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From The Ed Show this Tuesday, the war on women's health continues:

Republicans are still trying to silence Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown student who appeared on The Ed Show last week. First, they wouldn't let her or any other woman testify at a birth control hearing. Now Democrats are holding their own hearing with Fluke, but refuse to televise it!

Terry O’Neill, President of the National Organization for Women, Lizz Winstead, comedian and co-creator of The Daily Show and Krystal Ball, Democratic strategist and former candidate for U.S. Congress, comment on the on-going Republican war on women’s health.

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Does crazy go to "11?" I was just wondering, because I've heard so many similarly crazy things from Wingnut Nation in the past couple of weeks. Like this low-level politician from Fort Wayne who can't bring himself to be associated with the scandalous abortion-loving, transgender-embracing Girl Scouts of America:

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - A Fort Wayne lawmaker's refusing to sign a resolution to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts.

He says he chose not to because of things he uncovered about the organization while surfing the web. State Representative Bob Morris says he won't sign it because the organization supports abortion and homosexuality. But the Girl Scouts of Northern Indiana - Michiana says it doesn't do any of the above.

It was websites like Honest Girl Scouts and Speak Now Girl Scouts that persuaded Representative Bob Morris to not sign the resolution.

Morris sent a private letter to his party members over the weekend explaining why he'd be voting against celebrating the Girl Scouts 100th birthday.

"Mixed reaction and some eyes were opened," (R) State Rep. Morris said.

He says he doesn't have a problem with Girl Scout groups or troops locally here in Fort Wayne.

"The Girl Scouts of America 99.9 percent of them are great groups, great troops but the problem that I have is with Girl Scouts of America of the national level."

Some websites claim The Girl Scouts of America donate funds to Planned Parenthood.

The Girl Scouts of Northern Indiana - Michiana released this statement about it:

"Neither Girl Scouts of Northern Indiana - Michiana nor Girl Scouts USA have any relationship with Planned Parenthood. No funds are allocated to Planned Parenthood. Neither organization has a programmatic relationship with Planned Parenthood. Neither organization has plans for any relationship in the future."

Other sites also say The Girl Scouts promotes homosexuality by allowing transgender children to join troops

VP aspirant Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell rethinking anti-abortion bills (Photo: Tom Saunders, VADOT)

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is now in full retreat mode on that bill mandating that women seeking an abortion in the state must get a trans-vaginal ultrasound (colloquially known as “state rape”) beforehand.

We saw hints of this earlier today from a spokesman. But McDonnell has now put out his own statement, asking for amendments to the bill that would modify the ultrasound from trans-vaginal to trans-abdominal:

“On Wednesday, McDonnell, who had previously said he would approve the bill, put out a statement reiterating his support for pro-life policies and informed consent laws, but essentially telling the legislature to back off.

“Over the past days I have discussed the specific language of the proposed legislation with other governors, physicians, attorneys, legislators, advocacy groups, and citizens,” McDonnell said. “It is apparent that several amendments to the proposed legislation are needed to address various medical and legal issues which have arisen. It is clear that in the majority of cases, a routine external, transabdominal ultrasound is sufficient to meet the bills stated purpose, that is, to determine gestational age.”

“Thus,” he continued, “having looked at the current proposal, I believe there is no need to direct by statute that further invasive ultrasound procedures be done. Mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state. No person should be directed to undergo an invasive procedure by the state, without their consent, as a precondition to another medical procedure.”

Recall that McDonnell previously endorsed this same bill. Somehow a “trans-vaginal ultrasound” wasn’t initially seen as an invasive procedure?

The executive director for NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia points out to TPM that this remains a mandatory ultrasound as a condition for getting an abortion, regardless of where the camera is stuck. In fact, seven other states mandate an ultrasound before an abortion: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. In Texas, the provider must then show the woman the image of the fetus before it gets aborted. In the other six states the provider must offer an opportunity to view the image. The Guttmacher Institute cites a couple reasons for this:

Since routine ultrasound is not considered medically necessary as a component of first-trimester abortion, the requirements appear to be a veiled attempt to personify the fetus and dissuade a woman from obtaining an abortion. Moreover, an ultrasound can add significantly to the cost of the procedure.

And guess who’s paying for that? The woman!

