Dear Nienstedt: No, YOU DID NOT LEAVE because "you were a distraction"

an outcome
devoutly to be wished

Let's not pretend that the Archbishop resigned willingly.  He was forced out, he had no choice -- and he left because he did an excruciatingly bad job.

From the STrib timeline of Nienstedt's failures to do right by anyone other than himself:

September 2010: Archdiocese launches battle against same-sex marriage, issuing 400,000 DVDs to state Catholics and campaigning for constitutional amendment that fails in 2012.

Instead of involving himself in the privacy of people's bedrooms, I have to wonder if the archbishop ever heard the parable about the man who had a post jammed in his eye but instead bothered with the tiny speck in someone else's eyeball.
Nienstedt devoted far more energy, attention and resources to THIS insertion into politics, instead of paying attention to an acknowledged crisis -- a failure of priorities and values, and an exercise of poor pastoral stewardship.  It reflects a greater desire to coerce non-Catholics and other people of different conscience to submit and conform to Roman Catholic dogma and an indifference to protecting children and others from predatory clergy, in my opinion- DG)

 May 2013: A new state law extends the statute of limitations on sex-abuse lawsuits, opening the door to potentially dozens of additional lawsuits, witnesses and depositions.  

This was opposed by Nienstedt and the church, arguing that they did NOT want accountability for crimes. - DG

September 2013: Former archdiocese canon lawyer Jennifer Haselberger goes public with allegations that church officials ignored concerns about the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer for years before he was convicted of abusing two boys.  

Imho, Nienstedt engaged in WILLFUL ignorance; it was his JOB to know what was going on, and to correct and prevent abuse, and the decision to ignore it was a choice, not an accident, and a dereliction of his duty and of basic human decency. - DG

December 2013: Ramsey County District Judge John Van de North orders the archdiocese to release a list of 30 priests considered “credibly accused” of child sex abuse.

Nienstedt and the archdiocese lawyers fought this as well and cooperated only to the degree they were coerced into doing so imho, which argues a lack of cooperation with civil authorities, and also a lack of concern for justice for the victims. - DG

December 2013: At Sunday mass, Nienstedt apologizes and says the archdiocese overlooked allegations of clergy sex abuse.    

This apology comes after we have been given extensive assurance that the archdiocese will NOT overlook allegation of clergy abuse -- and not for the first time, but as part of a recurring pattern.  Given that recurring pattern of assurance and continuing abuse, as demonstrated by the UN Panel above, I don't see any reason to consider Nienstedt's words, here in this apology, or any other apology, or in any assurances, to be sincere.  My opinion - DG

February 2014: A Ramsey County judge orders Nienstedt to give a sworn deposition to lawyers in lawsuits against the church, addressing whether the archdiocese followed its own policies in investigating sex abuse allegations. 

 What I recall from the depositions was a lot of "don't knows", "don't remembers, and other weasel words that frankly struck me as insincere and dishonest/untruthful, and every effort being made to obstruct the investigations against the church.  It was Nienstedts JOB to know, and if he did not know, to find out.  He failed in the job and in the trust he demanded from others in his commitment to doing his duty. My opinion, when he refused to quit, he should have been fired. - DG

March 2014: St. Paul police reopen investigation into the archdiocese’s handling of allegations against Wehmeyer.   

April 2014: Nienstedt gives a sworn statement that he knew little about the allegations against Wehmeyer and was not aware that known child sex abusers worked at the archdiocese during his tenure.  

And yet we have been assured this kind of error won't continue to occur, that these cases have been studied and reviewed  and examined? When does this become too much failure, and when is Nienstedt to be called out on apparent dishonesty, and at best disinterest?  This underlines that Nienstedt's resignation not about "distraction", this is about far worse job failures on the part of Nienstedt and his subordinates - my opinion, DG

April 2014: Internal archdiocese task force issues a report saying that poor oversight led the church to do an inadequate investigation of clergy sex abuse allegations.   

But this was exactly what Nienstedt and friends assured us, the public, was 'fixed' 'corrected', 'changed' and that they 'got it'.  This simply proves that no one can or should put any faith in statements from the Roman Catholic church generally, or Nienstedt and his subordinates specifically under any circumstances.  Why did this man continue in his position? WHY? That he did argues institutionalized cover for these crimes. - my opinion - DG

July 2014: Nienstedt announces that he will not resign, saying the church has turned the corner on the abuse allegations and he is working to regain support.   

Where have we heard THAT line of rubbish before? How can it be promoted with a straight face? Nienstedt should have been thrown out, and defrocked in the process, before now, if the church was serious and sincere -. my opinion - DG

October 2014: Archdiocese reaches landmark settlement with victims of clergy sex abuse and announces major changes in the way it will address future allegations.   

Blah blah blah, same old same old, but nothing changes -- and the same people continue in positions of power, influence and authority.  REAL changes would have included Nienstedt LEAVING involuntarily, imho, and if Nienstedt really cared about anything but himself, he would have left voluntarily. - DG

January 2015: Archdiocese files for bankruptcy protection, citing in part legal costs from clergy sex abuse litigation.   

Even if you only care about the church hanging on to its property and money, this should have been grounds for Nienstedt and his sidekick to be kicked to the curb then, not six months later. - my opinion, DG

June 5: Ramsey County Attorney John Choi files criminal charges against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for “failing to protect children” stemming from the Wehmeyer case. It’s the first time a U.S. archdiocese has been criminally charged with such offenses. 

