It appears that Ted Nugent is one sick SOB who likes underage girls.... and the Republicans like HIM!!

...................................................................................................................................................................
Ted Nugent's Jailbait Problem
By Larry Womack, February 23, 2014

Another campaign appearance, another Ted Nugent controversy. Mainstream Republicans and everyone to their left are appalled. But no one is surprised. Nugent's incendiary rhetoric (read: infamous idiocy) is, at this point, expected and tiresome. It has become difficult to muster the outrage.

More unfortunate is that these incidents have had the unintended side effect of protecting Nugent from a far bigger character issue. In fact, in the case of Nugent, we have even come to see alleged child sexual abuse as some sort of eccentricity or harmless vice. Can you imagine anyone else who had been accused of having sex with a 12-year-old, written a song about raping a 13-year-old and adopted a 17-year-old so that he could have sex with her going on to campaign alongside all the most conservative "family values" candidates?

When Ted Nugent was 32 years old, he released the song "Jailbait." Here's a taste of the lyrics (written by him):

Well, I don't care if you're just 13
You look too good to be true
I just know that you're probably clean...
Jailbait you look fine, fine, fine...
It's quite alright, I asked your mama
Wait a minute, officer
Don't put those handcuffs on me
Put them on her, and I'll share her with you

The albums' next track is titled "I Am a Predator." I'm not kidding.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not above a really sick joke. In fact, I love them. I even think that pedophile joke in Eternal Sunshine is kinda funny and it's supposed to be bad.

But this one isn't funny -- especially coming from Nugent.

Two years before recording "Jailbait," Ted Nugent had the novel idea of becoming legal guardian to a 17-year-old girl, so that they could have sex without, you know, her parents having legal recourse. They acquiesced. "I guess they figured better Ted Nugent than some drug-infested punk in high school," he told VH1, years later. In the same documentary, he claimed to have had several relationships with young girls, and seems to brag about gaining their parents' approval, too. (Though he didn't go so far as to adopt any of them.)

That sounds... an awful lot like that line in "Jailbait." You know, the one just before he urges the cop to handcuff the girl so they can both rape her. Wrap your mind around that for a moment: the man wrote, recorded and released a semi-autobiographical pedophile joke. And then campaigned with Rick Perry.

Okay, okay. Seventeen is not 13. I'm not going to pretend that it is, or that an adult relationship with a 17-year-old is proof that someone is a hebephile who will have sex with a 13-year-old. It isn't a good sign, but interest in post-pubescent girls is hardly an indicator that someone likes to have sex with pre-pubescent girls. Let's face it: all of your favorite rock stars from days gone by were having sex with underage groupies. And almost every man who isn't a rock star has at least unwittingly fantasized about doing it. (The most common word in porn titles is "teen," and if you think that all of those teens are really of legal age, you are incredibly naïve.)

Nugent, for his part, described himself to VH1 as "girl addicted." "Recently," his wife writes on her website, "we have discovered four more adult children Ted had from previous relationships."

"Previous relationships." Not, "his long-time hobby of siring groupie bastards." That wouldn't be very "family values."

But we have pretty good reason, even beyond the autobiographical details, to believe that the choice of 13 in "Jailbait" is not entirely comedic exaggeration. For example, Courtney Love claims to have performed oral sex on Nugent when she was 12 and a half. When pressed, an uncharacteristically somber Love elaborated, "I didn't have breasts yet... it's sick." This would have been around the time of Nugent's 29th birthday.

I encourage anyone to listen to that (NSFW) interview. It isn't leveled as some sort of angry allegation. Love comes across as fairly reluctant to reveal her age at the time of the incident. In fact, she seems to feel shame about it. (Which, of course, she should not.)

To be clear: Nugent says that he does not remember the incident with Love. He is not guilty just because he is accused. That is an incredibly serious allegation and, given that recollections are clouded by a haze of three decades and god knows how many drugs, it is to be taken with a grain of salt.

Still, he doesn't say, "Because I wouldn't have had sex with a 12-year-old." He just denies recalling it. That's very disturbing. I've met 30-year-olds who could pass for 15 and 15-year-olds who could pass for 30, but I have never met a 12-year-old girl who could pass for 18. Puberty is pretty key in that regard. Rather than deny that he would have done it, Ted Nugent wrote a semi-autobiographical novelty song about how he'd have liked to. He doesn't seem to see it as a very serious allegation.

Imagine for a moment that Ted Nugent is not widely known as king of the inbred. Imagine, instead, that he is an attorney in Manhattan. Or Bono. Or that, instead of Courtney Love, he was accused of receiving oral sex from a 12-year-old boy. And then recording a song about how he's really into that. After adopting a 17-year-old so he could have sex with her.

Would governors and congressmen hit the campaign trail with that guy? Would they send their children to his "Kamp for Kids" -- and professional snipers? What would they say about almost any other man? They wouldn't call him a creep or a redneck. They'd call him a pedophile.

Instead, Nugent is embraced as some sort of down-home firebrand. He's a redneck rock star; sex with kids is just part of the package! Sarah Palin says that if a candidate "is good enough for Ted Nugent, he is good enough for me!" Congressmen invite him to the State of the Union. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is attacked (in a fairly convoluted way) for associating with Ronan Farrow.

How can anyone be seen on a campaign stage with a man with this sort of personal history? What is wrong with these people?

So the next time Ted Nugent says something horrible (and there will be a next time,) I encourage you to stay focused on the big picture. You know, the one of that little girl in handcuffs.
...................................................................................................................................................................

Texas Republicans have a wild and wacko extremely right-wing base, composed mostly of aging white males. Sooner or later they will all age out.

...................................................................................................................................................................
Perry on Politics: As Texas turns
By James M. Perry, February 23, 2014

Republican politics in Texas, conservative for many years, now seems to be largely wacko.

Take the case of Greg Abbott, the state's 50th attorney general and his party's leading candidate to succeed Rick Scott as governor. Abbott has been traveling around the state in the company of Tim [sic] Nugent, the rock 'n roll guitarist (his hits include "Cat Scratch Fever" and "Wango Tango"). This is the same Ted Nugent who, in his most infamous line, said, "I have obviously failed to prod, if not shame, enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel... work his way into the top office of authority in the United States."

"Subhuman mongrel?" I'm far from the first to note that's  the kind of language Hitler's Nazis used to justify their extermination of millions of Jews.

Nugent has apologized, more or less, for his vile language, and Abbott and other Republicans have insisted they'd never say such things. Abbott's excuse, apparently, is that Nugent appeals to the party's base. He brings lots of voters to Abbott's campaign appearances.
                             
This isn't how conservatism started in Texas. Its founding father was a good-natured investment broker named Peter O'Donnell, from Dallas. It was O'Donnell who called a press conference at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington in April of 1963 to announce he and others had founded a Draft Goldwater Committee intent on electing Barry Goldwater president and creating a smaller government and lower taxes. O'Donnell went on to establish with his wife a philanthropic foundation  (the fifth largest in Texas) that has contributed millions of dollars to improve higher education in the state. I  doubt O'Donnell would recognize these people today as genuine conservatives. 

All this hullabaloo over Nugent's role in the Abbott campaign is probably a godsend for his likely Democratic opponent, Wendy Davis, the state senator who staged an 11-hour filibuster against an anti-abortion bill. She made the evening news everywhere and sent millions of people twittering. The pink sneakers were inspirational.

It won't be easy, though. No Democrat has won statewide office (and Texas has 27 of them) since 1994. Democratic hopes in Texas grow out of the state's demographics -- the state is slowly turning Hispanic (Obama won 71% of the Hispanic vote in 2012), and in time it's almost certain to switch from red to blue. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky told a room full of Lone Star Republicans recently that Texas "will be a Democratic state in ten years if you don't change."

Abbott, under normal circumstances, might be running a fairly traditional campaign for a right-wing Republican these days. He might be noting that as attorney general he sued the Federal government 30 times. "I go into the office, I sue the government. and I go home." He might be talking about the state's economy, a job-making machine. He might be talking about how much he admires guns. Even better, he might be reminding voters how he won court approval for a statue of the Ten Commandments to be displayed in front of the state capitol in Austin.  The Texas press doesn't want to hear any of that. They want to talk to the elusive Mr. Abbott and ask him about Ted Nugent.                          

