If you want to keep your "Market Driven" failure of a healthcare system... well, you lose.

A story in the LA Times today about a study by Rand Research says the enrolment figures for the Affordable Care Act (which conservative frothers know only as Obamacare), will likely be near or even above 9.5 million people by the enrolment deadline (today).  Meaning, of the perhaps 17 million uninsured workers, and 47 million Americans in total without insurance, the ACA will have found a way to cover half of the workers and about 1/5 of all, and that's SO FAR.  Also, it will have ended the practices of pre-existing exclusions and limitations, something tried in 1996 but around which insurance companies found loopholes.

Obamacare has led to health coverage for millions more people

At least 9.5 million previously uninsured people have gotten health insurance since Obamacare started, surveys and reports show.

WASHINGTON — President Obama's healthcare law, despite a rocky rollout and determined opposition from critics, already has spurred the largest expansion in health coverage in America in half a century, national surveys and enrollment data show.

As the law's initial enrollment period closes, at least 9.5 million previously uninsured people have gained coverage. Some have done so through marketplaces created by the law, some through other private insurance and others through Medicaid, which has expanded under the law in about half the states.

The tally draws from a review of state and federal enrollment reports, surveys and interviews with insurance executives and government officials nationwide.

The Affordable Care Act still faces major challenges, particularly the risk of premium hikes next year that could drive away newly insured customers. But the increased coverage so far amounts to substantial progress toward one of the law's principal goals and is the most significant expansion since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.

The millions of newly insured also create a politically important constituency that may complicate any future Republican repeal efforts.

This also means it will be 2.5 million MORE than the Obama Administration set as an estimate last summer, and about a BAGILLION times more than the nay-saying, just say NO to everything crowd of Republicans said would get enrolled last fall after the initial roll-out had capacity/throughput issues (some of which were directly attributable programming problems which were the outgrowth of the intential lack of funding Republicans created for the program from 2010 on - thereby creating the very failures they pointed out).

On an even funner and funnier side, the number of Americans who may have had their insurance dropped NOT BY THE ADMINISTRATION BUT BY COMPANIES WHO CHOSE TO NOT REPLACE THE PLAN WITH ONE THAT DIDN'T EXCLUDE PRE-EX CONDITIONS, will not be "Millions of Americans" but more likely, "hundreds of thousands", or maybe a 10:1 ratio of those who got insurance vs. those who no longer have piece of sh*T plans offered by lowball companies. And let's be clear about one thing, when Obama said, "If you like your healthplan, you can keep it" he meant the Administration wasn't going to take anything from you.  It/he can't keep unscrupulous companies from doing unscrupulous things.

Even so, that number was (gasp!) greatly exagerated and much poo was flung by those who don't get that spending 26% of our national economy is a recipe for economic stagnation and decline - and it was flung about these "poor Americans" who would lose their craptastical insurance.  Well it seems, not so much.

In the end, what this shows is, America and Americans needed a better choice than the rip-you-off because you will pay anything to save your loved-ones "market driven" solution the US insurance companies and health care providers devised over the past 40 years.  This is a first step, and unlike all of the negative pronouncements, it appears to not only have met, but far exceeded (to the tune of exceeding it by 30%) expectations.  Show me a private company that fought tooth and nail against multi-billion dollar lobbying to launch a nationwide product using multiple vendors, which met and exceeded expectations by 30%.  There are a few, but damned few.  What it shows is that collectively, using economies of scale, the same economies large companies use, we can, if we try, do great and even very good things, despite the hate-mongers. 

So, much like Ronnie RayGun was wrong about Medicare leading the US down the road to becoming a communist nation - go read, he said that very thing, those of you who said the system would fail and it would greatly harm the US, you were wrong. You lose.  The final pilar of a socially concience state has had it's foundation set.  The funny thing is, someday, you'll understand that it was the BEST thing that could happen.  We have to get our businesses out of the business of needing to feed an unending amount of cash into a broken healthcare system if we are to compete on a global stage.  The current model was bankrupting us FAR more than Washington DC ever could.  Someday you may understand it, but I'll not hold my breath.  If I do, though, at least I know I'll not have any charges related to my subsequent treatement denied payment because I held my breath once when I was six.  Maybe you should start holding your breath until they repeal it - and then you too can see how nice it is not to have to worry about whether your insurance is going to screw you, again.

We've come to another landmark moment in Obamacare - time for a litltle crowing!

The punishment does not fit the crime or the criminals

Conservatism = Willful ignorance

When is Free Speech TOO MUCH Free Speech?

Suicide predator William Melchert Dinkel

suicide victim's mother,
Elaine Drybrough

Preying on vulnerable people is not acceptable, especially while misrepresenting who you are, and it should be criminal.

From the Mercury (my emphasis added):

In 2011, Melchert-Dinkel told police he did it for the "thrill of the chase."

According to court documents, he acknowledged participating in online chats about suicide with up to 20 people and entering into fake suicide pacts with about 10, five of whom he believed killed themselves.

An appeals court panel ruled in July 2012 that the state's assisted suicide law was constitutional, and that Melchert-Dinkel's speech was not protected by the First Amendment.

We penalize scam artists who prey on the elderly, and properly regard them as criminals. We do the same with predatory pedophiles as well, who prey on children. People suffering from depression or other mental illness that makes them vulnerable in a way that differentiates them from people who are not similarly vulnerable temporarily at some stage in their lives.

From the Daily Telegraph (also source of two photos above)

Mrs Drybrough, 65, from Hillfields, discovered Melchert Dinkel’s identity and campaigned for his prosecution in the US after the Sunday Mercury revealed how the evil nurse had targeted another vulnerable Midlander.

The predator bragged to mum-of-two Kat Lowe, from West Bromwich, that he had helped a man from ‘near Birmingham’ to take his life and claimed that he had assisted five people to commit suicide while they chatted online.

Melchert Dinkel, who called himself Falcongirl, Cami D and Li Dao on internet chatrooms, revealed his true identity to Kat as he claimed he was going to join her in a suicide pact. He sent her a picture of himself, which was published in the Sunday Mercury’s investigation.

Elaine recognised the name Li Dao and began her campaign for Melchert Dinkel to be prosecuted in the US.

When police called at his home, Melchert Dinkel admitted he had emailed Mark details of how to hang himself and said that he had seen the Sunday Mercury probe into his twisted activities on the internet.

His prison sentence was put on hold while his appeal was processed.

In the latest court hearing on the case the Supreme Court ruled that a Minnesota state law prohibitiing “advising” and “encouraging” suicide broke the constitution because it restricted freedom of speech.

But it upheld the part of the statute that outlaws “assisting” suicide.

We do not allow people to misrepresent themselves to defraud people for financial gain, and we especially view with contempt those who prey on vulnerable people like the elderly.  We do not allow people to use the defence of free speech to pedophiles when they engage in predatory behavior for sexual gratification either, recognizing that these people, although not for financial gain, are attempting to prey on and exploit young people, vulnerable people, for a different type of ugly pleasure.

