Again

It happened again.

James von Brunn, who has a long history of virulently hating Jews, blacks and everyone else who is not white and Protestant, walked into the Holocaust Museum in Washington yesterday and opened fire, killing a security guard before he was shot himself and arrested. There are so many angles one can take with this horrible story it's hard to know where to begin.

Soon after President Obama took office, a report requested by the outgoing Bush Administration on the dangers of violent right-wing extremist groups (the KKK, armed militias, violent racists and anti-Semites, etc) was leaked. Led by Fox News, the GOP screamed that the report was actually about mainstream conservatives, to the point where Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano knuckled under and retracted it. Will everyone who led this shrieking chorus now apologize?

As a convicted felon who in 1981 walked into the Federal Reserve's HQ in Washington armed with a shotgun and threatened to kill everyone inside, von Brunn should never have been allowed anywhere near a gun. How did he get it? Did he buy it at a gun show, at which background checks are still not required? Did he bribe the owner of a gun store to let him have one anyway? Did he get it from one of his neo-Nazi comrades?

Will the guns-for-everyone crowd finally remember the first part of the Second Amendment, the part about a "well regulated militia?" I'm pretty sure the Founding Fathers didn't intend the nation to be filled indiscriminately with mechanisms of death and mayhem.

And will all the pundits who pollute the airwaves with hatred and paranoia, who spin wild fantasies that a president with the middle name of "Hussein" is a traitorous tyrant who must be stopped at any cost, who regularly use the language of war and violence - will they finally realize that there are people out there who take their overblown rhetoric literally?

They will - for maybe a day. Then it will be back to business as usual.

Until the next time, that is.

But You Already Knew That

"What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality."

Neoconservative pundit Charles Krauthammer, admitting that the world as seen on Fox News bears little or no resemblance to the actual world we live in

Praying for Death

Out on the lunatic fringe of Christian-right politics is a preacher named Wiley Drake, who last distinguished himself by being the 2008 vice-presidential running mate of Alan Keyes. (You may remember Keyes from the 2004 Senate campaign in Illinois; after the original GOP candidate imploded in a sex scandal, he was called in as a last-minute replacement and went on to get creamed by a guy named Barack Obama. Today, Keyes spends his time cozying up to the craziest of the crazies, insisting that Obama is a secret Muslim who was actually born in Kenya.)

Drake is fond of what he calls "imprecatory prayers," a ten-dollar phrase which means praying for someone to die. Now, as children we all had such moments, usually on the playground when you ask for God to send a bolt of lightning to zap a bully or something. But Drake really means it.

In 2007, he urged his followers to pray for the deaths of Joe Conn and Jeremy Leaming (which Drake misspelled as "Learing"), two staffers at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. You see, they apparently got on Drake's bad side by reporting that Drake's church was under investigation for specifically endorsing Mike Huckabee's presidential run and thus violating IRS tax-exemption rules.

Well, nothing happened. Conn and Leaming are still very much alive and well.

Last week, he openly celebrated the murder of Kansas doctor George Tiller: "I am glad George Tiller is dead. I said to the Lord, 'Lord I pray back to you the Psalms, where it says that they are to become widowers and their children are to become orphans and so forth.' And we began calling for those imprecatory prayers, because he had obviously turned his back on God again and again and again." Not surprisingly, this did not go over well with Christians and other people who see murder as, you know, bad.

Undeterred by the resulting criticism, Drake is now trying again. This time, he's setting his sights a tad higher than two staffers and a doctor - he's going for the big kahuna, the whole nine yards, all the marbles.

Yes, he's praying for the death of President Obama himself.

One day after cheering Tiller's murder, Drake went on Alan Colmes' radio show and specifically said that since Obama's policies somehow show that he follows the "wrong" form of Christianity, he has to go.

Colmes: When you say you are praying for the death of someone using imprecatory prayer, you then said - I asked, then, "for whom else are you praying in that fashion?" And you said "President Obama." Are you praying for his death?

Drake: Yes.

Colmes: So you're praying for the death of the president of the United States.

Drake: Yes.

Colmes: Do you, are you concerned that by saying that you might find yourself on some kind of a Secret Service call or FBI wanted list or, uh, do you think it's appropriate to say something like that, or even pray for something like that?

Drake: I think it's appropriate to pray the Word of God. I'm not saying anything. What I am doing is repeating what God is saying, and if that puts me on somebody's list, then I'll just have to be on their list.

Colmes: Uh, you would like for the president of the United States to die?

Drake: If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around, I am asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers that are throughout the Scripture, uh, that would cause him, uh, death, that's correct. I think we'll see, in the days ahead, other imprecatory prayers answered. God says clearly in his word that we are to continue to pray, and he will answer our prayers.

Since Drake is supposedly a Southern Baptist, the group's president backed away from his comments as fast as he could. Johnny Hunt called it a "terrible statement, [a] very unbiblical statement."

Is Drake determined to prove that Christian demagogues can be just as insanely bloodthirsty as their Muslim counterparts? He's certainly doing a good job at it.