 Like the big banks with money laundering and crooked deals, including in both respective quantity of wealth and attitude, it will take jail time for the people who are responsible to bring about any real change.  I can only hope that those who failed to protect children spend time behind bars for it, but I will in fact be surprised if that happens, or if Nienstedt is tried by the Vatican and punished criminally either. But I live in guarded hope so long as Francis remains pope.  It would not seem unfair or unjust to me in the least if the Vatican made an example of Nienstedt.- my opinion, DG)I have long felt the Archbishop of the Diocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis was an arrogant jerk who put himself and his ambitions ahead of the welfare of children and the Minnesota church. 

It is not as if Nienstedt is the only RC clergy at fault, or as if other faiths don't have some similar problems, but I think it is fair to posit Nienstedt is one of the worst among many bad clergy.  This UN Panel  from a little over a year ago seems to have pretty fairly summed up the problems that have never been addressed despite apologies and assurances and law suits, and the size, wealth, and both historic scope and geographic scope make their problem one of the worst.

Its Nienstedt, but it's not ONLY Nienstedt

From the NY Times (large/ bold type emphasis mine - DG) a year ago February:

U.N. Panel Criticizes the Vatican Over Sexual Abuse

In a hard-hitting report applauded by victims as a landmark in the Roman Catholic Church’s clerical sexual-abuse scandal, a United Nations committee on Wednesday called on the Vatican to remove all child abusers from its ranks, report them to law enforcement and open the church’s archives so that bishops and other officials who concealed crimes could be held accountable.

The report, issued by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, is likely to put pressure on Pope Francis to make concrete changes in the way the church handles abuse cases and put some muscle into the commission on abuse that he announced in December, whose members and mission have not yet been specified.

The Vatican responded on Wednesday that it had already made many of the changes called for in the report, and that the report’s conclusions were out of date.

The report, however, was sharply critical of the church’s current practices, not just those of the past. “The committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by and the impunity of the perpetrators,” the report concluded.

The criticism came from a panel that examined the Vatican’s compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international agreement signed by 140 sovereign entities, including the Vatican. The panel held a hearing on the issue last month, the first time the Vatican faced public examination by an international body of its record on sexual abuse,
But the Vatican press office said in a statement that it regretted to see the United Nations committee “attempt to interfere” with Catholic teaching and the church’s “exercise of religious freedom.”

On the many pressing problems related to child welfare, the report recommended specific steps it said the Vatican should take: stop obstructing efforts by victims’ advocates in some countries to extend statutes of limitations, which now allow most abusers to escape prosecution; stop insisting that victims sign confidentiality agreements swearing them to silence as a condition for receiving compensation; help birth parents locate children who were taken from them for adoption out of Catholic institutions like the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland; and identify, count and financially support children fathered by Catholic priests without imposing confidentiality agreements on the mothers.

Kirsten Sandberg, the chairwoman of the United Nations panel, said Wednesday at a news conference in Geneva that tens of thousands of children around the world had suffered abuse by priests. “We think it is a horrible thing that is being kept silent both by the Holy See itself and in the different local parishes,” she said.The panel rejected the church’s key contention that the Vatican has no jurisdiction over its bishops and priests around the world, and is responsible for putting in effect the Convention on the Rights of the Child only within the tiny territory of Vatican City. By ratifying the convention, the panel said, the Vatican took responsibility for making sure it was respected by individuals and institutions under the Holy See’s authority around the world.“It is wonderful that the U.N. has spoken so clearly about what the Vatican has done — and what it has failed to do,” said Ms. Dorris, who is based in St. Louis. “To us, it is a call for the civil authorities to step in. Church officials have proved they cannot police themselves.”

The above appears to be a detailed indictment of the church as macrocosm that also fits perfectly the church here in Minnesota as microcosm.

Nienstedt's apologies have, in my opinion, presented at best a shallow and superficial concern for others, and instead focused on his own experience, representing himself as the victim, not the person who is responsible for contributing to the ongoing pattern of abuse.  This has seemed to me to be his chronic message, especially in his so-called apologies.  To paraphrase what I see and hear from Nienstedt:

"Poor me, that these priest-abused children are complicating my life and obstructing my desire to advance.  Doing my job badly and then being held accountable for it when I don't want to be accountable is painful to me.  Shame on those victims for attacking the church after being harmed.  We clergy, especially me, are above the law and consequences."

Nothing could be a better demonstration of the serious intentions to better of the larger Roman Catholic church than if Nienstedt is the first in the dock, prosecuted in the new Vatican tribunal, in addition to the criminal charges here in Minnesota.

I will pray for Nienstedt, that he truly sees the error of his ways and that he receives actual justice.

Ah, the stink of conservative hypocrisy!

Conservatives, one standard for them, and a far harsher, more hate-driven standard for others.

Obama was of course born in America, and it does not matter if his father was American or not.

This is dishonest, this is lacking in principles, morality, ethics, integrity, fairness and decency.

This is the radical religious right.

Conservatives Make up Stuff, Lie about it being in the Bible

On June 3, 2015 the Charlotte Observer reported on this law suit where the state attempted to deny freedom of the exercise of religion by Christians and Jews:

The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) and the Alliance of Baptists have made it official that they are joining as plaintiffs in a Federal District Court lawsuit opposing North Carolina’s same-sex marriage ban.
The United Church of Christ filed the lawsuit in April, challenging North Carolina’s state ban on same sex marriage. The suit is said to be the nation’s first faith-based challenge to same-sex marriage bans.
As it stands, North Carolina law makes it illegal for rabbis, priests, ministers and other religious officials to solemnize the marriage of same-sex couples on an equal basis with opposite sex couples without fear of criminal prosecution and civil penalty.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article9127277.html#storylink=cpy

North Carolina and other states, and many conservatives across the nation (including those who want to be president after the 2016 election), support denying this exercise of the freedom of religion involved in this suit.  And now North Carolina is attempting to bring back a ban of sorts on interracial marriage as well.