His own story is intriguing. Thirty years ago, when he was 26, a falling tree paralyzed him. He's been in a wheel chair ever since. He sometimes jokes about it. "Some politicians talk about having a steel spine," he says. "I actually have one." (He sued the tree's owner and collected $10 million.)  
                                                                   
The problem for rational Republicans here in Texas and elsewhere is this wild and wacko base, composed mostly of aging white males. If politicians keep bringing in the likes of Ted Nugent to appease them, there's a sliver of a chance the turnaround in Texas might come sooner than most people expect. The lady in the pink sneakers is counting on it.
...................................................................................................................................................................

"... roadkill at every barbecue"? Sheesh.....

...................................................................................................................................................................
Texas political candidate vows to fight for right to roadkill
February 23, 2014

A chicken in every pot? Tink Nathan wants roadkill at every barbecue.

According to a NBC news report, Nathan is a Republican who is running for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives. On his campaign website, Nathan states he wants to revamp the Texas Wildlife Code to allow roadkill to be used for human consumption. The practice was banned in 2007. Nathan, an avid hunter and NRA member, is founder of the Tink’s deer scent company and operates a TV production company that sponsors hunting enthusiast shows.

In addition to fighting for citizens’ rights to roadkill, Nathan supports a state ban on gay marriage, wants to strengthen border security and is in favor of a limited government.

The Tink Nathan campaign is based out of Center Point, a community northwest of San Antonio. His campaign website motto is, “Don’t send another lawyer to Austin.”
...................................................................................................................................................................

"While Republicans benefit significantly from the Koch/AFP money, it comes with a price tag -- getting pinned with supporting a radical agenda ..."

...................................................................................................................................................................
The Democrats' Koch Problem
By Doug Thornell, February 22, 2014

With less than seven months until the midterm elections, the biggest challenge Democrats face isn't the Affordable Care Act or the President's popularity, it's the millions of dollars being spent by the Koch brothers' financed groups, most notably Americans for Prosperity. If Democrats don't take them on directly and raise the curtain on their agenda, we are going to be in deep trouble in November.

First the facts -- no single group on either side of the political spectrum has spent more this cycle to impact competitive senate races. AFP has spent close to $13.5 million in television attack ads across eight states. To put that in perspective, that sum is about three times the amount the nearest Democratic-aligned group is spending. In North Carolina alone, AFP has spent over $7 million clobbering Senator Kay Hagan. That is more than double the combined amount being spent by Democratic-aligned groups. And keep in mind, this is February!

AFP has made it crystal clear that the spigot isn't going to be turned off anytime soon. Top Republican strategists are emboldened by AFP's massive spending and point to them as one of the leading reasons the GOP has a small advantage heading into the midterms. And in contrast with other groups, like the Senate Conservatives Fund or the Heritage Foundation, Republicans are embracing AFP's agenda, not running from it.

"AFP is playing a critical role in the Republicans' efforts to win back the Senate because not only are they hammering Democratic Senators early with very effective ads, but unlike groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund, they are taking the fight squarely to the Democrats and not engaging in costly, intra-party warfare," said a top GOP senate strategist. "AFP isn't interested in raising money for themselves or expanding their own profile -- they just want to advance conservative principles by helping Republicans win in November and they've given our party a much-needed boost in that effort."

So where does that leave Democrats? The good news is that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), their candidates and incumbents are excelling in the areas they control. On almost every metric, the DSCC and Democratic candidates have outperformed their Republican opponents. So far this cycle, Democratic candidates have raised a whopping $130,000,000 to the GOP cumulative total of $80,000,000. The DSCC has outraised the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) by nearly $16 million. Democratic challengers are proving they are no joke -- in Georgia, for example, businesswoman Michelle Nunn has outraised the entire GOP field.

If it were just the DSCC versus the NRSC and Democratic candidates versus Republican candidates, Democrats would be fine. But it's not. And quite frankly, Democrats' chief opponent for some time now hasn't been the GOP committees, it's the shadow groups that have grown in influence since the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.

So how do Democrats go on offense when they are getting vastly outspent? In 2012, AFP spent over $30 million attacking President Obama. The President's campaign responded aggressively and tied Mitt Romney to the Koch's Big Oil agenda and was aggressive about getting out the President's record on energy and other issues. That same cycle, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) made a similar decision to run against the outside money. She was being outspent, at one point, by a margin of 3 to1. She went on the air to directly respond to the attacks. She fought back with a tough TV ad highlighting AFP's agenda, including privatizing Medicare. One of her advisors told me that this strategy, "wasn't a silver bullet, [but] it did allow us to tread water instead of watching our internals decline."

This cycle, in Alaska, AFP was running ads slamming Senator Mark Begich. When the Alaska Democratic Party highlighted the news that a Koch Industries-owned company fired 80 workers and shut down a local plant, AFP subsequently pulled their ads. In Louisiana, where AFP has run more than $2.3 million in ads against Senator Mary Landrieu, her campaign has turned the tables on the group by highlighting the group's unpopular position of opposing delaying premium increases to the flood insurance program.

While Republicans benefit significantly from the Koch/AFP money, it comes with a price tag -- getting pinned with supporting a radical agenda which includes privatizing social security, opposing workers rights, protecting polluters and shutting down American plants and shipping jobs to China.

I agree with Sen. McCaskill's advisor: this strategy isn't a silver bullet. But taking on AFP and other outside groups by tying their unpopular agenda to the Republicans they are propping up has worked in the past. And it is much better than the alternative which is laying on the ground and getting kicked for the next six months.

Of course, it wouldn't hurt to have a few deep pocket progressive donors come forward with tens of millions dollars to help balance out the TV ad wars. And for the groups on the left focusing on 2016, don't think the Koch brothers and AFP won't be spending even more then. It's worth it for you to spend some money now discrediting their agenda so we aren't playing catch up in the future.
...................................................................................................................................................................

Speaking of clowns..... why do the conservatives bother with Ted Nugent?

...................................................................................................................................................................
Even Conservatives Can’t Figure Out Why Their Politicians Are Hanging Out with Ted Nugent
By Evan McMurry, February 22, 2014

Why Ted Nugent is a cause celebre for the right wing is not hard to fathom: he has the sub-militia bona fides that appeal to an out-of-power party enamored with revolutionary rhetoric and independence measured by the acre, and his bellicosity can be mistaken by sympathetic parties for fearlessness. The question raised repeatedly this week — “Why does Ted Nugent get so much coverage?” — kinda self-answering.

The more intriguing question, just now starting to be voiced on the right, is why are viable Republican politicians allowing him to get this exposure? This is what conservative columnist Richard Greene would very much like to know:

Since Abbott is ahead in the polls and already assured of getting the votes from Texans who like the plainspoken country music rocker, you have to wonder why he took the risk that landed him in hot water last week. 

Most speculate that the attorney general’s strategy was to pump up his core supporters. I’m uncertain if that outcome has been achieved, but it sure seems to have handed Davis a welcome opportunity to rally hers.

Both good points. The Wendy Davis campaign has been on a months-long slide that has belied its candidate’s inexperience; now, suddenly, it is Abbott who appears the novice, as he struggles to articulate a response to Nugent’s comments while giving Davis’ defense a much-needed breather. “Abbott’s campaign stumble put Davis’ tortured explanations of how she has defined, redefined and defined again her positions on critical issues in the rear-view mirror this past week,” Greene writes.

This is doubly befuddling as nobody who would be swayed by Nugent would have voted for Davis in a million years; his presence likely didn’t earn Abbott a single vote. Abbott had everything to gain from holding back and letting the Davis campaign defeat itself. Ted Nugent is the opposite of holding back.

Matt Lewis is equally perplexed at the Daily Caller. Lewis understands why conservati[v]es are rallying around Nugent amidst the controversy — he diagnoses an almost pathological tendency on the right to unite with the enemy’s enemy — but he doesn’t sound at all sure what Nugent was doing there in the first place.

Lewis, and Alyssa Rosenberg with him (how often do those two agree?), sees the right as being starstruck, a problem when your political party attracts so few stars: “Nugent is beloved partly because conservatives are so desperate for celebrities that they are (ironically) enamored of them,” Lewis writes.

That’s all well and good when Nugent is your prank guest to the State of the Union. Perhaps Abbott felt he was so far ahead in the polls that he could afford a prank. It’s doubtful his campaign feels that way now. And it’s all the more likely that when a politician next suggests inviting Ted Nugent to a campaign stop, her campaign manager will take a deep breath and ask, “Why?”
...................................................................................................................................................................

"... when you endorse the clown, you become part of the circus by default."