Deus Vult

After President Obama spoke in Cairo last week to the Muslim world, reaching out to the people whom President Bush had slapped away for years, you could hear neoconservative heads exploding all over the place. Ed Cline in particular accused Obama of making "obeisance" to his supposed Muslim masters, and pressed all the usual hot buttons in urging a continued holy war against Islam.

My reaction to all this was "deus vult."

In 1095, Pope Urban II declared a crusade to "liberate" the Middle East from Muslim control. In reply, crowds of fired-up Christians yelled out "deus vult" - God wills it - and went on to slaughter horrendous numbers of Jews, Muslims and others in the name of God.

One wonders if God was ashamed of what had been done in the holy name.

For more than seven years, the Bush Administration waged the Global War on Terror as a religious war - precisely what should not have happened. From Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin's derision of Allah as a satanic idol while preaching in uniform to official military evangelizing of the local population in Iraq and Afghanistan to the biblical quotes on the president's daily Pentagon briefings, everything was cast in a stark my-God-can-kick-your-God's-butt light.

The problem with a religious war is there can be no compromise and no middle ground. Anything less than total war is tantamount to surrender. Worse yet, it tells people of the opposing faith that they are the enemy, even if the vast majority of those people would never take up arms in such a war.

This is the dilemma in which we now find ourselves. President Bush and his crowd did indeed see Islam and all Muslims as the enemy, but how can you differentiate between "bad" Muslims and "good" Muslims? In a religious war, you ultimately cannot. Casting the battle against terrorist groups who follow a twisted view of Islam as a struggle against an entire faith guarantees that such a fight will go on forever, with new generations of recruits perpetually induced to sign up by whatever religious insult is offered at any one time.

Cline is most certainly wrong when he said that "Islam has been and is certainly now at war with the U.S. and with the West." How can a religious faith be at war with anything? If he had said that some people who follow a faction of Islam are at war with the US, he would be more correct.

Rather ironically, he also says that, "There is no reconciliation possible between...reason and faith... As with reason versus any other faith or religion, it is a matter of 'either-or.'" Considering that the previous Administration saw the world precisely in such black-and-white religious terms, it's an odd argument for him to make.

After 9/11, the entire world was with us in our battle with al Qaeda - especially the Muslim world, who rightly saw Osama bin Laden and his murderous ilk as a threat to them as well. But President Bush threw that all away, preferring to fight the War on Terror as a global crusade - with all the connotations that word implies. The Administration and the larger Republican Party did everything they could to cast Muslims of all stripes as a vague and threatening Other, and all American Muslims were seen as potential traitors and terrorists. Is it any wonder that the Muslim world now sees us with deep suspicion, and is it any wonder that President Obama now has a lot of work to do to correct that image?

Let's look at it this way: suppose 9/11 had been carried out not by nineteen followers of bin Laden's perverted brand of Islam, but by nineteen followers of an apocalyptic Jewish sect. (And don't say "Jews would never do that" - look at Baruch Goldstein.) The vast majority of Jews loudly denounce what was done in their name and promise to root out the killers in their midst. And then the White House reacts by declaring war on Judaism itself, claiming that the religion is inherently violent and terroristic, no matter what actual Jews may say or do. The military goes on to invade and destroy Israel, desecrate the tallitot and tefillin of Jewish prisoners, and distribute Christian Bibles in Hebrew to convert local Jews to the "right" faith.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

President Obama was absolutely right last week in Cairo. We can no longer afford to treat 1.5 billion people as "less than" because they follow the same basic faith as do a band of fanatical killers. Such an approach would be tantamount to treating all Jews like Baruch Goldstein, or all Christians like Torquemada. If we want the Muslim world to live with us in peace, we have to live with them in peace, and that starts with treating them like adult human beings instead of religious untermenschen.

The Freedom Concerts Scam

It's that time of year again. The days are growing longer, the air is getting warmer and the kids are looking forward to summer vacation. Which also means it's time for Sean Hannity to start plugging his "Freedom Concerts" series on his TV and radio shows.

"It's all to raise money for a great cause," Hannity says, "the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund, which gives scholarships to the children of slain heroes." Great idea - kids whose parents died while serving our country certainly deserve all the help we can give. Lord knows they've earned it.

But the Freedom Concerts aren't as advertised. Only a tiny fraction of the ticket money ever gets to the people who need it.

While the fine print has mysteriously disappeared from Hannity's website, a number of bloggers preserved it for posterity: "The following fees are included in the above ticket prices: $4.75 facility fee, $4.25 parking fee, and a $4.00 donation to the Freedom Alliance." (Note: This is from 2007, but since Hannity no longer tells anyone how much of the ticket price is actually donated, let's assume nothing has changed.)

Putting aside the fact that parking costs more than the actual donation, the amount given is the same no matter how much you spend on a ticket - four dollars. Ticket prices can go to $300 or more, but let's say you get one of the cheap seats at $75, which means 5.3% is donated.

