Herman Cain, You Are TOO IGNORANT to Be President

from Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC.com :

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So........how simple, how transparent, how much EASIER is this 9 9 9 plan of Herman Cain? NOT AT ALL. It is superficial, and ill conceived, and the numbers don't add up - yet again, more Republican math failures, with dumb ideas masquerading under the bogus label of common sense solutions. 

Let me point out that O'Donnell has put in his time in and around Congress; he was a key aide and senior advisor to Senator Moynihan for six years, and the staff director for an additional two years was the staff director of the Senate Committee on Finance.  So, O'Donnell knows his subject, clearly better than either Herman Cain, or Cain's chosen advisers.

from the Wikipedia entry on O'Donnell:

From 1992 to 1993, he was staff director of the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, then chaired by Senator Moynihan. And then from 1993 to 1995, he was staff director of the United States Senate Committee on Finance, once again under Senator Moynihan’s chairmanship. He thus led the staff of the Senate's tax-writing committee during the consideration of President Bill Clinton's first budget, which Congress enacted in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993.

Herman Cain doesn't understand his own economic policy; he is far too easily stumped by simple, softball questions.

We're Republicans; We Don't Need to Know Nuthin'!Herman Cain: More Republican Pro-Ignorance, Anti-Education Politics and Economics

Herman Cain has touted how smart his economic advisers are.  Initially he kept their identities 'secret'.

Now we know why they were such a big secret; it's because his economic advisers aren't economists at all, much less economists recognized for their knowledge and understanding of economics and our economy.

Real economists, of the variety who are sought to advise Congress and the President - and usually CEOs of very large companies - are expected to be conversant with macro and micro economics.

So....who does Herman Cain have filling that role?

According to Bloomberg News and the San Francisco Chronicle:

Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan stems from basic economic principles and didn't need a professor to develop it, said the suburban Cleveland investment adviser who did.

Rich Lowrie of Gates Mills, Ohio, who is Cain's senior economic adviser, developed the plan with Cain based on "pro- growth economics" and in consultation with economists including Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, whom he calls friends.

"When people say, 'Well, you're not an economist, you've not even set foot in a faculty lounge, what could you possibly know about economics?' I'm not holding myself out to be that," Lowrie, 47, said in a telephone interview yesterday from Cleveland.

Now it would be one thing if either Cain, or Lowrie, were whiz-bang success stories, but they are not either of them successful on the order of magnitude of someone who IS an exceptional self-made man - someone like Warren Buffet.  And his performance as CEO of Godfather's Pizza didn't create a lot of jobs - quite the opposite, per this Bloomberg Businessweek article,

The new CEO initiated deep cuts to bring down expenses. He closed 20 percent of the company's 640 restaurants and fired 300 to 400 people.

...it's not at all clear that Cain's efforts made that much of a difference in Godfather's fortunes. He says the company was losing $8 million a year when he took over and turned a profit of $4 million two years later. You'll have to take his word for it. Cain, who declined to be interviewed, has not released details of the company's performance under his leadership. Publicly available figures show Godfather's sales fluctuated from about $225 million to about $275 million during his time there, sometimes rising, sometimes falling, never surging. Godfather's didn't go out of business; neither did it become a major combatant in the pizza wars, and Pillsbury sold Godfather's to Cain and a group of investors in 1988. In a November 1987 interview with Restaurant Business, Cain predicted Godfather's would "exceed 1,000" restaurants within three years and take on its larger rivals.

By the time Cain left the company in 1996 to head the National Restaurant Assn., the industry's powerful lobbying group, the number of Godfather's restaurants had dwindled to the low 500s. Today, Godfather's Pizza is the nation's 10th-largest pizza chain by sales, according to PMQ Pizza Magazine. The company's current officials would not reflect on Cain's leadership there—or say whether they are rooting for their old boss in 2012. Godfather's "takes no position on political candidates," the company said in a statement. "But we do make great pizza."

The bottom line: Though Cain says he would revive the economy as he did Godfather's Pizza, it's not clear the chain improved much when he was CEO.

So, Cain clearly has a track record of making claims about his own wonderfulness that he doesn't back up with facts and figures, and he makes big promises about what great things he is going to do........and then makes equally big excuses about why he didn't do those big things after all.  But new management does appear to have been more successful with the same company than Cain while he was in charge.

And that isn't the only problem with Herman Cain's record of leadership.  He doesn't appear to have done all that well at another company where he was a top executive either, Aquila Energy, according to this review of his executive credentials:

Herman Cain's spot on the board of directors at Aquila, a high-flying energy company that crashed to earth, may be a blotch on his record.
The Kansas City-based company and Cain faced allegations that employee retirement funds were heavily invested in company stock when the company was changing to investments to "high risk enterprises." The complaint states, "...the risk profile of the Aquila Fund drastically transformed from a conservative utility investment to a high risk growth stock."
The company settled the suit for $10.5 million.

And then there were the factually erroneous economy-related statements made at the debates hosted by the Washington Post / Bloomberg earlier this month, where Herman Cain was busted by the WaPo fact checkers.

In one of the most entertaining articles I've come across in researching this post, "Republican Debate: Viewer's Guide to Economic Jargon", maybe both Cain and his non-economist economic adviser should review it, along with anyone who skipped any study of economics in college, or who may have forgotten the econ classes, if they were too long ago.  Because ONLY if we have consensus about the terminology and the concepts can we begin to form any kind of consensus.

By Bloomberg News, Published: October 11 (ed note - prior to the debate)

Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. presidential debates are an occasion for voters to size up the would-be leaders of the world’s largest economy.
To do so, though, viewers will need to translate the jargon, acronyms and bureaucratic talk that become a native language on the campaign trail.