June 12, 2015 marked the 48th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia.  When the Lovings were refused marriage licenses in Virginia, the justification for doing so -- not once, but twice, was that it was prohibited in the Bible.  The Lovings were lectured by the bureaucrats in Virginia, actual BIBLES IN HAND, on how they believed God intended the races to be separate.

Chief Justice Warren wrote (my bold emphasis added):

“Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.”

There were more other states in the US that DID allow interracial marriage, and there were other branches of Christianity that allowed it also, then, just as religious groups and  other states permit same sex marriage, now. 

That did not matter to the conservative racist bigots of the Virginia state bureaucracy.  They instead chose to impose THEIR religious beliefs on all other citizens.

This is part of the wording of the unanimous decision, authored by Chief Justice Earl Warren:

“Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.”

Recently we have ol' racist bigot and notorious homophobe Pat Robertson claiming that we shouldn't interfere with the racist policies of institutions like Bob Jones University when they try to ban inter-racial dating, as an exercise of freedom (or, in this case free-dumb) of religion.

And recently we have the state of North Carolina passing legislation that permits their bureaucrats to refuse to issue marriage licenses or to refuse to perform marriages as exercising freedom of religion.  Like Bob Jones University, that encompasses both freedom of the bureaucrats to refuse interracial marriage, which was found to be illegal and unconstitutional in the SCOTUS decision, Loving v. Virginia or same sex marriage.  But North Carolina doesn't give a tinker's damn about legality or the Constitution or freedom for 'other' people.

Not of course, YOUR freedom of religion -- no, the only thing they want to exercise is THEIR limited and narrow freedom of religion.  They have NO problem whatsoever curtailing YOUR freedom or MY freedom of religion. 

The proffered reasoning of candidates like Ben Carson represent what is faulty and unethical about the conservative position - so far held by every declared or thinking-about-declaring conservative candidate for president, and by most conservative candidates for other office, and by every conservative policy platform.  The right wants to define and coerce how everyone else lives, based on their narrow religious beliefs.  Like the beliefs of many conservatives about race, which is not a real 'thing', but rather a factually false artificial construct, sexuality is not as conservatives believe EITHER.

Facts matter in setting public policy and our laws.  Factually erroneous beliefs should not matter, in that specific context.

Conservatives do not care one whit if they insult, degrade, or defame anyone who disagrees with them in the process, or how dishonest they are in doing so.  But no one else gets to disagree with them, because to do so is to bully good conservatives and make them victims and to attack religion --- up to and including false claims that those seeking civil equality will criminalize Christianity (or maybe Judaism).

We have presidential candidate wannabe Ben Carson wailing and moaning about how anyone who supports gay marriage equality is curtailing HIS freedom of religion.

“Well, a lot of people say ‘Ben Carson’s a homophobe because he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman.’ That’s ridiculous.”

“Yes, I do believe that it’s between a man and a woman, but I don’t believe that anybody gets to change the definition of something that is a societal pillar.”

This is the same argument used to prohibit the marriage of Richard and Mildred Loving.  Richard and Mildred Loving were sentenced to prison for daring to oppose this narrow racist religious view of their freedom of choice that conservatives attempted to impose on them.

You see, Ben Carson wants people to be civil and to follow a double standard, one standard for HIM, and another standard for those terrible 'others'. 

We have had Ben Carson claiming that homosexual orientation is the result of a choice.  It is clearly not, and while he is free to believe the moon is made of green cheese if he so desires, or any other factually inaccurate thing, his believing it does not make it so, and is not a basis for other people's civil rights to control and order their lives, especially their family decisions.

In the past, notably at a NOM meeting, Carson called the efforts for equality for LGBT people an attempt to destroy America and to impose a "New World Order".  In the past he has equated any sexual orientation or gender identity that differs from heterosexual normative to bestiality, pedophilia, and necrophilia.  We have Carson claiming:

“When we talk about liberty and justice for all, doesn’t that mean that people can be left alone, that no-one else gets to change definitions on them and change life for them?” he asked. “They have no right to say to me that I must change the way I think in order to accommodate what they believe,” he said. “That’s where the injustice comes from, and we have to understand that.”

No one is saying Ben Carson must change the way he thinks.  He - like the racist people of Virginia back in the days of miscegenation laws - can BELIEVE anything he likes.  What he, and other conservatives, may NOT do is force others to conform to those beliefs, and he and other conservatives may not unreasonably restrict the freedom of individuals to marry whom they choose on that religious basis. 

Monogamy is not in fact the definition of marriage in the Bible, and the Bible is not the law of the land. 

Monogamy is not in fact the pillar of society, either, as it has not been the norm for humans across the course of history around the globe.  For that matter, neither is the so-called nuclear family.  Rather polygamy, concubinage and sex slavery, and tribal or clan organizations of extended family raising children has in fact been far more frequent and common.

Carson and the other conservatives are wrong.  We can and do change the definition of marriage so as to recognize the rights and freedom of individuals, and conservatives are NOT supporting freedom of religion or civil equality.  Conservatives are doing the OPPOSITE of what they claim they want.  Freedom of religion is the freedom for same sex marriage, just as it is for interracial marriage.

Wealth and Income Inequality are not ACCIDENTAL - it is deliberate, calculateed and largely conservative driven

Today is Flag Day - Celebrate old Glory!

Because I don't think I could top this post from back in 2012, I'm going to do a rare repost here:

Flag Day is TODAY

I like the history of our holidays, major and minor. So in honor of our flag and Flag Day, here is a brief description and history of our holiday. Flag Day celebrates the adoption of a national flag at the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1777.