Now that you have your ticket, take a moment to note the fine print - the $4 does not go directly to the scholarship fund, but rather to the Freedom Alliance as a whole. This tax-exempt group, founded by Iran-Contra scoundrel and Fox News talking head Oliver North, exists primarily to push all sorts of right-wing causes. According to their website, "the Mission of Freedom Alliance is to advance the American heritage of freedom by honoring and encouraging military service, defending the sovereignty of the United States and promoting a strong national defense."

Oh yes, and they also throw a few bucks to the troops here and there. The FA's most recent Form 990 (the IRS form filed by tax-exempt groups) says they took in $12,459,317 in 2007. But if you keep looking, you find some surprising information on what was spent where:

• Salaries: $1,063,018
• Postage and shipping: $1,424,627
• Printing and publications: $1,151,428
• Grants and allocations: $895,347

That works out to 7.2% of their revenue being spent on grants. (By comparison, the United Negro College Fund spends 56% of their revenue on grants.) And if that doesn't grab you, consider that they actually spend more just on stamps than on the people who are supposed to be getting help.

But wait, it gets worse. If you run down the list of scholarship grants as given in the Form 990 (none of which are more than $6000, a small fraction of actual college costs) and add everything up, you get the grand total of $597,500.

$597,500 out of $12,459,317 is 4.8%. Combine that with the 5.3% of the cheap-seats ticket price and you get a final percentage of 0.25% of your money actually going for scholarships.

And if you get one of those $300 tickets, just 0.064% goes to the supposed purpose.

So when Hannity and his ilk flog their Freedom Concerts as a fundraiser for the kids of dead soldiers, they are actually perpetrating an extraordinarily cruel and heartless scam. They are ripping off well-meaning concertgoers who think they're helping the children of America's fallen warriors. Raking in the dough, they keep most of it for themselves while giving a pittance to those who need it the most.

There should be a special place in hell reserved for people like this.

Let the Slime Begin

In the twenty-four hours since President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the GOP and the right wing have gone crazy all at once. Amid all the snide remarks to her gender and ethnicity, two stand out as quite possibly the stupidest reasons to reject a nomination - ever.

For starters, Mark Krikorian attacked Sotomayor for the way she pronounces her name: "Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English...and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be giving in to."

But that one looks positively sane next to some Republicans who actually blasted Sotomayor for, of all things, her tastes in food. In a 2001 speech, the judge talked about how the cuisine of her Puerto Rican heritage helped to shape her identity: "For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir - rice, beans and pork - that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events."

That was a big red flag for the super-patriots among us for whom anything other than burgers and hot dogs is akin to Communism:

This has prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo - pigs' tongue and ears - would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench.

Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative-leaning advocacy group, said he wasn't certain whether Sotomayor had claimed her palate would color her view of legal facts but he said that President Obama's Supreme Court nominee clearly touts her subjective approach to the law.

"It's pretty disturbing," said Levey. "It's one thing to say that occasionally a judge will despite his or her best efforts to be impartial ... allow occasional biases to cloud impartiality. But it's almost like she's proud that her biases and personal experiences will cloud her impartiality."

This is truly nuts. And this is the best they've got! The GOP obviously cannot challenge the nomination on its merits, so they're going all-in on the slime right at the get-go.

It's going to be a long and dirty summer.

Everybody Run, the National Park Visitor's Got a Gun

The gun lobby has been quite busy these last few months stoking paranoia throughout the land, spreading fantasies that President Obama will take everyone's guns away. Meanwhile, they've also been pressuring Congress to take a truly stupid step - allowing people to carry guns, concealed or open, in America's national parks. The NRA sold the bill as a measure allowing park visitors to protect themselves against the marauding fiends who presumably rampage through our national parks with abandon.

Except they're not.

By any standard, America's national park system is one of the safest places to be in the country. According to the National Park Service, the FBI recorded 382 major crimes (i.e., murder, rape, robbery or aggravated assault) throughout the park system in 2007. With 275 million people visiting 34 million acres of federal parkland, that means you had a 0.000139% chance of being the victim of a violent crime.

By comparison, the state of South Dakota (population 800,000) recorded 1347 violent crimes, giving you a 0.17% chance of being a violent-crime victim there. So in other words, your chances of being a crime victim in South Dakota are one thousand, two hundred and eleven times greater than being a crime victim in a national park.

But that doesn't matter to the gun lobby. To the NRA, guns must be allowed anywhere at any time, consequences be damned. And there will be consequences. Imagine people getting into an argument over parking spaces, or camping sites, or anything else, and finding out the hard way that someone has both a .38-caliber pistol and an itchy trigger finger.

Another clue that the gun lobby might not have thought this one through is the existence of President's Park, a national park on the east coast. Steeped in history, the park is a focal point for news coverage, is visited by world leaders, and is admired by Americans of all ages.

President's Park, you see, is the White House. And somehow, I doubt the Secret Service would appreciate hordes of Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights by packing heat anywhere near the president.