...................................................................................................................................................................
Do conservatives keep “falling in love with bad boys” in politics?
By Jazz Shaw, February 22, 2014

This is essentially the question that Matt Lewis is asking this weekend in his Daily Caller article, The enemy of my enemy is my friend: Why conservatives are always defending the indefensible. In it, Matt puts forward the question of whether or not somebody is worth defending – even if they have the potential to do more long term harm than good – just because they are also the enemy of someone we oppose. He delves into a few different examples, citing Donald Trump, Ted Nugent and … Matt Bevin?

Political candidates who pick the right enemies are too often supported, regardless of their failings. Most recently, we have seen this in the effort to oust Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell, of course, is no conservative hero, but conservatives were too quick to latch onto a flawed replacement. 

Matt Bevin’s campaign has been plagued with mistakes and odd revelations (did he really go to MIT?), the most recent of which is that he signed a letter in support of TARP. Bevin’s in a different category from Trump and Nugent, but conservatives are supporting him for many of the same reasons, including the fact that he has the right enemy. For a lot of conservatives, it’s better the devil you don’t know than the devil you do.

I’m really not sure I’d lump Bevin in with the rest of the cast of characters in this article. While he has turned out to be a less than productive candidate, many of the “charges” listed against him are largely superficial, and this may be nothing more than yet another case of insufficient vetting rather than some sort of dangerous wolf in sheep’s clothing. In the end, Bevin’s opposition to McConnell is surely still just as valid as the protests expressed by many conservatives who wished to see McConnell removed. He apparently just wasn’t the best candidate to carry the message to the polling stations.

As to the rest of the subjects listed, Lewis has a point to make which is rather hard to argue with in general terms.

It’s time to break the cycle. Having the right enemies is hardly a qualification for robust support. That’s because you and I will (fairly or not) be associated with the people we support. When we endorse the wrong person, their actions reflect on us. 

So here’s my modest proposal: When conservatives vet someone (assuming they do), they should consider some additional criteria, including: “Is this personal really a conservative?” — “Is this person just using us?,” and (just as importantly) — “Do they have the character and integrity worthy of our support?”

No matter how much you may love to hear some people set their own hair on fire and spout out some really over the top, world class invective, Matt’s point is a fair one. Winning in politics involves, well… winning, and there are still some lines that are only crossed at significant risk. Some actors on the political stage tend to cross – or completely shatter -- those lines, and while the entertainment value is high, they risk becoming clowns in the eyes of many voters who may be more cautious. And when you endorse the clown, you become part of the circus by default. The enemy of your enemy may indeed be your friend, but we probably all have had a few friends that you really wouldn’t want to bring home for Sunday dinner with the family.
...................................................................................................................................................................

"... even if Citizens United could be wished away, money would still be in politics at the time when it mattered most."

...................................................................................................................................................................
There's money in politics. Get over it.
By Bill Scher, February 21, 2014

News of billionaire Tom Steyer's plan to spend $100 million to elect pro-environment candidates provoked some interesting reactions on both the left and right. New York Times editorial board member David Firestone lamented, "Big money pollutes politics whether it comes from the Koch brothers...or from Mr. Steyer and his liberal friends." The Guardian's Andy Kroll tut-tutted that Steyer's "big money" will "alienat[e] everyday people...at precisely the time when their voices and their involvement are needed most."

Conservatives, normally champions of the notion that campaign money is a glorious exercise of one's First Amendment rights, accused President Obama of delaying approval of the Keystone pipeline to stay on the right side of Steyer's checkbook.

Also this month, prior to Steyer's announcement, liberals were stoking the usual panic about the free-spending Kochs, following a Washington Post scoop that the libertarian brothers have already spent $27 million on the upcoming midterm elections.

All of this should shock precisely no one. There is money in politics. There has always been money in politics. There will always be money in politics.

As President William McKinley's campaign manager Mark Hanna said in 1896, "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can't remember the second." That year the business-backed McKinley outspent the agrarian populist William Jennings Bryan 12-to-1 to win the presidency.

But the populists had the last laugh. McKinley's re-election and subsequent assassination brought the trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt to the White House, ending the Gilded Age and ushering in a Progressive Era that big money was unable to stop.

The ideological whiplash from over 100 years ago reminds us that despite the long-standing role of money in our democracy, the game is not fundamentally rigged. The political pendulum still swings in favor of non-moneyed interests.

This is not to say that money is meaningless. Obviously the country's plutocrats carry disproportionate political influence. Politics favors the organized, and money often helps buy organization.

The question is what citizens in a democracy should do about this situation. Do we try to change the process, and legislate campaign money out of the system? Or do we do our damnedest to win policy fights within the process we have?

Of course, we could do both. But some on the left myopically believe that nothing is possible until campaign cash is eradicated. For example, Michael Moore once pledged to support only those candidates who prioritize passing a constitutional amendment to ban private money in politics, saying, "Nothing — and I mean NOTHING — we want to accomplish, from creating jobs to protecting the environment to preventing wars, will happen as long as those who hold the purse strings are the ones who own our Congress."

Not true. Despite governing in a time of weak campaign finance regulations, President Obama secured a historic expansion of health coverage and huge investments in renewable energy, while increasing regulation of the banking, food, and auto industries. And now he has the coal and utility industries in his sights, as the EPA will soon issue major regulations to cut carbon emissions.

Conversely, advancements in campaign finance reform often did not yield the result advocates might have expected.

The liberal campaign finance limits of 1974 couldn't stop the wealthiest from propelling Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980. George W. Bush raised $350 million more in 2004 than in 2000, despite the McCain-Feingold law being passed in the interim. And while conservative opponents of campaign finance regulations won a historic victory with the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010, they found that newly legalized anonymous corporate cash couldn't stop Barack Obama's re-election in 2012.

Supporters of campaign finance regulations can argue that past reforms simply weren't comprehensive enough to make a difference. But as long as Citizens United is in place, the whole debate is moot. Any attempt to impose strict campaign finance regulations has nowhere to go. Winning the super-majority support for a constitutional amendment in our politically divided country has no chance. Reformers can't do much but hope for a conservative justice to depart on Obama's watch.

But ultimately, as I previously argued in a New York Times op-ed, even if Citizens United could be wished away, money would still be in politics at the time when it mattered most. Even if corporations couldn't spend on elections, they "can and will spend freely during the legislative process. And when they are unified, they have the resources to dominate debate."

Nothing short of altering the First Amendment can change that fact.

And yet we've still managed to enact Social Security and block attempts to dismantle it and hand it over to Wall Street. We've managed to create Medicare and the Affordable Care Act. We've managed to clean our air and water, and we are making progress on protecting the climate.

Why? Because successful politicians and activists were willing to engage in an imperfect process, organize at the grassroots level, bargain with and divide corporate interests, and make compelling arguments to the public.

Both Steyer and the Kochs are getting in the arena and trying to win the argument. They have more money than most of you. It's not fair. But life's not fair. Get over it, and get in the game.
...................................................................................................................................................................

Koch's AFP "Julie's story" ad-- "as dishonest as you can get with a political ad"

...................................................................................................................................................................
Koch Brothers Latest Obamacare Ad Is Their Most Dishonest And Deceptive One Yet
By Justin Baragona, February 21, 2014

The Koch Brothers SuperPAC, Americans for Prosperity, is currently running an ad in Michigan targeting Democratic Senator Gary Peters, who is up for reelection in November. The commercial, titled ‘Julie’s Story: It’s Time To Listen’, states that a cancer patient named Julie Boonstra is being bankrupted by the Affordable Care Act. She discusses how her original plan was cancelled and now her out-of-pocket expenses are so high she finds them totally unaffordable.

Of course, after a few people dug in and investigated, it appears that, just like every other Koch Bros. funded Obamacare ad, the truth is a whole lot different than what was placed in the ad. Thanks to Benjy Sarlin at MSNBC, the Detroit News, Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog and the basic facts of the health care law, the real story is nowhere near the horror story depicted in the commercial.



When you see that ad, you’d think that Obamacare is killing Ms. Boonstra! It seems like she is dealing with a real-life horror movie where bureaucratic nonsense and an uncaring law has made her life expendable. Of course, pesky facts always get in the way of a good narrative. The truth is that Julie Boonstra did have her existing insurance policy cancelled because it didn’t meet the minimum standards of the ACA. Instead, she had to get a better policy at half the price. She was paying $1,100 a month in premiums under her old policy. She now pays $571 a month.