Here is the beautifully brief wording:

The Flag Act of 1777 was passed by the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1777, in response to a petition made by an American Indian nation on June 3 for "an American Flag."^[1] (As a result, June 14 is now celebrated as Flag Day in the United States.) It reads, in its entirety: "Resolved, That the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation." (See Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774 – 1789, 8:464.)

So, you would think that settled the design of our national flag, except that the concept of a national flag as we know it now didn't really exist in the 18th century; it was a later development.

Credit should go to both Wikipedia for some of these images, and to an excellent site, Flag Timeline  of USHistory.org for many of the others.

the Cowpens flag

What the Flag Act resulted in were a number of designs which conformed to that brief wording, including but not only the Betsy Ross flag - although the Betsy Ross flag eventually won the greater recognition.  Here are some of those flags used at the time:

The Francis Hopkinson flag design

and the final selection, the Betsy Ross flag

another Continental Navy flag

the Brandywine flag
note the different proportions

the Forster flag

the Serapis / another
John Paul Jones flag

A New England flag

   The Second Continental Congress started out meeting in Philadephia, but then later in the year moved around Pennsylvania to other locations, including Lancaster and York. The national flag came into existence two years to the day of the official establishment of the Continental Army in 1775. 

However there WAS a flag that was flown as early as 1775 by our newly formed Navy, referred to as the Continental Colors.  It differed from the East India Flag ONLY in the proportions of the Canton.

East India Company Flag in 1775

Wikipedia has a full entry on it for those who have a greater curiosity, but here is an excerpt:

Continental Colors flow by John Paul Jones
note the difference in size and proportions of
the canton from the East India Company flag -
there is a small difference

In the first year of the American War for Independence, the Continental Congress authorized the creation of a navy. A new flag was required representing the Congress and fledgling nation, and distinguishing from the Red Ensign flying from British vessels.
The Continental Colors were first hoisted on the Alfred, in Philadelphia on December 2, 1775, by Lt. John Paul Jones. The event had been documented in letters to Congress.^[2] The Continental Colors were used by the American Continental forces as both naval ensign and garrison flag through 1776 and early 1777.
It is not known for certain when, or by whom, the Continental Colors' design was created, though the flag could easily be produced by adding white stripes to the previous British Red Ensigns.^[3] The Alfred flag has been credited to Margaret Manny.^[4]

And here is a short bio on Margaret Manny, who is less well known than Betsy Ross.

Margaret Manny was a milliner in colonial Philadelphia who made flags for the United States during the American Revolution.
Manny began making jacks and ensigns for ships as early as December 1774.^[1] She also made the Grand Union Flag, or Continental Colors, first flown by John Paul Jones aboard the Alfred on 3 December 1775.

My thanks to our co-blogger Laci for calling my attention to rich history of the East India Company flag, which preceded our own flag by a full seventy years, as a very British and a very corporate flag, first used in Asia. The East India Company flag stripes were somewhat 'variable' in number, ranging from nine to fifteen which mirrored our own experimentation with stripe numbers. The symbol in the upper left corner, the 'Canton' also changed over time, representing changes in the UK. We didn't pioneer that pattern of alteration to reflect growth and change either.

before 1707, when the Acts of Union
combined England and Scotland
into Great Britain

East India Company flag after 1707

After 1801 the flag
contained the Union Flag of
the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and
Ireland in the canton

But the adaptation of the flag of the East India Company, while strikingly similar is not the only theory for the design adopted by the Continental Congress.
Another theory is based on the family coat of arms of Richard Amerike:

"According to the American Flag Research Center in Massachusetts the heraldic origin of the American flag is not positively known; archives in the British Library confirm that the Stars and Stripes was the coat of arms of the Ap Merike family – and that they pre-date Washington's connection with the continent by 300 years".^[64]

The coat of Arms belonging to the family of George Washington has three stars in chief (at the top) on a white field, with two red horizontal stripes across the middle of the escutcheon, underneath it.  The Amerke basis for the flag is generally considered 'revisionist history'.  Clearly neither coat of arms are as similar as the East India Company flag design, but both provide some insight into the heraldic tradition that was the foundation for flag design.
From Wikipedia: In any case, both the stripes (barry) and the stars (mullets) have precedents in classical heraldry. Mullets were comparatively rare in early modern heraldry, but an example of mullets representing territorial divisions predating the US flag are those in the coat of arms of Valais of 1618, where seven mullets stood for seven districts.
The thirteen original colonies were the basis for thirteen stripes and the thirteen original stars on the first official U.S. flag, but in the Flag Act of  1794, that was temporarily expanded to fifteen stripes and stars with the admission of the first two new states.  Had that pattern continued, our flag would now have 50 stripes along with the 50 stars.  It is a fascinating insight into how the flag has changed, but also into how the nation under George Washington thought about our national expansion at the time.  It wasn't until the Flag Act of 1818 that the stripes were codified as representing the original 13 colonies, with the stars changing --  with such changeovers always mandated to occur on July 4th -- to represent the number of states at any time in our nation with only the stars.
Here is the order of the states joining, representing each of those stars, because of course there was no official membership or ratification until AFTER the sessions of the Continental Congress:
Delaware (December 7, 1787), Pennsylvania (December 12, 1787), New Jersey (December 18, 1787), Georgia (January 2, 1788), Connecticut (January 9, 1788), Massachusetts (February 6, 1788), Maryland (April 28, 1788), South Carolina (May 23, 1788), New Hampshire (June 21, 1788), Virginia (June 25, 1788), New York (July 26, 1788), North Carolina (November 21, 1789), and Rhode Island (May 29, 1790) (source - Flag Timeline)

This is a singularly striking image from th 1880s that shows some of the various permutations of our flag over the years, from an old textbook (courtesy of wikipedia):

Ding Dong, the Straw Poll's Gone

Iowa Republicans finally abandoned their sham straw poll, begun in 1979.