We do not allow people to ENCOURAGE actions which harm others, in our laws against inciting to riot: 18 U.S. Code § 2101 ((a) Whoever travels in interstate or foreign commerce or uses any facility of interstate or foreign commerce, including, but not limited to, the mail, telegraph, telephone, radio, or television, with intent - (1) to incite a riot; or (2) to organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry on a riot; or (3) to commit any act of violence in furtherance of a riot; or (4) to aid or abet any person in inciting or participating in or carrying on a riot or committing any act of violence in furtherance of a riot; and who either during the course of any such travel or use or thereafter performs or attempts to perform any other overt act for any purpose specified in subparagraph).  So it is not as if we do not already limit free speech when it comes up against the boundary of harming others, well within the confines and guarantees of the U.S. Constitution.

We should not give legal cover to this kind of behavior, including specifically 'encouragement' which does real damage, real harm, or contributes directly to the actual loss of life, or if unsuccessful, real injury.  I would argue that attempting to harm someone else should be sufficient to be illegal.

Isn't this the reason, at least in part, that we have anti-bullying laws?

Isn't the reason we have laws against making threats to people that we recognize that there is a real harm done by words in certain contexts?

There should be a real discussion on the legitimate place for assisted suicide, for those who are in severe pain that cannot be entirely managed medically, and who are facing what is clearly a hopeless situation where no recovery is possible.  That is about respecting and valuing life, about respecting the dignity of autonomy and control over one's life and body.  It is about giving ease from suffering when there are no better alternatives to an impending death.

This man did not do that, did not advocate for that.  This man helped push a young girl, just turned 18 a short time before, into killing herself, and did the same to a man in the UK.

What I found perhaps the most distressing aspect of this crime - and it is a crime, at least in moral and ethical terms, and should be a crime by legal definition - is that the second death to which he contributed was potentially avoidable.

Again from the Mercury:

"He was doing it continuously from the time he was speaking to my son and Nadia. He'd been doing it for years before their deaths, probably because he enjoyed it."
Mrs Drybrough learnt of the correspondence between her son and an alias of Melchert-Dinkel soon after her son's death and made repeated efforts to alert authorities in the UK and the US, before the death of Ms Kajouji.

The courts have it wrong; this should not be free speech under the protections of the Constitution, any more than inciting to riot, yelling fire in a crowded theater, or making threats, or libel should be protected.  And this ghoul should be behind bars for longer than a year.

I hope his wife and children leave him and refuse to have anything further to do with him; THAT would be karma, since the family of those he successfully got to commit suicide will not see their loved one, father, spouse or child, again.

I can only wonder how his church deals with predator Melchert Dinkel.

In contrast, I can only applaud the contributions made by this man, who lived to a ripe old age, but who at periods of depression in his life considered suicide, and then had the courage to make very public statements encouraging people to get help, and not to give in to their despair and pain.

GOP = Hypocrisy; Tea Party = Hypocrisy x2; Radical religious right = Hypocrisy x 10

Parody about Fred Phelps' death

OK, you don't really need to know Russian to get this is actually about a marijuana plantation in Canada that was guarded by 13 black bears (note words: "Canada Press", "Marijuana" and "Plantatio" and the word "smert"="death" is absent), but this is funny.

Don't Pay attention to the Russian--read the subtitles:



BTW, you don't need to be a Russian scholar to know that смерть (smert) is death. If you are a James Bond fan, you would remember that Smersh meant "smert shpionem", or "death to spies".

It is what it is; it is inevitable if the conservative Justices on the SCOTUS prevail

Friday is Fun Day

From the FB group, Military Veterans Against the Tea Party:

Hobby Lobby is a religious oppressor, not an innocent group of people trying to mind their own business

Just sayin' -- and that goes double for reproductive rights

States Preaching Small Government Most Dependent On Federal Government

via EgbertoWillies.com

Say one thing ( very pompously) and do another - aka GOP HYPOCRITES:

The map above is striking. It is a perfect illustration that politics and facts at times seem mutually exclusive. In short, with just a few exceptions, the states whose politicians preach small government are much more dependent on it than other states.
States in green or closer to green on the map above are less dependent on the federal government. States in red or closer to red on the map above are more dependent on the federal government.
John S Kiernan, a senior writer & editor at Evolution Finance wrote an excellent piece on state federal government dependency. He compiled data from the Internal Revenue Service, the Census Bureau, Transparency.gov, US Department of Commerce – Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There is a striking political & economic statement in his article that should be digested.

The extent to which the average American’s tax burden would vary based on his state of residence represents a significant point of differentiation between state economies.  But it’s only once piece of the puzzle.
What if, for example, a particular state can afford not to tax its residents at high rates because it’s receiving disproportionately more funding from the federal government than states with apparently oppressive tax codes?  That would change the narrative significantly, revealing federal dependence where bold, efficient stewardship was once thought to preside.

The conclusion of the report is something many have written about over the last several years; Red States by far are more dependent on the federal government and are poorer. In the aggregate these states take back much more from the federal government than they put in. More of their gross domestic product is also more dependent on direct and indirect government outlays. This turns the takers vs makers debate on its head as those pushing that message represent the end they portend to despise.

This is reminiscent of the whiney preaching by the MN GOP about fiscal responsibility and good government,while they were themselves fiscally irresponsible with their own finances and with the state finances, and where they did an exceptionally BAD job of government while they had control of the lege.

FACTS are consistently the enemy, not the friend, of conservatives.  They promote a failed ideology, bad government, and worse economic policies.

The Radical Religioius Right, exercises in Hypocrisy: Having it both ways, or Screw the Golden Rule

 
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. - Matthew 7:12

I'm giving you a new commandment…to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.   John 13:34

Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Romans 12:20

Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. Romans 13:10

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Galations 5:14

I could quote a couple of dozen or more similar bible quotes that refer to variations on the proverbial golden rule of treating others as you would be treated that is common to all of the great religions in some form.  But it is clearly a core premise, a foundational tenet, of Christianity.

And yet, we see over and over again that our radical right wing Christians, the same ones who like to wage culture wars, and who seek to ensure to themselves the rights to bully others and harm other through discrimination over matters of individual differences like sexual orientation, utterly trample the Golden Rule.  It is the most appalling and offensive hypocrisy.

Nowhere in those Bible verses does it say - "so long as they agree with you or seem to be like you, without identifiable differences".  Rather the right seeks to coerce and act punitively to create conformity to their beliefs, right or wrong.

For example, via the Daily Kos, Amanda Knief of American Atheists was denied the services of a Notary PUBLIC, who was also a member of the bank management:

American Atheists, Inc. (Official)

BREAKING: An important message from American Atheists Managing Director, Amanda Knief:
----

I was just refused service -- because I am an atheist. It was embarrassing, humiliating, and pissed me off.

A notary at a local bank, where I have gone more than a dozen times to have work documents signed, asked me to explain what we were having notarized. The documents were charitable organizations registrations for American Atheists in several states. So I told her what AA is about. She looked down, then looked at me and [American Atheists President] Dave Silverman and said she couldn't sign the documents because of "personal reasons" and went to find another notary who was eating his lunch to come do the authentications.

I have been called names, threatened, hated on and all manner of ridiculed because of my atheist activism, but I think sitting in a bank and having another professional refuse to do business with me because I am an atheist was the worst slight I have ever received.