If she is paying less a month, how can she justify that Obamacare is bankrupting her? Well, she says it is because she now faces out of pocket expenses more often. She states that for a lot of her treatments, she is forced to do a 20% co-pay. However, under the law, there is a cap on how much she can be charged out of pocket. The cap is $6,350 a year. By her own admission, she is saving nearly that exact amount in premiums due to the ACA. So, even if she has to pay the maximum amount in out of pocket expenses a year under the new plan (doubtful), she isn’t paying anymore than she did under her old plan.

Basically, this is as dishonest as you can get with a political ad. Ms. Boonstra, at worst, is having to deal with smaller expenses on a more frequent basis, but is not spending anymore than she did previously. In fact, it is more than likely she’ll still end up spending less than before. On top of that, her old policy, that was twice as expensive, only got cancelled because it didn’t offer as extensive of coverage as it should have. She now has a better policy for half the price and she cannot be kicked off of it due to her condition.

Kessler gave the ad two Pinocchios. Personally, I think it is one of the biggest lies we’ve ever seen in politics, and that is saying something. It just goes to show how good this law really is when lobbyists and politicians have to stoop to telling outright lies in their attempts to discredit it.
...................................................................................................................................................................

Perfect illustration of the "one percent" issue

.............................................................................................................................
Non Sequitur

Tocqueville predicted it: "Equality always wins." Take that, religious right

...................................................................................................................................................................

How Christianity gave us gay marriage

The American fight for equality began with distinctly Christian precepts

By Damon Linker, February 19, 2014

The suggestion sounds ludicrous: How could Christianity be responsible for the all-but-assured triumph of the movement for gay marriage? Aren't the most committed Christians the most passionate defenders of traditional marriage and hence the most ardent opponents of permitting gay couples to marry?

From the overwhelming support for traditional marriage among white evangelical Protestants in the United States to the Catholic Church's definition of homosexuality as "intrinsically disordered" to the black (Catholic and Anglican) Christians of Uganda who have recently worked to pass one of the most draconian anti-gay laws in the world, the answer would seem to be yes.

But things aren't quite so simple. Just flip through the opening pages of everyone's favorite work of secular prophesy — Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1835–1840) — and you'll find a provocative alternative interpretation of Christianity's indispensable role in the creation of the revolutionary ideal of human equality. The stunningly rapid rise of support for gay marriage over the past two decades is just the latest in a very long line of victories for that consummately Christian ideal — and it's unlikely to be the last.

Tocqueville begins the introduction to his two-volume study of American democracy by noting that "a great democratic revolution is taking place among us." The 700-page book is his attempt to make sense of this revolution, which was transforming life across the European continent during his lifetime, but which was already far more advanced in the United States by the time of his famous visit in 1831.

For Tocqueville, the march of equality was upending age-old institutions and moral habits "in all the Christian world." It was a "providential fact," by which he meant that there was nothing anybody could do to stop it.

The ultimate source of the democratic revolution — the motor behind its inexorable unfolding — is the figure of Jesus Christ, who taught the equal dignity of all persons, and declared in the Sermon on the Mount that the last shall be first and the first shall be last, and that the meek shall inherit the earth.

These are among the most subversive teachings ever uttered — and according to Tocqueville, Western civilization has been working out their logic for the better part of two millennia, as political communities have applied Christ's egalitarian teachings in stricter and stricter terms.

First, the rigidly hierarchical order of the Roman Empire assimilated and transformed Christ's message, creating a series of stratified Christian aristocracies that ruled Europe for centuries. But by the 11th century, the clergy, which "opened its ranks to all, to the poor and to the rich, to the commoner and to the lord," had gained political power. In this way, the principle of equality began to "penetrate through the church to the heart of government."

Over the next 700 years, as Tocqueville tells it, "a double revolution" transpired: "The noble has fallen on the social ladder, and the commoner has risen; the one descends, the other climbs. Each half century brings them nearer, and soon they are going to touch."

They already did touch in the United States, the world's first nation settled by egalitarian Christians (the Puritans) and explicitly dedicated in its founding documents to the principle of universal human equality. Where France required a violent revolution to overturn recalcitrant elements within its social order and advance the cause of equality, the United States merely needed to declare and secure its independence from a foreign power, before allowing the egalitarianism already implicit in its habits and institutions to flower and flourish.

Tocqueville was fascinated by the question of what democracy in America would look like, because he thought it was inevitable that the rest of Western civilization would soon follow it in building societies dedicated to equality. But he was also filled with "a sort of religious terror...by the sight of this irresistible revolution that for so many centuries has marched over all obstacles, and that one sees still advancing today amid the ruins it has made."

Roughly 80 years before the fictional lords and ladies of Downton Abbey begin to realize it, Tocqueville understood that the world of aristocratic privileges was slipping away and would soon be reduced to ruins. That is what inspired his religious terror.

The same terror grips opponents of gay marriage today, as the Christian principle of equality overturns and transforms the Christian tradition's historic understanding of what a marital partnership is and can be. In this sense, at least, opposition to gay marriage parallels an earlier generation's opposition to interracial marriage. In both cases, the opponents of change are attempting to stand against the march of equality. In both cases, the opponents will fail.

By all means, let's ensure that the religious rights of these opponents are protected. But let's also hope that they will eventually follow Tocqueville's example in recognizing that a major reason why equality always wins is that the new order is always more just than what preceded it. This is why Tocqueville counseled resignation and acceptance rather than a reactionary response — because, he concluded, trying to "stop democracy...[is] to struggle against God himself."

None of this means anything as crude as "Christ wants gay marriage." But it does mean that we live in a culture in which reformers who successfully claim the mantle of equality inevitably triumph — because those who oppose equality find it impossible to gain public traction for their own side of the argument.

Equality always wins. And equality became the lodestar of Western culture thanks to Christianity.

...................................................................................................................................................................

Inflammatory speech? Hmmmph, Fox News is famous for that!

...................................................................................................................................................................
Kurtz apparently doesn't realize that Wendy Davis is female since he wrote "Davis is also getting in on the action. In a fundraising letter reported by Politico, he says ..."  That's Faux News reporting for you.  Sheesh....
...................................................................................................................................................................
Ted Nugent, Wendy Davis and CNN: The politics of inflammatory speech
By Howard Kurtz, February 21, 2014

There’s no shortage of manufactured outrage in the political world, but sometimes the outrage is utterly warranted.

What Ted Nugent said about President Obama is so far beyond the pale that it needs to be called out. The more interesting question is whether a candidate who allies himself with Nugent should be held responsible for the incendiary language.

Nugent, after all, is an aging rock-n-roller who traffics in over-the-top talk. That makes him something of a media magnet, even though his role is basically that of celebrity provocateur.

It was at a gun show a few weeks ago that Nugent called Obama not just a “chimpanzee,” but “a Chicago, Communist- raised, Communist-educated, Communist-nurtured, subhuman mongrel.”

He can brand the president a commie if he wants, but such phrases as chimp and subhuman mongrel are truly offensive.

[UPDATE: Nugent apologized Friday morning on the Ben Ferguson radio show. According to Mediaite, "the rocker branded his words as 'street fighter terminology,' and vowed to 'elevate his vernacular' to the level of prominent Texas Republicans like Abbott and Rick Perry."]

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer teed off on Greg Abbott, the Republican running for Texas governor with Nugent’s highly visible support. “Nugent's presence hit a sour note with a lot of people,” Blitzer said. “They say Texans deserve better than a candidate who would align himself with someone like Nugent who offered a hate-filled assessment of the president.” He added that the phrase subhuman mongrel is similar to a German word that is "what the Nazis called Jews ... to justify the genocide of the Jewish community."

Nugent took to Twitter to liken CNN to the Nazis’ propaganda chief: “CNN Joseph Goebbells [sic] Saul Alinsky propaganda ministry mongrels.” Nugent later cancelled a planned appearance on Erin Burnett’s CNN show. Blitzer followed up on his program by questioning Nugent’s use of the phrase “blood brother” when he introduced Abbott.

But is it fair to hold Abbott accountable for a supporter’s rant? This is an old game in politics, where critics demand that the politician condemn something that an ally said. John McCain repeatedly apologized in 2008 when he was introduced by radio talker Bill Cunningham, who referred to “Barack Hussein Obama.”

Abbott, for his part, hasn’t distanced himself from the singer. He says Nugent is campaigning with him to expose his opponent Wendy Davis’s weak stance on gun rights. He told reporters he wasn’t aware of Nugent’s past statements, according to the Dallas Morning News—a bit of a dodge since he obviously must be aware of them now.