In the last 35 years, the straw poll ha only correctly predicted the eventual candidate twice.  That is a success rate lower than a broken clock, which is correct at least twice a day. 

The last epic fail was the win by Michele Bachmann, demonstrating that not only can the straw poll be wrong, it can be spectacularly wrong.

It took the Iowa Conservatives 36 years to get rid of something that demonstrably did not work.

Sadly, that is actually a quicker response to the failure of one of their ideas, policies or traditions than we usually see, which is pretty much NEVER do they respond to objective evidence of failure.  Rather they try to glam up their pig ideas with lipstick in the form of a common sense label for bad ideas or premises.

Conservatives MUST GO!

These are factual figures. Conservatives are lousy at governance, and especially poor at economic policy and foreign policy --- and those two are both closely connected to our failed energy policy. To see the actual statistics on how bad these obsessive ideology failures really are, see the graphic below.

Via Occupy Democrats on Facebook:

Conservatives still believe the debunked nonsense promoted by Art Laffer -- who is currently the personal architect of the failed government tax policy in Kansas.  Tax cuts do not increase revenue, increase job growth or increase growth of GDP.

From Fact and Myth:

Do Tax Cuts Increase Revenues? No, Tax cuts do not Increase Revenue
“The Bush tax cuts led to 50 consecutive months of job growth…It’s demonstrably proven that tax cuts increase revenues” – Rush Limbaugh

The argument that tax cuts create or increase revenue is an old myth that simply refuses to go away. The logic behind this argument is that cutting taxes will stimulate spending (since investors now are  now encouraged through reduced tax rates) that will result in GDP growth.  This growth in GDP will result in increased tax revenues so significant that they will more than offset the drop in tax revenues that result from a lowered tax rate. The inverse to this is that increased taxes lower tax revenue by discouraging investment, which in turn lowers tax revenues so drastically, that they offset the added increase coming from the tax rate increase. One of the reasons Republicans and other self-ascribed fiscal conservatives are able to get away with this is, is the superficially plausible argument that the Reagan and/or Bush tax cuts grew the economy and created revenue.  To understand the fallacy of these arguments, it is necessary to understand economic growth during business cycles and over a long period of time, and how this affects tax revenues.

Correlating Tax Increases and Decreases with Revenue

By conveniently pointing to places where tax cuts were enacted at or around the time of a recovery or boom, tax cut advocates argue that tax cuts increase revenue.   The problem with this is that the revenue increases following the Bush and Reagan tax cuts are dwarfed by the revenue increase following Bill Clinton’s tax increase on the wealthiest Americans.  In fact, as a percentage of GDP, post-Reagan & Bush tax cut revenue falls below the 1965-2005 average. In other words, revenue increased because the economy was recovering/growing, and the tax cuts have little (probably nothing) to do with growth in GDP.  if anything, these tax cuts actually lowered revenue increased from what they would have been otherwise.  So the real question to ask is this: how much revenue did these tax cuts cost us?  See Historical Tax Rates.

Half of the right wing are evangelicals.  From CBS news earlier this year:

White Evangelicals are half of GOP primary voters

(CBS News) NEW YORK -- With nominating contests completed in 27 states and nearly 40 percent of Republican National Convention delegates allocated, Republican primary voters are showing a record-breaking religious bent.
So far, 50 percent of Republican primary and caucus voters have been white evangelical, or born again, Christians, based on CBS News polling of voters entering or exiting their polling places since the first contest in January.
The data comes from entrance polls in two caucus states, Iowa and Nevada, and exit polls in 14 primary states - Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.
"Conservative people of faith are playing a larger role in shaping the contours and affecting the trajectory of the Republican presidential nomination contest than at any time since they began pouring out of the pews and into the precincts in the late 1970's," said Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, who called our attention to the numbers today.
Reed said conservative Christian turnout among Republicans exceeds its rate from four years ago, when 44 percent of white Republican primary voters described themselves as evangelical. They're not only a factor in the South but also in general election battleground states like Ohio, where 47 percent of Republican primary voters subscribed to the label this year.
Reed estimated that through the primaries in Alabama and Mississippi this past Tuesday, more than 4 million evangelical Christian voters had participated in those 16 primaries and caucuses where entrance or exit polls were conducted by CBS and other news organizations.
"They are indispensable to any winning strategy for the eventual Republican presidential nominee in both the primaries and the general election. Any candidate who ignores these voters and the values that motivate them does so at their own peril," Reed said.

As a general thing, participation in democracy is a good thing.  But because conservatives have engaged in wholesale voter suppression of any demographic that doesn't vote for their candidates and causes, it actually results in the hijacking of representative government, and the inevitable resulting epic failures of fanatics in control. 

Evangelicals specifically, and conservatives generally, appear to struggle with the basic concepts of cause and effect.  They engage in what amounts to magical thinking as a preference to rational thought, and to embrace religious superstitious insanity in the face of overwhelming logic and data.

It is no accident that American secular democracy arose in the era of the highly secular, pro-science  Age of Enlightenment.  And yet we still see stupidity like this, which has no place in government and which is the last thing our founding fathers and mothers wanted to see empowered or respected. 

It doesn't matter if the willful ignorance is the economic policies of Art Laffer and his stupid curve, or the religious right superstitious insistence on controlling everyone's sex choices because they are a bunch of sexuality hating prudes.  They are bad for America, They have to GO.