In New Jersey, notaries are not required to abide by any code of conduct or ethics that prevents them from refusing service to people based on "personal reasons." Even though we had a valid, legal document and valid, legal identification--she was legally able to refuse me service.

Time to write legislation that won't let this happen to anyone else. Fuck this.

----

The bank is question was the TD Bank in Cranford, New Jersey (where American Atheists national headquarters is located).

This is completely unacceptable, and far from over.


- Your friends at American Atheists

Can you imagine the full-throated outrage, real or fake, and the right wing hysteria if this had been reversed, and it was an atheist denying service to a conservative Christian?

As with the attempted legislation in Arizona that would permit Christians to discriminate against LGBT couples in selling services they provide to everyone else, or the efforts to create a state religion, or the efforts to make it legal to provide creationist answers to science tests instead of factual answers, Christians on the radical right seek a privileged status over others who believe differently. 

But if someone fails to acknowledge their privileged status, for example by wishing Happy Holidays to those who celebrate a range of mid-winter holidays, then they claim some sort of silly war is being waged against them, and against religion generally - but they pretty clearly mean ONLY against Christians.  I have yet to hear a Christian on the religious radical right argue that any wrong is done if someone doesn't wish someone Happy Hanukkah when that holiday coincides with the advent season.

This is the case as well, in a different format, where employers - like Hobby Lobby - want their beliefs to be given more importance than the beliefs of those who they employ.

For those on the radical right who decry the nanny state, is this not an even more egregious example of a paternalistic state? One where authorities, be it right wing legislators, or corporations, know what is best for you, whether you agree with it or not, and demand the power to force it on you - even if it is factually wrong? 

Corporations are not people, and sincere belief - by people, including those running a corporation -- do not justify enforcement and does not merit respect when those beliefs are wrong, or wacky, or factually in error.  We were told we had to respect the erroneous belief of the religious right that two parents of different genders were better than two parents of the same sex.  We are being asked to affirm the same thing - that factually inaccurate sincere belief trumps fact -- in the litigation against contraception in front of the Supreme Court.  Screw facts if they don't conform to the radical religious right, and screw whatever anyone else believes, or their liberty to act or believe differently.


John Stewart hit it in the episode of the Daily Show on March 27th:

The Christians on the radical religious right are hypocrites who do not follow the core tenets of their own faith.  If they don't take their own religion seriously enough to conform to it - why should we take them seriously. 

But most of all, let us not create the legal fiction that corporations are people, when clearly they are not.  Let us not give preferential treatment to the radical religious right just because they will whine and litigate and generally behave like assholes; not only does right not make right, but sheer bloody-mindedness by them certainly does not.

The essence - and the flaw - of radical right wing racism (and it is all radical right these days)

Recently, Pat Garofalo made a racist tweet about basketball players and street criminals. He walked it back, but it seems to be something he actually believes.
Around the same time, Congressman and former GOP VP candidate Paul Ryan made derogatory comments about inner city people lacking a work ethic, etc. He also walked it back, but it seems to be what he believes, even though both the authoritative sources he cited have been discredited for decades as false. In spite of walking that back, it appears to be what he and most (if not all) of his fellow conservatives believe about those "bad poor people"; just yesterday, the Wall Street Journal 'doubled down' on those views.
from Firedog Lake:

Ryan also cited Charles Murray, a conservative social scientist who believes African-Americans are, as a population, less intelligent than whites due to genetic differences and that poverty remains a national problem because “a lot of poor people are born lazy.”

No shock, I'm sure: Charles Murray is widely considered to be a white supremacist.  We saw similar claims about Hispanics made by another right wing think tanker a year or so ago.  There seems to be a whole cottage industry of white supremacy think tankers feeding this garbage to the willing conservative consumers, not just those with political office.

Around the same time, over at the City Pages, another commenter tried to justify this kind of thinking by bringing up a supposed hereditary / genetic explanation that was supposed to identify brown and black people as more likely to be violent criminals because of the so-called "warrior gene", as a justification for Garofalo's comment.

Apart from the consistent failure of conservatives in connecting successfully with science and the world of facts, which all three of the above failed miserably to do, there is a greater problem than simple class warfare against the poor, especially those who are people of color.

Looking at the warrior gene, the reality is not that men of color are more violent and more criminal, it is this from New Scientist:

People with 'warrior gene' better at risky decisions
It's been called the "warrior gene" – a mutation that seems to make people more aggressive. Now researchers report that people with this gene may not be aggressive, just better at spotting their own interests.
Previous research has found that people with MAOA-L, a gene that controls signalling chemicals in the brain, can be more aggressive. But there is enormous controversy about this, as the gene's effects seem to vary with people's backgrounds.
Cary Frydman and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena have now found that people with MAOA-L "just make better choices", says Frydman. "This isn't the same as aggression."Variants of the gene MAOA produce less or more of an enzyme that degrades several signalling chemicals, known as neurotransmitters. People with MAOA-L, which results in less of the enzyme, sometimes show more aggression or impulsivity – but not always.
...the calculation also allowed them to look at how often each person took the risky option that would also do them the most good. At every level of risk aversion among the participants, "the MAOA-L carriers were better at choosing what – for them – was the more beneficial option".
The results are consistent with previous research, says Frydman, but his team could distinguish for the first time between the two components of each decision: deciding how much each option was worth , then comparing them. The MAOA-L carriers were better at the second part.
This edge may look like aggression or impulsivity in some situations, but may simply reflect more focused attention, thinks Frydman. "If two gamblers are counting cards, and one is making a lot of bets, it may look like he's more aggressive or impulsive. But you don't know what cards he's counting – he may just be responding to good opportunities."
"Previous studies that have associated MAOA-L with aggression or impulsivity might have to be interpreted carefully," says Antonio Rangel, who heads the lab where Frydman works. "The key question is whether, in the context of the lives of the subjects, these decisions were optimal or not."
In a study published last year Dominic Johnson of the University of Edinburgh, UK, found that MAOA-L carriers were more aggressive, but only after a large provocation and without apparent impulsiveness. "That could be explained by this new work," he says, because his subjects seemed to be acting in strategic self-interest, the very thing Frydman's MAOA-L carriers were good at. This also suggests how such behaviour – and the gene that shapes it – could be selected by evolution.

So - depending on nurture and environment, the 'warrior gene' can be a good thing, or a bad thing.

Then I looked at the work of Psychaiatrist, Psychologist and Criminologist Adrian Raine, who is a renowned researcher in the field of the biology of crime (referring back here, to MN Rep. Garofalo specifically, and indirectly to the assumptions of Congressman Ryan and others).

What Dr. Raine has found is that nurture has an enormous influence in the expression of certain brain differences, notably in the amygdala and the pre-frontal cortex, and further that some of these differences are caused by environmental toxins like the presence of lead. People in poverty are disproportionately victims of environmental pollution (including lead).

Raine has found in the course of his years of study that there are physical differences, such as an unusually low heart rate at rest, that along with brain differences CAN be a predicter of crime. But Raine himself has these same brain differences, and is clearly not a criminal.

What Raine has found is that - similarly to the research on the so-called 'warrior gene', people with these biological differences can in fact, properly nurtured, become decorated heroes who do dangerous work like bomb demolition experts.
As he and others in the field note, over and over, biology is not destiny.