Protesters should and no doubt will continue to fight this forced medical procedure as a condition of accessing a legal medical procedure. And with McDonnell and Virginia conservatives on the run, perhaps something better will come of that protest. Might want to peek in on the other seven states, too.

Seattle Mayor Michael McGinn calls for marijuana legalization (Wikipedia)

Mike McGinn, the Mayor of Seattle, Washington, used his city address yesterday to repeat his call for the legalization of marijuana in his state. From his speech:

It is time we were honest about the problems we face with the drug trade. Drugs are a source of criminal profit, and that has led to shootings and even murders. Just like we learned in the 1920s with the prohibition of alcohol, prohibition of marijuana is fueling violent activity. We also know today that the drug war fuels a biased incarceration policy. The drug war’s victims are predominantly young men of color.

Seattle is the kind of place that isn’t afraid to try a different approach. We support safe access to medical marijuana and made enforcement of possession of marijuana for personal purposes our lowest enforcement priority. But we’ve learned in the past year that with the federal war on drugs still intact, and with our kids still getting gunned down on the streets, we need to do more.

I know every one of the city council members sitting to my left and right believe as I do: it’s time for this state to legalize marijuana, and stop the violence, stop the incarceration, stop the erosion of civil liberties, and urge the federal government to stop the failed war on drugs.

And maybe if we can get sensible about marijuana, we can get sensible about gun laws next.

(emphasis mine)

This is the sitting mayor of one of America’s largest cities speaking in his official capacity, calling for an end to marijuana prohibition. Having powerful elected officials clearly and repeatedly state that the drug war has failed is critical for moving the policy decision about marijuana legalization from a fringe idea to part of the legitimate mainstream political discourse. The more politicians that take this position, the less scary it becomes for other politicians to join them.

McGinn’s very public call for marijuana legalization is especially important now, because this November the voters of Washington state will get to decide on I-502.  If approved, this ballot initiative would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana in Washington for adults over the age of 21.

It should be noted Mayor McGinn specifically said it is time for “this state to legalize marijuana.” Not only does he think marijuana legalization in general is the right policy solution, but he indicates that it is an important reform Washington should move forward with even if the federal government isn’t ready to embrace it.

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Well, we managed to get Pat Buchanan off the air on MSNBC, but that didn't stop him from rearing his ugly head on PBS over the weekend to sing the praises of one Charles Murray, along with host John McLaughlin and The National Review's Rich Lowry.

John McLaughlin opened the second segment of the show bemoaning the decline of marriage in the United States along with the number of children who are born out of wedlock.

For a little refresher on just who Charles Murray is, I'll just refer back to David Brooks singing his praises earlier this month on Charlie Rose's show which I posted here -- David Brooks: The Villagers' Mr. 'Common Sense Center'.

As was linked and quoted in that post, Charles Pierce took apart Brooks' op-ed preceding that interview in his article here -- Our Mr. Brooks Finds Another Very Important Thinker. Rich Lowry in the clip above failed to mention the entire title of Murray's book just as Brooks did, which is as Pierce noted Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. Somehow that whole "state of white America" portion of the title didn't seem to be very relevant to either of them. Imagine that?

As Media Matters documented before Buchanan finally got the boot from MSNBC, and as Buchanan mentioned in the clip above, Buchanan cited Murray's work in his recent book -- Pat Buchanan Won't Disavow Idea That Minorities Have Inferior Genes:

In his new book Suicide of a Superpower, Buchanan cites The Atlantic article and the work of Charles Murray, who co-wrote The Bell Curve with Herrnstein. The Bell Curve argues that there's racial differences in intelligence. Buchanan wrote in his book.

It seems trying to mainstream Murray's ideas are nothing new for our corporate media or for The McLaughlin Group in particular. From FAIR back in Feb. 1995 -- Racism Resurgent - How Media Let The Bell Curve's Pseudo-Science Define the Agenda on Race:

When the New Republic devoted almost an entire issue (10/31/94) to a debate with the authors of The Bell Curve, editor Andrew Sullivan justified the decision by writing, "The notion that there might be resilient ethnic differences in intelligence is not, we believe, an inherently racist belief."

In fact, the idea that some races are inherently inferior to others is the definition of racism. What the New Republic was saying--along with other media outlets that prominently and respectfully considered the thesis of Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein's book--is that racism is a respectable intellectual position, and has a legitimate place in the national debate on race. [...]

