Judge keeps Gingrich, Perry, Huntsman off Virginia ballot

By Reuters
Friday, January 13, 2012

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge in Virginia on Friday refused to order that candidates Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman be added to the ballot in the state’s March 6 Republican presidential primary election after they failed to qualify.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and congressman Ron Paul were the only two candidates to qualify for the primary in Virginia by submitting the 10,000 verifiable signatures by the deadline. Romney is the frontrunner in the race for the Republican nomination to face Democratic President Barack Obama on November 6.

Perry and the other candidates sued Virginia election officials to be added to the ballot, arguing that the state’s qualification process limited voter access to the candidates of their choosing.

But Judge John Gibney ruled the candidates filed their legal challenge too late, finding the harm they suffered began when they started collecting the necessary signatures because they were required to use Virginia residents to do so.

Such a requirement was likely unconstitutional and had the candidates sued earlier, the judge said he could have granted permission to use people from outside Virginia to collect signatures.
“It is too late for the court to allow them to gather more signatures – the absentee ballots must go out now,” Gibney wrote in a 22-page opinion issued after a hearing in Richmond.

The state argued those ballots must be mailed to absentee voters by January 21 to comply with election laws.

Gibney did rule the requirement of 10,000 verifiable signatures legal, saying it was “a minimal number” and that six candidates made the primary ballot four years ago under the same rules.

The candidates could appeal his ruling.

Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, Santorum, Huntsman All fail to qualify for VA primary

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich failed to qualify for Virginia's Super Tuesday primary ballot, the latest setback for a candidate whose standing in polls has been slipping.

Gingrich's campaign said he would pursue an aggressive write-in campaign, though state law prohibits write-ins on primary ballots.

The state party said early Saturday that Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry had failed to submit the required 10,000 signatures to appear on the March 6 ballot.

Failing to get on the ballot in Virginia, where Gingrich lives, underscores the difficulty first-time national candidates have in preparing for the long haul of a presidential campaign.

And it illustrates the advantage held by Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who has essentially been running for president for five years. Romney's team, larger than those of most of his opponents, has paid close attention to filing requirements in each state. He will appear on the Virginia ballot along with Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who also has run a national campaign before.

Ironically, Gingrich had a slight lead over Romney in a Quinnipiac poll of Virginia Republicans released earlier in the week.

The former House speaker surged in popularity in early December and tried to use that momentum to make up for a stalled campaign organization. But his standing in polls has slipped in recent days amid a barrage of negative ads in Iowa, where the Jan. 3 caucuses begin the contest for the Republican presidential nomination.

Three other candidates — Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman — did not submit signatures before Virginia's deadline of 5 p.m. Thursday.

Gingrich's campaign attacked Virginia's primary system on Saturday, saying that "only a failed system" would disqualify Gingrich and other candidates and vowing to run a write-in campaign.

"Voters deserve the right to vote for any top contender, especially leading candidates," Gingrich campaign director Michael Krull said in a statement. "We will work with the Republican Party of Virginia to pursue an aggressive write-in campaign to make sure that all the voters of Virginia are able to vote for the candidate of their choice."

However, according to state law, "No write-in shall be permitted on ballots in primary elections."

"Virginia code prohibits write-ins in primaries. He can't do it," said Carl Tobias, a law professor at University of Richmond.

Tobias said Gingrich may have had trouble meeting a requirement that he must submit 400 signatures from each of Virginia's 11 congressional districts.

Gingrich's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Gingrich had been concerned enough to deliver his signatures personally. Rushing Wednesday from New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Jan. 10, he had supporters sign petitions before entering a rally in Arlington, Va.

Virginia GOP spokesman Garren Shipley said in a statement that volunteers spent Friday validating signatures on petitions that Romney, Paul, Perry and Gingrich had submitted.

"After verification, RPV has determined that Newt Gingrich did not submit required 10k signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary," the party announced early Saturday on its Twitter feed. Shipley did not respond to telephone calls Saturday seeking comment.