What is so doubly troubling about conservatives like Garofalo and Ryan is that they, in their conservative policies, under the fake label of tough love, are doing everything possible to sabotage the social safety net that helps people who are more vulnerable to the effects of their genetic or developmental inheritance. By harming aid to schools, nutritional assistance, obstructing health care for poor kids and their families, opposing raising the minimum wage, opposing clean air and water, along with other environmental protection, and pretty much EVERY other policy plank they have, they doom people in poverty to a rigged system, and permanently unlevel playing field that disadvantages them.

I can only wonder if these unabashed debunked believers in the latest iteration of eugenics are actually some kind of macabre Social Darwinists, who are simply hoping that most poor people will just die off, like some modern economic version of the black plague in past centuries. And in the interim, they contrive for these people to profit those raking in billions in the private prison business along the school to prison pipeline.

Our people are a tremendous potential resource; it is constructive and beneficial public policy to invest in it, and to make sure that we guarantee the poorest among us have the basic necessities to live, to thrive, and to succeed.
Conservatives hate that.

Conservatives believe, consistently, things that are not true, and often things that are truly hateful. Shame on conservatives, and double shame on their failure to accept honest science, and to promote dishonest fake or junk science. That includes every single conservative in our state legislature and every right wing member of our congressional delegation (and presumably the people who elect all of the above).

We have to stop those conservatives from pushing through their bad policies, their terrible and inhumane legislation, by persuading them if we can, but by voting them out and voting their policies down if we cannot. Odds are that we probably will not succeed in reversing their failed thinking, so that argues instead for focusing our efforts on successful opposition. Time to write them off, and move on in spite of them.

The radical right seems determined to double down and double down over and over again, unwilling to accept truth or facts.

What conservatives don't understand is that not only is it the right thing to do, to help those who need it, but that we ALL benefit from people fulfilling their potential instead of destroying it.   It is the best possible public policy.

Hooray for the ACA

There are regular, frequent lies that are then debunked making bogus claims about the ACA.

And there is far less coverage of the many millions of success stories where the ACA works precisely the way it was intended to work, and works very well.

Here is another example.

Potholes in logic

I recently flew home from Washington DC on the same plane as Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton.  I didn't know Dayton suffered from a degenerative condition which not only affects his speech, but also his ability to walk (which is clearly somewhat difficult for him).  I found him to be a genial, gracious and grateful person.  Quite unlike my experiences in talking with Michelle Bachmann or Keith Ellison, or even, Al Franken.  I found Franken to be bright and polite, but distant.  To be clear, I didn't talk about policy with any of these pols, I simply talked about life or made polite conversation.

At the time I talked with Governor Dayton, I wasn't aware the state would like run a large surplus for the upcoming biennium.  Had I known, I might have broken my policy of leaving politics aside (normally) when talking with pols, they get that all day long.  I might have because this situation is the Yin to the whole tax shift onto the middle-class' issue "Yang."  We've shifted, dramatically, the burden to fund the government (as a percentage of taxable income) away from the upper class and business, to the middle-class.  Yes, I know the wealthy pay double what they used to as a figure of total income tax receipts at the federal level, but folks, that's because the wealthy quadrupled their income in that period.  So where they used to pay 40% (or 60) they now pay 20% (or 30).   E.G. 2*.4=8,  8*.2=1.6.   They pay more because they HAVE so much more.  Not hard math here.

Yet, the fundamental question of how to fund government still is the essential one to many Americans.  What is a "fair" amount?  It's not some percentage, because we may chose to fund some new initiative (like say a war in Afghanistan to bring those who attack us to heel).  It's also, imho, not some flat figure for all, because asking a homeless person to fork over $20, let alone 20%, of their income is unconscionable for a civilized nation.  Asking Bernie Madoff to struggle through life on $80m per year rather than $110m, does not violate our sense of moral fairness, nor should it.

So, what is that number?  First, let's be clear about how government works (basic foundational ideas).  Government isn't like a household.  That kind of analogy is poppycock.  Government expenses go down during good economic times, and income goes up (as it should) because more people are working, more sales are being made (so higher tax receipts) and fewer people need help.  A great mistake to make is to assume we only ever need the funds expected/asked for during good economic times.  This is because during normal, and worse yet, bad economic times, receipts are lower and the needs, especially in bad times, are far higher.  We saw this during the financial collapse of 2008-2010.  Not only did the government have to step in to help people who were without food or shelter, it did that which nearly any economist will say is right, it helped stave off depression by keeping jobs going through public expenditure, including debt spending.  So, all things being equal, and admitting that some of any expenditure by a large organization, including one as large as the US (or a state) government, is waste, what is the "right" figure?  I've heard it asked by folks, "The schools should tell us a budget then stick to it, as a figure per student.  If they did that, we'd be ok with the increase they're asking for, but it doesn't ever seem to stop."  In short, figure out your needs (government), for the programs we, as a public, generally feel are necessary.  Tell us that figure, then live within that figure.

And that's the point.  What's that figure?  Well, it seems to me it has to be the number which is sufficient to fund the government during normal economic times.  Meaning, a number which pays for infrastructural investment, covers normal public welfare outlays, covers a peacetime defense budget, and so on.  It does it without gimmicks, it does it without debt.  It means as well that we have to have sufficient tax receipts to cover expenses during normal economic times.  Not a surplus, not a deficit.  Some on the right think the left can't stop spending.  I disagree, but I'd be interested to know if any on the right feel there is funding level which is sufficient?  Is there a time when tax cuts aren't needed, aren't right to engage in?  If we have enough money, and only enough money, to pay our bills under normal circumstances, isn't that the time to stop cutting taxes?  I get many think there are programs to be cut to pay for it, but assume that figure is essentially de minimus, inconsequential, are you done?  I know I'm done spending on new programs unless the public agrees a new program is right to do.  Will you meet that point halfway?

Going further, that means during boom economic times, we should bank some part of that excess for one thing, to pay the debt generated during down economic times, either by having it in the bank or to retire that debt if we don't keep excess on the front end.  In short, our tax burden should not be shrunk during boom times just as it cannot increase during down times.  Rebates, as opposed to cuts, may be possible if a certain amount of "rainy day" funds are banked, but cutting rates during boom times (as Tim Pawlenty AND Jesse Ventura did) is simply a sure way to guarantee you will have deficits when you have bad times because the tax rates won't generate the revenue needed to pay for the increased demands of an ailing public.

And so that brings me to what I'd have talked to Democrat Mark Dayton about.  We, the state of Minnesota, are $2b behind in road maintenance.  We are because we didn't properly fund our infrastructure for more than 20 years.  Road maintenance isn't the only area where we're behind on paying for the complex machinery on which our economic health rests, but it is a visible, obvious manifestation of that chronic underfunding - underfunding made possible by pretending a subsistence level budget was in fact the same as that which was necessary to keep our schools in good order, keep our bridges in good order.  In short, we didn't pay the rate we should have in normal economic times.  We underpaid.  We set our rates too low to pay the bills we incurred as a populace.  We were irresponsible citizens who pretended it was enough and are about to hand to our children a network of power service, sewage, roads, etc.. which is far worse in condition and relative capacity than we were handed by our fathers and mothers.  We've been deadbeats, cheap, and selfish.  Think not, then consider that non-defense related discretionary spending has fallen from the time of Reagan at slightly more than 10% of GDP to about 6%, in short, it was 50% higher under Reagan.