This is a dumb idea, plain and simple. The amendment, sneaked into a bill reining in credit-card companies, was dutifully passed by Congress and sent to the White House. President Obama will probably sign the bill to achieve its major purpose, but Congress should remedy this nonsense at the first opportunity.

Mustard-Gate

It has now been 108 days since Barack Obama became president, and in that short time the Republican Party and their media mouthpieces have gone nuts trying to paint him as a secret Commie Muslim who is a milquetoast abroad and a tyrant at home. You know, the usual tactics of a political movement which has absolutely nothing to offer the American people apart from fear and loathing.

But this time, they may just have outdone themselves, descending from standard political hackery to all-out batshit craziness.

The other day, Omaba and Vice President Biden stopped in at a Virginia burger joint. Nothing fancy about it, just lunch combined with a standard "man of the people" photo op. So what happened? Well, let's allow Fox News' Sean Hannity to explain:

Yes, because Obama likes his burger with some spicy bite, he is somehow an un-American crank worthy of sniggering derision. Real Americans apparently like ketchup, and you're clearly a Communist/terrorist/etc if you happen to want something else. (Better not tell Hannity that some of us actually like - gasp! - green chile on our burgers!)

This is so stupid there are hardly words for it. I like to believe that even Hannity doesn't buy into the crap he shovels out, but stranger things have happened. Maybe he really has hypnotized himself into thinking that you can judge whether someone is a real American depending on which lunchtime condiment they prefer.

Or perhaps he's smirking because he just sold his audience another whopper.

The Operative Budget

Ron Ziegler, Richard Nixon's press secretary, once had the thankless job of telling the White House press corps that his boss had lied like a cheap rug. "This is the operative statement," he said in 1973 as he told the assembled reporters to ignore whatever he had said in the past. "The others are inoperative.''

The Republican Party now seems to be having seances with Ziegler's ghost for inspiration.

Last week, the party leadership staged a disastrous "budget unveiling" which did not feature any actual budgeting. In the chorus of boos and catcalls which followed, the GOP hastily explained that the stunt was never actually intended to present a budget (suuuure it wasn't) but was merely a warm-up for the actual budget unveiling. And so, the supposedly best and brightest of the GOP assembled this morning to present what Ziegler might have called their operative budget.

No one in the party seems to have realized that this shindig took place on April Fool's Day. So as expected, their budget is a joke. Less amusingly, it's a disaster for anyone who doesn't have gobs of money - in other words, 99.99% of us.

The proposal brings back the good old days of supply-side tax cuts, dropping the top tax rate to 25% for anyone making over $50,000 a year ($100,000 for joint filers). Everyone else pays a 10% rate.

So let's do some math. Let's suppose Bob and Carol Moneybags earn a combined $400,000 annually, so they currently pay 35%, or $140,000, in federal income taxes. (For simplicity's sake, let's assume they have no kids and no deductions.) Under the Republican proposal, their rate would be cut to 25%, or $100,000, for a tax savings of $40,000.

Now let's look at Ted and Alice Worker, who together make $56,000 a year. Their current tax rate is 15%, so they pay $8400 in tax. The GOP plan cuts that to 10%, or $5600, for a tax savings of $2800.

So let's compare. The Moneybags' tax savings are more than fourteen times that of the Workers, despite the fact they make only seven times as much, so the budget proportionally gives far less in tax savings to the people who need it the most.

But wait, there's more. The GOP plan also "eliminates nearly all existing tax deductions, exclusions, and other special provisions" - mortgage interest, child care, medical care, job hunting, et cetera - that have made it possible for the middle class to retain some fiscal viability even in the current economy. The upshot of this is that a full third of lower- and middle-class taxpayers (that is, those of us in the bottom 60% of the income scale) would actually pay more under the GOP plan than they do now.

So in other words, Bob and Carol would royally screw Ted and Alice.

And if all that weren't bad enough, the GOP budget would impose an across-the-board freeze for all non-military spending (the Pentagon budget would increase to $714 billion by 2019) just when we need it the most. More money for schools? Too bad. More money to fix roads and bridges? Buy a Learjet and fly above them. The economic stimulus? Gone.

But holders of Treasury bonds and other forms of public debt would do just dandy, thank you very much. The GOP envisions the annual interest paid on the national debt to increase from $170 billion in 2009 to $643 billion in 2019 - a 278% increase with absolutely nothing to show for it.

And in a truly bizarre example of how to pull numbers out of one's hindquarters, the GOP offers this graph as "proof" that they know best:


Yes, the Republicans insist they know how their budgeting will affect government revenue in seventy years. The party must have an official Bureau of Making Crap Up in order to get something like this.

The actual legislation text says that "within ten years of enactment of this legislation, individuals would choose one of the two tax systems: the current tax code or the simplified system." So the GOP is openly admitting that their plan would make the existence of one tax system for the rich and another for everyone else de jure rather than de facto.

Furthermore, the GOP's insistence that their budget plan will work is based on the assumption that everyone is willing to pay a higher tax rate rather than go for the lower one. Of course, no one will do that; everyone will naturally go for the lower rate, which blows the party's rosy scenario right out of the water.