While Murray and Herrnstein were generally characterized as sober social scientists, their critics were sometimes identified with censorious political correctness: "Both Murray and Herrnstein have been called racists," wrote Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (10/18/94). "Their findings, though, have been accepted by most others in their field, and it would be wrong--both intellectually and politically--to suppress them." Proclaimed Newsweek's Geoffrey Cowley (10/24/94): "As the shouting begins, it's worth noting that the science behind The Bell Curve is overwhelmingly mainstream."

Murray himself doesn't think that the research they relied on was so mainstream. "Some of the things we read to do this work, we literally hide when we're on planes and trains," Murray told the New York Times Magazine (10/9/94).

Pioneers of Eugenics

As well they might. Nearly all the research that Murray and Herrnstein relied on for their central claims about race and IQ was funded by the Pioneer Fund, described by the London Sunday Telegraph (3/12/89) as a "neo-Nazi organization closely integrated with the far right in American politics." The fund's mission is to promote eugenics, a philosophy that maintains that "genetically unfit" individuals or races are a threat to society.

The Pioneer Fund was set up in 1937 by Wickliffe Draper, a millionaire who advocated sending blacks back to Africa. The foundation's charter set forth the group's missions as "racial betterment" and aid for people "deemed to be descended primarily from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States." (In 1985, after Pioneer Fund grant recipients began receiving political heat, the charter was slightly amended to play down the race angle--GQ, 11/94.)

The fund's first president, Harry Laughlin, was an influential advocate of sterilization for those he considered genetically unfit. In successfully advocating laws that would restrict immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, Laughlin testified before Congress that 83 percent of Jewish immigrants were innately feeble-minded (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94). Another founder, Frederick Osborn, described Nazi Germany's sterilization law as "a most exciting experiment" (Discovery Journal, 7/9/94).

The fund's current president, Harry Weyher, denounces the Supreme Court decision that desegregated schools, saying, "All Brown did was wreck the school system" (GQ, 11/94). The fund's treasurer, John Trevor, formerly served as treasurer for the crypto-fascist Coalition of Patriotic Societies, when it called in 1962 for the release of Nazi war criminals and praised South Africa's "well-reasoned racial policies" (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94).

One of the Pioneer Fund's largest current grantees is Roger Pearson, an activist and publisher who has been associated with international fascist currents. Pearson has written: "If a nation with a more advanced, more specialized or in any way superior set of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide" (Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party). [...]

For Their Own Ends

Many pundits carefully distanced themselves from the book, then made use of its claims to push their own ideological ends. In a New Republic column (10/31/94), Mickey Kaus argues against a genetic basis for IQ differences, saying, "There are obvious policies that might change the black 'environment' and therefore black IQ scores." But what's his example of such a program? "Abolition of cash welfare," he suggests.

The McLaughlin Group (10/21/94) featured a whole parade of this sort of pseudo-critic: While no one wanted to embrace wholeheartedly Murray and Herrnstein's genetic determinism, almost all were happy to make use of the conclusion The Bell Curve draws from the eugenic argument: that the poor and non-white are getting what they deserve.

Thus Pat Buchanan declared: "I think a lot of the data are indisputable.... It does shoot a hole straight through the heart of egalitarian socialism which tried to create equality of result by coercive government programs."

And Michael Barone: "The implication of their argument is, if they're right, that we really should not engage in a lot of government social engineering to create equal outcomes and so forth. They'd have to throw all the Chinese out of the Higher Math Department."

Morton Kondracke found this message: "It does undermine the case, John, for racial quotas, which is the form of discrimination in our society."

Clarence Page, the token liberal on the panel, described Murray as a personal friend, and gave a lukewarm critique: "It's got some good data, but it's Murray's conclusions that he doesn't prove."

It was left to John McLaughlin, of all people, to say the obvious about The Bell Curve: "It is largely pseudo-scientific and it is singularly unhelpful."

