three letters, the Energy Center received a $20 million grant from the Energy Department, funded by the stimulus bill he voted against. And that’s the story they missed while the Beltway gang was more focused on what Ryan said than what he did, and why. ..................................................................................................................................

New Chemical Element Discovered

by William DuBovitz The heaviest element known to science was recently discovered by investigators at a major U.S. research university. The element, tentatively named administratium, has no protons or electrons and thus has an atomic number of 0. However, it does have one neutron, 125 assistant neutrons, 75 vice neutrons, and 111 assistant vice neutrons, which gives it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by a force that involves the continuous exchange of meson-like particles called morons. Since it has no electrons, administratium is inert. However, it can be detected chemically as it impedes every reaction it comes in contact with. According to the discoverers, a minute amount of administratium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete when it normally would have occurred in less than a second. Administratium has a normal half-life of three years, at which time it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which assistant neutrons, vice neutrons, and assistant vice neutrons exchange places. Some studies have shown that the atomic mass actually increases after each reorganization. Research at other laboratories indicates that administratium occurs naturally in the atmosphere. It tends to concentrate at certain points such as government agencies, large corporations, and universities. It can usually be found in the newest, best appointed, and best maintained buildings. Scientists point out that administratium is known to be toxic at any level of concentration and can easily destroy any productive reaction where it is allowed to accumulate. Attempts are being made to determine how administratium can be controlled to prevent irreversible damage, but results to date are not promising.

Republican lies and damned lies

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MediScare: No, “ObamaCare” Doesn’t Cut Medicare (Updated)
by David Pinar on Aug. 15, 2012

I’m sorry, but do Republican politicians have no shame? They’ve been running with the bold faced lie that “ObamaCare”, aka the Affordable Care Act, “cuts Medicare” since the day it was signed into law. Jesse Kelly pasted signs that “Gabby voted to cut $500 Billion Medicare” on his campaign signs in 2010. What do you do when a lie doesn’t stick? Tell a bigger lie. Now that Mitt Romney has selected Paul Ryan as his running mate Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” Budget Plan that converts Medicare into a voucher system that will result in much high medical cost for future retires has become a campaign issue. So Romney figures the best defense is a good offense and has dusted off the old “Obamacare cuts Medicare” lie and upped the ante – now he claims the Affordable Care Act “cuts Medicare” by an absurd $700 Billion.

Whatever amount you want to use, the Affordable Care Act doesn’t “cut Medicare” – it saves Medicare by reducing expenses. Let SeniorCorps.org explain:

Despite the doom and gloom tactics of some members of congress and talking heads, the cuts will come from two prime sources; (1) eliminating Medicare fraud, and (2) a reduction in the amount of payments that are paid into Medicare Advantage programs that are offered by private insurance companies.

Medicare fraud cost the program an estimated $60 Billion every year. By beefing up the enforcement of fraud detection, the Affordable Care Act enables the Medicare Administration to significantly reduce this waste. As for Medicare Advantage program, that was a program passed by a Republican Congress under the theory that private business can always do something better than government. Enron anyone? Medicare Advantage benefits typically cost much more than benefits directly from Medicare. As my blogging colleague Denise in her Medicare and More blog explains so well in her Paul Ryan’s Medicare Plan article today, Medicare administrative costs average 3-4%, while private insurance companies’ administrative costs average around 15%. One reason is that the Medicare Administration doesn’t pay hundreds of millions in salaries & benefits to CEOs like the big insurance companies do. And private insurance companies don’t like to lose money, so they got the Republicans to include a “risk adjustment” factor into the Medicare Advantage program that guarantees the insurance companies will always get paid more than their actual cost. It doesn’t matter if their higher costs are from bloated administrative costs or actual benefits paid out to enrollees, they always get paid more. The Affordable Care Act remedies that by reducing and capping payments to insurance companies offering Medicare Advantage policies. The leaner, more efficient companies will do just fine and continue to offer policies, while the companies with bloated costs will abandon the market. Capitalism at its finest. And seniors don’t lose a single benefit – if they don’t fine find a Medicare Advantage policy that meets their needs they simply re-enroll to get those benefits directly from Medicare.