Davis is also getting in on the action. In a fundraising letter reported by Politico, he says: “Ted Nugent calls Greg Abbott his ‘blood brother.’ I call their alliance repulsive. I find Ted Nugent disgusting, and I find it disgusting that Greg Abbott is sharing a stage with him.”

So both candidates are making hay over Ted Nugent.

Meanwhile, one voice on the right is speaking out. Republican Sen. Rand Paul tweeted: "Ted Nugent's derogatory description of President Obama is offensive and has no place in politics. He should apologize."

And On Guns.com, S.H. Blannelberry defends Nugent:

“I’m willing to bet that Nugent used the historically-embedded phrase to do what he does best: raise hell!

“Remember, Nugent is a performer first and foremost. That’s what he does best. And in the political arena, with the cameras rolling and the lights on, he’s going to put on a show. He’s going to be outrageous. He’s going to use words and phrases that purposely rattle the cages of liberals and progressives.”

Well, I look forward to Nugent's next appearance on CNN.
...................................................................................................................................................................

Giving the Kochs a run for their money

...................................................................................................................................................................
Democrats enlist billionaires to give right a run for their money
By Richard McGregor, February 21, 2014

It was Al Gore who summed up the sentiment of the attendees at the A-List Democratic fundraiser in San Francisco on Wednesday when he was asked to toast the host, billionaire-turned-green activist, Tom Steyer.

Riffing off the nickname of a famous baseball player, Mr Gore called the former hedge fund manager “Mr Tipping Point”, as the person whose commitment and wealth could turn climate change into an election winner for the Democrats.

“He’s not just saying it; he’s going to succeed in doing it,” Mr Gore said, according to one guest at the party.

The money men of the rightwing, such as the industrialist brothers, Charles and David Koch, have gained much attention for the tens of millions of dollars they have poured into politics since caps on campaign finance were lifted by a series of court decisions in recent years.

Mr Steyer plans to give the Kochs and their allies a run for their money from the environmental left, pledging to assemble a $100m-plus war chest for the congressional midterm elections in November, half from his own pocket and the rest from donors.

“I would not look at that number as a ceiling – we have made clear that 2014 is going to be an expansion,” said Chris Lehane, a political consultant advising Mr Steyer.

Mr Steyer, with a net worth estimated by Forbes to be $1.5bn, has already spent upwards of $50m in the past two to three years on politics, including $11m in the Virginia governor’s race in late 2013.

Virginia was a “beta test”, Mr Steyer’s advisers say, for deploying new techniques to get young people out to vote on climate change, the sort of thing Democrats must do to fend off the Republican challenge to their Senate majority.

“Climate is their number one issue – if you want to get young people to turn out, you have to talk about it,” said Mr Lehane.

But climate change and the issue that Mr Steyer has worked hard to make a litmus test of the issue – the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to carry heavy oil from Canada to the gulf coast – cut across party lines.

Five years after it was first proposed, TransCanada’s plans for the $7bn pipeline remain caught up in federal inquiries and state legal challenges that will probably delay a final decision beyond this year.

Standing next to Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, at a trilateral summit in Mexico this week, President Barack Obama made it clear he would not be rushing the process.

“Keystone will proceed along the path that’s already been set forth,” he said.

For all the Democratic activists like Mr Steyer who oppose the pipeline, however, some of the party’s most vulnerable senators, like Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, embrace Keystone as a vote winner in their state.

Just as the Tea Party’s attacks on Republicans they regard as insufficiently conservative have upended the right, many Democrats fret that Mr Steyer’s aggression could have the same disruptive impact on the left.

Mr Lehane tried to put those fears to rest this week, saying Mr Steyer’s campaign group, NextGen Climate Action, would not spend money directly against Mrs Landrieu.

“We’re certainly not subscribing to what I would call the Tea Party theory of politics,” Mr Lehane said.

Mrs Landrieu, already under attack from a Koch-backed campaign group over her support for Mr Obama’s health reforms, is making a virtue of the threats against her.

“I have billionaires on both sides, and I’m exactly where I should be, which is right in the middle,” Mrs Landrieu told the National Journal.

Mr Steyer’s campaign highlights the tensions in the evolving Democratic base built under Mr Obama, which relies less on blue-collar workers and more on a patchwork coalition of the young, women, social liberals, environmentalists and minorities.

The function at Mr Steyer’s palatial home in San Francisco attended by Al Gore was a fundraiser for the Democratic Senate campaign. Many Democratic senators, including majority leader, Harry Reid, attended. Mrs Landrieu did not.

Democrats have been aghast about big-spending by wealthy conservatives like the Koch brothers, since campaign finance became a free-for-all after courts lifted caps on donations to outside campaign groups in 2010.

Mr Steyer’s money, they insist, is different, borne not out of “economic self-interest” but the urgency of combating global warming.

“There is an enormous amount of outside money coming in from the fossil fuel industry and others that is trying to trump the majority will of the country,” said Mr Lehane.

“What Tom is spending is, by any objective analysis, a very small drop in a very large oil bucket of money.”
...................................................................................................................................................................

"Raising the minimum wage ... could effectively get people out of poverty: A novel concept."

...................................................................................................................................................................
Don’t Like Food Stamps? Raise the Minimum Wage
By Tina Dupuy, February 21, 2014

Say you’re philosophically opposed to food stamps. Let’s say you feel better about yourself by calling those who’ve hit hard times freeloading parasites. Suppose the very idea someone somewhere may be cheating the system is enough for you to support snatching all subsidized sandwiches out of the hands of your fellow Americans. Imagine that right in the middle of the Great Recession you think feeding the hungry is actually hurting the poor and discouraging them from working. Let’s pretend—hypothetically—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is one of the government programs you’d most like to see cut or dissolved altogether. Let’s suppose you’re the kind of person who’s disgusted by the whole thing. “Get a job!” you mutter at the TV when the food stamp issue is broadcast into your home.

Then you should be for raising the minimum wage!

There are 46.2 million impoverished citizens in this country. That’s more than the populations of Tunisia, Greece, Portugal, Switzerland and Ireland combined. Of these 46.2 million, about 10.4 million are the working poor. The others are largely elderly, disabled or children.

The most recent data tells us 10.4 million Americans work and yet can’t feed themselves or their families. Why? Because working doesn’t work. Working isn’t the solution to hunger because work doesn’t pay enough to buy food AND shelter. Raising the minimum wage to the proposed $10.10 an hour would mean a person with a full time job and one dependent child would no longer meet the requirements for food stamp eligibility. Working could effectively get people out of poverty: A novel concept.

Currently the ideologically pure right wing thinks food stamps are a disincentive to work and a minimum wage raise will kill jobs. Their hope is to keep wages so low you can’t live on them while also cutting food stamps. It’s where philosophy shatters on the frayed edge of facts on the ground. It’s not realistic—it’s just Republican.

The right wing has shed its once storied pragmatism for a new outraged ostrich-with-its-head-in-the-ground approach to public policy. They’re against abortion AND family planning; against the national debt AND for tax cuts; against Obamacare AND against socialized medicine (google it). So when you ask a Republican lawmaker what their ideas are to fix pressing issues Americans face every day they just squawk, “Benghazi!” “Lawless!” and hide their head back in their proverbial burrow.

An easy way to reduce food stamp dependency is to raise the minimum wage. A Pew Research study noted, “Nearly 21.3 million U.S. workers (or 16.4 percent of the workforce) would be directly affected by raising the minimum wage to $10.10 by July 2015.”

And if 21.3 million workers and their families have new spending power—it’s good for business. Walmart, which depends on food stamps to largely feed their workforce, saw a negative impact on their profits from the cuts to the program last November. If they were forced by government decree to pay their workers enough to buy food at Walmart with their wages (instead of EBT cards), it would be a positive impact to Walmart’s bottom line.

If food stamps are something you in your gut just don’t like, then you would naturally support an initiative to reduce dependency on that program. Since poor shaming has had little impact on making the poor less poor perhaps we should try another tactic.

Tell Congress to raise the minimum wage.
...................................................................................................................................................................

"If you have a Waffle House in your state, you are more likely to support a Republican for president. If you don't, you won't. The harder question to answer is whether that fact is terribly meaningful."

...................................................................................................................................................................
How Waffle House explains American politics, in 1 map
By Chris Cillizza, February 20, 2014

Confession: I love the food at Waffle House. (Hashbrown preference: Smothered, Covered and Chunked.)