And from The Roosevelt Institute here's more on Murray's latest book they were touting in the segment above as well -- Blame Marriage Rates on the Family Values of the 1%:

Charles Murray is at it again. He burst onto the national scene in the ’80s, announcing that he knew why the African-American non-marital birth rate had risen so dramatically: the government made them do it. He explained that welfare and a host of other liberal sins had weakened the moral fiber of the poor, producing disaster. It would take free market discipline to instill the right values once again. Now Murray is back with a new book and a long article in the Wall Street Journal attempting to explain income inequality among whites. His claim: working class whites have lost ground because they have abandoned a commitment to marriage, religion, and hard work. In his world, unemployment is high because those on the losing end of today’s economy refuse to work, non-marital births occur because of a lack of emphasis on marriage, and the upper class can assist only by expressing its disapproval and “preaching what it practices” — presumably investments in Ivy League education, parent-subsidized internships, and marriage between two investment bankers at 32.

In this new work, Murray says no five-point plan can change things. What he doesn’t tell you is how little his last five-point plan accomplished. Murray’s past work helped spark the movement that led to the abolition of welfare “as we know it” in 1996. And the welfare mothers who were able to get and hold jobs — in no small part due to government subsidized health benefits and day care — were in fact better off. But Murray claims no credit because throughout the twenty-year attack on welfare (and the steady erosion of benefits that went with it) marriage rates continued to decline.

Murray-like prescriptions — even when they are right that the behavior of the working class is a problem — have always failed. The simple fact is that prosperity and equality improve behavior more than privation or preaching. Consider the Irish potato famine. The potato blight wiped out the principal source of food for Catholic Ireland while leaving the cattle and wheat of Protestant Ireland (the 1% of their day) unaffected. The British responded with soup kitchens — for six months. Then, Murray-like editorial cartoons in London started to depict the English taxpayer with drunken Irishmen on their backs. The editorials complained that soup kitchens encouraged idleness and worse — too many Irish births. The English brought back market discipline (and upper class disapproval of Catholic behavior) and their solution worked: the Irish population fell by a quarter in the next several years, due in roughly equal parts to death and emigration. But no Englishman heralded the improved moral qualities of Irish Catholics. The improvement in the reputation of the Irish took jobs and equal community membership, factors the Irish never found under British rule.

Murray can’t tell you what really caused the class divide in marriage because the class-based changes in families he laments closely track the class warfare of the 1%.

More there so read the rest but that takes us to the segment above from this weekend's The McLaughlin Group. I'd love for anyone to explain to me why Pat Buchanan is still on the air, or John McLaughlin and Rich Lowry for that matter. They've unfortunately been trying to make someone with white nationalists ties that pay for his books to be published acceptable to the mainstream for some time now.

Rough transcript:

MCLAUGHLIN: Issue two... brides no more! Wedding ceremonies, bridal music, smiling couples... fugheddaboudit! Today more and more Americans are shunning marriage. The percentage of American adults married today is 51 percent, so says Pew Research Center. That's the lowest rate of married adults ever recorded in any earlier Pew polls. And it doesn't stop there. Those Americans who do marry are waiting longer before they say “I do.”

In 2010 the marriage rate for Americans aged 25-34 was 44 percent. Fifty years ago, 1960, 82 percent were married. So why is marriage becoming increasingly passe? Item, divorce. The divorce rate in America has long been 50 percent. One out of two marriages fail. Item, economy. Today Americans wait until they have a firm financial footing like graduating from college, on a payroll, before walking down the aisle. Item, no stigma. Americans today are less likely to turn up their noses on those who live alone or cohabit. […]

Now hold on D'Vera. The number of children born out of wedlock, has gone up. There's a troubling correlation. More unmarried people, having more children out of wedlock. Today the percentage of Americans born out of wedlock is, get this, 40 percent.

Question, does it strike you as ironic that just as the heterosexual interest in marriage is apparently on the wane, gay and lesbian interest in marriage is waxing prophetic? Rich?

Lowry: Yes, in irony. And when they say that marriage died, they'll put it on the heterosexuals, who've done a very good job of destroying it as an institution. 1970 you had about 10 percent illegitimacy rate, now it's 40, 42 percent. And another thing people miss, particularly eroding among the middle and the working class. If you look at marriage rates among the upper class, they're basically the same as what it was in 1960. It's eroding in the middle and in the working class which adds the economic pressure, is creating a real crisis in the working class.

MCLAUGHLIN: You know who supports you on that?

LOWRY: Who's that?

MCLAUGHLIN: Charles Murray. Who is Charles Murray?