Another big “cuts Medicare” lie about the Affordable Care Act is that it makes drastic cuts in payments to doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers. Nope, that’s a law passed by the Republican Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1997. It went into effect in 2002, but so far Congress has constantly voted to defer those payment reductions. If there are any reductions in payments to healthcare providers, it will be from an Act of Congress, not the Affordable Care Act.

No, the Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”, if you must) doesn’t cut Medicare – it saves Medicare expenses by eliminating fraud and billions in payments to inefficient insurance companies. But “RyanCare” clearly does – it raises the age for eligibility to age 67, and converts Medicare to a government subsidy to private insurance companies. And if the fixed voucher payments to insurance companies doesn’t cover the cost of private insurance, future retirees will be faced with making up the difference out of their own pocket, or do without.

UPDATE: Thanks to a link in a comment from my fellow Tucson Citizen blogger Fort Buckley, I’m updating my blog with some excellent information from a blog at the WashingtonPost.com by Sarah Kliff:

On July 24, the Congressional Budget Office sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, detailing the budget impact of repealing the Affordable Care Act. If Congress overturned the law, “spending for Medicare would increase by an estimated $716 billion over that 2013–2022 period.” As to how the Affordable Care Act actually gets to $716 billion in Medicare savings, that’s a bit more complicated. The majority of the cuts, as you can see in this chart below, come from reductions in how much Medicare reimburses hospitals and private health insurance companies.

I can’t include the chart in my blog as it’s copyrighted material. You can see it at the link to Sarah Kliff’s article, or I’ll explain it: It’ s pie chart showing that 34.8% of the $716 Billion in Medicare savings over the next 10 years comes from reduced reimbursements to hospitals. The hospital companies agreed to it as they expect to have many more paying customers (as opposed to the uninsured) from the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of medical insurance coverage. About 30.2% of savings comes from reduced payments to insurance companies in the Medicare Advantage program. Ms. Kliff explains how that works:

Medicare Advantage plans allows seniors to join a private health insurance, with the federal government footing the bill. The whole idea of Medicare Advantage was to drive down the cost of health insurance for the elderly as private insurance companies competing for seniors’ business.

That’s not what happened. By 2010, the average Medicare Advantage per-patient cost was 117 percent of regular fee-for-service. The Affordable Care Act gives those private plans a haircut and tethers reimbursement levels to the quality of care administered, and patient satisfaction.

Reducing the government subsidy to insurance companies to provide benefits that cost more than if Medicare itself provided them, and ties reimbursement rates to the quality of care provided and patient satisfaction. Sounds like a darn good thing to me. Finally, around 35% of Medicare savings come from a number of small changes. Reductions to Medicare’s Disproportionate Share Payments — extra funds made to hospitals for services made to  uninsured patients. Lower payments to home health providers make up another 8.8 percent. About a dozen cuts like this make up the 35% in savings. Ms. Kliff concludes with this point:

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. And, as Ezra pointed out earlier today, the Ryan budget would keep these cuts in place.

The bold emphasis is mine. The Affordable Care Act, “ObamaCare” if you must, doesn’t cut back on any benefits for Medicare. It saves over $716 Billion in Medicare expenses over the next 10 years. Repealing it – which Mitt Romney and pretty much anyone with an “R” after their name has vowed to do – would add over $716 Billion to the deficit.

Thanks, Ft. Buckley, for helping me make my point.

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“It’s not the voting that’s Democracy, it’s the counting”

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Target Election Fraud, Not ‘Voter Fraud’
By Carl Gibson, August 10, 2012

Fact: There are two things that occur more often than the right-wing myth of “voter fraud”: UFO sightings, and election-rigging. Statistically, you’re 3,615 times more likely to report seeing an alien than you are of seeing voter fraud. And we watched the right wing nakedly steal three elections in recent memory.