Anyway, with the stimulus scrapped entirely, the Republicans are betting that any economic recovery will occur purely due to tax cuts, which has been proved time and again to be fallacious. Tax cuts by themselves don't have any significant economic effect, particularly not such trickle-down cuts as the GOP is proposing.

So rather than come up with solutions to fix our economic woes, the Republicans have delved into the all-too-recent past to dredge up George W. Bush's tax policy - exactly the sort of nonsense that got us into this mess in the first place.

The GOP really is a broken record, condemned to repeat the same twaddle endlessly. Congress should send this supposed "alternative plan" packing until the Republicans show they have some connection to reality.

Aaand It's Gone

Last week's South Park episode "Margaritaville" turned its harshly satirical light on the current global financial crisis as only Trey Parker and Matt Stone can. In a scene which speaks volumes, Stan goes to the bank to deposit $100 only to have the bank lose it within a few seconds:

Bank teller: We can put that check in a money market mutual fund, then we'll reinvest the earnings into foreign currency accounts with compounding interest aaand it's gone.
(long pause)
Stan: Uh, what?
Bank teller: It's gone. It's all gone.
Stan: What's all gone?
Bank teller: The money in your account - it didn't do too well, it's gone.
Stan: What do you mean? I have a hundred dollars.
Bank teller: Not anymore you don't. Poof.

And so on. In a case of life imitating art imitating life, we now have a story which should get anyone's blood boiling. When most American companies moved away from traditional pension plans, they set up 401(k) retirement plans instead and invested the money in the stock markets. 401(k) holders have thus been particularly savaged by the Wall Street plunge, but if you have an old-fashioned pension, your retirement fund is safe, guaranteed by the federal government - right?

Wrong. The Boston Globe reported yesterday that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal agency tasked with insuring pension plans, made some rather unorthodox investment decisions. The PBGC has traditionally invested very conservatively in bonds, with an emphasis on long-term stability and security rather than short-term gains.

But in early 2008, as economists the world over were shouting warnings that the housing bubble was popping and that Wall Street was about to crater, the PBGC board signed off on a plan to change its investment model. The agency thus moved more than half of its $64 billion fund to more speculative ventures, including emerging foreign markets, real estate, and private equity funds.

Aaand it's gone.

The PBGC won't say just how much of the fund has vanished, but they admit that at the end of its last fiscal year, the fund was down by 6.5% and its stock investments were down by 23%. But the last fiscal year ended in September 2008, before the worst of the market carnage, and the agency has so far refused to give figures for this year. That doesn't sound good.

So who's responsible for what sure looks like a case of outright criminal negligence? Charles E.F. Millard, who headed the agency until the Obama Administration took over in January, just happens to be a former managing director of Lehman Brothers - which invested heavily in subprime mortgages and then went under last fall when the subprime market collapsed. At the time the strategy was changed, he claimed that "the new investment policy is not riskier than the old one."

Uh huh.

After the market collapsed, Millard was asked whether his strategy might have been, well, stupid. "Ask me in twenty years," he replied dismissively. "The question is whether policymakers will have the fortitude to stick with it."

Um, Chuckie, the retirees who are now broke because of your greed-fueled shortsightedness don't have twenty years. They're too busy trying to survive to "stick with it."

If there's anyone who deserves to go to jail in this whole miserable economic crisis, it's Millard and whoever else is responsible for this.

GOP Underpants Gnomes

Ever since President Obama was inaugurated back in January, the Republican Party has done nothing but say "no" to anything he has suggested. No plans, no alternatives, no nothing. It got so ludicrous that in his press conference this week, Obama chided the Republicans for their incessant carping yet never proposing anything else.

Eventually, the GOP realized they really don't want to be known as the Party of No and so loudly went before the cameras yesterday to unveil their budget. Except they didn't.

Rather, what they presented was a 17-page (19 if you count the front and back covers) pamphlet called "The Republican Road to Recovery" which contained precisely zero budget numbers. Instead, it spends all its time complaining about the president's proposed budget with a few cheap shots thrown in for effect:

According to Senator Kennedy's campaign website, the [wind farm] project [off the coast of Massachusetts] would undermine "the ecology of the Sound and will jeopardize the public interest." The Senator once remarked, "Don't you realize - that's where I sail!"

In fact, the only thing even approaching a budget number is yet another big tax cut for anyone making over $100,000 a year. Yes, another one.

In a nutshell, the pamphlet is, shall we say, light on details. For example, this is how the GOP proposes to fix the nation's housing crisis:


That's it. No details, just a feel-good graphic.

The rollout was a disaster, with media, pundits and bloggers all complaining that the supposed "big announcement" was little more than a bait-and-switch scam. Even the conservative National Review blasted the party, saying that the stunt was "a bottle full of air."

In their defense, the GOP claimed they would introduce their actual budget - with real numbers, no less! - in Congress next Wednesday.