Share

This presidential campaign has developed its own lexicon.
What happens if you dial 9-9-9? Who’s Ponzi? How do you get a
tax holiday? What’s a permitorium? Want to dance the Operation Twist?
Here’s a viewers’ guide to 25 words and phrases likely to be heard at Tuesday night’s Bloomberg/Washington Post Republican presidential debate at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. Coverage begins at 7 p.m. New York time on Bloomberg Television, and the debate will be streamed live
beginning at 8 p.m. on Bloomberg.com and washingtonpost.com.
This debate will focus on the economy, debt, deficits, taxes, trade and jobs.
CRONY CAPITALISM: Critics on both ends of the political spectrum
have decried what they call government’s penchant for helping favored companies. On the political left, the criticism is that the government propped up financial institutions such as Citigroup Inc. during the financial crisis of 2008, while doing little to buffer homeowners and workers suffered. Some Republicans have seized on that term and used it against President Barack Obama, arguing that his 2009 economic-stimulus plan poured funds into politically connected companies, especially in renewable-energy technology and the auto industry.
CURRENCY MANIPULATION: Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has said he would officially label China a “currency manipulator” and impose duties on its goods until that nation raised the value of its currency to “fair value.” China takes steps in the market to hold down the value of its currency, giving its exporters a cost advantage over companies in other countries and contributing to the U.S. trade deficit. The U.S. Treasury Department releases a report twice a year in which it is supposed to identify any country that it believes is manipulating its currency. Treasury hasn’t labeled any country a manipulator since 1994. Under current law, there are no consequences for a country named a manipulator.
DEBT LIMIT: The debt limit is the total amount of money the federal government can borrow to meet its obligations, including interest on the debt, Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, tax refunds and other payments. The debt limit allows the government to finance existing legal obligations that Congress and presidents have made in the past.
Since 1960, Congress has raised the threshold 78 times, including 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democrats. On Aug. 2, Obama signed into law a bill to instantly give Treasury $400 billion in additional borrowing power.
DEFICIT: Deficits are the government’s total expenditures that
exceed the annual revenue it receives. Deficits differ from debt, which is the accumulation of yearly budget shortfalls. At 8.5 percent of gross domestic product, the $1.3 trillion budget deficit that the Congressional Budget Office projects for 2011 will be the third-largest shortfall in the past 65 years. This year’s deficit stems in part from the financial crisis and its effect on the economy, according to CBO. Although economic output began to expand again two years ago, the pace of the recovery has been slow and the economy remains in a “severe slump,” the CBO said.

The office of President of the United States  requires the skills of someone who both has experience and knowledge.  The track record behind Cain, including his cutting jobs, his failure to grow the business to the numbers he promised, and his problems with bad choices relating to risk at the energy company Aquila in his corporate background, combined with his disdain for a more expert adviser on economic issues, does not meet those criteria, in my opinion.  He appears to have inflated and hyped his credentials, while showing a uniquely right-wing attitude that one doesn't need an education or expertise in a subject, that dumb is good enough.

It isn't good enough, not nearly good enough, and that was never more true than in our current national and global economic crises.

MISTER Brown, so YOU think you are someone's Lovely Daughter?Senator Brown, handsome is as handsome DOES!

"Mrs. Brown you've got a lovely daughter.

Girls as sharp as her are something rare."

The title of this post is a pun on the lyrics of a mid-1960's song, "Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter" by a British pop band that had some success in the U.S. as well, with the improbable name Herman's Hermits.  They have a charming naiveté that adds a bit of fun to an otherwise very serious subject. (And obviously, I like to add in bits of mixed media in my blogging.)

The post is about plagiarism by Senator Scott Brown from Elizabeth Dole, who I have always admired as a very 'sharp' woman in politics, one of my favorite women conservatives.  She has always been sharp in every sense of the word, including appearance, intellect, and particularly poise and ability to think on her feet with a clever and intelligent response.  So as an admirer of Mrs. Dole, I was more than usually offended by this apparent plagiarism by Mr. Brown.

The 'daughter' reference will become clear below.

Word cloud, courtesy of the Maddowblog, MSNBC
that is supposed to be a brown background
generated by wordie.net

The post is about a plagiarism scandal involving newly-minted Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts.  The following will explain (from the Rachel Maddow show, Friday October 14, 2011):

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This is not a good development for Brown in view of the recent decision by Elizabeth Warren to challenge him in the next Senatorial race, in 2012.

I have to admit that I laughed out loud at the part near the end about blaming this on the 'summer intern'........back in February.

Right Wing Fiction, Stranger Than Fact

You can tell how extreme far right people are in direct proportion to how much they fear monger made-up conspiracies, and how much they use factually inaccurate statements to support those statements.

I usually agree with the axiom that fact is stranger than fiction. But on the right, which has become tragically more extreme and at the same time more detached from reality, fiction IS really more strange than fact.

As evidenced by this, among numerous other examples.

From Right Wing Watch, which provides audio clips in support of this report:

Hunter Warns That "The Homosexual Lobby" Wants A "Military Takeover"

Submitted by Brian Tashman on October 14, 2011 - 3:25pm

While speaking today with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council on his radio show Washington Watch, Congressman Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA) accused “the homosexual lobby” of pushing for a “military takeover by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community” at the expense of heterosexual soldiers. Hunter was one of the staunchest opponents of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and told Tony Perkins that he predicted such a “takeover.”

Perkins: Let’s talk about this issue here, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, we knew a lot of this was going to happen, you’ve been pressing this issue from the very beginning. But just, I mean, days after this is signed into law, first we had the transvestites wanting to be allowed to come into the military, but now we have chaplains being ordered, or at least given the permission and of course we know what that means it means they’ll be pressured, to do same-sex weddings on military bases. Are they moving faster than you thought they would?
Hunter: No, in fact this is exactly what we knew would happen. We’re not especially clairvoyant, we can’t see into the future, but the homosexual lobby isn’t simply pressing to have equal status in the military with people that are heterosexual. They would like a military takeover by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community, and that’s what they’re going to keep pushing for until it happens.

The congressman also didn’t have kind words for the U.S. Navy, contending that they were more supportive of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’s repeal because they were only “involved in the peripheral countries in Africa and Libya” rather than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

Hunter: I think that the Navy particularly has a problem with this because I think they’ve been lost since 9/11, except for the Navy SEALs, they don’t have anybody really that are in this fight that we’ve had in Iraq and Afghanistan directly. They’re more involved in the peripheral countries in Africa and Libya. I think that they were trying to become accepted, frankly, at the highest levels to the administration, and that’s one reason why they pressed forward with the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell so quickly and gave instructions to their chaplains to be able to marry same-sex people, once more in direct contravention of federal law.

Not only do we have numerous decorated members of our armed forces who have demonstrated their courage and competence alongside our heterosexual military dating back to the American Revolutionary war, it would be an improvement to accept qualified homosexuals into our armed forces rather than having repeatedly lowered our standards, including for accepting convicted felons.

This is yet one more example of right wing misinformed, factually inaccurate bigotry, being used as a wedge issue because the right has no policy, no ideas, and no broad based support.  With this  bull-oney? They're not going to get any either.

The Congressional Research Service Proves Republicans In Congress Are Liars

Remember all those occasions where the Tea Party and the Republicans would line up together in front of their microphones, and talk about why it is we cannot tax the rich because they are job creators?

Well, the rich are profiting greatly, they aren't creating jobs, no matter how much money they have or how little they pay in taxes - contrary to the repeated claims on the right.