The entire reason we invaded Iraq, lost thousands of American troops and massacred hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, was because machines in Volusia County, Florida tallied NEGATIVE 16,022 votes for Al Gore when his name was checked at the ballot box in 2000. Despite the clear controversy, Bush won Florida, where his brother was governor and a presidential election was ultimately decided with a 5-4 vote in the Supreme Court.

During the 2004 election, where Ohio was considered one of the most crucial battleground states, an executive for Diebold, a private company that sells voting machines, penned a fundraising letter that promised to deliver votes to Bush in Ohio in 2004. Bush ended up winning that state, and winning re-election. Diebold continues to sell voting machines unabated.

David Prosser, an arch-conservative justice on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, won his 2011 election against Joanne Kloppenburg, ultimately because Waukesha County Clerk Cathy Nicklaus, who used to work for the GOP caucus that Prosser oversaw, “miscounted” 14,315 votes after Kloppenburg emerged with a slim lead. Nicklaus’ “error” gave her former boss a 7,500-vote margin of victory, which almost exactly matched the amount of votes needed to avoid a state-funded vote recount. Nicklaus apparently forgot to click “save” on a Microsoft Access template. Convenient, no?

It’s actually really easy to rig a Diebold voting machine. In fact, a Department of Energy security assessment team figured out a way to do it via remote control. All it takes is $10 to $26 in parts, an 8th grade science education, and a key that can access a rudimentary lock for any Diebold Accuvote machine, which is easily available at any office supply store and can be copied without much of a hassle. Up to 30% of Americans will be using these easily-hacked machines on election day. And that DoE security assessment team said the fact that so many of these machines can be hacked so easily without leaving a trace is a national security issue. So why are Republicans so hell-bent on stopping the myth of “voter fraud” instead of the actual national security issue of election fraud?

It could be because Republicans just don’t want black people to vote. Jim Greer, Florida’s former GOP chairman, admitted to state party officials having regular meetings about “keeping blacks from voting.” Florida, a contentious battleground state, is one of several states that passed a law requiring voters to have a photo ID to go vote. A similar voter ID law was passed in Pennsylvania, another battleground state. Pennsylvania’s house majority leader openly admitted it was “gonna allow Governor Romney to win” the state in November. Wisconsin Republican State Senator Glenn Grothman said the same thing not long ago (Also, dressing as a banker and sarcastically heckling Grothman as he walks into the state capitol should be a national pastime).

There are over 250,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania whose right to vote may be infringed because of new voter ID laws. Some were born to a midwife in a house instead of a hospital, and never had a birth certificate, which is a requirement to get a photo ID. Some are veterans who only have their veterans’ ID, which isn’t sufficient enough to get a photo ID. Some live miles away from the nearest ID issuing station, don’t own a car and have no public transportation in their communities. Others work 9 to 5 jobs, and can’t afford to take off work to get a photo ID during business hours out of fear of losing their jobs in this troubled economy. The voter ID laws have stipulations that make the state provide a free photo ID for registered voters who don’t have one, but usually nothing gets done.

Since the Republican Party is largely made up of old, wealthy white men, and seeing as the Republican party has gone out of their way to hate on and disenfranchise everyone who isn’t a wealthy white man, like women, students, black people, immigrants, the GLBT community, and the working poor, they figure it’s an easier solution to simply keep the aforementioned groups from voting through laws that undermine their right to vote. It makes sense, considering that the voter ID laws passed in the last year were based on the ALEC model Voter ID Act. After all, ALEC co-founder and conservative operative (re: scumbag) Paul Weyrich famously said, “Our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up as the voting populace goes down.