So when I came across this U.S. map that detailed the number of Waffle House locations by state -- as best as we can tell it originated at DeadSpin -- I was more than a little interested. And, because I spend my days (and nights) thinking about politics, I immediately began looking up the presidential performance numbers in states with Waffle Houses versus those without them.


Image courtesy of city-data.com

Here's what I found.

Mitt Romney won 16 of the 25 states that have at least one Waffle House. In those 16 -- call them Waffle House America -- he averaged almost 58 percent of the vote, roughly 11 points higher than he won nationwide. Of the nine Waffle House America states that President Obama carried, he won six -- Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania and New Mexico -- with 53 percent of the vote or less. (In Maryland, Illinois and Delaware, Obama won with 62 percent, 59 percent and 58 percent, respectively.) Of those six Obama, states, five went for George W. Bush in 2004.  Take all 25 states in which there is at least one Waffle House and Romney averaged 53 percent of the vote, a six-point improvement of his showing nationwide.

Compare the 25 states in the Waffle States America to the 25 states not in it. Of those 25 non Waffle House states , Romney won just eight in 2012: Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.  He took an average of 47 percent of the vote in those 25 states.  Take out Utah -- where Romney took 73 percent -- and he averaged 46 percent. Take out Utah and Wyoming -- where Romney won 69 percent -- and his average drops to 45 percent.

The split is clear. If you have a Waffle House in your state, you are more likely to support a Republican for president.  If you don't, you won't.  The harder question to answer is whether that fact is terribly meaningful. The Waffle House franchise began in Georgia (hence it has the most restaurants of any state) and, not surprisingly, grew most aggressively in the nearest geographic/regional areas of the South and Southwest.  (The franchise was founded in 1955.) The south has been solidly Republican territory since -- at least -- the 1994 midterms (and arguably considerably earlier) so it's possible that the map simply shows a coincidence rather than any conclusion.

But, at the least, the remarkable overlay between Waffle House America and the Romney States of America speaks to the remarkably divided state of the country. The self-sorting/silo-ing of America extends beyond what we read, watch and listen to -- it extends all the way to what we eat.
...................................................................................................................................................................

Governor Deal of Georgia "... would have been better off having lunch with a hooker" than with the mayor of Atlanta

...................................................................................................................................................................
Politicians: Sin in Sex, Not in Traffic
By Margaret Carlson, February 19, 2014

Traffic is the new sex.

Stick with me. Senator David Vitter, who recently announced that he is running for governor of Louisiana in 2015, is ahead in a recent poll. You may recall Vitter's apology in 2007 after his phone number surfaced during an investigation of the prostitution ring run by the notorious "D.C. Madam," Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who later committed suicide. The details of his dalliances involved infant wear. He said he committed "a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible."

His lead in the polls is in keeping with other comebacks by officials caught in sexual scandals. After his own prostitution scandal, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer got a television show and ran a creditable race for New York City comptroller.

Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford survived trying to cover up his infidelity with a tall tale about hiking the Appalachian Trail and returned to Congress. Bill Clinton, who was impeached for his transgressions, left office with a 68 percent approval rating, and his wife is the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Compare that with the fate of politicians involved in traffic scandals. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is the subject of multiple investigations for the epic gridlock on the George Washington Bridge. His non-best friend from high school, David Wildstein, whom he appointed to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is singing like a bird. Kentucky Senator Paul Rand is pursuing questions about how federal funds for Superstorm Sandy were spent, and several mayors are anxious to tell him. Even Christie's idol, Bruce Springsteen, mocked him on late-night television. Just 35 percent of Americans see the governor favorably, down from 52 percent in a Gallup poll in June. He's gone from a 32 point net positive rating last summer to a 5 point net negative now. Before Bridgegate, he topped many of the polls about potential Republican presidential candidates. A Washington Post/ABC poll puts him in third place now, with the support ojust 13 percent of Republicans, behind Representative Paul Ryan and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Republican Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia also has seen voters tap the brakes over his traffic record. Deal was a shoo-in for re-election in his Republican-leaning state until "Snowjam '14" (it's never good for a catastrophe to get a name) created a crushing traffic jam on the interstate. Deal was missing in action as the snow began to pile up, and he initially blamed poor weather forecasting for the failure to clear roads or stagger closings so that everyone wasn't hitting the freeway at the same time.

The overnight crisis -- a baby was born on the interstate, people were trapped overnight in their cars while their children slept at school -- attracted national attention. On NBC, Al Roker scolded Deal for calling the storm a surprise when all he needed to do was turn on the TV to find out it was headed his way. Late-night host Jay Leno joked, "Drivers were stranded, traffic was at a standstill for 12 hours, and everyone was asking the same question: 'What did we do to piss off Chris Christie?'"

Now it's the people of Georgia who are ticked off at Deal, who was lunching with the mayor of Atlanta when both should have been glued to the Weather Channel. A survey showed 1 out of 3 people blamed Deal, not Mother Nature, for the traffic nightmare. In a statewide poll, 57 percent of Republicans rated Deal poor to fair.

According to Public Policy Polling, while Deal still holds a lead over his likely opponents who haven't yet begun to advertise, including state Senator Jason Carter (yes, grandson of), only 36 percent of voters approve of Deal and 41 percent disapprove, a terrible place for an incumbent to be.

He would have been better off having lunch with a hooker. Just ask Senator Vitter.
...................................................................................................................................................................

"Paul appears to have an edge among conservative and tea party voters ..."

...................................................................................................................................................................
Rand Paul vs. Ted Cruz: Who's winning tea party voters?

While Rand Paul, who is currently leading in polls of GOP voters, backs fellow Kentuckian Mitch McConnell against a tea party opponent, Ted Cruz openly defies establishment Republican leaders.

By Peter Grier, February 18, 2014

Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas are both favorites of the tea party wing of the Republican Party. If both run for president in 2016, as seems likely at the moment, they’d vie for the same conservative voters as a base upon which to build a winning GOP primary coalition.

Given that potential White House candidates are jockeying right now for support from key donors and party figures, it’s not too early to ask this question: Which of these two men is currently winning the most tea party support?

Despite their similar electoral roots, they are very different politicians, of course. And they’re taking two different roads to building name recognition and support in advance of the official White House race.

The libertarian-oriented Senator Paul is emphasizing his vision of a changed, more inclusive Republican Party. And he’s doing so in a pretty blunt way. In an interview with Glenn Beck that aired last week, Paul said the GOP will not win the White House again in his lifetime absent radical change.

“And it has to be a transformation. Not a little tweaking at the edges,” Paul told Mr. Beck in a segment aired on TheBlazeTV.

That means some kind of immigration reform, though Paul hasn’t outlined specifics on this issue beyond opposition to the indefinite jailing of detainees.

“If you want to work and you want a job and you want to be part of America, we’ll find a place for you,” Paul said in an interview with Politico published Tuesday.

Deemphasizing the war on drugs could win support in minority communities, which have a disproportionate share of their population jailed on drug charges, according to Paul. When the Kentucky senator speaks before audiences of young voters, he talks about civil liberties, not taxes.

Senator Cruz is taking a more confrontational approach. Where Paul has endorsed majority leader Mitch McConnell against a tea party primary opponent, angering some conservatives, Cruz won’t support Texas colleague Sen. John Cornyn (R), who also faces a tea party primary challenge.

Cruz clashed openly with establishment GOP leaders last week when he forced them to break his filibuster to allow a final vote on a bill to raise the national debt ceiling. Senator McConnell had hoped the legislation would pass without Republican fingerprints, avoiding a messy fight that might spook financial markets.

Afterwards, the Lone Star lawmaker was unrepentant. Lots of GOP senators misrepresented their intentions to constituents, he said, vowing they’d fight the debt ceiling when they had no intention of doing any such thing.

“It’s like they think the American people are just a bunch of rubes, that we don’t remember what they say,” Cruz told conservative radio talk host Mark Levin late last week.

Such defiance thrills insurgent-minded conservatives. Slate’s Dave Weigel notes today that Cruz is so popular in Texas that a number of Republican candidates now prominently feature photos of themselves with Cruz on their web sites – even though Cruz hasn’t actually endorsed them.

As for Paul, his endorsement of establishment leader McConnell shows he’s bailed on bringing big change to Washington, charges Leon Wolf in the conservative RedState website.

“When it comes to actual accomplishments that have changed the way things are done in Washington or even within the Senate GOP caucus, Paul’s cabinet is pretty empty,” writes Mr. Wolf.

