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It’s the hypocrisy, stupid

Feb 21st, 2012
by S.W. Anderson.

“Woodstock is the great American orgy. This is who the Democratic Party has become. They have become the party of Woodstock. The prey upon our most basic primal lusts, and that’s sex. And the whole abortion culture, it’s not about life. It’s about sexual freedom. That’s what it’s about. Homosexuality. It’s about sexual freedom.

“All of the things are about sexual freedom, and they hate to be called on them. They try to somehow or other tie this to the Founding Father’s vision of liberty, which is bizarre. It’s ridiculous.”

—Rick Santorum,, former senator and a Republican presidential candidate,
at a 2008 Oxford Center for Religion and Public Life forum
titled, “The Press & People of Faith in Politics.”

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  • Cain, Herman (alleged) presidential candidate
  • Calvert, Ken, U.S. representative
  • Chenoweth-Hage, Helen, U.S. representative
  • Craig, Larry, U.S. senator
  • Ensign, John, U.S. senator
  • Foley, Mark, U.S. representative
  • Fossella, Vito, U.S. representative
  • Gingrich, Newt, U.S. representative
  • Giuliani, Rudi (alleged), mayor
  • Haley, Nikki (alleged), governor
  • Hyde, Henry, U.S. representative
  • Lee, Christopher, U.S. representative
  • Livingston, Bob, U.S. representative
  • Packwood, Bob, U.S. senator
  • Sherwood, Don, U.S. representative
  • Thomas, Clarence (alleged), Supreme Court justice
  • Tower, John (alleged), U.S. senator
  • Schwarzenegger, Arnold, governor
  • Thurmond, Strom, U.S. senator
  • Sanford, Mark, governor
  • Vitter, David, U.S. senator

This list is a sampling of Republican political figures involved in sex scandals of various kinds.

What about Democrats Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner and so on?

There is this significant difference. No Democratic presidential candidate — or other Democratic candidates, for that matter — is going around casting out first stones, sliming the Republican Party as the party of fornication, adultery, communicating with minors for immoral purposes and so on.

Don’t expect sanctimonious Santorum to criticize the moral lapses surrounding him in Republican ranks because wrong is wrong no matter who’s doing it. No, what sanctimonious Santorum is about is bringing in the fundamentalist Christian sheeps’ money and votes. He does that in part by demonizing the opposition and by giving the more gullible among the religious right reason to join him in feeling superior.

That makes sanctimonious Santorum a con man, a prize hypocrite and a disgusting piece of political work.

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Posted in: politics, Quote.
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Questions GOP candidates should be,
but aren’t being, asked by reporters

Feb 17th, 2012
by S.W. Anderson.

three monkeysGiven what Republican governors like Scott Walker (Wisconsin), Rick Snyder (Michigan), Rick Scott (Florida) and John Kasich (Ohio) have done but did not campaign on doing, it’s reasonable to expect reporters to grill Republican presidential candidates about their intentions in certain areas.

So far, despite numerous debates and saturation coverage of campaign appearances and talking-points dumps, media types are busy as can be not asking fair, pertinent questions that might reveal what Willard “Mitt” Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul would really do as president.

We think that no matter how many Sunday-morning talk shows, press conferences and interviews Republican primary candidates do, or the eventual GOP nominee will do later on, you won’t see reporters ask these . . .

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16 obvious questions for Republican presidential candidates