Has anyone else noticed that next Wednesday is April Fool's Day?

This whole fiasco reminds me of the Underpants Gnomes from South Park, who also claimed to have a terrific plan:

Phase 1: Collect Underpants
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit!

That's the standard GOP operation right now: offer meaningless platitudes, skip whatever actual work needs to be done, and just say that everything will be fine.

And they wonder why no one trusts them.

Holy Disgusting

For years, the Catholic Church has been trying to put the horrors of the sexual abuse scandals behind them and bring the Church into something resembling the present.

And then they blow themselves all the way back to the Middle Ages.

A man from Brazil, who had been raping his two stepdaughters for years, was arrested after it was discovered that one of them was four months pregnant.

She is nine years old. Her sister, who is "only" fourteen, is physically handicapped.

Brazil has some of the world's most restrictive abortion laws, barring the procedure in all cases except those involving rape and danger to the mother's life. With both conditions having been met in spades, the procedure was performed and the the girl's life was saved. The stepfather is now in jail where he belongs, and I for one hope he never gets out.

And then Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho excommunicated the mother and the girl's doctors for performing the abortion, telling a Brazilian TV network that "the law of God [is] above any human law." Attempting to show that he is not a complete jerk, the archbishop graciously did not excommunicate the rape victim herself.

With Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva condemning the Church's outrageous take on the tragedy, it was noticed that the stepfather was not excommunicated.

That was not an accident, Sobrinho said. "It is clear that he committed a very serious sin," he said as he defended the Church's actions, "but worse than this is the abortion."

Let me get this straight: a monster who rapes children and gets a nine-year-old girl pregnant is actually better than the girl's mother and the doctors who save her life?

According to the Vatican, yes. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the head of the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation for Bishops, weighed in over the weekend. "It is a sad case," he told the Italian newspaper La Stampa, "but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated."

And the Church hierarchy wonders why Catholics are leaving in droves. It's only a matter of time before the Church's medieval outlook on life ensnares them as well.

Capitol Hill, Den of Marxists

Years behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget, the Capitol Visitor Center has finally opened, presenting a thumbnail view of the Capitol Building's history and what Congress does.

But it wouldn't be America if someone didn't like it.

Jim DeMint, a Republican (naturally) senator from South Carolina, issued a statement on his website blasting the new visitor center for rampant leftism and insufficient fealty to religion:

The current CVC displays are left-leaning and in some cases distort our true history. Exhibits portray the federal government as the fulfillment of human ambition and the answer to all of society's problems. This is a clear departure from acknowledging that Americans' rights "are endowed by their Creator" and stem from "a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence." Instead, the CVC's most prominent display proclaims faith not in God, but in government. Visitors will enter reading a large engraving that states, "We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution." This is an intentional misrepresentation of our nation's real history, and an offensive refusal to honor America's God-given blessings.

DeMint appears to see his job not as representing his constituents, or making policy, but rather to ensure that Americans have the correct religious viewpoint. He is apparently ignorant of the simple fact that not all of us share his religious beliefs. Nor does he know (or care) that in America, church and state and kept separate to protect each from encroachment by the other.

The senator needs a refresher course.

God, Head of Security

People from Appalachian states like Kentucky have an image of being ignorant, inbred yahoos who substitute pithy slogans for actual thinking, while people who live in these states wonder why they can't shake that image.

Well, maybe it's because of things like Chapter 39G, Section 10, Paragraph 2(a) of the Kentucky Revised Statutes. Section 10 in effect presents the job description of the state Homeland Security director, and includes such duties as coordinating with the federal Department of Homeland Security to protect the state against various threats.

So far so good. But before all that mundane stuff comes a paragraph detailing the director's prime duty:

Publicize the findings of the General Assembly stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth by including the provisions of KRS 39A.285(3) in its agency training and educational materials. The executive director shall also be responsible for prominently displaying a permanent plaque at the entrance to the state's Emergency Operations Center stating the text of KRS 39A.285(3);

In case you're wondering, Chapter 39A, Section 285, Paragraph 3 reads as follows:

The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God as set forth in the public speeches and proclamations of American Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln's historic March 30, 1863, Presidential Proclamation urging Americans to pray and fast during one of the most dangerous hours in American history, and the text of President John F. Kennedy's November 22, 1963, national security speech which concluded: "For as was written long ago: 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.' "

Yes, the main job of the state Homeland Security director, even before he gets to all that stuff about, you know, security, is to praise God.

Proving that some people in the state government rise above the prevailing gene pool, neither the department's website nor its mission statement give the legally required credit to the Almighty. State Rep. Tom Riner, who inserted the God Clause back in 2002, is having a hissy fit over this minor oversight.

Perhaps the state government expects a tent revival to ward off terrorists. What next? Will all state residents receive crosses, garlic and holy water? (And do crosses even work to ward off Muslims anyway?)

This is why people think states like Kentucky are filled with ignorant hillbillies.

The Circular Firing Squad Assembles

With the election over, the knives have come out. Yes, open warfare has broken out between the staffers of John McCain and Sarah Palin, each one blaming the other for Tuesday's loss.