A new report from the CRS says so, and they aren't the only ones to be making that assertion backed up by the numbers.  This quote from Bloomberg summarizing the report notes:

The report found that a relatively small proportion of business owners are millionaires and played down the impact of higher tax rates on job creation.

“The small share of taxpayers with small-business income in the millionaire category suggests that tax reform policies designed to ensure adherence to the Buffett Rule will affect few small businesses,” the report says.

The findings of the CRS study are similar to an analysis last month by the non-profit Citizens for Tax Justice, a labor- funded research group based in Washington.

Continuing from Bloomberg and the Congressional Research Service:

'Buffett Rule’ May Be Broken by 25% of Millionaire Taxpayers, Study Finds

By Andrew Zajac - Oct 12, 2011 4:03 PM CT

Enlarge image

The findings put the U.S. tax system in conflict with the so-called Buffett Rule, which says households making more than $1 million annually shouldn’t pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle class families, says the report, which analyzed 2006 Internal Revenue Service data. Photographer Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Time Inc.

About 25 percent of millionaires in the U.S. pay federal taxes at lower effective rates than a significant portion of middle-income taxpayers, according to a legislative analysis.
Preferential treatment of investment income and the reduced impact of payroll taxes on high earners lets about 94,500 millionaires pay taxes at a lower rate than 10.4 million “moderate-income taxpayers,” representing about 10 percent of those making less than $100,000 a year, according to the report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service dated Oct. 7.

From the Excellent Non-Partisan Site Ballot News- Wisconsin Recall Update!

Here is the link to their web site; along with GoJo, this is one of the best non-partisan sources for information on the web, nationwide, not only for Wisconsin. But I have been relying on them for accurate WI information throughout 2011. Check them out for yourself, here. And/or follow them using the link on our blog roll in the left-hand bar of this blog.

Wisconsin recall fever, take 2

October 14, 2011

By: Greg Janetka
MADISON, Wisconsin: Less than two months ago Wisconsin held the last of the nine state Senate recall elections that dominated the state’s politics for most of 2011. Total campaign spending for the recalls surpassed $44 million, while costing state and local governments approximately $2.1 million.^[1] With the state still working to put itself back together (there’s a special election for Assembly District 95 taking place November 8 to fill the seat left open when Jennifer Shilling (D) defeated Dan Kapanke (R) in a recall), it looks as if it may all happen again in 2012.
Democrats made no bones about their desire to recall Gov. Scott Walker (R) for his role in targeting the repeal of most collective bargaining rights for public employees, officially announcing on October 10 that they, in conjunction with United Wisconsin, would officially begin the recall campaign against Walker on November 15.^[2] They would have likely have gone after him sooner, but under Wisconsin law incumbents are not eligible for recall until they have been in office for a year.
It was due to this rule that more state legislators were not targeted this year. 17 of Wisconsin’s 33 incumbent state senators, 6 Democrats and 11 Republicans, won election or re-election on November 2, 2010, meaning they could potentially be recalled in 2012. They are:

1. Chris Larson (D)
2. Jon Erpenbach (D)
3. Kathleen Vinehout (D)
4. Robert Jauch (D)
5. Tim Carpenter (D)
6. Tim Cullen (D)
7. Dale Schultz (R)
8. Frank Lasee (R)
9. Joseph Leibham (R)
10. Leah Vukmir (R)
11. Michael Ellis (R)
12. Neal Kedzie (R)
13. Pam Galloway (R)
14. Rich Zipperer (R)
15. Scott Fitzgerald (R)
16. Terry Moulton (R)
17. Van Wanggaard (R)

Additionally, two Republicans and four Democrats who were targeted last year but did not see enough signatures collected against them to face recall could see a second attempt.
With the Republicans holding a 17-16 majority in the Senate, state Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate said he expects his party will run recall efforts against Walker as well as GOP senators. “It would be irresponsible of the party to not jump on that opportunity,” he said.^[3]
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, meanwhile, said of trying to recall Democratic senators, “I haven’t ruled it out, that’s for sure.”^[3] Dan Romportl, head of the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate, said, “At this point, all options are on the table. We are waiting to see what transpires on the Democrat side and then we will go from there.”^[4]
Hold on Wisconsin, it’s gonna be a bumpy 2012.

The Tea Party, Tooth Decay..........and Voter Suppression in Wisconsin

It is perhaps only amusing to me that a part of the state of Florida -- or as it seems more and more often, Flori-DUH! - hijacked by the Tea Party would succumb simultaneously to their worst anti-science impulses, and to right wing paranoia and---- wait for it! ---- the ubiquitous right wing, factually inaccurate invoking of Hitler myth.

The Tea Party is so inept, their members can't be trusted not to harm themselves with the sharp corner of a Graham cracker, much less should they be trusted to have anything to do with governmental decisions affecting human populations.

In this instance, it is the removal of fluoride from the water. Fluoride is the substance that the prestigious, well-respected, SCIENCE-BASED Center for Disease Control says on their web site, on the page headed Community Water Fluoridation:

Overview

For 65 years, community water fluoridation has been a safe and healthy way to effectively prevent tooth decay. CDC has recognized water fluoridation as one of 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.

• The Benefits page provides information on the oral health benefits of fluoride to individuals and communities.
• The Safety page provides references and other information about fluoride safety.
• The Statistics page provides access to data sources such as the National Oral Health Surveillance System.
• The Engineering and Operations page provides information on water fluoridation technical assistance resources to state programs.
• Other Fluoride Products describes forms of fluoride delivery other than water fluoridation.
• Guidelines and Recommendations offers technical information on programs, and Fact Sheets covers specific topics. See also Journal Articles, Related Links

So who better to fact check Flori-DUH! Tea Partiers better than the Florida factcheckers at Politifact.com, who give the Fori-DUH! Tea Partiers a Pants-on-Fire rating, reserved for their most severe level of lying, or being so grossly inaccurate that they pretty much had to work at being ignorant.

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

Say water fluoridation started in Nazi Germany ghettos and death camps to pacify the Jews.

Critics of water fluoridation on Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 in a Pinellas County Commission meeting and web comments

Truth about fluoride doesn't include Nazi myth

Here's a reason to support a Florida county's decision to cut fluoride out of its drinking water: The idea came from the Nazis.

The Nazis put fluoride in water to pacify Jews during World War II, a local resident told members of the Pinellas County Commission on Oct. 4, 2011, before the commission voted 4-3 vote to stop fluoridating water for about 700,000 residents.
"History shows, actually, that in Nazi Germany, one of the first things that they did was add fluoride to the water in the ghettos where the Jews stayed," Matt Leffler of Clearwater said.