  1. Will you do things, or sign legislation, to make it difficult or impossible for workers to form a union or to join one, such as a national right-to-work law?
  2. Will you do things, or sign legislation, favoring charter or other private schools at the expense of public schools?
  3. Do you intend to privatize or eliminate Social Security?
  4. Do you intend to privatize or eliminate Medicare?
  5. Do you intend to privatize or eliminate the U.S. Postal Service or any other federal department or agency?
  6. Will your administration directly or indirectly seek to cripple or destroy Planned Parenthood?
  7. Have you ever discussed, or pledged, in person or through an intermediary, what you would or wouldn’t do as president with any of the Koch brothers?
  8. Have you ever discussed, or pledged, what you would and wouldn’t do as president with a trustee, CEO, executive or other representative of Goldman Sachs, or of any of the country’s 10 largest banks and brokerages?
  9. Do you believe taxation should be progressive, with the heaviest burden falling on the wealthiest?
  10. Do you believe the risk-taking for personal gain of an investor has greater virtue or benefit for the country than the efforts of someone who uses his or her muscles and mind to produce goods or a service, yes or no?
  11. Have you pledged to Grover Norquist, or any person or group, that you will not raise taxes on a particular income group, and if so what income group?
  12. Would you put in charge of watchdog agencies such as the Mine Safety Bureau and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau persons from the industries and interests those agencies are charged with monitoring?
  13. Do you support efforts in several states with Republican administrations to make it more costly and difficult for the young, old and poor to vote, and would you make similar efforts at the federal level?
  14. Would you sign legislation requiring mass drug screening of individuals for whom there is no reason to suspect, or evidence of, illegal drug use? In other words, would you employ drug screening to discourage people in need from seeking unemployment benefits or public assistance?
  15. Do you believe war with Iran would be good for business and/or the economy generally, yes or no?
  16. Do you believe going to war is a winning strategy for a president seeking a second term, given that voters have historically been unwilling to change presidents in time of war?

For any reporters or broadcast personalities who happen by: Please note that these questions concern public policy matters exclusively. They are not personal. They’re not about the horse race, polling or gaffes.

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12 comments

Posted in: Media, politics, Republican dirty tricks.
Tagged: · · ·

GOP propaganda is pervasive and persistent;
The left must counter it quickly and repetitively

Feb 12th, 2012
by S.W. Anderson.

No GOPJesse Singal, who took over the reins at the Political Animal blog after Steve Benen moved on, points up an experiment showing how difficult it is to counter erroneous popular wisdom with facts and truth in ways that keep the wrongheaded straightened out.

An interesting new study out of Duke points out just how complicated it can be to correct false beliefs — particularly in the chaos of an election-season media environment.

From the study’s press release:

The researchers gave 50 Duke undergraduate students a 120-question test on basic science information, with questions including: What is stored in a camel’s hump? How many chromosomes do humans have? What is the driest area on Earth? After answering each question, students rated their confidence in their response, and then received the correct answer as feedback. Half the students were retested six minutes later, while the other half were retested one week later.

Students who were retested immediately corrected 86 percent of their errors. As expected, their responses showed a hypercorrection effect — they were more likely to correct errors that they had made with high confidence relative to low-confidence errors.

In contrast, students who were retested one-week later also showed a hypercorrection effect. However, these students only corrected 56 percent of their errors, indicating they had forgotten many of the correct answers that they had learned from the feedback.

When students forgot the correct answer over the one-week delay, the opposite of the hypercorrection effect occurred — the higher their confidence in their initial error, the more likely they were to re-produce that same error on the final test.

In short, simply replacing wrong information with right information isn’t enough. Strong, repetitive reinforcement is needed. Here’s the key paragraph of Singal’s post, and he couldn’t be more right.

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Posted in: politics.
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As Obama’s economic policies bear fruit
Romney plots return to worst of Bush years

Feb 6th, 2012
by S.W. Anderson.

g.w. bush and romneyVulture capitalist Mitt Romney is working the GOP primaries circuit, calling President Obama a failure at creating jobs and restoring the economy — a successful strategy judging by Romney’s recent wins in Florida and Nevada.

While that’s working for Romney now, he faces a day of reckoning when his general-election opponent tells a much different — and verifiable — story, and the crowds include informed, thinking people who value the truth.

That truth, for those who not blinded by the right, looks like this (hover cursor over balls at top and graph bars for more details):

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The chart shows some strong, steady improvement in the employment situation. Obama has done and is doing many correct things making more job creation and increased hiring possible. He’s earned the right to take a bow — and get re-elected.