But here’s the kicker: Right now Paul leads Cruz in polls of GOP voters. The RealClearPolitics rolling average of major surveys has Paul as the presidential nominee choice of 11.2 percent of Republicans, as opposed to 8.2 percent for Cruz.

Paul appears to have an edge among conservative and tea party voters as well, though the data here is a bit thin. In a January McClatchy/Marist survey, 10 percent of self-described tea party supporters picked Paul as their presidential choice. Nine percent picked Cruz. Paul won eight percent of “strong Republicans” in the McClatchy data; Cruz won six percent, which is within the poll margin of error.

A poll from Democratic-leaning firm PPP released Jan. 29 has similar results. Among self-described “very conservative” voters, Paul bests Cruz as a nominee choice by 15 to 11 percent. (Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee beats both men in this category with 20 percent of the “very conservative” respondents.)

PPP finds Paul’s favorability ratings higher than Cruz’s among conservative voters, as well.

It’s early yet, though, and these results might just reflect the fact that Rand Paul’s father Ron Paul ran for president last time around and the family brand remains well-known in GOP circles. It’ll be interesting to see how the Paul/Cruz matchup develops in months ahead.
...................................................................................................................................................................

"The Koch brothers are all but on the ballot"

...................................................................................................................................................................
Democrats Take Aim at Early Flurry of GOP Ads
Americans for Prosperity, Funded By the Koch Brothers, at Top of Liberals' List 
By Thomas Catan and Rebecca Ballhaus

Democrats are moving to counter an unusually early ad blitz by the conservative group Americans for Prosperity by trying to turn voters against the group's wealthy donors.

The group, which receives funding from industrialists Charles and David Koch, has spent $28 million since October on ads backing conservative policy stances or which highlight the records of vulnerable Democratic candidates, an unusually large sum so early in the cycle.

Liberal super PACs and Democratic campaigns are answering with ads of their own, but they say they are unlikely to be able to match AFP's spending dollar for dollar, in part because their donors usually don't contribute this early in the election cycle.

Democrats say the disparity in spending in some states is large. In North Carolina, for example, Americans for Prosperity says it has spent $8.3 million in the last year on ads focusing on Sen. Kay Hagan (D., N.C.) or which attack the Democratic-backed health-care law or call for budget changes. Democratic groups, by contrast, have spent just under $2 million, according to the Hagan campaign.

Now Democratic candidates and their allies are invoking the financial supporters of Americans for Prosperity in an effort to neutralize the conservative ads and spur their own donors to open their wallets.

Ms. Hagan has appeared on left-leaning cable news channel MSNBC several times in recent weeks to attack the Koch brothers' opposition to the recently passed farm bill and their support for budget cuts known as sequestration. "These are not policies that North Carolinians want, and they're not going to be fooled by this outside money," the senator said during a Feb. 12 appearance.

A campaign spokesman for Sen. Mark Pryor (D., Ark.), Erik Dorey, said the campaign is telling supporters that the conservative PACs have an "unlimited resource of shady undisclosed outside dollars." Americans for Prosperity says it has spent about $600,000 against Mr. Pryor; his campaign says total spending against the senator has topped $4 million.

"The Koch brothers are all but on the ballot," said Craig Varoga, president of Patriot Majority USA, a liberal nonprofit and super PAC. "The real opponents in these elections is not the candidates the Koch brothers are trying to help, it's the Koch brothers themselves."

AFP scoffs at the focus on its donors, saying Democrats want to distract voters from their support for President Barack Obama's health law.

"Rather than try to protect Americans who have lost their insurance or lost access to their doctor, they are lashing out at us to divert attention," said Levi Russell, a spokesman for the group.

Robert Tappan, a spokesman for Koch Industries Inc., criticized Democratic officials for attacking "private citizens who are exercising their First Amendment rights…We hope the conversation can shift from attacking others to a discussion of substantive ideas.''

The kickoff to campaigning has come early this year. The number of political ads that aired in January was 58% higher than in the same month four years ago, according to Kantar Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, which monitors political advertising. The group doesn't say what share of the ads came from each party or its allies.

Americans for Prosperity contends it has spent $2.6 million in Louisiana opposing Sen. Mary Landrieu, as well as $450,000 in Alaska against Sen. Mark Begich. Like Mr. Pryor and Ms. Hagan, both are Democrats running for re-election in states that Mr. Obama lost in the 2012 presidential election.

Democratic campaigns and liberal super PACs say the early ad buys could damage their candidates, many of whom need to save their money for later in the year. At the same time, some are hoping that the early barrage, coming at a time when most voters aren't yet paying attention, could blunt the potency of the attacks as the November election draws closer.

Other groups also are seeking to answer AFP's attacks. Patriot Majority USA has spent more than $1 million in the last four months running ads supporting Democrats in North Carolina, Arkansas, Ohio and Kentucky. And the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority USA has spent more than $2.7 million supporting Democrats in North Carolina, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana and New Hampshire.
...................................................................................................................................................................

"... there’s nothing new about the primaries we see today. What’s unique now is how much attention we pay to them ..."

...................................................................................................................................................................
No, Primaries Aren’t Destroying Politics
“Getting primaried” isn't even as common as you think.
By Robert G. Boatright, February 18, 2014

This month, when House speaker John Boehner effectively scotched plans to tackle immigration reform this year, the move was chalked up in some quarters to fear. Specifically, the scary proposition that running afoul of the far right with a measure that seemed soft on “illegal aliens” would ring a sort of cattle call for primary challengers looking to oust GOP members on the ballot this year.

The dreaded primary challenge—which conventional wisdom suggests has never been more common or more effective in terms of ending the careers of lawmakers—is maligned as the cause of gridlock and hyper-partisanship. We don’t yet know how many primary challengers will run in 2014, filing deadlines vary, but many will have to announce their candidacy by the end of March. That would make this time of a year a nervous one, particularly on the right, where the spectral threat of an opponent from within the GOP is inducing paranoia. President Obama has noted that Republican members of Congress won’t even socialize with him, lest such blasphemy cost a lawmaker their job.

There’s just one problem with the idea that primaries have become more common and more important: It’s dead wrong. By my count, there’s nothing unique about the number of competitive primary challenges occurring today. In fact, there were more competitive primary races run in the House during the 1970s (an average of 49 per election) than there have been in the last decade (the average has been 45 each election). Today’s primaries only look competitive because the late 1990s had so few of them. The pattern in the Senate is similar.

Even if we consider only primaries launched for ideological reasons—for instance, to unseat a lawmaker deemed insufficiently conservative by the Tea Party, as opposed to an incumbent weakened by, say, a scandal—there’s no reason to think things are all that abnormal today. There was a slight increase in ideological challengers in 2010 and again in 2012, but the change is not dramatic (in the House there were 29 instances of this sort of “primarying” in the 1970s, and 31 between 2004 and 2012).

That’s not to say there’s nothing new about the primaries we see today. What’s unique now is how much attention we pay to them—in other words, congressional primaries end up mattering more today because we think they matter more. There are three big reasons why this is the case.

First, primary challengers can get their hands on a lot more money today—and a good deal of it now comes from outside the state where they are running. Consider the Senate, for instance. In every election between 1980 and 2000, there were between two and six competitive Senate primary challengers—a pattern that resembles this past decade. What’s been different lately is where the money to finance those challengers originates. During the 1980s and 1990s, only one candidate (Virginia Republican James Miller in 1996) raised more than $500,000 from people other than himself, and there was nobody who raised more than $200,000 from donors outside the state. In the last 10 years though, 10 candidates have tapped donors to raise $1 million for primary bids, and all 10 raised at least $500,000 from out-of-state donors. House primaries have seen a similar explosion in out-of-state financing. In 2008, for instance, two Maryland primary challengers—Democrat Donna Edwards and Republican Andy Harris—each raised nearly $400,000 from out-of-state donors. Sure, campaigns have gotten more expensive and contribution limits have increased, accounting for some of this change, but it’s clear that the primary bids we see today are propped up by donors and groups farther afield than ever before.

Second, this flood of money owes a lot to a new breed of political interest group, one that sees primary fights—and the threat of primary fights—as a powerful tool to influence lawmakers and draw attention to itself. Traditional, issue-oriented groups such as the National Rifle Association or the League of Conservative Voters have never dabbled much in primaries. Newer organizations—like the Club for Growth, MoveOn.org, FreedomWorks and various Tea Party outfits—aren’t held together by single issues around which they build sustained campaigns. To raise money, they need to demonstrate their effectiveness, and perhaps their best way to do so is to take down an incumbent who is not paying attention. To get results, these groups concentrate their attention on a small number of races. Every year there are two or three primary challengers (like Edwards or Harris) who receive substantial interest group support, but there are rarely more than that. There just isn’t enough interest-group money to lavish on candidates whose odds of winning are low.

