GOP Senate candidate from PA says pregnancy from rape is just like having kid of out wedlock

GOP candidate for US Senate from Pennsylvania, Tom Smith, compares pregnancy resulting from rape and having a baby out of wedlock. He says that getting pregnant from being raped is "similar" to getting pregnant from being raped. And his daughter had a child out of wedlock, and he dealt with it, so women who get raped can deal with having their kids too, cuz his daughter dealt with it.

Just wow. And there's video,

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Bill Nye on the dangers of creationism

Since today is the start of the Republican convention, it's probably a good idea that Bill Nye is speaking out. The GOP extremists appear to believe that if they keep repeating nonsense, it will somehow make it true. The science deniers of the GOP are dangerous to the health and future of America, so it's good to hear someone like Nye say it. Read the rest of this post...

Anarchist militia inside Pentagon planned to kill Obama, overthrow government

Wow.

Good thing the Republican party chairman and Mitt Romney aren't constantly telegraphing the crazies that some crazy, socialist black foreigner has taken over their country.

It is interesting that the same religious right hate used against gays - that we're the other, out for your children - is now being used against Democrats generally (that Obama is the other, he's the enemy, be it a secret Soviet socialist or a Muslim extremist - either one is out to literally kill you and destroy your country).  It's hate either way.  And it sends a clear signal to the crazies that "those people" need to be gotten rid of at all costs, since that is what we do with Soviets (and Islamic terrorists) who have token over the country - we eliminate them at all costs. Read the rest of this post...

In 2010, 75% of Americans near retirement had less than $30,000 in their retirement accounts

As we approach the 2012 elections, the "fiscal cliff" (clever branding, that) and Obama's post-electoral march to the Grand Bargain sea, I want to present to you three virtual images. And an injunction.

■ Image one, from the New York Times in a recent article on retirement (my emphases and some reparagraphing throughout):

Seventy-five percent of Americans nearing retirement age in 2010 had less than $30,000 in their retirement accounts. The specter of downward mobility in retirement is a looming reality for both middle- and higher-income workers.

Almost half of middle-class workers, 49 percent, will be poor or near poor in retirement, living on a food budget of about $5 a day.

The article is really good; do read the rest. But I want to stop here a moment.

Gather that fact — 75% of about-to-retire Americans are headed off their own "fiscal cliff." Once that $30,000 is gone, boom.

■ Image two, from the William Pitt Rivers article that led me to the quote above:

I heard the sound of clinking and clanking coming from the front of my house. I knew what it was immediately: one of the Can People was making her daily pass through my recycling bins. ...

The Can People are old men and women, stooped, wearing worn-out clothes and fraying shoes as they rattle through my refuse with gnarled, arthritic hands. ...

I wave to them when I see them, but they seldom respond, either because their eyesight is too poor to make me out as I stand on my porch like a lord, or because they are too ashamed to acknowledge the fact that I see them, and thus see what it is they must do to survive. ...

I remembered a brace of ginger ale cans I'd neglected to bring outside. Hurriedly, I tossed them into a bag and brought them to my porch. She was bent into the blue bin to the waist, and when she reared up at the sound of me, there was fear in her eyes. ...

I came to the railing, extended the bag of cans to her, and she took them without a word. Her face was a delta, a map of time itself, and she could not bring herself to meet my eye. She placed the bag of cans in her shopping cart, and I watched as she clattered her way down the sidewalk[.]

In the article, Mr. Rivers takes apart "something called Charles Lane" — a Wash Post writer and water-carrier for something called Paul Ryan. A worthy read.

■ Image three, this man, a politician whose face I've seen lately telling Clinton's money man Robert Rubin ("Bob" he says) and a roomful of Rubin's best friends (including "Roger" and "Peter") that Social Security needs reforming.

He forgot to say that he was just the man to do it, but I can't blame him for that. This was 2006 and he was not yet president of the United States.



"Too many of us have been interested in defending programs as written in 1938," he codedly says. Social Security was enacted in 1935 and significantly amended in 1939, partly in response to the government's kicking the economy back into recession by reduced New Deal (stimulus) spending.

Other telling quotes:

"The coming baby boomer retirement will only add to the challenges."

And:

"Most of us are strong free-traders."

Good to be among friends.

■ The injunction — It's legitimate to consider the man above to be 2012's Lesser Evil. As near as I can tell, the current Koch-couped Republican Party is a wrecking ball.