But a brighter employment picture isn’t the whole story. What the chart doesn’t show is how many Americans are in jobs that pay less, provide meager benefits, if any, and offer no job security at all. Obviously, we still have a long way to go before broadly realized prosperity is the rule and not the exception.

In a post that puts our progress in perspective, economist, educator and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich explains why it’s in the interest of the bottom 90 percent of Americans to keep Obama in the White House — and Romney among the unemployed.

Romney’s budget proposals would shred safety nets even more. According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, his plan would throw 10 million low-income people off the benefit rolls for food stamps or cut benefits by thousands of dollars a year, or some combination. “These cuts would primarily affect very low-income families with children, seniors and people with disabilities,” the Center concludes.
. . . Romney’s tax plan would boost the incomes of America’s most wealthy citizens, who are already taking home an almost unprecedented share of that nation’s total income. Romney wants to permanently extend George W. Bush’s tax cuts, reduce corporate income tax rates, and eliminate the estate tax. These tax cuts would increase the incomes of people earning more than a million dollars a year by an average of $295,874 annually, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

By reducing government revenues, Romney’s tax cuts would squeeze programs for the poor even further. Extending the Bush tax cuts will add $1.2 trillion to the nation’s budget deficit in just two years. That’s the same as the amount that’s supposed to be saved by automatic spending cuts scheduled to start next year — which, by the way, will hit the poor especially hard.

Oh, I almost forgot. Romney and other Republicans also want to repeal Obama’s health care law, thereby leaving 30 million Americans without health insurance.

All that would put Romney on track to greatly outdo George W. Bush’s perverse misleadership and arrogant incompetence, doing every wrong thing possible — starting and ending with rewarding the rich for being rich and punishing the rest of us for not being rich.

Anyone on the fence about re-electing Obama must reckon with the alternative. Teaching Obama a lesson about bad Patriot Act decisions and such can’t be worth four or eight more years of trickle-down economic policy, of borrow-and-spend idiocy, of crony capitalism, K Street strategies, Roberts and Alito-grade Supreme Court appointments and crackpot-crusader quagmire wars.

A November vote for Romney will be a vote for more of what got us into the mess our economy and society are in. A vote for Romney will be a huge attaboy to Republicans for their obstruction of everything necessary to straighten out our country. It will encourage them to be even more cynical, selfish and extreme in the future.

Do register to vote, if you aren’t registered already, and vote in November. But before you do, think carefully about what your vote will mean.

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10 comments

Posted in: politics.

Romney, Gingrich campaigns run on lies and more lies

Feb 3rd, 2012
by S.W. Anderson.

fingers crossedW atching president wannabes Willard “Mitt” Romney and Newt Gingrich campaign for the Republican nomination is like watching a “COPS” episode wherein a pair of sleazy, three-time losers try to lie their way out of being taken downtown for booking after being caught with stolen goods.

Here’s Romney, from a Wednesday, Feb. 1, CNN interview with Soledad O’Brien.

I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.

. . .I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.

People who worked for a Kansas City steel company taken over by Romney’s Bain capital can tell you plenty about how Romney cares for working-class and middle-class Americans. He guts the business that’s been their livelihood for years, laying off loyal employees, selling off assets and cutting pensions. In return for this “service,” Bain charges the ransacked business a big, fat management fee.

Bain Capital will tell you it streamlined the company, making it more efficient and profitable. That being the case, will Bain stick around and run the company until those bigger profits come rolling in? Not a chance. Bain wants to cash out its big, fat management fee and depart — before the company goes bankrupt. To get the money, Bain takes the proceeds from asset sales, any available cash, then forces the company to borrow the rest to pay the management fee.

Then, the Bain vulture capitalists ride off into the sunset, millions richer, leaving a deeply indebted basket case where a viable business had once been. Workers, suppliers, the community and state are all left worse off. That’s how Romney cares about Americans.

This next is from a Gingrich press release issued Jan. 24, right after President Obama’s State of the Union Address, as quoted by Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Here we have to confront the truth about President Obama. Economic growth and prosperity is not really at the top of his agenda. He will always prefer a food stamp economy to a paycheck economy and call it fair.