So, we have roads filled with potholes.  Potholes so numerous it's easily the worst in the 28 years I've lived here.  Potholes so numerous that it's hard to drive down a road, ANY road, and not hit a broken section of road, a section which might flatten a tire or even break a wheel.  We have lots of potholes in Minnesota, but they're rarely that bad individually, let alone in epidemic proportions.   The reason it seems to be an epidemic, based on my conversations with MN DOT planners, is this chronic, decades long underfunding.  Roads, rather than being scrapped down to the bed, were patched, over and over again.  Some of course have been re-done, but nowhere near enough, clearly.

So, I'd have said to Governor Dayton, please, rather than cutting taxes - or at least rather than cutting them very much, please, please, please, put a down-payment on our future infrastructure.  Pay for our roads first give out happy checks after that.  Anything else is crippling our infrastructure, anything less is a shot through with logical holes as are our inadequately maintained roads.

GOP Whining over Paying Women Fairly

from the WAGE project:


Employers pay women less than they pay men for the same reason male dogs lick their balls - because they can.  And like male dogs, employers won't stop willingly.

THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR NOT PROVIDING EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK. PERIOD.  FULL STOP.

It is a systemic problem in need of a system-wide legal solution; it has been ongoing for more than 40 years without the 'free market' providing anything resembling a solution to the problem.

There is absolutely NO factual basis to claim that women don't want to earn equal pay - as was made by a Wisconsin conservative law maker who took as his factual authority his understanding of something claimed by the blond idiot Ann Coulter.

There is absolutely NO factual basis for a claim made by a Texas woman in that state's Republican party that men are better negotiators.  And there is absolutely no rational assertion that demanding to be paid fairly and equitably will result in being perceived as inferior in any way, or as whining.  These right wing women just make stuff up; it has no validity or substance. Those are all radical right wing excuses -- BAD excuses - for cheating women.

It is a systemic problem, part of the larger problem of suppressed compensation for large sectors of the labor market, and is reflected (for example) in the failure to adequately raise the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation.  It is reflected as well in the disproportionate number of women in so-called 'C-class' positions (CEO, COO, CFO, etc.) and in the smaller percentage of women in the more important positions of authority in government than the percentage of women in the population (governors, members of Congress and the Senate, and of course NO woman president EVER).

Conservatives hate women, they hate minorities, and they are the servile puppets of bad economic policies and corporate entities whom they serve instead of their human constituents.

Recently we had two examples of failed Republican thinking:
from MSNBC, quoting MN Rep Andrea Kieffer:

“We heard several bills last week about women’s issues, and I kept  thinking to myself: ‘These bills are putting us backwards in time. We  are losing the respect that we so dearly want in the workplace by  bringing up all these special bills for women, and almost making us look  like whiners,‘ “ Kieffer said last Wednesday.

In some Minnesota counties, women make considerably LESS than the average of $0.77 to every $1.00 earned by men for equal work.  In Minnesota, where the minimum wage is below the federal level, in some counties the average is considerably lower.

Kieffer is playing the front-person for the Republican line which is trying out the stratagem of using their token women to make misogynistic statements for a change, after the epic failure of their male-dominated "legitimate rape" and other public relations fiascos.  The right wing women are not any more successful; the problem is the message and the policies, not just the messenger.  We've seen other radical right conservative women fail, from Michele Bachmann on pretty much everything, to the offensive claims of women like Phyllis Schlaffy that "good" women are never sexually harassed in the workplace:

"Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women."
- Phyllis Schlafly

Of course, we KNOW that is a false assumption, and blaming victims for bad conduct by employers and those in management positions in authority over them is wrong, just like denying equal pay for equal work. NO woman 'deserves' to be harassed, just like no woman - or man, or child - deserves to be raped or otherwise sexually coerced, or abused in the workplace in any way.

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/phyllissch383405.html#o4LlVbJxGCugL5CG.99

Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/phyllissch383405.html#o4LlVbJxGCugL5CG.99

And the same criticisms of factual deficiency can, of course, be said of any policy or legislation from the right relating to women's reproductive health, privacy, or freedom of choice.

Kieffer, a good little empty-headed plastic dolly reciting pre-recorded lines like an old "Chatty Cathy" doll, is just following like a good little soldier where she is directed to go by the big old white men in charge of the MN GOP.  There is not an original thought in the mix, or an independent idea.:

continuing from MSNBC:

“I wasn’t completely shocked or surprised. This seems to be a pattern  of really sort of ignorant remarks by Republican lawmakers in this  state as well as around the country. I think what we’re seeing is these  legislators and other Republican elected officials really, truly showing  their stripes,” Ken Martin, party chair of the Minnesota  Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, told msnbc.

Equal pay pits women against women in Texas 

The battle for equal pay continues to be a dividing issue in  states around the country, including Texas. Cari Christman, executive  director of a political action committee for Texas Republican women,  last weekend struggled to explain the GOP’s opposition to fair-pay laws.  Women don’t need measures like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, she  argued in a television interview, mostly because “women are extremely  busy.” In an attempt to clarify her counterpart’s comments, Beth  Cubriel, executive director of the Texas Republican Party, this week  explained that men are better negotiators than women.

Republicans continue to demonstrate they do not value women, or view us as equal, ranging from comments like Rush Limbaugh's comment that
"we already have museums for women, they're called malls", but excused that comment by noting “Hey, I could have said brothel.”   to the Texas governor Republican candidate, Greg Abbott, who would undo the Lily Ledbetter Act -- and did, regarding women college professors in the Texas state education system (as well as in his own office, ditto minorities, who are paid less than white men).

Conservatives believe thing that are demonstrably NOT TRUE, things which are usually hateful, hurtful and demeaning. Facts are not the friends of conservatives; they appear to be totally unacquainted with them.

If we leave it to the radical right, women will lose the vote, be kept at home mostly barefoot and pregnant, less educated, dependent for financial support, and probably stuck in corsets and long dresses with high collars and long sleeves, and no freedom or equality.  The GOP and worse, the tea party  are oppressors and do not believe in or value women, the family, genuine equality or freedom.  Their evil actions give the lie to their words, and to add insult to the injury, they don't even make the effort to produce credible lies.  The radical right deserves to lose badly in the 2014 election cycle, and this is an issue that will hurt them more than most.

Conservatives must go.

Celebrate World Meteorological Day 2014! Acknowledge global warming and what we can do about it

 

Weather is different than climate.  Global warming is real.

World Meteorological Day 2014

Weather and climate: engaging youth

World Meteorological Day is celebrated every year on 23 March to commemorate the entry into force in 1950 of the convention that created the World Meteorological Organization. The day also highlights the huge contribution that National Meteorological and Hydrological Services make to the safety and well-being of society.