Third, primary challenges serve as great election-year sport for a political press with a lot of airtime, newsprint and web space to fill. And of course, the political media—now working year-round and virtually 24/7—loves both colorful characters and party infighting, both of which abound in primary challenges. The spring of an election year, particularly a midterm year, can be a period of pent-up demand for political coverage at a time when little of true consequence occurs.

In 2010, Tea Party-backed Joe Miller, running to unseat Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, managed somehow to make news with campaign ads that spoofed Old Spice commercials. The candidacy of Texas Rep. Steve Stockman, a primary challenger in the Lone Star State’s Senate race, seems based entirely on provocative behavior. Earlier this month he made a show—and got media attention—for walking out of the president’s State of the Union address in a huff.

Grabbing headlines used to be much harder for a primary challenger. In 1968, for instance, the Democratic challenger trying to dislodged J. William Fulbright—the longtime chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the namesake of the celebrated international fellowship—tried to stir up controversy in Arkansas over Fulbright’s interest in foreign affairs (not always an issue that played well at home) by injecting socialist salutations into his remarks, calling the senator “Chairman Fulbright” and speaking often about “Chairman Mao.” This is just the sort of grandstanding that would be fodder for cable news today, yet the story appears to have never left Arkansas.

Fulbright did end up losing his seat to a primary challenger in 1974—a year in which more than 50 members of Congress were defeated in the primaries. Yet, despite the turnover, there were no stories about an “epidemic of primarying” or about how primary elections had become more important. Perhaps it didn’t feel like a trend because intriguing primary elections in Arkansas tended to remain of interest mostly to the residents of Arkansas.

Many recent studies of polarization in Congress have talked not only of the alleged rise of primarying, but also of the powerful effect of the mere threat of being primaried. It’s tough to measure what effect this sort of thing has on behavior, but if the numbers tell us anything, it’s that frightened members [of] Congress shouldn’t worry so much. Primary challengers have a poor record. There hasn’t been one elected to the Senate since John Sununu (R-N.H.) in 2002. (In the 2010 election, the Tea Party-backed Republican Mike Lee replaced Utah senator Robert Bennett, but Bennett was defeated at a state party convention and didn’t actually appear on the primary ballot.) In fact, actuarial tables show that statistically, the average incumbent has a greater chance of death before the next election than of losing to a primary challenger.


But that’s little comfort to lawmakers in the crosshairs—even those who seem firmly ensconced in their seats. In January, the Tea Party Leadership Fund charged that on account of his work with Democrats, House Speaker John Boehner was guilty of “stabbing conservatives in the back.” Their remedy? They announced a plan to recruit a conservative opponent to challenge Boehner in the May primary. Chances are, the challenger will lose.
...................................................................................................................................................................

Early voting is not the cause of political ignorance

...................................................................................................................................................................
Political ignorance and early voting
By Ilya Somin, February 11, 2014

Some conservative commentators – including co-blogger Eugene Kontorovich and John McGinnis, and former Justice Department voting rights specialist J. Christian Adams, have recently criticized early voting, on the grounds that it exacerbates the problem of political ignorance.

I agree that widespread political ignorance is a serious problem. But I doubt that early voting makes it any worse than it would be otherwise. As leading voting rights scholar Rick Hasen points out, social science research shows that early voters are, on average, better-informed than those who vote on election day. They also tend to have stronger partisan loyalties, and are therefore unlikely to change their minds based on last-minute election ads or news developments.

There is always the possibility that some dramatic last-minute revelation will occur that would change the minds of even relatively well-informed and strongly partisan voters. But that possibility exists no matter when people vote. If everyone casts their ballots on November 5, there is always a chance that a major scandal will be revealed on November 6 that would have changed the outcome of the election. As a practical matter, allowing people to vote a few weeks before the official election day doesn’t greatly increase this kind of risk. By the time we get to last few weeks of an election, the media and opposition researchers have already thoroughly gone over the records of candidates for major offices, searching for scandals and misdeeds.

Moreover, many last-minute revelations are distractions rather than genuinely useful information. For example, Adams cites the case of the last-minute revelation of George W. Bush’s decades-old drunk driving conviction in 2000. I am no fan of Bush’s. But I think that revelation wasn’t meaningfully relevant to the decision before the electorate in 2000. Although Bush did indeed have a drinking problem when he was young, no one familiar with the evidence doubted that Bush was sober in 2000, and had been for many years. The same goes for campaign revelations that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had probably used marijuana during their college days.

But, although I agree with Hasen that conservative critiques of early voting are overblown, I think he goes too far in this part of his argument, versions of which are sometimes advanced by other liberal commentators:

[T]here is a fundamental divide between liberals and conservatives about what voting is for: Conservatives see voting as about choosing the “best” candidate or “best” policies (meaning limits on who can vote, when, and how might make the most sense), and liberals see it as about the allocation of power among political equals. Cutting back on early voting fits with the conservative idea of choosing the “best” candidate by restraining voters from making supposed rash decisions, rather than relying on them to make choices consistent with their interests.

Hasen relies on a false dichotomy here. There is no reason why voting can’t be about both choosing the best candidate or policies, and allocation of power between equals. Indeed, the latter conception of voting only makes sense if the “equals” can actually use that power effectively. Their ability to do so is impaired if they often don’t know what policies they are voting for, or don’t understand their likely effects. That’s why concern about political ignorance is far from confined to conservatives (or libertarians). Leading liberal scholars such as Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, Larry Bartels, and Richard Shenkman, have all written important books and articles decrying the problem as well. They recognize that ignorance is one of the main factors preventing voters -including the poor and disadvantaged – from using the political process to “make choices consistent with their interests,” in Hasen’s words.

Finally, it is important to recognize that ethical voters should not in fact make choices based purely on their narrow self-interest. Officials elected to public office rule over all of society, not just those who voted for them. As John Stuart Mill put it, voting is not just an individual choice, but the exercise of “power over others.” For this reason, voters have a duty to consider the impact of their choices on all of society, not just on themselves or their families. Making such decisions responsibly often requires a substantial degree of knowledge – more than most voters currently have. Early voting is not the cause of that problem, and probably does not make it any worse than it would be otherwise. But ignorance is a serious danger nonetheless.
...................................................................................................................................................................

Ted Nugent threatened Obama in 2012, and this year insulted him by calling him a "subhuman mongrel". Hmmm, if anybody is "subhuman", it's Ted Nugent

...................................................................................................................................................................
Ted Nugent Rocks Texas Campaign for GOP’s Greg Abbott
By Arlette Saenz, February 18, 2014

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is drawing criticsim for campaigning for governor today alongside the controversial rocker Ted Nugent.

Nugent, who has made incendiary comments about President Obama and women,  campaigned with Abbott today at Get Out The Vote events in Denton and Wichita Falls, Texas.

Abbott’s opponent, Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis, and Democrats are criticizing Abbott’s decision to hit the campaign trail with Nugent.

“Greg Abbott’s embrace of Ted Nugent is an insult to every Texan — every man, woman, husband, and father. If this is Greg Abbott’s idea of values, it’s repulsive,” Davis said in a statement.

“Just last month, Ted Nugent called President Barack Obama a ‘subhuman mongrel’ and ‘gangster.’ He spews hate against our first African-American president and in return, Attorney General Greg Abbott welcomes him to the campaign trail. Is this how Abbott celebrates Black History Month?” Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said.

During the 2012 campaign, Nugent was investigated by the Secret Service after making potentially threatening remarks against the president.

“If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year,” Nugent said at the National Rifle Association Conference in 2012.  Nugent, who endorsed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign, met with the Secret Service, who later dismissed the rocker’s comments.

Last month Nugent had fresh insults for Obama.

“I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame, enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America,” Nugent said in an interview with Guns.com.

Nugent has also made controversial remarks about women. In 2007, he called then Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., a “worthless b****.”

But Nugent seems unfazed by this week’s criticism, tweeting Tuesday morning before his events with Abbott.

Proudly campaigning for the great TX AG Greg Abbott for TX governor
— Ted Nugent (@TedNugent) February 18, 2014

...................................................................................................................................................................