Once the St. Petersburg Times published its story about the decision — similar, anonymous comments on the Web piled up:

"Do you guys know where water fluoridation started? In the death camps in WWII."

"There have been many links to cancer going back to the original tests on fluoride done by the Nazis on the Jews."

"It IS what they used to dull their brains!! They used it in the concentration camps. It was in the concentration camps that they also developed many anti-psychotics."

One reader declared the Nazi-fluoride connection "an absolute historical fact." Several readers linked to sources on the Web.

Certainly Nazis, who killed millions of Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, were known for chemical tests and inhumane medical experiments. So PolitiFact Florida had to know: Did that include adding fluoride to water?

We tracked down roots of these claims on the Web, reached out to Holocaust historians, contacted well-known critics of water fluoridation, and read book excerpts and magazine articles and news stories. And we can tell you: There's no teeth to this claim.

This fact-check won't explore the pros and cons of fluoride in your drinking water — though we will note the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls the practice one of the greatest public health achievements of the century. And also that groups of citizens, scientists among them, have been wary of the practice since the 1950s.

We'll focus instead on an Internet meme that's crept into the local public debate over drinking water — one that well-known fluoridation critics would like to see washed away.

"We have done our level best to discourage opponents of fluoridation from using this emotive argument," said Paul Connett, a chemist who directs the anti-fluoridation group Fluoride Action Network and recently co-authored a book called The Case Against Fluoride. "The historical evidence for this assertion is extremely weak. It is sad that the U.S. media has done such a bad job of educating the public on this issue that it is so easy for crazy ideas to fill the vacuum."

• • •

So where does the story come from?

Andy Hollinger, who handles media relations at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, tried not to laugh as we explained our fact-check.

"I can almost guarantee you that is indeed an urban myth," he said. "... That sounds like Conspiracy Theory 101."

But he humored us, putting historian Patricia Heberer on the phone. Her expertise is the German medical community, including Holocaust-era experimentation.

Most Nazi medical experiments, she said, had two themes: new drugs and treatments for common battlefield ailments, from war wounds to typhus, or the more infamous effort to underpin Nazi racial ideas, such as Josef Mengele's twin studies. None of the experimentation that she knows of involved fluoride — for mind control or for healthy teeth.

Meanwhile, in the concentration camp system, as in the ghettos, it would have been surprising if fluoride delivery was a focus — in the final few days before liberation, water lines scarcely delivered water. So, water treated just for the Jews?

"I can't see it," she said.

But she had heard a similar Cold War-era theory. It wasn't about the Nazis fluoridating water. It was the Communists.

• • •

Still, do an Internet search for "fluoride" and "Nazis," and you'll find articles such as "Nazi Connections to Fluoride in America's Drinking Water." The text appears on various sites, and includes the citations "Stephen 1995," and "Bryson 2004."

"Stephen 1995" is likely Ian E. Stephens, author of a 1987 self-published booklet, an extract of which was published in Nexus Magazine in 1995. We tracked down a copy of the article from the magazine's website, an alternative Australian publication covering "health breakthroughs, future science and technology, suppressed news, free energy, religious revisionism, conspiracy, the environment, history and ancient mysteries, the mind, UFOs, paranormal and the unexplained."

It's called "Fluoridation: Mind Control of the Masses?" And in it we meet government research worker Charles Eliot Perkins, who at the end of World War II purportedly learned from a big German chemical producer that it had developed a plan to fluoridate occupied countries.

"Repeated doses of infinitesimal amounts of fluoride will in time reduce an individual's power to resist domination by slowly poisoning and narcotising a certain area of the brain and will thus make him submissive to the will of those who wish to govern him," says a document quoted in the excerpt. "Both the Germans and the Russians added sodium fluoride to the drinking water of prisoners of war to make them stupid and docile."

"Bryson 2004" is Christopher Bryson, an investigative reporter and television producer who reported on Guatemalan human rights abuses for the BBC World Service, National Public Radio and the Atlanta Journal Constitution in the 1980s, and later wrote a book called The Fluoride Deception. It delves into murky connections between military-industrial fluoride polluters and the early push for public water fluoridation.

His book mentions Nazis or Nazism less than 10 times, and none of the references discuss water fluoridation. We contacted him.

"I never came across any documentation or credible information showing that fluoride was used in Nazi death camps," he said.

• • •

In 2009, two scientists published a book called The Fluoride Wars: How a Modest Public Health Measure Became America's Longest Running Political Melodrama.

The hydrologists dedicate more than 30 pages to conspiracy theories and their origins. We contacted one of them.

"The World War II death camp statement is an absurd lie," said Jay Lehr, who has authored or co-authored more than 30 books, most of them self-described "boring science books for scientists."

The Fluoride Wars instead presents a lively social history of the fluoridation debate in the United States.

And it starts with the first large-scale fluoridation in history, not in Europe, but in Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1945.

• • •

Given the topic, it seems appropriate to conclude with Wikipedia, where we found mention of Nazis and fluoride — in an article listing conspiracy theories: Fluoridation is alternately part of a "Communist, Fascist or New World Order or Illuminati plot to take over the world." It was "pioneered by a German chemical company to make people submissive to those in power." It was "used in Russian prison camps and produces schizophrenia."

Our Holocaust historian knew of no such project. Two book authors who researched the topic, one a journalist, the other a hydrologist, found no credible evidence of such a connection. A leading anti-fluoridation activist repudiates the story. The most commonly cited Web source for the story was a 16-year-old extract in a fringe Australian publication. So we can confidently declare this claim Pants on Fire!

So in that context, I offer this video clip to elaborate on the Tea Party's ignorance and paranoia.  It's bad enough they are foolish enough to believe these conspiracy theories and stupid urban myths, but it is unconscionable that they act on them without checking first to see if there is even a fragment of truth to them.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Tea Party and the segments of the right wing that support them, or at least go along with them, propose and enact measures which are costly, and which are ill-advised and ill-conceived. They harm large segments of our population, they break things which previously worked, they act on the basis of fantasy conspiracies without basis in fact. And they are out of step with an increasingly large number of people in this country who disagree with them and who oppose what they have been doing. Pardon the pun - rightly so.  In trying to give us smaller government and more efficient government, they have broken government, they have proven they cannot govern, and that they have failed ideas to offer.  In all probability, they will be shown the door in 2012, and their efforts will systematically be undone, to fix the harm they have caused.
The only dumbing down we have to fear is from the Tea Party.