This year's World Meteorological Day theme is “Weather and climate: engaging youth." Today’s youth will benefit from the dramatic advances being made in our ability to understand and forecast the Earth’s weather and climate. At the same time, most of them will live into the second half of this century and experience the increasing impacts of global warming. WMO encourages young people to learn more about our weather and climate system and to contribute to action on climate change.

Hooray for Michigan! The latest state with greater freedom!

Michigan is the latest state where a court has overturned their same-sex marriage ban.

Another blow for freedom and equality, one that continues to put the state of Minnesota in the forefront of a national trend.

Every new state that takes this step takes away a viable issue for the radical right to discriminate and hate, to practice bigotry against others.

and now something completely different - a belated friday fun-day (plus one)

hat tip to salon

Fred Phelps, Westboro Church Hate Group patriarch dies

We look forward to his hate group of limited family members dying with him.

Some of his former members have defected, and tried to undo his work - good for them.

We do not celebrate the death of anyone, but the world is definitely a better place without a hate monger who perverts religion to cause people greater pain during funerals for their loved ones.

Phelps and his so-called church, really more of a hate cult, represents all that is bad on the radical religious right.  The WBC has been missing their threatened obscene protests; we can only hope this continues. 

This was an ugly man, leading an ugly group of people with hate in their hearts and tarnished souls.

The legacy they have created is one where the LGBT members of our communities are gaining in respect, and where gay marriage equality is a reality, because they represent such a detestable view point that it underlines why according people greater dignity and equality is a good and desirable thing, and why their style of religious hatred towards the LGBT people among us is a bad thing.

They have accomplished the opposite of their intention.  That would make a good epitaph for Phelps' tombstone.

Whether this week, this month, or this summer, Kentucky and a slew of the remaining states that ban gay marriage are slowly and steadily correcting their error in denying human rights to all those who should have them - including gay marriage.

Rest in peace Phelps; you lost.  It's not all over yet, but you lost. Enjoy eternity.

Happy First Day of Spring!

OK, so it's snowy - but it is melting, with temps above freezing (for now).

Today, the periods of daylight and night are the same length.  And we know it will get warmer, and the light periods of our days will get longer, until June with the summer solstice, when they start to get shorter again.

Liars are Losers - and the radical right wing are LIARS and Hypocrites

Watch as 1000 years of European borders change

There's a lesson in here somewhere:

Update to our Happy St. Patrick's Day - here is a short quiz

Everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day....but how much do you know about Ireland?

1.  Was St. Patrick Irish?
      Yes
      No

2.   Were there snakes in Ireland for St. Patrick to drive out? Not since the Ice Age, long before St. Paddy
       Yes
       No

3.   Ireland became part of England in what century? The 15th under Henry II - mostly - by invitation from warring Irish kings
        8th
      10th
      15th
      18th

4.  Ireland became part of the United Kingdom in what century? 18th - barely - in 1799
       6th century
      18th century
      19th century

5.  Most of Ireland stopped being part of the U.K. in what century? 20th
       19th
       20th
       21st
       trick question, all of Ireland is still part of the UK

6.  In 1998, what prominent Irish American helped broker the Good Friday Agreement helping put an end to the 'troubles' over partition between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland?
     Ted Kennedy
     Caroline Kennedy
     John F. Kennedy, Jr.


7.  Ireland is approximately the same size as what state in the U.S.?
     Louisisana
     Indiana
     Alaska
     Delaware

8.  The New York St. Patrick's Day parade is older than the United States.
      Yes
      No

 9.  What state in the U.S. has the most Irish-Americans?
      New York
      Pennsylvania
      Massachusetts
      California


10.  Ireland is one of the __________ nations in the world.
       Richest
       Poorest
       exactly Median income   

answers will be published on Tues. 3/18/'14

Democracy vs. Republic: Conservatives believe false things

Our liberal Founding Fathers

Conservatives believe things that are not true.  Conservatives imagine themselves to be victims, when they are not.

I recently had a series of exchanges with someone on an internet site over the concept of representative government.  In the course of that exchange, the other guy, a radical right conservative, called me - among other things - a 'communist' who "did the bidding of my communist handler" and claimed that calling the United States a democracy was some kind of lefty plot the Democrats were pursuing to overthrow the country....blah blah blah......and some other nutjob conspiracy theory nonsense.

This appears to be one of the perennial themes and memes of the radical right, an exercise in stupidity, in dumbing down their base, and in ginning up the paranoia.  It is ludicrous.

There are many kinds of republics; ours is - technically - a hybrid democracy; while the UK is a parliamentary republic, as well as being a constitutional monarchy, for example, AND a democracy.  The terms overlap, and in some respects are interchangeable.  To be a democracy AND a constitutional republic are not mutually exclusive, in spite of what fall-down-foam-at-the-mouth radical righties believe -- and sadly, they believe many foolish things.

This particular deluded paranoid conservative believed in the infallibility of sources from the religious right who also promoted equally silly notions about the 'New World Order', among other outrageous beliefs.

Here is an excellent explanation of why we in the U.S. in describing our chosen form of representative government as a democracy are correct, in spite of what the radical right has decided to promote as silly propaganda.  I can only assume that we need much better civics classes, and point to the terrible harm that the radical right talking heads are doing to a nation with the motto e pluribus unum.  A tip of the hat to my co-blogger Laci for the link to Thom Harman:

If you want the most technical term, our country is a constitutionally limited representative democratic republic. Our form of government, the constitution limits the power of government. We elect representatives, so it's not a pure democracy. But we do elect them by majority rule so it is democratic. And the form of, the infrastructure, the total form of government, is republican, it is a republic.

In the early days of this country, James Madison basically created a distinction that didn't exist before this, and this was in 1787. The, it used to be, if you look at dictionaries pre 1787, the words democracy and republic were interchangeable. The Roman republic was referred to as a democracy, the Greek democracy was refereed to as a republic. The words were interchanged. And in one of the Federalist papers, and I forget which one it was, I think 14 maybe, but it's been a long time since I read them, in one of the Federalist papers in an effort to, which were put into the newspapers by Hamilton and Madison, and John Jay wrote a couple of them, to sell the constitution to people, because we were operating under the articles of Confederacy in 1787.

To sell the constitution, Madison created this artificial distinction. And what he said, basically, was that democracy, that we weren't creating a democracy in the United States, and in a technical sense it is not a pure democracy, because like Greece, you had to have at least 6,001 people show up for a decision to be made. It had to be real majority rule. And so Hamilton, excuse me, Madison made the point that democracy could arguably be considered a form of mob rule, whereas a republic imposed, you know, an infrastructure of laws and prevented mob rule.

Now, what he omitted, intentionally, because he was trying to sell the constitution, he was trying to basically reinvent language, what he omitted was that we democratically elect our representatives. And later in his life, in the 1830s, after his presidency was over, keep in mind this was in the 1770s or 1780s, in the 1830s when he was an old man, when he was writing his memoirs, he came out and said, and there's a whole, if you go to buzzflash.com and look at my book reviews, the very first book review that I ever did for BuzzFlash, which was like five years ago, it's the oldest one on the list, is all about this topic, or it has several chapters on this topic. And I forget the title of it now, but it's a great book and it's written by a guy who's a constitutional scholar ["How Democratic Is the American Constitution?" by Robert A. Dahl.] And Madison in 1834 said, you know, after all these years, we can, you can use the words interchangeably. And that was about the time that the Democratic Republican party that Jefferson created dropped the word "republican" from its name. And that was about the time that Madison, who was one of the early founders of the Democratic Republican party started again using the word democracy.