If we’re to have democracy again in this country, the first step is obviously to repeal any law aimed at disenfranchising the voting rights of American citizens, especially registered voters. And we have to strike down the voter fraud myth every time we hear it- even the right’s loudest voices are silenced when asked to provide a specific example of voter fraud. But we can’t stop the fight until unaccountable private corporate entities like Diebold stop marketing easily-manipulated machines to our states, and all Secretaries of State have mandatory paper trails for all ballots in all voting precincts. Like Tom Stoppard wrote in his play Jumpers, “it’s not the voting that’s Democracy, it’s the counting.”
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The Romney pattern of dealing with things

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Mitt Romney: The Aristocrat
By Cliff Schecter, August 13, 2012

You may know of the infamous comedian’s insider joke—or perhaps even saw the film about it—called The Aristocrats.

For comedians, it is a yarn that each time it’s spun is supposed to become more obscene than the previous telling. In other words, it’s kind of like watching real-life aristocrat Mitt Romney campaign.

Seriously, I didn’t think I’d be writing about the GOP presidential nominee this much. But it’s really difficult not to look again and again at the car-wreck of self-inflicted damage by someone whose behavior lends credence to alien-possession sci-fi. Even more painful, or comical, depending upon your perspective, is how he thrashes around trying to deal with this fact.

As renowned leadership expert Kathleen Schaefer put it to me, “the problem with Romney is that he keeps trying to pretend he’s something he’s not and it keeps tripping him up.” Of course, this begs the question: does he have any other choice?

Take Rafalca—the dancing horse—who’s owned by the Romneys, and was a competitor in the Olympics (but didn’t qualify for any medals).  When Romney was asked about his gamboling steed, he said it was [his wife] “Ann’s thing” and he didn’t even know when the horse was performing.

Really?

So this man who has been happily married for around 40 years expects anyone to believe he really wasn’t aware of the show time for his wife’s dressage horse? Of course he knew, but this fits the Romney pattern of dealing with these things.

It comes to our attention—and his—that in some way he’s different than what we might call most humans. In this case, it was his owning an Oldenburg warmblood that provided him with a $77,000 write-off during the only year of tax returns that Romney’s deigned to share with us. Maybe he should have thought, back when he was deciding he would grace the campaign trail with his cybernetic flair, that Rafalca deserved some time off from the Olympics in 2012—you know, to prance around the fields surrounding one of Mitt’s estates, chow down on some serious oats and play with Tagg and the boys.

For some unknown reason, it didn’t ever cross Mitt’s mind that owning an Olympic-bound mare would set him apart from his fellow Americans. So, he found himself in the situation of having to explain it last week, and answered with what can only be called transparent dishonesty.

This is far from the only awkward situation created by Mitt’s wealth, and lack of understanding of how to handle his different strokes. The whole tax fiasco has been yet another case study.

Again, if you knew you were running for president, wouldn’t you perhaps spend at least five years before that run making your taxes look as clean as a whistle? I’m saying no Grand Caymans, no Switzerland, no stashing bullion in the cargo bay of Curiosity to reach the low-tax surface of Mars (OK, one of these might be a exaggeration).

Not Romney, though. He apparently had to use every maneuver known to man and man’s most deceitful accountant to ensure he paid low-to-no taxes. So how has he handled the fallout? Stonewalling, uncomfortable denials, and lashing out at those who attack him for his hidden returns, such as Senator Harry Reid—thereby keeping the whole story in the news that much longer (genius!).

He’s even got porn star Jenna Jameson saying she is going to vote for him because “when you’re rich, you want a Republican in office.” (Of course, other porn actors interviewed byThe Daily Beast are pro-Obama, showing that even in the world of x-rated entertainment, Mitt can find a way to divide the top 1 percent from everyone else).

In Schaefer’s view, the way Romney should handle his background would be not only to accept it, but talk about his success in terms of how it could help regular American voters. If he had self-awareness and self-confidence, I think this would definitely be the way to go.

But the-guy-who-saved-the-Salt-Lake-Olympics-in-a-single-bound seems to lack the understanding that telling audiences you like to fire people and jet-ski photo ops are not recommended for a presidential candidate running during a recession (or like, ever). And he just makes it worse by clinging to the kinds of falsehoods that would make David Barton blush, such as his time at Bain Capital having had anything to do with creating jobs.