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Posted in: politics.
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Budget committee hearing revealing
of muddled approach to jobs recovery

Jan 30th, 2012
by S.W. Anderson.

Conrad

Budget hawk: Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Budget Committee. / AP

A Senate Budget Committee hearing held Thursday, Jan. 26, provides insight into Democrats’ regrettable two-steps-forward, one-step-back approach to getting the economy growing in ways that will put our more than 14 million unemployed back to work.

Hearings are set up by committee chairpersons, in this case Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., a career-long budget hawk with a strong penchant for uttering the word “unsustainable” and phrase “entitlement reform” in alternatively ominous and frustrated tones.

Committee chairpersons usually invite witnesses who will provide a range of views, conservative to progressive, when answering senators’ questions on matters as weighty as Thursday’s, titled “Outlook for U.S. and Global Economy.”

However, Conrad arranged for input from two relatively moderate and one hard-core conservative economists. They were: Dr. Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton economics professor and Dr. Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisors, the moderates; and Dr. Ike Brannon, American Action Forum director of economic policy.

In the mid-1990′s, Blinder was Federal Reserve Board vice chairman, until he reportedly got on the wrong side of then-Chairman Alan Greenspan and his people for offering views that differed from Greenspan and his people’s. Prakken heads a macroeconomic consulting firm, does speaking engagements ($20,000-$30,000 each), has taught economics and headed the National Association for Business Economics.

Brannon is the director of economic policy and of congressional relations for the American Action Forum — a Karl Rove front group. Here’s a snippet out of a Think Progress Jan. 11, 2011, item:

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Posted in: economy, Government, politics.
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To buy America’s presidency
is to sell out Americans’ democracy

Jan 27th, 2012
by S.W. Anderson.

sheldon adelson

Sheldon Adelson, the money man behind Newt Gingrich's campaign.

Sheldon Adelson, an international gambling casino tycoon who’s reportedly the eighth-richest man in America, loves his country and wants the best president his money can buy.

Adelson is backing the desire for a president of his very own by bankrolling — $10 million and counting — ex-House speaker and millionaire lobbyist Newt Gingrich’s quest to become the Republican nominee for president

While that much is clear, what Adelson considers “his country” — the U.S. or Israel — remains hazy, even as Gingrich thunders warnings at campaign audiences about Iran posing an imminent threat of a “second Holocaust.”

In Cocoa, Fla., Gingrich on Wednesday called Adelson “very deeply concerned about the survival of Israel” and the threat of a nuclear Iran. Asked if he had promised Adelson anything, Gingrich replied that he pledged “that I would seek to defend the United States and United States allies.”

At 79, Adelson is not a young man. Suppose that after spending tens or hundreds of millions, maybe $1 billion, to get Gingrich elected president, Adelson becomes senile. Suppose his deep concern for Israel becomes paranoid delusions that Iran is armed with nukes and prepared to annihilate the Israelis any day now. Suppose he calls in his chits at the White House, causing Gingrich to launch a pre-emptive nuclear first strike against Iran.

You can say that sounds farfetched, but history is rife with seemingly farfetched things that came to pass. Maybe it’s not that farfetched to begin with. Does anyone familiar with Gingrich think that as president he’d turn down his political sugar daddy if doing so would doom his chances of winning a second term?

It’s also fair to question where Adelson’s greatest loyalty lies. It’s fair to ask what he would want if in some situation Israel and the United States’ vital interests were to diverge.

Does anyone in their right mind think Gingrich has asked his political benefactor with a net worth estimated at $21.5 billion about that?

But even without Adelson’s devotion to Israel, all Americans, especially Republicans, should be repelled by the thought of a presidential candidate being beholden to one super-rich backer to the tune of $10 million or more.

All Americans, including Republicans — unlikely though that is — should be repelled by what the Supreme Court’s democracy-trashing Citizens United decision is making possible. And all Americans, even Republicans, should get behind Sen. Bernie Sanders’ constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United, and with it, 150 years of errant court decisions bestowing on corporations the rights of human citizens.

koch bros.