LOWRY: He is a scholar at AEI and he just wrote a book called Coming Apart, about the very class division which is not just economic, it's social and cultural.

MCLAUGHLIN: He makes the same point you just made. You think you should notify him of that? That without knowing it you made the same point, which is some kind of corroboration. (crosstalk)

BUCHANAN: It is, John it's a triumph of the counter-culture. That's right. Among working class white folks, the illegitimacy rate is way over 40 percent, among Hispanics, all Hispanics it's 51. Among African Americans, it's 71 percent. Among the poor it is pandemic. The values of the counter-culture with regard to family and marriage and divorce and premarital sex, all of these things, are triumphing, frankly into the culture and into society and we're seeing the consequences of it now. Some of us feel it means coming apart... (crosstalk)

MCLAUGHLIN: I want to ask Par a question. Do you think the state should be involved in marriages? Why do we have the requirement of registration is needed, for the state?

BUCHANAN: I think the Judeo-Christian idea of a family and children is of enormous benefit to the entire society and it conforms that society on the basis of its values, and it did. Unfortunately the values are changing. There's no doubt about it. In California, of course they defeated gay marriage out there, but legislatures are passing them.

MCLAUGHLIN: On the abstract level, is there any reason why marriage should be related to the state and you would have to sign a book if you want a license to get married?

BUCHANAN: Children, their various rights involved, the married couples, there's also children involved, obligations and duties, so yes.

MCLAUGHLIN: You want the state to be involved in how the children are reared?

BUCHANAN: No, I want... there's obligations to protect the children. You can't do certain things.

MCLAUGHLIN: You mean there could be a tax responsibility to take care of a child if the child is born out of wedlock?

BUCHANAN: If society has agreed they're going to be educated better, you can do it by homeschooling.

MCLAUGHLIN: Can't religious institutions carry that problem?

BUCHANAN: Unfortunately not.

MCLAUGHLIN: Why have the state involved at all? (crosstalk) You don't need the state involved in a marriage. It's a private contract between a spouse and...

BUCHANAN: That's true if we were a Judeo-Christian country like we used to be. Yes.

MCLAUGHLIN: Where are we now? An atheist country?

BUCHANAN: We're a secular/Christian country and increasingly secular.

MCLAUGHLIN: Are you doing anything about it?

BUCHANAN: I just wrote a book and it got me in trouble.

As I wrote yesterday, the big question in tonight's debate will be whether and how Rick Santorum addresses questions about his religious agenda—particular his warning about Satan's attack on America. That might make Republicans uncomfortable, but this is the party they created, and it's not like Mitt Romney hasn't been doing it too.

As ABC's Rick Klein notes, today is Ash Wednesday. Santorum has been wearing ash on his forehead today, although Newt Gingrich hasn't. I suspect Santorum won't wear it during the debate, but it would be a striking visual if he were to do so.

Mitt Romney hopes to put his tax plan at the center of the debate, but his back-to-back gaffes (saying that cutting spending hurts the economy, and using the language of Occupy Wall Street to describe his tax plan), could haunt him.

Newt Gingrich is apparently planning on returning to Churchillian form by letting the others be chihauhaus, whatever that means, and Ron Paul will, as always, be Ron Paul. So gather yourself around the Daily Kos comment threads and join us tonight to watch what would be the most hilarious debate yet.

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan worries critics misrepresent still undisclosed settlement

The pushback from the Administration on one particular story arising from the foreclosure fraud settlement has been pretty intense. You cannot say that Shahien Nasiripour doesn’t have the attention of HUD.

Today, they devoted an entire blog post (unsigned, from “HUD Public Affairs”) to refuting Nasiripour’s story in the Financial Times (which they don’t link, so I will) about how bank servicers can count HAMP modifications toward the “credits” in the foreclosure fraud settlement. But really they only refute the title of Nasiripour’s story:

The article, entitled “US taxpayers to subsidise $40 bn housing settlement,” argues that there is a taxpayer subsidy because modifications performed under the Treasury’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) are eligible for credit under the settlement.

In reality there is no such subsidy. Servicers cannot use HAMP incentives to meet their obligations under the settlement, plain and simple.

This does not refute Nasiripour’s story, which includes this very point from Administration officials:

Federal officials involved in negotiating the settlement defended the arrangement, pointing out that the amount reimbursed to the banks could not be directly used towards fulfilling settlement obligations.