So from the 1830s, so from the founding or in the mid 1780s until the mid 1830s we referred to America as a Republic. From the 1830s until the modern era we referred to it as a democracy, but then when Joe McArthur came along he started, he and some of his advisors, and Karl Rove really got on this big time, said, "wait a minute, calling this a democracy sounds too much like the Democratic Party. We should call it a Republic because that sounds more like the Republican Party." And so the talking point on right wing radio has been, and Limbaugh's been pushing this for 20 years now, has been that we don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic, and that you shouldn't call it a democracy, it's a republic. And the reason why is because they like the word republic because it sounds like republican and they hate the word democracy because it sounds like democratic. And ... that's the bottom line, we live in a democratic republic.

Sadly, with the time, money and effort spent mis-educating adults who should know better, we can only do our humble best here to educate the poor, deluded conservative masses who as a result of believing the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party and the rest of the lunatics who have hijacked what used to be a grand old party are causing conservatives to have their brains bleeding out of their ears as a result of stupidity and mental abuse.

If you want the most technical term, our country is a constitutionally limited representative democratic republic. Our form of government, the constitution limits the power of government. We elect representatives, so it's not a pure democracy. But we do elect them by majority rule so it is democratic. And the form of, the infrastructure, the total form of government, is republican, it is a republic.

In the early days of this country, James Madison basically created a distinction that didn't exist before this, and this was in 1787. The, it used to be, if you look at dictionaries pre 1787, the words democracy and republic were interchangeable. The Roman republic was referred to as a democracy, the Greek democracy was refereed to as a republic. The words were interchanged. And in one of the Federalist papers, and I forget which one it was, I think 14 maybe, but it's been a long time since I read them, in one of the Federalist papers in an effort to, which were put into the newspapers by Hamilton and Madison, and John Jay wrote a couple of them, to sell the constitution to people, because we were operating under the articles of Confederacy in 1787.

To sell the constitution, Madison created this artificial distinction. And what he said, basically, was that democracy, that we weren't creating a democracy in the United States, and in a technical sense it is not a pure democracy, because like Greece, you had to have at least 6,001 people show up for a decision to be made. It had to be real majority rule. And so Hamilton, excuse me, Madison made the point that democracy could arguably be considered a form of mob rule, whereas a republic imposed, you know, an infrastructure of laws and prevented mob rule.

Now, what he omitted, intentionally, because he was trying to sell the constitution, he was trying to basically reinvent language, what he omitted was that we democratically elect our representatives. And later in his life, in the 1830s, after his presidency was over, keep in mind this was in the 1770s or 1780s, in the 1830s when he was an old man, when he was writing his memoirs, he came out and said, and there's a whole, if you go to buzzflash.com and look at my book reviews, the very first book review that I ever did for BuzzFlash, which was like five years ago, it's the oldest one on the list, is all about this topic, or it has several chapters on this topic. And I forget the title of it now, but it's a great book and it's written by a guy who's a constitutional scholar ["How Democratic Is the American Constitution?" by Robert A. Dahl.] And Madison in 1834 said, you know, after all these years, we can, you can use the words interchangeably. And that was about the time that the Democratic Republican party that Jefferson created dropped the word "republican" from its name. And that was about the time that Madison, who was one of the early founders of the Democratic Republican party started again using the word democracy.

So from the 1830s, so from the founding or in the mid 1780s until the mid 1830s we referred to America as a Republic. From the 1830s until the modern era we referred to it as a democracy, but then when Joe McArthur came along he started, he and some of his advisors, and Karl Rove really got on this big time, said, "wait a minute, calling this a democracy sounds too much like the Democratic Party. We should call it a Republic because that sounds more like the Republican Party." And so the talking point on right wing radio has been, and Limbaugh's been pushing this for 20 years now, has been that we don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic, and that you shouldn;t call it a democracy, it's a republic. And the reason why is because they like the word republic because it sounds like republican and they hate the word democracy because it sounds like democratic. And ... that's the bottom line, we live in a democratic republic.
- See more at: http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2010/03/usa-democracy-or-republic#sthash.6HI1Okc3.dpuf

If you want the most technical term, our country is a constitutionally limited representative democratic republic. Our form of government, the constitution limits the power of government. We elect representatives, so it's not a pure democracy. But we do elect them by majority rule so it is democratic. And the form of, the infrastructure, the total form of government, is republican, it is a republic.

In the early days of this country, James Madison basically created a distinction that didn't exist before this, and this was in 1787. The, it used to be, if you look at dictionaries pre 1787, the words democracy and republic were interchangeable. The Roman republic was referred to as a democracy, the Greek democracy was refereed to as a republic. The words were interchanged. And in one of the Federalist papers, and I forget which one it was, I think 14 maybe, but it's been a long time since I read them, in one of the Federalist papers in an effort to, which were put into the newspapers by Hamilton and Madison, and John Jay wrote a couple of them, to sell the constitution to people, because we were operating under the articles of Confederacy in 1787.

To sell the constitution, Madison created this artificial distinction. And what he said, basically, was that democracy, that we weren't creating a democracy in the United States, and in a technical sense it is not a pure democracy, because like Greece, you had to have at least 6,001 people show up for a decision to be made. It had to be real majority rule. And so Hamilton, excuse me, Madison made the point that democracy could arguably be considered a form of mob rule, whereas a republic imposed, you know, an infrastructure of laws and prevented mob rule.

Now, what he omitted, intentionally, because he was trying to sell the constitution, he was trying to basically reinvent language, what he omitted was that we democratically elect our representatives. And later in his life, in the 1830s, after his presidency was over, keep in mind this was in the 1770s or 1780s, in the 1830s when he was an old man, when he was writing his memoirs, he came out and said, and there's a whole, if you go to buzzflash.com and look at my book reviews, the very first book review that I ever did for BuzzFlash, which was like five years ago, it's the oldest one on the list, is all about this topic, or it has several chapters on this topic. And I forget the title of it now, but it's a great book and it's written by a guy who's a constitutional scholar ["How Democratic Is the American Constitution?" by Robert A. Dahl.] And Madison in 1834 said, you know, after all these years, we can, you can use the words interchangeably. And that was about the time that the Democratic Republican party that Jefferson created dropped the word "republican" from its name. And that was about the time that Madison, who was one of the early founders of the Democratic Republican party started again using the word democracy.

So from the 1830s, so from the founding or in the mid 1780s until the mid 1830s we referred to America as a Republic. From the 1830s until the modern era we referred to it as a democracy, but then when Joe McArthur came along he started, he and some of his advisors, and Karl Rove really got on this big time, said, "wait a minute, calling this a democracy sounds too much like the Democratic Party. We should call it a Republic because that sounds more like the Republican Party." And so the talking point on right wing radio has been, and Limbaugh's been pushing this for 20 years now, has been that we don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic, and that you shouldn;t call it a democracy, it's a republic. And the reason why is because they like the word republic because it sounds like republican and they hate the word democracy because it sounds like democratic. And ... that's the bottom line, we live in a democratic republic.