From the Huff Po :

State Rep Suggests Abortion Is To Blame For California Drought

Scientists are still exploring the causes of California's historic drought, but one local lawmaker thinks it might all come down to one thing: God's wrath over abortion.
While speaking at the California ProLife Legislative Banquet last week, California Assemblywoman Shannon Grove (R) suggested a theory that the state's worst drought in 1,200 years may be divine retribution for California providing women with access to abortions, RH Reality Check reported.
“Texas was in a long period of drought until Governor Perry signed the fetal pain bill,” she told the audience. “It rained that night. Now God has his hold on California.”
Grove was likely referring to House Bill 2, RH Reality Check noted, a Texas abortion bill banning abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, four weeks earlier than the standard set by Roe v. Wade.
Grove did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation that she made the statement at the event, but she elaborated on her theory in a Facebook comment.
"I believe --and most Americans believe --that God’s hand is in the affairs of man, and certainly was in the formation of this country," she wrote. "Is this drought caused by God? Nobody knows. But biblical history shows a consequence to man’s actions."

Dumb bunny and blond bimbo Shannon Grove is wrong.  The correct understanding of cause and effect is the  scientifically established and totally secular  anthropogenic global warming from fossil fuels and other human activity, OTHER THAN ABORTION OR GAY MARRIAGE AND GAY SEX.  These crazies control the right; the only need we have to take back America is from the ridiculous radical right wing nuts who have demonstrated that they are out of touch with REALITY --- and dangerously so.

Conservative Hypocrisy and Double Standards of Justice -- Easy on themselves, MAX Harsh on everyone else

Conservatives are hypocrites.

Conservatives want a lenient justice for them and their children, and the harshest possible justice for other people.


We see this in Jim-Bob Duggar, when it comes to his son being guilty of a sex crime, against his four sisters and another girl.


We see it with Jeb Bush when his kids were guilty of crimes while he was governor, especially when his daughter was a drug addict. Daughter Bush went to rehab, but at least went through the justice system -- but only apparently because Jebbie couldn't avoid it. Jim-Bob Duggar acted as a vigilante, keeping HIS son out of the system of justice entirely, and certainly did not hold him accountable under our system of laws, much less subject him to the death penalty for rape and incest.

We see it when Mike Huckabee used his position as governor to keep his son from being held accountable in the courts for animal cruelty in hanging a stray dog. Then-governor Huckabee is alleged to have used his power and influence to prevent an investigation and prosecution, according to the authorities who attempted to investigate and prosecute the case. Of course, this NEVER stops ol' Mike Hucksterbee, purveyor of quack cures, from being critical of OTHER people's parenting, like his criticism of the Obama's for the choice of music they allow their daughters -- while Huckabee pals around with pedophile Ted Nugent, performing sexually offensive lyrics with him -- and then lying about it.
From Right Wing Watch:

After Mike Huckabee criticized Beyoncé’s music as “obnoxious and toxic mental poison” unfit for children and compared the singer to a prostitute, it didn’t take long for people to point out that he himself had once joined with Ted Nugent to perform a sexually explicit song on his national television program.

Huckabee is, predictably, reacting by pretending that what happened didn’t actually happen, telling the Christian Post today that Nugent “changed the lyrics pretty dramatically” when he sang the song “Cat Scratch Fever” on Huckabee’s Fox News show.

In fact, anyone who watches a video of the performance can see that Nugent didn’t change any of the song’s explicit lyrics as Huckabee accompanied him,

Video available here.  You have to wonder at how much forgiving of the pedophiles Mike "Family Values" I-Wannabe-President REVEREND Huckabee can offer. It appears to be quite a lot, given that among the many examples truly evil sexual conduct in super close friend Ted Nugent, covered by the HuffPo a year ago February:

In fact, in the case of Nugent, we have even come to see alleged child sexual abuse as some sort of eccentricity or harmless vice. Can you imagine anyone else who had been accused of having sex with a 12-year-old, written a song about raping a 13-year-old and adopted a 17-year-old so that he could have sex with her going on to campaign alongside all the most conservative "family values" candidates?

When Ted Nugent was 32 years old, he released the song "Jailbait." Here's a taste of the lyrics (written by him):

Well, I don't care if you're just 13

You look too good to be true

I just know that you're probably clean...

Jailbait you look fine, fine, fine...

It's quite alright, I asked your mama

Wait a minute, officer

Don't put those handcuffs on me

Put them on her, and I'll share her with you

The albums' next track is titled "I Am a Predator."...

Two years before recording "Jailbait," Ted Nugent had the novel idea of becoming legal guardian to a 17-year-old girl, so that they could have sex without, you know, her parents having legal recourse. They acquiesced. "I guess they figured better Ted Nugent than some drug-infested punk in high school," he told VH1, years later. In the same documentary, he claimed to have had several relationships with young girls, and seems to brag about gaining their parents' approval, too. (Though he didn't go so far as to adopt any of them.)

Oh those hypocritical claims of the moral high ground! Another perfect example of the conservative do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do, and- if-it-becomes-inconvenient- lie ideology. Another example of the problem with conservatives, sex, and religion -- because of course, Hucksterbee shares a love of god and guns and maybe grits with gravy with the Nuge, and that makes everything else all okey-dokey and forgiveable.


Justice under conservatives is for OTHER PEOPLE, not 'them" and not "theirs' - and that is dangerous, that is unfair, that is uncivilized, that is not the rule of law under the U. S. Constitution. Justice is for evangelical conservative men, and screw justice and legal protection for women and girls.

Via Patheos:

Before he was the star of 19 Kids and Counting, Jim Bob Duggar was a prominent political figure in Arkansas, serving as a member of the state’s House of Representatives before running for the U.S. Senate in 2002.

Duggar lost his 2002 bid to be the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate, however, he did take positions as a candidate. While trying to justify his anti-choice, anti-abortion stance, U.S. Senate candidate Jim Bob Duggar stated forcefully and clearly that those guilty of rape and incest should be put to death.