Andrea Risotto, Treasury department spokeswoman, said this system “leverages a way to help more people”.

Usually, the writers don’t have much of a say in the headlines, so HUD really has a beef with the editorial staff at the Financial Times. But HUD also leaves key questions unanswered in their post. They say that “if a servicer receives a HAMP incentive of 40 cents for every dollar of principal reduction, it can receive credit at the applicable rate on the remaining 60 cents… in no event can the servicer receive more under the settlement than it would have in the absence of HAMP incentives.” But does this include the additional HAMP incentive for the borrower staying current? Also, isn’t it the investor, not the servicer, who receives incentive payments in the principal reduction plan inside HAMP?

In addition, if this is coming on line with the settlement over the next 6-9 months, as eligible underwater borrowers are identified, why would any servicer in the short term do a principal reduction through HAMP? As HUD says in their post, “most HAMP modifications do not include principal reduction.” That, of course, is why it has such a high re-delinquency rate (up to 30% of borrowers go delinquent within 18 months), because the modifications that servicers perform in HAMP are unsustainable. The entire point of the new HAMP tweaks was to encourage more principal reduction. So why add an incentive to delay principal reduction for 6-9 months?

HUD claims that they could not have exempted HAMP from the settlement, because “it would have freed (servicers) from HAMP’s extensive compliance regime, reporting requirements, and borrower-protection features.” This is a non sequitur. You could very easily have put those compliance guidelines into the settlement. It would have been a simple copy-paste. HUD answers this by saying that “it would make it less likely that HAMP-eligible borrowers would receive principal reduction.” I’m not following the logic there at all. You could just include the evaluation and reporting requirements across all loans as part of the settlement.

And it goes without saying that, until there are terms on a sheet of paper that everyone can read, these claims by HUD just aren’t entirely credible. We don’t know what’s in the settlement yet. That’s a factual statement.

I’ll say this, the criticism appears to be getting to HUD. Some Connecticut lawmakers savaged the miniscule $2,000 check to foreclosure victims (which the Attorney General of the state, who was on the settlement’s executive committee, characterized as $1,500 – what does he know that we don’t?) that’s part of the settlement. Heck, even Pat Robertson is calling for corrupt bankers to be put in jail, citing the experience of Iceland. It must be lonely defending this settlement.

UPDATE: I asked Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general for TARP and NYU professor, who was quoted in the Financial Times story that HUD goes after here, for his comments. Here they are:

If (HUD) had included in the settlement agreement a provision making HAMP’s Principal Reduction Alternative mandatory when NPV+ (a long-standing recommendation for all servicers made by SIGTARP), and then exempted these HAMP subsidized modifications from receiving credit under the settlement, they would have reached far more homeowners.

And why is HUD bragging that its settlement terms lack the obviously inadequate compliance requirements and borrower protections that are part of HAMP? You would hope that they would want to exceed that failed standard, not celebrate that they will be far under it.

Just to parse this, NPV+ is a test required for principal reductions in many pooling and servicing agreements with investors. Basically, Barofsky is saying that Treasury could have made principal reductions mandatory through HAMP when that equation comes out as beneficial, and then forced the settlement’s principal reductions separately. That’s how you could reach the maximum borrowers. The rest speaks for itself.

Even Mitt Romney grasps a bit of John Maynard Keynes (photo: IMF)

For all the stiffness and the flip-flopping, what has really gotten Mitt Romney into trouble with the Republican primary electorate is when he says something that shades too close to the truth. We saw another example of that yesterday, when Romney committed the sin of explaining how austerity works in a recession:

Mitt Romney said Tuesday that cutting spending slows growth in the economy — a rhetorical slip more akin to an argument a Democrat might make than a Republican.

Speaking in Shelby Township, MI, the former Massachusetts governor took a question about the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission empaneled by President Obama to address the nation’s deficit and debt issues. In his response, he said that addressing taxes and spending issues are essential.

“If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy,” he said in part of his response. “So you have to, at the same time, create pro-growth tax policies.”

I love how this is described as a “rhetorical slip” rather than a partial truth. Cutting spending does, in fact, slow down the economy, especially in the midst of a recovery out of recession. Now, what Romney says at the end there is that “pro-growth tax policies,” by which he means tax cuts, need to be paired with the spending cuts to create that demand.