Public Opinion: Thumbs Up! for Occupy Movement; Thumbs Down! for Tea Party Extremists

The Tea Party has failed to fulfill its potential, and the polling makes it clear that the Tea Party is woefully out of step with the main stream of this nation.  While the Occupy movement is still very young, it is already both larger, more diverse economically, ethnically/racially, and in age demographics.  It is also far more widely approved, and growing as the Tea Party fizzles and declines.

This is not a recent development, this growing disaffection with the Tea Party.  When they were co-opted by the Republicans and by the astro-turfers, effectively bought by big money.  It worked well for the 2010 elections, but I predict that the Tea Party will largely be a spent force by the 2012 elections.

Back in August, the New York Times showed that Republicans were getting a greater share of the blame in the record 82% disapproval of Congress, per their New York Times / CBS News Poll.  And the majority of us are not too happy with how the Tea Party is fragmenting and co-opting the Republican Party either:

The public’s opinion of the Tea Party movement has soured in the wake of the debt-ceiling debate. The Tea Party is now viewed unfavorably by 40 percent of the public and favorably by just 20 percent, according to the poll. In mid-April 29 percent of those polled viewed the movement unfavorably, while 26 percent viewed it favorably. And 43 percent of Americans now think the Tea Party has too much influence on the Republican Party, up from 27 percent in mid-April.

The same poll showed 57% disapproved of the job Boehner was doing compared to 47% who disapproved of Obama's performance.  The approval ratings however were sharply different: only 30% approved of Boehner, while 48% approved of Obama's performance.  When it came specifically to the economy:

"Americans said that they trusted Mr. Obama to make the right decisions about the economy more than the Republicans in Congress, by 47 percent to 33 percent."

But that was one poll, and back in August.  A CNN/ORC poll at the end of September showed an all time low opinion of the Tea Party:

Just 28 percent of Americans hold favorable views of the tea party, an all-time low in the 19 months that CNN/ORC pollsters have gauged Americans' feelings about the movement. At the same time, 53 percent of Americans think poorly of the tea party, an all-time high. According to CNN/ORC, the movement's popularity peaked in the spring of 2010, when 38 percent of Americans said they liked the tea party and only 36 percent said they didn't.

There have been a few Pew research polls which show a continuing decline in the opinion about the Tea Party, as have Washington Post / ABC polls, and polling by the Wall Street Journal/NBC.

A TIME Poll taken just a few days ago showed the continued 'thumbs down' for the Tea Party, and a very clear majority thumbs up for the Occupy protesters, per this succinct summation:

The poll asked people to identify which faction of government best represents their views. 30% identified with Democrats, while 17% said Republicans and 12% went with the Tea Party. So if you’re looking for a left-right bias, it leans slightly to the left (30% left to 29% right), assuming the designations of Democrats to the left; Republicans and Tea Partiers to the right. A whopping 39% of the respondents identified with no party or the always-popular “other” designation.
When asked for their view of the Tea Party, 27% of the respondents went with favorable, while 33% said it was unfavorable. When asked about the Occupy Wall Street movement, 54% looked at it as favorable, while 23% viewed it as unfavorable. In short, twice as many respondents viewed OWS as the favorable movement.
Digging even deeper into the numbers, the Tea Party was more hated (24% “very unfavorable” to OWS’ 13% “very unfavorable”), while OWS was more readily embraced (25% “very favorable” against the Tea Party’s 8% “very favorable”). For Tea Party supporters looking for any kind of silver lining, the group of poll-takers didn’t have much faith in OWS being more than just protests and tent-pitching — 56% said they felt it would have little impact on American politics.
There were some other interesting nuggets in the poll; 71% of respondents, for instance, believe that Wall Street executives should be prosecuted if they were found responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown. But what sticks out is the large gap between OWS and the Tea Party. With virtually equal amounts of left and right-leaners answering the polls, and independents tending to go in the Ron Paul direction (let’s not forget — the man pretty much invented this Tea Party), it’s kind of shocking to see such a difference between the OWS movement and the Tea Party. Maybe it’s because the OWS movement isn’t wholly politicized yet and it’s tough to disagree with the “down with the rich!” sentiment. But as it matures into whatever it turns out to be, these numbers will likely change.

So it should be no surprise that those who hitched their wagons to the Tea Party star, the people who populate the right wing echo chamber, are trying every tactic they can devise to smear and denigrate the Occupy movement, often as is their tactic, with disinformation and factually inaccurate statements.  And the more they stamp their collective little feet.........the more the Occupy movement appears to be growing by leaps and bounds.  While the extremists on the right stomp their little feet in frustration it remains to be seen if the Occupy movement will demonstrate better legs than the Tea Party.  I'm betting that it will, and that it will be a force to be reckoned with in the 2012 elections, and that unlike the Tea Party, it will be a unifying rather than a fragmenting group of people at the grass roots level influencing politics.

So it should come as no surprise that the far right extremists will be waging their culture wars in the interim, because it seems even impaired by their Republican math, they can read the numbers written on the wall that shows they are on their way out.

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Factcheck.org Weighs in on Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan with a big FAIL

In a few respects this duplicates my earlier post on the problems with Cain's 9-9-9 plan, but it is worth sharing here for the additional depth it goes into in examining the plan and its impact.

From the weekly upate courtesy of Factcheck.org:

Cain’s ‘Fiscal Hocus Pocus’

Posted on October 13, 2011

A former chief of staff of the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation calls Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan “a terrific example of fiscal hocus pocus” that would have the effect of “drastically increasing taxes on the working poor and middle class.” Edward Kleinbard, now a professor of law at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, published a research paper through the university on Oct. 12. It is so far the most detailed look at the 9-9-9 plan by any independent tax expert, and it will provide ammunition for both liberal and conservative critics.
Cain claims that his plan is “simple, transparent, efficient, fair, and neutral.” We noted after the most recent GOP debate that, in fact, his plan is “murky” rather than transparent, and that Cain’s consultant on the plan hadn’t produced any study of how it would impact different income groups.
Some analysts have estimated that Cain’s plan wouldn’t produce as much income as the taxes it would replace, and one liberal analyst has even said it would cut revenues in half. Kleinbard disagrees. “I cannot promise that the Plan is wholly revenue neutral compared to current law, but in fact it should raise a great deal of revenue,” he writes. That will bolster Cain’s conservative critics who argue that creating both a 9 percent national sales tax and a 9 percent flat tax on personal income would lead to higher taxes. “You know, you can drain out more blood with two needles than with one,” says Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
Furthermore, Kleinbard concludes that Cain’s proposed sales tax would amount to “a disguised one-time 9 percent tax on existing wealth — no doubt much to the surprise of Mr. Cain and his followers.” That’s because an asset worth $100 on the day before the tax becomes effective would return only $91 to the owner the day after (the $100 sales price minus the $9 tax). Kleinbard calls this “a one-time 9 percent haircut on existing wealth,” and it may give conservatives fresh reason to object to Cain’s plan. The tax would apply to real estate (including personal residences), stocks, bonds, gold or any other asset that is bought and sold, with the sole exception of “used goods” which Cain now says he would exempt. (Cain adviser Gary Robbins told us that existing homes would be exempted as “used goods,” a point Cain also made in a CNBC interview a day after the debate.)
On the other hand, Kleinbard’s analysis also supports liberal critics who argue that any sales tax or flat tax tends to reduce taxes for upper-income persons while raising them for lower-income persons.