But Lesser Evil is still evil. If you do decide to hand him four unfettered years to do as he chooses, remember — you put him there. You have to help save us from this evil as well.

I'm serious. If you vote for Romney, what he does will be your fault.

If you vote for Obama — and you don't try to stop his Keystone Dreams and the looting of the safety net to please the future funders of the Barack H. Obama World Legacy, Library, and Retirement Tour — that will be your fault too.

Stopping those who want to install "Ayn Ryan" is only half the job.

If you conspire to install Obama, you have to stop him too. It's part of the job you gave yourself by voting for him.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Poll: Raise taxes to save Social Security

The program that the GOP wants to destroy remains popular among Americans. Bizarrely, the GOP views Social Security as an entitlement despite Americans paying into the system during their working life. Regardless of what spin we hear from the GOP this week, it's their mission to destroy Social Security. It's terrifying to think what would have happened to Social Security in 2008 had the Ryan plan (which Bush also attempted in his second term) been enacted and it was privatized.

Why do Republicans want to destroy something as popular and important as Social Security?

Most Americans say go ahead and raise taxes if it will save Social Security benefits for future generations. And raise the retirement age, if you have to.

Both options are preferable to cutting monthly benefits, even for people who are years away from applying for them.

Those are the findings of a new Associated Press-GfK poll on public attitudes toward the nation's largest federal program.

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SMACKDOWN: Chris Matthews accuses RNC chair, Romney of playing race card over birtherism

And if you ever needed to see the face of the Republican party - white, male, arrogant and angry in all of its glory - just watch RNC chair Reince Priebus in this video. NBC's Chris Matthews takes Reince to task for Mitt Romney's birther comments last week.

Of course, it wasn't Romney's first paean to racism.  He did it here and here too.

Watch the entire video, it's only 5 minutes long.  For all the criticism the left has laid on Matthews over the years, he takes no BS from Priebus over the GOP's embrace of racism.  Watch this.  Here's a transcript of the exchange, but it's only one small bit:

RNC chair Reince Priebus: I think Obama's policies have created the sense that for whatever reason he's looking to guidance, as far as health care is concerned, as far as our spending is concerned, as far as the stimulus packages are concerned, he's looking to Europe for guidance.

Matthews: What?

Priebus: I mean that's the problem...

Matthews: Where do you get this from? This is insane....  What's this have to do with Europe? The foreignization of the guy.  You're doing it again now.  He's influenced by foreign influences? You're playing that card again.

What's this European thing of yours?  What are you up to with this constant [unintelligible] that he's not really domestic?

Priebus: I'm not gonna get into a shouting match with Chris, so you guys can move on.

Matthews: Cuz you're losing.... I'm not gonna sit here and listen to cheap shots about Obama being a foreigner - is the thing you're party's been pushing, Sununu pushed it, everybody's pushing it.

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Four years ago the nation was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer

And interesting double-whammy from former Florida Republican Governor Charlie Crist and former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul.  Neither of whom is terribly thrilled with Mitt Romney.

First Crist, who makes a valid point many have forgotten:

We often remind ourselves to learn the lessons of the past, lest we risk repeating its mistakes. Yet nearly as often, our short-term memory fails us. Many have already forgotten how deep and daunting our shared crisis was in the winter of 2009, as President Obama was inaugurated. It was no ordinary challenge, and the president served as the nation's calm through a historically turbulent storm.

The president's response was swift, smart and farsighted. He kept his compass pointed due north and relentlessly focused on saving jobs, creating more and helping the many who felt trapped beneath the house of cards that had collapsed upon them.

What Crist wrote matters, because it counters the latest GOP talking point, dutifully parroted by Fox's Greta Van Sustern on ABC's This Week this morning:

VAN SUSTEREN: [T]he flip side is, President Obama has now had almost four years. And frankly, if you aren't better off -- we know his economic strategy. And if you don't think it worked, if it didn't make your life better -- it doesn't matter whether you find someone sort of warm and fuzzy that you like, you're like, OK, well let's try something else.

Ah yes, the old "are you better off now than you were for years ago."

Four years ago we all had terminal financial cancer. We were on the verge of another Great Depression, financial death. And President Obama came in and stopped it from happening.

Now, has the patient fully recovered yet? No.

Did we feel better four years ago, just as we were diagnosed but the disease hadn't yet caused any real damage? Yup.