This is not only the orthodox position of the GOP, but it’s largely what just happened in Congress. The payroll tax cut is a “pro-growth tax policy” in this analogy, and you can view the spending cap from the debt limit deal or the trigger or any number of other spending cuts as representing the spending trims paired with it. This time the payroll tax cut wasn’t offset with spending cuts, but that’s the major difference.

As a macroeconomic matter, tax cuts add to deficits, and Modern Monetary Theory and basic Keynesian economics dictate that you need to run a high deficit out of a recession. The difference is that tax cuts are actually worse at providing economic growth than boosting spending. You can see that with the low-growth economy of the Bush years. By the same token, tax increases are a better policy in terms of austerity than spending cuts. The economic multiplier is simply higher on the spending side, and this gets more pronounced when the beneficiaries of the tax cuts are wealthy. Spending usually services the poor, who have a higher propensity to spend their benefits. The big tax plan Romney plans to announce on Friday will, almost certainly, lower taxes mostly on the rich.

So Romney, while being derided as “not a true conservative” because of this quote by the likes of the Club for Growth, is actually well within the conservative mainstream in calling for tax cuts paired with spending cuts. It’s just well outside the mainstream of demonstrable economic theory.

I understand this focus on social issues is about distracting low-info voters from the fact that the GOP has done nothing to create jobs; it’s been about bleating the usual mantra of lowering taxes on the wealthy and other crap that helped destroy the economy in the first place. What I was unprepared for was the unbridled desperation of the fundie base to the extent that it’s driving independent voters and especially women to have to go back to arguing about basic matters of contraception, access to the legal right to an abortion, and whether they should even be in the workforce. And the party of anti-government intrusion is MIA.

I cannot believe Rick Santorum, a leading candidate running for POTUS said “Satan has his sights on the United States of America” — and is dead serious, not doing amateur stand-up comedy. It is surreal to see this unfold in 2012.

Santorum’s viewpoints are so bizarre — and so nakedly boasted about — that there’s a “Rick Santorum or Satanic Heavy Metal?” quiz you can take. His long-record of anti-gay statements are completely off the rails and he has not disowned any of them, like this one in 2008:

“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.”

No one in the GOP, which is loaded with gay Republicans, is willing to say this is ridiculous demonization, in fact, they are letting the Base rile up. If Santorum is the head engineer of the New Republican Crazy Train, he’s got plenty of people in box cars all the way to the caboose.

Take Tanya Ditty, state director for the anti-gay Concerned Women of America of Georgia, who testified yesterday before the subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee on House Bill 630 (State Fair Employment Practices Act), which would provide Workplace Protections for LGBT State employees. In her “expert” testimony that surely was seen by the GOP lawmakers, Ditty asked committee members to oppose the bill because she believed it would allow such things as necrophilia, zoophilia and pedophilia. [cont'd]

You might laugh at this and think the woman needs better meds, but how far is she from standard bearer Santorum? After all, the former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania is on board with bigoted, barely sane Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, on whether Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen who talks over-the-top discredited birther batsh*t:

Arpaio said he plans to endorse one of the four remaining GOP candidates in the coming weeks. But the sheriff added he would not make his choice known before he announces the findings of his birth certificate probe at a news conference set for March 1st.

Santorum, he said, seemed to have no problem with the nature of his investigation. “He had no problems with what I told him that I may be doing,” Arpaio told reporters.

Is the GOP really swinging this far to the right by its silence? Perhaps the problem is that party brokers don’t like Mittens, and no one of any stature in the party is willing to run in 2012 to bump The Mormon (the fundie base is clearly not down with Romney). I’m sure those pols sitting it out know that the sh*tload of an economic mess that was left for Barack Obama can’t be cleaned up in four, let alone 8 years, and they don’t want to be left holding the steaming bag.

But to hand over the spotlight to Santorum, rather than marginalizing him, shows just how weak the GOP is, and how much fealty it continues to have to fundie dog-whistlers like the Rev. Franklin Graham, who is beyond offensive in insulting the President and the Muslim community with his tasteless bigotry. But again, Santorum is on the train, questioning the President’s faith (which is irrelevant to holding office, but it’s front and center in these preposterous conversations):

Appearing on MSNBC Tuesday morning, Graham said he is not sure the president is a Christian. Neither is he certain that Obama is not a Muslim.