Forty-six delegates will be at stake in Virginia's Super Tuesday primary. That's a small fraction of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination. But they could prove pivotal in a close race, especially for a candidate like Gingrich, who expects to do well in Southern contests.

Gingrich already missed the deadline to appear on the ballot in Missouri's Feb. 7 primary, though he insists it doesn't matter because the state awards delegates based not on the primary but on a Republican caucus held in March.

Meanwhile, Virginia's Democrats said President Barack Obama's re-election campaign gathered enough signatures to get him on the state's primary ballot though he was the only candidate who qualified.

 

Washington DC Reboot!

by Ward Sutton, Village Voice

at Daily Kos

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving GOP debate

Texas Democrats: Tea party ‘hell bent on disenfranchising poor’

By Eric W. Dolan - RAW Story
Wednesday, November 16, 2011

The Democratic Party of Texas blasted the King Street Patriots, a local tea party group based in Houston, for inviting columnist Matthew Vadum to speak at a fundraising event. Vadum has said that registering poor people to vote was “antisocial and un-American”

Talking Points Memo reported in October 2010 that the Justice Department was investigating the King Street Patriots’ anti-voter fraud campaign — called “True The Vote” — after receiving a number of complaints about voter intimidation in Hispanic and African-American areas.

“It’s fitting that the group whose sole purpose is to harass and intimidate minority voters  would feature a rightwing extremist who thinks poor people shouldn’t be allowed to vote,” said Texas Democratic Party Chair Boyd Richie. “But at least the King Street Patriots are finally being honest. This event serves as a gleeful admission from their group that folks who are likely to vote Democratic should be denied their fundamental right to vote.”

“Sadly, this group that’s hell bent on disenfranchising poor-folks and minorities is not an anomaly in today’s Republican Party,” he added. “Rick Perry, the head of the Republican Party in Texas, has taken the lead in disenfranchising Texans. Perry’s redistricting plan was struck down because it violates the Voting Rights Act and his voter suppression legislation has not been pre-cleared because it is designed to keep certain people from voting. The King Street Patriots and Rick Perry are two peas in a pod.”

Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry in May cut the ribbon at the grand opening of the King Street Patriots’ new headquarters and praised their president, Catherine Engelbrecht.

Some Disturbing Truths about Rick Perry's Texas

Sunday, November 6, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Michael Winship

 

I’m at sea this week -- literally, for once -- and learning helpful nautical stuff. For example, the old, three-mile limit for territorial waters was established in 1702 as the maximum distance a cannon ball could reach when fired from shore.

It’s even more useful to gain some distance from political events back on the mainland. Much of the week before this was spent chairing an international meeting of writers from a dozen or so countries. Combined, seeing ourselves as others see us, both experiences are revelatory.

One theme that prevails is a general mystification over many Americans’ propensity for the outright rejection of anything that’s not instantly comprehended. Just yesterday, talking with a couple from Calgary, the Canadians expressed their incredulity that relatives in the States were so vehemently opposed to President Obama’s health care and jobs programs "when they haven’t even bothered to read anything about them."

For another, you realize yet again how bizarre our system of campaigns and elections seems when viewed by those from abroad -- even though these days the rest of the world isn’t exactly the picture of mental health either. Something like our media frenzy over the harassment charges swirling around Herman Cain -- mired as those accusations appear to be in years of hubris and egotism on his part and our consuming national neurosis when it comes to all things involving sex or race -- seems distinctly odd.

Whether or not the Rick Perry campaign is behind any of the leaks surrounding Herman Cain’s alleged improprieties, the distraction certainly made the Texas governor, as the website Talking Points Memo reported, the "luckiest presidential candidate in the universe this week." Up to now, the governor has been experiencing the most dramatic crash from electoral hero to goat since Tennessee’s Fred Thompson ran his presidential campaign’s pick up truck off the road four years ago.

The Cain scrutiny helped draw attention from Perry’s plummeting poll numbers and his wacky address last Friday night at that dinner held by New Hampshire’s Cornerstone Action, a group of social conservatives with a notoriously anti-gay agenda. The speech came off more like Open Mike Night at Chuckles Comedy Club than High Noon on Inauguration Day 2013.