McCain's people let slip to the media that Palin was rather fuzzy on some basic facts. For example, she thought Africa was a country rather than a continent and she didn't know which countries are party to the North American Free Trade Agreement. (Answer: the United States, Canada and Mexico.) They also said that her now-infamous shopping spree was far more expensive than previously disclosed and that many of the clothes have mysteriously disappeared.

Even Fox News - Fox News! - has found it hard to defend her.

In retaliation, Palin's people have gone crying to Rush Limbaugh and the nuttiest of the wingnuts, complaining that all the people saying bad things about this poor helpless woman are just a bunch of sore-loser poopyheads. And the real wingnuts in the GOP have vowed not only to boycott Fox News, but to push all the insufficiently pure out of the party, leaving only the true believers behind.

Yes, they're serious. The American people rejected on Tuesday a Republican Party controlled by the crazies, so the solution is quite simple: more crazies!

I, for one, welcome a GOP controlled by people who are firmly dedicated to denying reality. After all, that's a sure-fire recipe for permanent Democratic control of our government.

The Morning After

Wow.

Just - wow.

What a night. After eight years of disastrous government, of endless and useless war, of a completely preventable economic collapse, the grownups finally got elected last night. The American people soundly rejected the fear-and-smear politics that has marked the GOP for the last twenty years, and told Karl Rove and his acolytes to go back to their caves.

As John McCain made his concession speech last night, you could see it in his face - the crushing realization that had he not jettisoned his principles and caved in to the God-guns-and-gays wing of the party, he might well have won the election. But no, he allowed Sarah Palin to be foisted onto the ticket and handed control of the campaign over to the crazies.

And now we have the results.

Barack Obama gave us real-world solutions to our domestic and international crises, while McCain could only mumble about Joe the Plumber and Bill Ayers.

The GOP sneered at Obama's Ivy League education as "elitist," portraying Palin's six-schools-in-five-years college career as something to be emulated. What they never figured out is that when it comes to important things like government, we want our leaders to be not just good, but the best.

Let's suppose you get very sick and have to be rushed to the hospital. What sort of doctor do you want working on you? Do you want someone who went to Harvard Medical School, been board-certified in numerous specialties, keeps up with the latest research, regularly takes refresher courses, and generally makes sure that she's the best damn doctor around?

Or do you want someone who graduated at the bottom of her class from some fourth-rate school, barely passed her medical boards, and just manages to avoid losing her license every other month?

The tale of the Regular Joe solving everyone's problems with some down-home common sense makes for a good story, but in the real world we see what that gets us - a government that lurches from disaster to disaster, consumed by the arrogance of power.

With the Democrats taking control of the White House as well as both houses of Congress, we now have a real chance to restore economic and social justice to America. No more trickle-down economics that ends up trickling on the people who need help the most. A strong middle class makes it better for everyone. And even though there are bumps along the way (e.g., California's apparent passage of the ballot initiative banning gay marriage) it's time to treat all Americans as first-class citizens.

So let's roll up our sleeves and get to work. We've come a long way, but we've got a long way to go.

One Day to Go

Election Day is tomorrow, and that means both campaigns are pulling out all the stops. It is said that the final few days of any campaign tells you far more about the person running for office than all the speeches and debates can possibly do. Let's compare:

• Barack Obama bought thirty minutes of prime time television to tell America in plain English how he will rework the nation's tax policies, work to fix the economic crisis, and rebuild our shattered international image while dealing with potential threads.
• John McCain sent out his surrogates to call Obama disloyal.

Quite a difference, no?

But now it's all up to you. No matter who you support, get out to the polls tomorrow and cast your ballot. Make a difference. Exercise your right to steer our nation's future.

Vote!

Go to Hell. Go Directly to Hell. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200.

It had to happen. With just one week left before Election Day, the GOP wingnuts have gone completely insane. They are throwing anything and everything they can think of at Barack Obama in a last desperate attempt at scaring people into voting for John McCain.

To wit, see Christian talk-radio host Janet Porter's latest column, in which she claims in stark us-versus-them tones that "You Cannot Be a Christian and Vote for Obama:"

[T]his election is not about race. It's not about the economy. It's about obeying God...

Be forewarned: If you willfully disobey God on life and marriage because of race or false hope for the economy, you will usher in the kind of change that brought the Soviet Union to collapse.

But the warning goes far beyond that. To those who think that God's grace gives them license to willfully disobey Him without consequences – think again:

"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!' (Matthew 7:21-23)"

Yes, the GOP's God-guns-and-gays wing really is threatening Americans with hellfire and brimstone should we vote for Obama. Promising mayhem for voting the "wrong" way is nothing new for the Republicans, but I think this is the first time they have actually threatened us with eternal damnation.

And then she goes even further, saying that anyone who does not vote for McCain cannot be a Christian: "[O]bey Him in the voting booth and out of it. If not, do us all a favor and quit calling yourself a Christian."