“All I know is under Obama, President Obama, the Muslims of the world, he seems to be more concerned about them than the Christians that are being murdered in the Muslim countries,” Graham said.

“Islam sees him as a son of Islam … I can’t say categorically that (the president is not Muslim) because Islam has gotten a free pass under Obama.”

Over the weekend in Ohio, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum criticized Obama’s environmental policies, saying they are based on “some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology.”

Note to MSNBC – Graham’s not his daddy — and doesn’t deserve a media platform to spread unprovable or false trash to tie the President to some kind of Muslim extremist, anti-American agenda. And the GOP is silent, not calling out Graham.

That the Republican talking heads don’t even flinch or call out Santorum’s obvious retrograde, science-free trash is telling. No one questions his absurd position on evolution, documented in a 2008 interview:

There is no suspicion of it. It is decided science that cannot be questioned. There cannot be any doubts about it. If you have any questions or doubts, it’s trying to inject religion into the science classroom. So it is above reproach.

I obviously don’t feel that way. I think there are a lot of problems with the theory of evolution, and do believe that it is used to promote to a worldview that is anti-theist, that is atheist.

Santorum’s bold insistence on publicly defended faith — specifically Judeo-Christian of course — as a legitimate factor in a campaign to serve as President, not Pope is absurd. Personal faith beliefs (or none at all) have no place in our governing, yet this is where the GOP obviously wants to go.

But the question I have is — how many people in the U.S. actually identify with and support Santorum’s views? A third of GOP voters? Half? Do we have that many people in the country who think the state mandating the inserting of a probe into the vagina of a woman who wants to have an abortion is an appropriate role of government? The general public doesn’t want government in their private sexual lives, and the party of alleged small government is silent, allowing the fundamentalists to rule their primary process in a way that is embarrassing.

After each election cycle you see speculation that the GOP will finally kick the religious right out on its duff and get back to core conservative values. At this point I’ve only seen the American Taliban influence coddled again and again. I don’t think the GOP can afford to lose the “sheeple” vote, the base of organized churches that get out the vote, do door to door and can be easily manipulated by fear and smear, God and guns, and fear of changes in gender roles or sexuality (without shame).

Now, McDonnell has changed his mind and is opposing the bill as currently written. From his statement:

Over the past days I have discussed the specific language of the proposed legislation with other governors, physicians, attorneys, legislators, advocacy groups, and citizens. It is apparent that several amendments to the proposed legislation are needed to address various medical and legal issues which have arisen. It is clear that in the majority of cases, a routine external, transabdominal ultrasound is sufficient to meet the bills stated purpose, that is, to determine gestational age. I have come to understand that the medical practice and standard of care currently guide physicians to use other procedures to find the gestational age of the child, when abdominal ultrasounds cannot do so. Determining gestational age is essential for legal reasons, to know the trimester of the pregnancy in order to comply with the law, and for medical reasons as well.

Thus, having looked at the current proposal, I believe there is no need to direct by statute that further invasive ultrasound procedures be done. Mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state.No person should be directed to undergo an invasive procedure by the state, without their consent, as a precondition to another medical procedure.

1:12 PM PT: The Virginia House of Delegates just passed the bill, taking out the mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasound, mandating just a regular ultrasound.

Friends,

Republicans have extended an invitation to all Michigan Democrats to crossover and vote in the Michigan GOP presidential primary this Tuesday, February 28th. Yesterday, Republican Senators Rick Jones and Arlan Meekhof said they’d welcome Democrats to crossover. You can check out the invitation for yourselves by watching the video clip below.

Any Democrat who takes Senators Jones and Meekhof up on their offer will still be able to participate in the Michigan Democratic Party’s presidential caucuses on May 5, 2012.

If Democratic crossover votes affect the results of the GOP presidential primary next Tuesday, the Republicans will only have themselves to blame.

Sincerely,

Mark Brewer
Chair, Michigan Democratic Party

And I am both proud and saddened to bring it to you...

In a nutshell, a collection of some of Santorum's craziest statements on abortion, contraception, homosexuality, global warming, Social Security, blacks (or "blahs"), Hitler, napkins, freedom and the left.

For daily updates on creepy sh*t Santorum says, visit Santorum Exposed on Facebook.