The following appeared on Duggar’s campaign website:

Q. What is your abortion position, and specifically, where do you stand on rape, incest, and threat to the mother’s health?

A. If a woman is raped, the rapist should be executed instead of the innocent unborn baby. Adoption is an option. Many couples would love to adopt and are waiting for a baby. Abortion has been and always will be the destruction of an innocent child. Rape and incest represent heinous crimes and as such should be treated as capital crimes. The developing infant committed no crime and should be allowed to live. In the unlikely event that the life of both mother and baby would both be lost (for example, a tubal pregnancy) all should be done to save the life of the mother.

Here is just a part of what is wrong with what passes for Duggar thinking, above and beyond the draconian punishment that characterizes conservatism. It is that we should not be executing anyone, even rapists. I'll give Duggar this much agreement, rape IS a heinous and terrible crime, for which there should be appropriate and severe consequences AND FOR WHICH THERE SHOULD BE DUE PROCESS IN CRIMINAL COURTS.  Josh Duggar should receive real legal consequences, but he should also receive real treatment, not fake pray-away-the-gay/pedophile and incest pseudo-treatment under restorative sentencing.

But in seeking restorative justice rather than retributive justice (eye for an eye), we should be seeking treatment for offenders, not simply the most extreme punitive action we can devise. Nothing is made whole or better after excessively punitive justice, in contrast to restorative justice where the goal of the process focuses on an outcome that is not based on vengeance, on trying to feel better by hurting a person who did something wrong or bad.

From Wikipedia:

Restorative justice is an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of the victims and the offenders, as well as the involved community, instead of satisfying abstract legal principles or punishing the offender. Victims take an active role in the process, while offenders are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions... In addition, it provides help for the offender in order to avoid future offences. It is based on a theory of justice that considers crime and wrongdoing to be an offence against an individual or community, rather than the state. Restorative justice that fosters dialogue between victim and offender shows the highest rates of victim satisfaction and offender accountability.

We do not have exemptions for abortion as a constitutional right; this is something that conservatives, in their fundamentally flawed concepts of right and wrong, innocence and guilt, are attempting to impose on the women in this nation. Women have a right to abortion (a limited right as established by Roe v. Wade) because women have autonomy over their bodies, because women have a right to determine if they consent to being pregnant rather than having it imposed on them against their will.


Embryos and fetuses are clumps of cells in the process of differentiation into a variety of kinds of tissues and potentially into the component body parts and systems. But embryos and fetuses are NOT PEOPLE, they lack the essential neurological development to have the essential awareness and capability that we define as living human beings. We use the same criteria to determine if someone is alive or brain dead -- and no longer able to think or feel as a living human being, even if there is some residual bodily processes that continue.


The simple reality is that most fertilized ova do NOT go on to become human beings, due to a failure to implant in the uterus and therefore they fail to complete that developmental process, possibly as high a rate of failure as 80% without intervention, and as high as 100% with contraception. The fertilized ova has no rights and deserves no rights, contrary to the efforts of extremist conservatives to force personhood on the nation as law. A conceptus is NOT A PERSON, and is unlikely to become one.


The simple reality is that many embryos and fetuses in nature do not continue to develop either. We can engage in a superstitious idea about reproduction, or we can accept the reality that pregnancy is a choice, and that most attempts at reproduction are not successful, much less entitled to continue at the expense of an unwilling woman's body. 

It is very difficult to rationalize that some omnipotent deity, or the biological system of nature  created by such a deity, produces all these little zygotes, these fertilized ova, and then fails to follow through with them -- but we are supposed to believe that we humans cannot make this conscious decision for ourselves about reproduction?  That is ridiculous on the face of it, and there is nothing anywhere in the Judeo-Christian religious texts which preclude doing so.  In fact quite the opposite is true -- there are a lot of accounts in the Bible of ripping open pregnant women so as to destroy pregnancies among conquered peoples.  The Bible actually requires it in the old testament, unless you posit that God only creates SOME pregnancies but not others.

2 Kings 15:16King James Version¹⁶ Then Menahem smote Tiphsah, and all that were therein, and the coasts thereof from Tirzah: because they opened not to him, therefore he smote it; and all the women therein that were with child he ripped up.

Hosea 13:16King James Version ¹⁶ Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.

Abortion has NOTHING whatsoever to do with guilt or innocence of that potentially developing cellular process. The reasoning that posits this is a human being with rights or guilt or innocence is BADLY FLAWED.


Even if you accept the premise of religion over rational thought, even Jim-Bob Duggar's own faith posits that a conception is not 'innocent', because of the doctrine of original sin -- that EVERYONE is born with sin and guilt. The Duggars, like former ordained pastor Mike Huckabee, are Southern Baptists; but the concept of original sin is a foundational concept and part of most forms of Christianity.

Southern Baptists and the Doctrine of Imputed Sin

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Joshua Breland

James Petigru Boyce (1827-1888), the founding president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, affirmed the federal headship of Adam and the doctrine of original sin. On whether man inherits guilt and is under condemnation prior to actual personal transgression, Boyce writes:Consequently, at the very moment of birth, the presence and possession of such a nature shows that even the infant sons of Adam are born under all the penalties which befell their ancestor in the day of his sin.

In other words, there is no state of innocence unique to the zygote, conceptus, embryo or fetus that places them in a position superior to assert a right over an existing fully formed human being.

It is not for conservatives in their flawed concept of good and evil, innocence and guilt, to decide that women are bad for having sex, so they deserve pregnancy, or that people are to be divided into good and evil -- which is apparently synonymous (or should that be SIN-nonymous) with being part of "them" in a black and white extremism of right and wrong that gives passes to conservatives but imposes the harshest possible outcomes on those they identify as 'other' or different than them.