Friday is Fun Day!

Losing Their Heads? Or Just out of Their Minds? (Update to an earlier story)

Raw Story reported a few days ago that now Rick Santorum has picked up the latest radical right wing / radical religious right claim about guillotines being employed, via Obamacare, to attack Christianity and/or to enforce Sharia law.

Looking at these stories, it is difficult not to diagnose Conservativism as a form of mental illness, a tragic break with reality, a form of delusional thinking deeply connected to the most emotional and primitive parts of the brain and to the most fundamental kinds of identity thought that precludes use of the rational parts of the brain.

So, let's review this - part of a story reported elsewhere, including here a few days ago.

Sources like Right Wing Watch and Addicting Info, among others, alerted me to this story, but until I came across this piece from Raw Story from a week ago, it had remained among the more peripheral of the fringe crazies among the radical right.  While it had moderate play among the more generally deluded conservatives, it seemed to be circulating much more with the radical religious right than the less religiously focused.

I have spent a little time digging into that, trying to find the source for this, but the Raw Story piece solidified my impression that this is a particular paranoia specific to the religious right subset of the mentally ill conservatives.  This load of steaming shit believed by conservatives and promoted by right wing propagandists started last November; here is where we are now.  (Following this is the - if you'll pardon my religious humor - the 'Genesis' of the lie involving guillotines, on which Santorum is building.)

From Raw Story:

Santorum: Obama leading Christians to the ‘guillotine’

By David Edwards
Thursday, February 9, 2012 10:37 EDT

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum warned on Wednesday that President Barack Obama and other liberals are leading people of faith down a path that ends at the guillotine.
During a campaign event in Plano, Texas, the candidate charged Obama had an “overt hostility to faith.”
“When you look and see what the left is trying to do in America today, progressives are trying to shutter faith, privatize it, push it out of the public square, oppress people of faith, strip their charitable deductions away from them, trying to weaken them, churches — trying to say that anyone who believes in the value of Judeo-Christian principles,” Santorum explained.
“As we saw in the Ninth Circuit just this week, that if you believe that [same sex marriage is wrong] — this is what the court said — that if believe that, if believe what’s taught in Genesis, if you believe what’s practiced Biblically and a generation since then you are irrational. The only possible reason you could believe this, according to the Ninth Circuit, is that you are a bigot and that you are a hater.”
He continued: “They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the the guillotine.”
Santorum admitted that the U.S. was “a long way from that,” but if Obama had his way then “we are headed down that road,” citing the Obama administration’s decision to require nearly all private health insurance policies to cover family planning, including female contraceptives.
“Now is the time for America to rise up and say enough!” the GOP hopeful exclaimed.

So where did Guillotine nonsense, Obamacare, Sharia law and attacks on Christianity come from?

Here. In the larger context of news coverage about a shortage of lethal injection drugs for the death penalty, we saw a rise in mentions of reverting to the Guillotine, in conjunction with discussions of other means of execution, like hanging or firing squad. We know that Conservatives HATE any impediment to their rights or abilities to kill other people they don't like, ranging from stopping them from lynching people, to interference with executions of innocent people, to stand your ground laws. It is part of a well-identified pattern that Conservatives also like to project their own worst behaviors as well as fears onto other people they oppose. The ability and the authority to kill people makes Conservatives feel strong and powerful, so much so, that fairness, rule of law or innocence don't matter. Any facts that get in the way of that desire for power are just ignored or steamrolled over.

Mixing up references to means of execution, and Obamacare, and attacks on Christianity are all part of the same pattern of paranoia and delusional thinking that is fundamental to the cray-cray 21st century Conservatism.

Let me just interject here, so far as I am aware, no one still uses the guillotine for beheadings; France has not done so since 1977 and it was outlawed in 1981.  (Some idiot in the U.S. state of Georgia tried in the mid-1990s to replace the electric chair with the guillotine, unsuccessfully.  It is worth noting that both means of execution have serious problems with effectiveness.)

Here is one of the earliest identifications of the claims about Obamacare and the Guillotine via WN.com and the Examiner:

Relax. Obamacare won't bring beheadings to U.S.

A new rumor about Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, making its rounds on the internet is that the law will make beheading an official method of execution in the United States. The rumor, apparently has its origin in an article by Lorri Anderson on the Freedom Outpost on Nov. 18, 2013, about international medical codes. Conspiracy sites claim that a medical code for “legal execution” reveals that beheading and decapitation are coming to the United States. The Freedom Outpost is a conservative pseudo-news site that has articles on birtherism, nullification and other conspiracy theories.
Anderson's article refers to a medical code, “ICD 9 E 978,” that conspiracy theorists believe purports to list the legal methods of execution in the United States. The definition of the coding is found on CentralX.com under “International Classification of Diseases” and is as follows:
E978 Legal execution
All executions performed at the behest of the judiciary or ruling authority
[whether permanent or temporary] as:
asphyxiation by gas
beheading, decapitation (by guillotine)
capital punishment
electrocution
hanging
poisoning
shooting
other specified means
INJURY UNDETERMINED WHETHER ACCIDENTALLY OR PURPOSELY
INFLICTED

Anderson notes that the code is part of an international coding system, but doesn’t seem to understand what the codes are for or how they are used. She seems to believe that, because the United States is using the coding system, all parts of the code will apply to patients in the United States and that is is being forced on American doctors by the Department of Homeland Security and UN.
Writing for About.com, Trisha Torrey explains that “ICD” codes are “International Statistical Classifications of Diseases.” The codes are used to categorize every disease, set of symptoms or cause of death that can be attributed to human beings. The coding system was developed by the World Health Organization, the coordinating authority for health in the United Nations. As electronic medical records are implemented, the codes will be used for diagnosis and treatment of health problems.
When someone dies, an ICD code will also be used to record the cause of death. This is where Anderson’s code for “legal execution” comes in. The code will obviously be used when a person has been executed “at the behest of the judiciary or ruling authority [whether permanent or temporary].” Even though “beheading” and “decapitation (by guillotine)” are not legal methods of execution for the federal government or any of the 50 states, beheading is still legal in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, rebels in Syria and the Taliban in Pakistan (possibly a temporary authority in areas that they control) have been known to use beheading, as did Saddam Hussein in pre-war Iraq. Other Islamic terrorists have also been known to behead their captives. In one notable case, Nick Berg, an American business who was Jewish, was kidnapped and beheaded by Iraqi Muslim terrorists in 2004 and the video of the murder was posted online. And no, there is no evidence that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Santorum is playing on the fears of those who are Islamophobes, those who are birthers, those who believe ridiculous and inaccurate things about the ACA/Obamacare, and especially playing to his particular base among the radical religious right.  The religious right has already been primed for this message by the ridiculous and false Obamacare bullshit.  If this flies successfully with his base you might see Santorum linking it more closely to Obamacare than just contraception, but it is fair to argue that the many instances where lies made about Obamacare have been debunked has made political wannabees like Santorum a little more careful of making demonstrably false claims like those made by Garrow and others.  This is clearly his roundabout way of saying something similar, without getting busted directly.