The Koch brothers, David, left, and Charles.

Even if Gingrich fails to win the GOP nomination and the White House, even if Adelson’s millions are being spent for naught, it’s only a matter of time until our presidential and other elections are nothing better than auctions bestowing power on the pawns of the highest bidders.

We’re dangerously close to that now, and there surely are other super-rich people with no more scruples about subverting our democracy than Adelson.

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The time to put and end to this very real, very imminent threat is now. The place to start is by burying the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision under the weight of the most decisively supported constitutional amendment ever.

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Support Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Saving American Democracy Amendment.

The amendment asserts:

  • Corporations are not persons with constitutional rights equal to real people.
  • Corporations are subject to regulation by the people.
  • Corporations may not make campaign contributions or any election expenditures.
  • Congress and states have the power to regulate campaign finances.

If passed, Sanders’ amendment would do more to safeguard our democracy and pave the way to restoring some balance between the excessive clout of the 1 percent over the 99 percent than anything brought forth in generations.

Please, click the link above, watch the video of Sanders’ floor speech about the amendment, then add your name to those supporting its passage.

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Posted in: greed society, politics, Republican corruption.
Tagged: · ·

S.C. Republicans run true to form
in giving Gingrich primary victory

Jan 22nd, 2012
by S.W. Anderson.

GingrichThat South Carolina Republicans handed defrocked ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich a big victory in yesterday’s GOP presidential primary comes as no surprise.

After all, they’re the same angry resenters and government-hating throwbacks who believed two-timing Mark Sanford was their kind of faith and family values governor; and think Sen. Jim “Waterloo” DeMint and Rep. Joe “You Lie!” Wilson are great members of Congress.

Maybe the best insight into why so many South Carolina Republicans chose Gingrich can be found in something the state’s former lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, said during a 2010 campaign stop, during his unsuccessful bid to become governor. Bauer told a Palmetto State crowd that the way to have fewer poor people is to quit feeding them, because getting enough to eat just makes them breed more.

Sounds just like something Gingrich would say, doesn’t it?

Interestingly, the L.A. Times story (linked above) notes:

It was also a far more conservative turnout than the one that buoyed Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to the exit polls conducted by a TV network consortium. More than 6 in 10 voters identified themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians, a group that has never warmed to Romney, a Mormon.

So, let’s get this straight. Most South Carolina evangelical Christian Republicans prefer that our next president be a House ethics violator and serial adulterer who treated his former wives with exceptional cruelty and callousness, to a Mormon who, to the best of public knowledge, has remained married and faithful to one wife.

We’re sure there are many good people in South Carolina who wouldn’t touch any of the above-mentioned political hacks, hustlers and has beens with a 10-foot pole, and would never vote for mean-spirited Gingrich. It must be frustrating and embarrassing to be one of those good South Carolinians.

Fortunately for them and the rest of us, Gingrich is probably the least electable of an especially unsuitable field of presidential candidates.

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14 comments

Posted in: politics.
Tagged: · · · ·

Republicans are funny about money
but the laugh is ultimately on you

Jan 18th, 2012
by S.W. Anderson.

bush the spendthrift
Along with lots of other lies and distortions, Republican presidential candidates are back at presenting themselves as fiscal conservatives — the party of sober, frugal and sound management of taxpayers’ hard-earned money.

Please, try to stop laughing long enough to take a look at some pertinent evidence in the form of what recent Republican administrations have done to the national debt vs. what Democratic presidents have done.