Kleinbard: The 9-9-9 Plan functions as an effective 27 percent payroll tax on wage income. By imposing an effective 27 percent flat tax on wage income, the 9-9-9 Plan would materially raise the tax burden on many low- and middle-income taxpayers, who today face little or no tax under the income tax, and a 15.3 percent effective payroll tax burden.

How would the plan amount to a 27 percent tax on wages? Kleinbard explains:

• Cain’s proposed 9 percent tax on business transactions — which does not exempt wages paid by businesses — would cause businesses to pay 9 percent lower wages, and thus effectively become an invisible tax on wage earners.
• The 9 percent tax on personal income would take another bite of the same wage income after it is received.
• The 9 percent national sales tax that Cain proposes would eventually take a third bite of that income at the time it is spent to buy goods or services.

Kleinbard’s arithmetic is a bit more complex and sophisticated than this rough summary, but he arrives at a 27 percent figure for wage and salary income, and a 17.2 percent rate on self-employed business owners (who could pay themselves in tax-free dividends rather than wages, avoiding the effects of the 9 percent personal income flat tax.)
Kleinbard figures that a family of four earning $120,000 would pay (directly or indirectly) $800 more in federal taxes under Cain’s plan than under current law. At lower income levels the increase in percentage terms would be even higher, and at low wage levels it would be “dramatic.”
One note of caution: Kleinbard has recently testified before the Senate Finance Committee that the U.S. has “no practical choice” but to raise taxes back to levels of the 1990s, at least until entitlement spending can be reined in. He said he favors allowing the Bush tax cuts on individuals to expire next year and imposing a new top rate in the range of 42 to 44 percent on incomes over $2 million. He also contributed $5,250 to Democratic candidates and party committees between 1989 and 2006 (and none to Republicans) when he was a partner in the New York law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton prior to joining the JCT staff in 2007. Whether any of that colors his analysis of Cain’s plan, we will leave to our readers’ judgment.
The JCT is a House-Senate committee upon which Congress relies for professional analysis of the effects of proposed changes to the tax system. Its staff is not divided into Republican and Democratic factions, and (like that of the Congressional Budget Office) is nonpartisan.

Nein! Nein! Nein!, Herman Cain, to Your 9-9-9; We Get It! And We DON'T Want It!

Nein! nein! nein! - No! No! NO! Appears to be the overwhelming response from economists and the electorate. This is a dumb idea, and the public seems to have caught on that it is against their interests to embrace this plan. I suspect that the public, even those low information voters, are wising up that Herman Cain is not the biz wiz he has been hyped to be.

The following is from MSNBC.com, and I post it here because it includes an excellent sampling of the economists who have spoken out in careful and thoughtful criticism after analyzing 9-9-9.  I find the unscientific poll at the end of particular interest, in view of the numbers participating:

Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan is simple:

Most will simply pay more

Jim Young / Reuters

"If the public understands it, they will support it and demand it. That is going to be the difference. It is not a complicated piece of legislation," Herman Cain says of his "9-9-9" tax plan.

By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to include the dropped word "income" in the paragraph about households who pay no income tax. The link also has been updated to provide more recent data.
When it comes to Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's proposed 9-9-9 tax plan, there’s one thing all sides agree on: it’s very simple.
If you're a corporation, own a small business or count yourself among the richest Americans, you'll simply love it. If not, you'd simply pay a lot more in taxes.
Everyone hates the current tax code. A Congressional supercommittee is attacking the mess as part of a broad proposal to balance the federal budget. President Barack Obama wants to pay for his jobs stimulus package by raising taxes on the wealthiest households. Corporations are agitating for a “tax holiday” to bring home over a $1 trillion in profits stashed overseas to avoid the IRS back home.
Now Cain, who has recently surged to the front of the pack of GOP presidential contenders, is drawing attention to a radical idea. Rather than slog through the political morass of overhauling the existing system, just scrap it entirely. No more deductions, exemptions, incentives and tax loss carry forwards
In its place, Cain wants the government to pay its bills with three sources of revenues held to single-digit rates: a 9 percent tax on all consumer purchases, a 9 percent “business” tax and a 9 percent income tax.
Cain claims the plan is already generating popular support among voters, which will make it much easier to implement in the political quagmire that has numerous tax reform proposals.

“I can be walking through the airport going through security and a TSA agent will say, ‘Hello Mr. Cain: 9-9-9,” Cain recently told CNBC.

“If the public  understands it,they will support it and demand it. That is going to be the difference. It is not a complicated piece of legislation.