Last I heard, God hasn't endorsed anyone this year.

Religious hatred has no place in American elections or anywhere else, and it only goes to show how desperate they are that they would stoop to these methods.

McCain is toast and they know it, so the Republicans have nothing to lose. But regardless of how McCain may go down in flames next week, such tactics may well ensure that the party goes down in flames with him.

Mud Will Be Flung Tonight

With eight days to go, John McCain's campaign clearly realizes it's over. Staffers have begun circulating their resumés, a senior McCain aide accused Sarah Palin of "going rogue," and the finger-pointing is rampant over at campaign HQ.

McCain and Palin have absolutely nothing positive to say on their own behalf - and that was before the story of Palin's $150,000 luxury shopping spree (paid for by the Republican Party) broke.

Remember John Edwards' infamous $400 haircut, about which the GOP spent weeks fulminating? The McCain campaign outspent him by 37,500%.

And the wretched excess for this supposed "plain folk hockey mom" just keeps on going - during just the first two weeks in October, the party shelled out $22,800 on Palin's makeup and another $10,000 on hairstyling. With Newsweek reporting that many GOP donors are "furious" over how their contributions were spent, the party seems in real danger of alienating their most deep-pocketed backers.

So the campaign has gone all-in on the mudslinging.

Palin's appeal last week to the "pro-America" parts of the country blew up in her face and she was forced to apologize, but the campaign continues to depict Barack Obama as a threatening Other. Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who last distinguished herself by bragging that her Minnesota constituents have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, even called Obama "anti-American" and demanded a media exposé of similar senators and representatives.

A few weeks ago, Obama told the much-exploited "Joe the Plumber" that he wants to "spread the wealth around" rather than have it concentrated in only a few hands. So naturally, the McCain campaign seized on Obama's comment to paint him as some sort of secret Communist. The usual suspects (Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, etc) did their jobs admirably, parroting GOP talking points ad nauseum. Orlando TV reporter Barbara West even quoted Karl Marx's famous definition of Socialism ("from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs") and asked Joe Biden on Thursday, "how is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?" (Biden's response was to laugh and ask, "Is this a joke? Or is that a real question?")

So now we see what the GOP really boils down to. With all their usual wedge issues (terrorism, gay marriage, etc) having failed, with a barely-there candidate and a loose-cannon running mate, and with an economy in which income inequality in some major American cities is at third-world levels, all they have left is hate and fear. But the more hate and fear the GOP unleashes at Democrats, the more the American people turn away in revulsion.

Of course, the Republicans haven't yet figured that out. And the longer they take, the bigger the Democratic victory next week will be.

It's Over

Twenty years ago, Michael Dukakis blew his chance at being elected president when he was asked whether he would support executing someone who (theoretically) raped and murdered his wife Kitty. Already seen as so mild-mannered to be almost comatose, his response was to launch into a dry spiel on why he opposed capital punishment. His campaign promptly went into a death spiral from which it never recovered.

We may have seen John McCain similarly self-destruct during last night's debate. Smirking and snickering, giving his rictus-like grin, blinking furiously as he clearly struggled to hold his temper, the Republican nominee came across as little more than a cranky old man. One half expected him to jump up from his chair and yell at Barack Obama to get off his lawn.

From his relentless invoking of a supposedly undecided "Joe the Plumber" (who, as it turns out, is neither undecided nor a plumber) to his insulting "air quotes" when rejecting health-based exceptions to an abortion ban, McCain all but poured gasoline over himself and lit a match. (And let's not even get into his exploiting his Bangladesh-born daughter to bash Obama over abortion. As a parent via adoption myself, I find that crass and tacky at the very least.)

The real John McCain was on display last night for all to see - someone who is painfully out of touch with the real world and has no real interest in finding out about it. Safely ensconced within one of his dozen or so homes, he has no clue that there is a whole country outside his little bubble where people agonize over how to pay the mortgage and parents go hungry so their kids can eat. And since he has absolutely nothing to offer apart from yet another budget-busting tax cut for the rich, he has no choice but to try and distract people with manufactured non-issues.

When he once again brings up one-time radical William Ayres, no one outside the rabid GOP wingnuttia cares. Even fewer people are at all sympathetic when he whines about being criticized for the anti-Obama shouts of "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" at his rallies.

And when he does nothing but throw tons of mud at Obama, blame the target for fighting back and then immediately claim that "of course, I've been talking about the economy," he comes across as confused and bitter.

With McCain's campaign now sagging into a nosedive, his staffers are predictably turning on each other. Some are blasting the candidate's reckless selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate and letting her run wild, calling her an "albatross" and a "total disaster." Every time she accuses Obama of "palling around with terrorists," McCain's poll numbers drop ever lower.

Too late, they realize that ignoring the real issues which confront Americans and instead running the campaign from a sewer is the contemporary equivalent of Pat Buchanan's "culture war" speech at the 1992 GOP convention. It's something that may fire up your core supporters but leaves the rest of us aghast.

The McCain campaign is toast. It's over.