Five recent presidents and debt

1981 - 2011 % Party
Debt as percentage of GDP when Reagan took office: 32.9 GOP
Debt as percentage of GDP when Reagan left office: 52.6  
National debt percentage change: 189  
     
Debt as percentage of GDP when Bush 41 took office: 53.8 GOP
Debt as percentage of GDP when Bush 41 left office: 65.9  
National debt percentage change: 55.6  
     
Debt as percentage of GDP when Clinton took office: 68.1 Dem
Debt as percentage of GDP when Clinton left office: 57.7  
National debt percentage change: 36.1  
     
Debt as percentage of GDP when Bush 43 took office: 57.8 GOP
Debt as percentage of GDP when Bush 43 left office: 74.1  
National debt percentage change: 89  
     
Debt as percentage of GDP when Obama took office: 86.4 Dem
Debt as percentage of GDP Dec. 31, 2011: 99.7  
National debt percentage change to Dec. 31, 2011: 41  

The data belie Republicans’ fiscal responsibility claims. So do a few facts they hope to keep voters from dwelling on by yammering inanely about “our food stamp president,” the imminent threat same-sex marriage poses to the flag, mom and apple pie, what lazy parasites the unemployed are, and what envious slackers OWS protesters are.

Never mind that congressional Republicans, in 2002, with the Bush White House’s blessing, unilaterally jettisoned the “pay-go rule” that had helped make possible the first balanced budget and substantial reduction in national debt in decades. Never mind that President George W. Bush squandered the budget surplus he inherited from President Bill Clinton on overly large tax cuts that mostly benefited the wealthy. And, never mind that Dick Cheney famously said, “Deficits don’t matter.”

Republicans also want you to forget how those perverse renditions of fiscal responsibility were compounded by Big Pharma’s prescription drug bill. The GOP-controlled Congress rammed it through in late 2003. Bush signed it and immediately put its cost off budget. Or to put it another way, he added the program’s cost to the national debt. But that unfunded liability was chicken feed compared to the cost of Bush’s unnecessary Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan, both pursued off budget/added to the debt.

Keep Republicans’ record of fiscal irresponsibility clearly in mind as they try to deny, distract and project what they’ve done on to President Obama. Keep in mind, he caught the full force of the collapsed economy Bush left behind and that he put the Medicare prescription drug program and both wars on budget shortly after taking office in 2009.

Obama’s early budget decisions weren’t politically expedient. But they were the fiscally responsible things to do.

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Chart data from skymachines.com, where you can see a more-comprehensive rendering that includes national debt per capita by presidential term .

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Posted in: politics.
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Romney statements make clear
why he should never be president

Jan 14th, 2012
by S.W. Anderson.

Romney speaking

On the campaign trail: Mitt Romney makes a point. /Mary Ann Chastain, Sfgate.com.

Mitt Romney, a Republican millionaire businessman who wants to become our next president, recently demonstrated twice over why, as a general proposition, a person of his background and mindset belongs in a corporate executive suite, not the Oval Office.

What Romney exhibited is the same lack of basic understanding about what government is, does and should do for people that made Republicans Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush such lousy presidents.

Like Romney, Reagan and the Bushes were intelligent, educated men. But also like Romney, all three exhibited a lack of intellectual breadth and depth, coupled with an inability to put themselves in others’ shoes, and understand — feel genuine compassion — for their situation.

People with that kind of deficit can make all the right moves when the goal is cutting operating costs, edging out competitors, becoming profitable and then maximizing profits, no matter what it takes, no matter who gets hurt.

However, when faced with a choice between disbursing already appropriated funds to help the poor afford to heat their homes in winter or catering to ideological distaste for providing federal help to citizens, it’s not surprising that George W. Bush chose to sit on the funds until late winter, in 2003 and again in 2006. Nor should anyone be surprised when a president of the Reagan/Bush/Romney type so mismanages the response to a catastrophe like hurricane Katrina that already-suffering and endangered people end up experiencing even worse horrors, with countless lives lost unnecessarily.

Compassion, empathy, depth of character and a well-rounded life experience matter in a president. Unfortunately, years of climbing the corporate ladder, making millions while vastly increasing shareholder value, doesn’t instill or enhance any of these important traits.

Democracy Now recently featured a discussion highlighting one aspect of Romney’s lack of basic understanding. It bears on appreciating the difference between the top-down command and control exerted by a CEO in a corporate setting and what democracy and public-service leadership are all about.

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Posted in: Business, Government, politics, Quote, Republican corruption.
Tagged: · · · ·

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