But the odds are much higher that, when the public understands it, the vast majority of taxpayers will be horrified to realize they face a huge tax increase. That assessment comes from Bruce Bartlett, a senior official in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, who described the plan as a “distributional monstrosity.”
“The poor would pay more while the rich would have their taxes cut, with no guarantee that economic growth will increase and good reason to believe that the budget deficit will increase” Bartlett recently wrote in the New York Times. “Even allowing for the poorly thought through promises routinely made on the campaign trail, Mr. Cain’s tax plan stands out as exceptionally ill conceived.
The reason the plan would hit poor people much harder that the wealthy is also simple. The current tax code provides a series of deductions, credits and exemptions that ease the tax burden on all households, but they have a greater positive impact those at the bottom of the income ladder. As a result, some 47 percent of U.S. households pay little or no income taxes. They would now suddenly be hit with what amounts to a tax bill that represents 27 percent of their income, according to USC law professor Edward Kleinbard, who published a paper this week calling the 9-9-9 plan “a terrific example of fiscal hocus pocus.”
“It is presented as a low-tax panacea, but it actually would raise the tax bills of many Americans very substantially,” he said.
Though he's gained political momentum by hammering away at the plan's simplicity, Cain has had a harder time explaining how the plan would benefit the average household. In a recent appearance on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown with Chuck Todd, Cain explained that a family with annual income of $50,000 would come out ahead under the 9-9-9 scheme. But as my NBC News colleague Domenico Montanaro found upon closer examination, the numbers Cain offered just don't add up.
The plan would certainly benefit some households. Owners of small businesses would be among the biggest winners, said Kleinbard, because they could pay themselves with dividends (which would no longer be taxed) instead of wages. That would effectively reduce their tax rate to about 18 percent.
Kleinbard also found that the plan would have some significant unintended consequences, including what amounts to a phantom tax on existing savings. For example, if you bought a new car with money you’d stashed in a savings account, accumulated from earnings, investment gains or interest or dividends that you’ve already paid taxes on, you’d now have to pay yet another 9 percent on the new car.
That phantom tax, which would apply to any purchase made with existing wealth, “may come as a big surprise to Mr. Cain and his followers.”
Cain and advisors who have reviewed the plan insist that it would collect enough money to replace the current tax code and not add to the federal budget deficit. But until Cain presents a more detailed proposal, those estimates are all but impossible to verify.
That uncertainty has drawn fire from the political right. Many support the idea of a flatter, more regressive tax than the current system. But they worry that Cain‘s plan could make it easier for the government to raise revenues.
“The challenge is creating a (business tax) and a sales tax and keeping the income tax  having three taxes all of which can grow,” Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, told MSNBC. “It’s like having three needles in your arm taking blood out. It’s much more dangerous than just one.”
Critics of Cain’s plan argue that he’s hoping that widespread dissatisfaction with the current system will prompt voters to overlook the plan’s numerous pitfalls.
NYU law professor Daniel Shaviro thinks part of the popular appeal of Cain’s plan is that it appears to hold tax rates to single digits – even though the cumulative tax paid by most households would amount to 27 percent. Borrowing from Cain, Shaviro offers and even simpler solution to make existing tax code much more palatable
“Replace the 35 percent annual income tax with a 3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3 monthly tax on annual income,” he recently wrote on his blog. “After all, who's counting if the 12 monthly taxes actually add up to 36 percent annually?”

Do you favor Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan?

   22.8% Yes, it's a simple and fair alternative  (33,140 votes)

   51.4% No, it's just a giveaway to the rich (74,690 votes)

   25.8% Won't know until more details are presented (37,584 votes)

We get it Mr. Cain, and we don't want it; your pizza, er, your economic plan, won't get past the door.  Go back to the food service industry.

Rick Perry, as Wrong on History as Bachmann or Palin! So, clearly he must appeal to the anti-education segment of the right wing base!

It not only bothers me that Perry made this mistake, it bothers me that he doesn't appear to KNOW it was a mistake.  Not a CLUE.

This is what ignorant looks like, sounds like, governs like.

Video courtesy of NBC by way of HuffPo:

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Consistently, these fools give lip service to the Founding Fathers, to the U.S. Constitution, to the Aemrican Revolution, even to religion.........and over and over and over they get it wrong. And they clearly don't even know it is wrong until one of their handlers explains it to them. This is distinctly different from an occasional misspeaking; it demonstrates a frightening level of ignorance and lack of education, be it Perry, or Palin, or Bachmann.

Fact checkers continue to fail Michele Bachmann But Only When She Opens Her Mouth

A brief excerpt from MinnPost's survey of fact checking the most recent GOP debate:

Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s fact checker, files his assessments, noting: “It’s hard to know where to start with Michele Bachmann’s characterization of the problems with the federal budget. According to Bachmann, 'every year we are spending about 40 percent more than what we take in,' the reason is out-of-control spending and the debt-limit deal that gave Obama ‘another $2.4 trillion blank check to spend.’ Whew! Let’s start with the debt-limit deal. Congress approved an increase in the debt limit to pay bills already incurred by Congress. It does not give Obama new authority to spend more money. It just lets the federal government continue sending out Social Security checks, feeding soldiers in the field and paying doctors who see Medicare patients. And guess what? Even if Obama wins not a dime of additional spending, Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling again in early 2013. Even the House Republican budget, an austere document drafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), calls for nearly $2 trillion in additional borrowing by the end of next year. So, the debt-limit deal let Obama keep the government functioning, not spend more money. Now, it is true that the federal government has spent dramatically more than it has taken in over the past few years, since tax collections collapsed in the wake of the housing meltdown, the banking crisis and the recession. In 2009, the nation borrowed about 40 percent of every dollar it spent (spending 67 percent more than it took in — Bachmann got the proportions wrong).” Detail guys ... they’re so boring.
Not to be left out of the fun, The New York Times’s Binyamin Applebaum looks into a couple of Bachmann assertions. The best of them is this: “Bachmann suggested that the federal government caused the boom in subprime mortgage lending by pushing banks to lower ‘platinum level’ lending standards. There are two problems with that assertion. The most important problem is that the vast majority of subprime loans were not made by banks or other lenders regulated by the federal government. They were made by mortgage companies that were not subject to regulation of any kind. The problem, if anything, was the complete lack of government supervision. The assertion also mis-characterizes the historical relationship between the government and banks. Regulators can sometimes prevent banks from acting, but there is almost no evidence that the government can push banks to make loans they don’t want to make. This point has been underscored over the last two years, as the Obama administration has begged and pleaded with banks to start making loans, and banks have largely declined to do so. Banks did make sub-prime loans in large numbers, and the reason they did so, according to their own executives, was that they saw a chance to make lots of money.”

 Which is pretty rough, coming on top of the STrib finding Bachmann to be extreme in her views.  Extreme AND wrong; now that is a potent combination.  All of which finds Bachmann's strategy in Iowa is failing as well.

The Candidates Debate:Worse than 'W', or Only as bad? How much worse could Republicans damage our economy, and lose even more jobs?

I'm talking here about the kind of bombing - failing - that the right is demonstrating in recent polls. This seems a pertinent observation in light of the most recent GOP presidential candidate debates.

For example, we have the Bloomberg/ WaPo poll here which shows a tremendous LACK of confidence in the conservatives to improve our economy.

1. If a Republican were president right now, do you think the economy would be better, worse, or about the same as it is now?

             Better   Worse   The same   No opinion
All adults     23      25         45           7 

and THAT includes Republicans and right-leaning Independents!

So, not only do the Republican and Tea Party members of congress have lower approval ratings and higher disapproval ratings than the Democrats, they don't have any faith that Republicans would have made  it better, and a higher percentage - 25% - believe the right would have made things WORSE.

But I particularly liked this question, both parts equally:

3a. Of the following possible Republican candidates for president, which one do you think would do the most to improve the economy?