EVERY human being on this planet, now and in the past and in the future, is a combination of good and bad, regardless of their religious or political beliefs -- or lack of them.

As to the notion that women should simply hand over 9 months of their lives, and their bodies, to continue as victims of rape or incest, because there are lots and lots of waiting adoptive parents......if that were true we would not have so many children in need of adoption already.

When we look at the generous forgiveness of those conservatives supporting the Duggars, including Mike Huckabee who was governor while Jim-Bob was in the Arkansas legislature, and while the Josh Duggar incest crimes were taking place, we see this about the outcomes of the conservative hypocritical justice system, from the fact check of Huckabee's past political ads:
Via On the Issues:

When it comes to violent crimes, a category that includes murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults, Huckabee’s record is mixed: Murders and robberies declined, while rapes and aggravated assaults increased. Overall, the violent crime rate was actually 5.2% higher than in 1996, when he took office.

Thanks to the double standards and conservative hypocrisy of Jim-Bob Duggar and Mike Huckabee, add Josh Duggar's multiple incidents of rape and incest against his four sisters and another young girl to those statistics -- because they were excluded under the term in office of Jim-Bob Duggar and Mike Huckabee in Arkansas.


Conservatives FAIL at governance, because their fundamental - and fundamentalist - concepts of how the world generally, and how government, and especially justice specifically operate are flawed and faulty, and inherently unfair and unjust. Conservatives mean well, but do badly... and they hate being held accountable for those failures and failings. Accountability is reserved for anyone who does not think or believe as they do.


THAT is why not one of the conservatives currently running for office should be elected, and why those who are the most extreme pose the greatest danger to our society and citizens.

My favorite quote of the week, so far: Robert Reich

Sing it Reich, sing it LOUD, sing truth to power!  Texas not only hates the rest of the nation, Texas just passed more lax gun laws, which were promoted and sought - in part - by those who want to secede, and declare they don't mind shooting people to get their way on a range of issues. (my bold and italicize emphasis added in the body of the quote)

Why Federal Disaster Relief Money Poses a Bit of Awkwardness for Texas

Yet Texans have elected people who seem not to have a clue. Indeed, Texas has done more in recent years to institutionalize irrationality than almost anywhere else in America—thereby imposing a huge burden on its citizens.
How many natural disasters will it take for the Lone Star State to wake up to the disaster of its elected officials?

Texas represents the worst of conservative willful and malicious ignorance, magical thinking, failure to grasp the rational concept of cause and effect, but most of all Texas conservatives are masters of hypocrisy.

From the same link above:

As extreme weather marked by tornadoes and flooding continues to sweep across Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has requested—and President Obama has granted—federal help.
I don’t begrudge Texas billions of dollars in disaster relief. After all, we’re all part of America. When some of us are in need, we all have a duty to respond.
But the flow of federal money poses a bit of awkwardness for the Lone Star State.

After all, just over a month ago hundreds of Texans decided that a pending Navy Seal/Green Beret joint training exercise was really an excuse to take over the state and impose martial law. And they claimed the Federal Emergency Management Agency was erecting prison camps, readying Walmart stores as processing centers for political prisoners.
There are nut cases everywhere, but Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott added to that particular outpouring of paranoia by ordering the Texas State Guard to monitor the military exercise. “It is important that Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed upon,” he said. In other words, he’d protect Texans from this federal plot.
Now, Abbott wants federal money. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency is gearing up for a major role in the cleanup—including places like Bastrop, Texas, where the Bastrop State Park dam failed—and where, just five weeks ago, a U.S. Army colonel trying to explain the pending military exercise was shouted down by hundreds of self-described patriots shouting “liar!”
Texans dislike the federal government even more than most other Americans do. According to a February poll conducted by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune, only 23 percent of Texans view the federal government favorably, while 57 percent view it unfavorably, including more than a third who hold a “very unfavorable” view.
Texas dislikes the federal government so much that eight of its congressional representatives, along with Senator Ted Cruz, opposed disaster relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy—adding to the awkwardness of their lobbying for the federal relief now heading Texas’s way.
Yet even before the current floods, Texas had received more disaster relief than any other state, according to a study by the Center for American Progress. That’s not simply because the state is so large. It’s also because Texas is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather—tornadoes on the plains, hurricanes in the Gulf, flooding across its middle and south.
Given this, you might also think Texas would take climate change especially seriously. But here again, there’s cognitive dissonance between what the state needs and how its officials act.
Among Texas’s infamous climate-change deniers is Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, who dismissed last year’s report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as “more political than scientific,“ and the White House report on the urgency of addressing climate change as designed “to frighten Americans.”
Smith is still at it. His committee just slashed by more than 20 percent NASA’s spending on Earth science, which includes climate change.
...Consider also the consequences for the public’s health. Several deaths in Texas have been linked to the extreme weather. Many Texans have been injured by it, directly or indirectly. Poor residents are in particular peril because they live in areas prone to flooding or in flimsy houses and trailers that can be washed or blown away. What’s Texas’s response?  Texas officials continue to turn down federal funds to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, thereby denying insurance to more than 1 million people and preventing the state from receiving an estimated $100 billion in federal cash over the next decade.

In my experience, Texans, individually, one on one are usually wonderful, hospitable people.  But as an electorate the conservative majority are freakishly, foolishly NUTS. 

At some point, the right has to take their party back from the fringies, the fundies, the cray-cray-crazies, and the rest of the extremists, and most of all the damned hypocrites.

RIP, Beau Biden

He was an exemplary American, who lived a dedicated life in both state government service and in the armed forces.