So we should probably expect more of The Aristocrat, and just enjoy it for the sheer spectacle. Anything less, as Mitt Romney would surely tell us, would be “poppycock.”

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I'm the same old guy that I used to be.....

I haven't changed at all....

Same old walk, same old talk that would run you up the wall.

Same old face, same old smile, same old baby blues....

I'm still doin' the rhumba, baby, I'm still the guy for you.

Ryan: lowest reviews of any VP candidate since Quayle

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Paul Ryan Receives The Worst Initial Reaction To A VP Nomination Since Dan Quayle
By Brett LoGiurato, August 13, 2012

It's only a one-day poll, but Paul Ryan received the lowest reviews of any vice presidential candidate since Dan Quayle in 1988 in a new USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday. 

The poll found that 39 percent of respondents think Ryan is a good or excellent choice for Romney, compared with 42 percent that think he's a "fair" or "poor" choice. 

That's the worst mark since Quayle was George H.W. Bush's nomination in 1988, according to Gallup.

Here's a look at the past:

Gallup

It should be noted, of course, that the Bush-Quayle ticket won in 1988. And a high mark on these polls — like in the case of John Edwards in 2004 — is not a precursor to victory. 

The Ryan nomination has generated a flurry of conservative enthusiasm over the last two days. Romney pollster Neil Newhouse told USA Today that he expects that to expand as more of the electorate gets to know the relatively obscure Ryan. 

"All these numbers indicate is the simple fact that Congressman Paul Ryan was not a nationally known figure prior to being named as Gov. Romney's vice-presidential pick," Newhouse said. "Congressman Ryan's selection reinforces the seriousness of the issues that will be debated in this election and President Obama's failure to get Americans back to work and his inability to strengthen the middle class."

The poll also found that Ryan boosts enthusiasm for Romney by about the same mark as Sarah Palin did for John McCain in 2008 — 17 percent say they're now more likely to vote for Romney, including 36 percent of Republicans. 

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Comparing Obama's and Romney's tax plans

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The Difference Between Obama And Mitt Romney's Tax Plans In Three Charts
By Brett LoGiurato, August 1, 2012
Back in March, when Mitt Romney had all but secured the Republican nomination, The Washington Post's Ezra Klein compared the tax plans of Romney and President Barack Obama with one chart. He used data from the Tax Policy Center, the same think tank that is out with a more comprehensive analysis of Romney's tax plan today.

Washington Post/Ezra Klein

Klein's chart measures the percent change in effective tax rates in different percentile groups of earners. The clear difference here is that Obama's plan hikes taxes on the top 5 percent — especially the top 0.1 and 1 percent — of earners, leaving the other 95 percent virtually unchanged. Romney's plan cut taxes on the top 5 percent by at least 6 percent.

Forbes' Naomi Robbins modified Klein's chart a couple weeks ago to better explain its proportional affect on taxpayers. The chart has "equally spaced intervals on the horizontal axis" that represent "equal percentages of taxpayers."

Forbes/Naomi Robbins

Finally, here's the chart from the Brookings Institute/Tax Policy Center's report today, which breaks down the effect on the tax rates after the more comprehensive analysis of Romney's plan to implement a 20 percent across-the-board cut in marginal tax rates. 

This chart measures the percent change in after-tax income. It shows a steeper increase than originally predicted on the 95 percent. Those making more than $200,000 — or the top 5 percent of earners — would proportionally benefit from Romney's tax plan. Meanwhile, those making less than $200,000 would see after-tax income slashed by about 1.2 percent. 

Brookings Institute/Tax Policy Center

“It is not mathematically possible to design a revenue-neutral plan that preserves current incentives for savings and investment and that does not result in a net tax cut for high-income taxpayers and a net tax increase for lower- and/or middle-income taxpayers,” the authors of the Brookings/TPC study write in their conclusion.

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