                        All adults   Leaned GOP 
Mitt Romney                17            22
Herman Cain                10            20
Rick Perry                  7            12
Ron Paul                    7             8
Newt Gingrich               4             6
Michele Bachmann            4             3 
Jon Huntsman                2             *
Rick Santorum               1             1
None of these (VOL.)       16             5
Other (VOL.)                1             *
No opinion                 33            22

3b. Of the following possible Republican candidates for president, which one do you think would do the most damage to the economy?

                        All adults   Leaned GOP 
Michele Bachmann           15            14 
Rick Perry                 12             9 
Ron Paul                    7            11 
Newt Gingrich               6             5 
Mitt Romney                 5             7 
Jon Huntsman                2             3 
Herman Cain                 2             2 
Rick Santorum               2             1 
None of these (VOL.)        5             5 
Other (VOL.)                3             1 
No opinion                 42            43 

The no opinions are about double what the highest rating to improve the economy scored, and 'none of these' was only a point off - well within the poll's +/- %  range.

I wonder if Mitt Romney would fare as well if the low-information voters who gave him this not-so-high rating in this poll knew that he had selected some of the worst advisors to President 'W' Bush to draft his econimic proposal, and to be his economic advisors?  Or that his foreign policy advisors were pretty much 'W' recycled faces as well.

I bet not, given the numbers who still believe that 'W' was significantly / mostly responsible for our current economic crisis; and that is according to this poll and this poll, and this poll, and a number of other polls in between. That last poll, taken last month shows 50% believe the economy is POOR, with more thinking it isn't good, and with 53% blaming Bush and the Republicans for the problems.

The Republicans are not a party of new ideas, and increasingly as they support the 1%, they are less and less the party of people either.

And THAT is only likely to be a more widespread opinion, as the news gets out about the REAL job performance of 'businessmen' like Herman Cain, who was not it appears the "Captain of Industry" that he represents, according to this examination of his supposed success.   Nor is Romney going to be getting much credit for his career as it relates to jobs, when the facts get more circulation.

According to politifact.com, during Romney's tenure as governor, Massachusetts ranked 47th in job growth, one of the very worst states in the country.  And Romney can't really in honesty take credit for improving those stats either.  As an executive at Bain Capital, Romney's company consistently bought companies, and then sold them off piecemeal, resulting in the firing of thousands of people from their jobs as those jobs DISAPPEARED.  Per the Bloomberg report on Cain, his performance wasn't any better for 'creating jobs' while CEO of Godfather's Pizza, and it has ended up worse, in comparison to it's competitors, than when he took over.

So.......for that question about making the economy worse?  Yes, ALL of the Republicans in contention for the presidential race would make it worse. ALL of them; the only questions are: "how very much worse?", and "worse than 'W', or only as bad?".

New Terrorist Plot Uncovered by the U.S.

Too bad that Ahmadinajad wasn't still visiting the U.N., making his annual revisionist history rant, where he could be confronted over this.

From  MSNBC.com, Reuters and the AP:

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US: Iran faction plotted to kill Saudi ambassador

Saudi, Israeli embassies were also targeted, U.S. says; two men chargedNBC, msnbc.com and news service

updated 2 hours 7 minutes ago
 

WASHINGTON — Two men allegedly working for "factions of the Iranian government" have been charged with plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and to attack the Saudi and Israeli embassies, Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday.

The criminal complaint, unsealed Tuesday in federal court in New York City, identified the two as Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri.
Holder said Arbabsiar, who was arrested on Sept. 29 in New York, was working for the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard and had confessed to a plot.
Shakuri, who is based in Iran, remains at large, Holder said. He allegedly is a member of Iran's Quds Force, a special unit of the Revolutionary Guard.
Both are originally from Iran and Arbabsiar, 56, is a naturalized U.S. citizen, the complaint said.
The Obama administration will be "taking further action" against Iran as a result, Holder said.

Nicholas Kamm  /  AFP - Getty Images

Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir was the target of an alleged plot by Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the U.S. said Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia's ambassador is Adel al-Jubeir, who has served in that post since 2007.
The indictment is the result of a sting operation conducted by the FBI, Holder said.
The case started when Arbabsiar, who lived in Texas, allegedly made contact with an undercover DEA informant in Mexico and asked for assistance from the Zetas drug cartel to assassinate the ambassador by blowing up a restaurant that he frequented.
No explosives were actually placed, and no one was in any danger, officials said.
A Justice Department statement said Arbabsiar claimed he was being directed by his cousin in Iran, described as a "big general" in the Iranian military and within the Quds Force.
Arbabsiar allegedly wired $100,000 to the informant as a down payment on a $1.5 million assassination fee.
Other sources told ABC News that he reportedly told the informant that Iran could provide "tons of opium" to the Zetas.
Arbabsiar was to make a first court appearance later Tuesday. He could face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The Quds Force was designated a terrorist group by the United States in 2007, in part because of alleged support of the Taliban and other extremist groups.
A senior U.S. official told NBC News to look to Treasury and the State Department for the immediate response against Iran.
The official also said that U.S. intelligence has a "high-degree" of confidence that the "Quds Force at the highest levels" was involved in the alleged plot and that this was not some "rogue operation."
President Barack Obama was first briefed on the alleged plot in June, said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor."The disruption of this plot is a significant achievement by our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and the president is enormously grateful for their exceptional work in this instance and countless others," Vietor said.
NBC's Pete Williams and Jim Miklaszewski, as well as the Associated Press and Reuters, contributed to this report.

The Formal Recall Effort to Walk Governor Walker Out of Office Begins!

Let the collection of petition signatures commence (soon)!

From Chris Bowers of the Daily Kos:

	Dog gone, Last night, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin announced it will begin gathering petition signatures to recall Governor Scott Walker on November 15. They will have 60 days to gather a minimum of 540,206 signatures, with a filing deadline of January 13. Further, the Wisconsin Democrats have confirmed to Daily Kos they will work with citizen-driven, grassroots efforts to recall additional Republican state senators. After Democrats picked up two seats in August through successful recalls, Republicans now hold only a 17-16 advantage in the chamber. As you read this, the Wisconsin Dems are training volunteers to gather petition signatures. Let's help them out, and finish what was started during the epic protests back in February. Keep fighting, Chris Bowers Campaign Director, Daily Kos

Note - a fundraising paragraph was removed for posting here, consistent with Penigma policy on soliciting donations. - DG

I will be following developments on this campaign from some of the same excellent Wisconsin non-partisan sites that covered the previous elections.  These have been unprecedented political actions, in terms of scale and type of activity, in U.S. history, so I hope that our readers will apperciate this in terms not only of politics, but the larger perspective and context.