But America is a lot like the patient who underwent chemo. You feel like garbage, but that doesn't mean you were better off when you had cancer but hadn't yet felt the full brunt of the disease.

Not mention, remember all the GOP congressman claiming that we weren't in that dire of straits - that this was all Washington paranoia, that people back home were shopping for Christmas without a care in the world.  Remember how the GOP voted against the stimulus, all but 3 of them?  And how Olympia Snowe singlehandedly cut the stimulus even further?  We'd be in a Great Depression right now had the Republicans gotten their way - never forget it.

Then again, Fox is the GOP propaganda organ. And the GOP has never trusted the American people with the truth, because truth has a Democratic bias. So, Republicans have said things such as claiming, falsely, that the stimulus created unemployment because we had a stimulus and unemployment still went up (ignoring the obvious point that the increase in unemployment could have been cut in half by the stimulus (which is the convention wisdom)). So, I understand why Van Susteren is parroting GOP talking points, but as always, they're a convenient untruth.

And now Ron Paul, from the NYT:

Mr. Paul, in an interview, said convention planners had offered him an opportunity to speak under two conditions: that he deliver remarks vetted by the Romney campaign, and that he give a full-fledged endorsement of Mr. Romney. He declined.

“It wouldn’t be my speech,” Mr. Paul said. “That would undo everything I’ve done in the last 30 years. I don’t fully endorse him for president.”

Ha! Read the rest of this post...

Forbes publishes racist, nativist cover story attacking Obama

UPDATE: Just realized the article is from two years ago, sorry about that.  Still obnoxious.

Ryan Chittum of The Columbia Journalism Review does a great take down of the barely-coded racist and nativist piece, including the fact that the nativist author of the piece is a foreign-born immigrant who only visited America for the first time when he was 17 - but that let that stop him from accusing Obama of spending time outside of America before he was - what age? - 17!

But hey, he's a Republican, and they don't let facts get in the way of some good hate.

It’s all here but the birth certificate!

Let’s unpack that stuff a little bit. First of all, D’Souza perpetuates the Cokie Roberts idiocy—that Hawaii is somehow less American than the rest of the U.S. But hey—no problems with Alaska, which came into the Union the same year. Somehow, Sarah Palin always seem to be an examplar of “Real America.” Hmmm.

But D’Souza has some real nerve here: Obama is a native-born American and D’Souza is not. When he says “Here is a man who spent his formative years—the first 17 years of his life—off the American mainland,” he could be referring to himself. According to Wikipedia, anyway, he was born in India in 1961 and never came to the States until 1978. That adds up to about “the first 17 years of his life—off the American mainland.” Somehow the first-seventeen years thing raises questions about Obama’s Americanness but not about D’Souza’s qualifications to question somebody’s degree of native-born Americanness.

This is loathsome stuff. And, again, it’s the cover story of one of the three big mainstream financial magazines.

Of course, don't forget Romney's ongoing pitch to the nativist crowd and to racists as well - leading up to Romney's embrace of birtherism this past Friday (which is both racist and nativist). Read the rest of this post...

Report of massacre near Damascus

The ugly civil war continues to decimate the Syrian population. GOP candidate Mitt Romney is ready to send in US troops, despite fatigue among voters for more wars (and expenses from wars.) It's somewhat understandable on one level due to the horrible violence inflicted upon the people of Syria by the Assad regime, but what part of eleven years of war is Romney missing?

Candidate Romney fails to understand that the two primary causes of the budget problems today are the wars and the Bush tax cuts. We can't afford either, yet Romney can't comprehend this important reality. The budget-busting is about those two items, not social programs. As sympathetic as Americans are about the situation in Syria, it's not feasible to keep throwing troops and money at problems for years.

Meanwhile, the crisis in Syria is growing. The Guardian:

The Syrian civil war reached new heights of brutality on Sunday with government troops accused of massacring civilians a few miles from Damascus on a weekend which saw one of the worst reported death tolls in 17 months of conflict.

Opposition groups claimed more than 200 bodies had been found in Daraya, a poor Sunni community on the south-west outskirts of the capital, after Syrian troops had stormed the town on Saturday, going door to door in what President Bashar al-Assad's regime described as a counter-terrorism operation. Opposition and human rights activists claimed many of the dead were civilians.

A New York Times employee in Daraya reported seeing "scores of bodies lined up on top of each other in long thin graves moist with mud".

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