(You can see the highlights here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7M4gz97Y9W8.)



In the words of Jon Stewart, "Best-case scenario, that dude's hammered. Worst-case scenario, that is Perry sober, and every time we've seen him previously, he's been hammered." I prefer to think that Perry decided, "What the hell, this campaign’s going nowhere, might as well let it all hang out." Or maybe he suffers from a case of premature election burn-out, like Robert Redford’s character in 1972 movie The Candidate, reeling from one too many iterations of his stump speech, blathering: "Can't any longer play off black against old, young against poor. This country cannot house its houseless, feed its foodless," and so on.

Of course, these are idle distractions from what we really should be paying attention to: candidates’ positions on the issues and their prior track records as business leaders or officeholders. And blahblahblah, I can hear you tuning out now. Luckily, though, when it comes to Rick Perry at least, in the tradition of such greats of journalism as Ronnie Dugger and Molly Ivins, we continue to have fine investigative reporting coming out of the state of Texas.  Reporters there care -- even when you don’t. They’ve been covering Perry and his stewardship as governor with an intensity as white hot as Tiger Beat’s recording of the day-to-day tribulations of Justin Bieber. Certainly, ounce for ounce, Perry has greater entertainment value.

The non-profit, non-partisan Texas Tribune, for example, features on its webpage an exhaustive "Perrypedia," which offers the latest on all things Rick. The publication recently noted that "Perry’s presidential campaign hinges on one overarching message: that states perform best when left to their own devices and federal regulators should butt out. Yet during his decade-long tenure in the governor’s office, Perry and his staff repeatedly downplayed the severity of abuse and neglect allegations at Texas’ state-run institutions for the disabled -- until conditions became so dire that the U.S. attorney general was forced to intervene."

Two years after that Justice Department investigation found violations of civil rights and avoidable deaths, "a Texas Tribune review of facility monitoring reports and employee disciplinary records shows mistreatment is still relatively commonplace. And though there’s been some evidence of improvement, the state’s federally designated disability watchdog group Disability Rights says that halfway into the five-year settlement agreement, not even a quarter of its requirements have been met."

A couple of months ago, the Houston Chronicle ran a terrific, four part series, "Perry’s Texas," examining the deteriorating condition of the state’s infrastructure during the governor’s tenure. And the October 22 edition of the Austin American-Statesman took a closer look at Perry’s time as state agriculture commissioner during the 1990s. The paper’s Laylan Copelin reported, "Over his eight years as Texas' farmer-in-chief, Perry oversaw a loan guarantee program with so many defaults that the state had to stop guaranteeing bank loans to startups in agribusiness and eventually bailed out the program with taxpayer money.

"The state auditor panned Perry's claims of creating jobs and criticized Perry and his fellow board members at the Texas Agricultural Finance Authority for not following their own lending guidelines...

"Even as the first alarms were sounded, Perry defended the program, saying no taxpayer money was at risk, blaming others and claiming he had fixed it.

"It only got worse."

Guaranteeing risky business loans with public money is a familiar tune -- all together, let me hear you say Solyndra. But instead of solar energy schemes, during Perry’s watch, "Entrepreneurs lined up for money to spin cotton into yarn, process meats, develop cotton insulation, market canna bulbs to wholesale nurseries and sell pinto beans as a ready-to-eat frozen meal, to name a few."

Forewarned is forearmed. These and other reports from Texas journalists present Rick Perry as the poster boy for conservative humorist and essayist P.J. O’Rourke famous description of Republicans as "the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."

Unsensational as it may be to all but the wonkiest, more attention to all candidates’ public records serves us far better than the latest private gossip and innuendo. Sorry, the salt air must be going to my head. Land ho.

Secrets of the Flat Tax

Middle Class Pays More So Rich Pay Less

by DEAN BAKER

 

With Herman Cain soaring to the top of the Republican pack on the basis of his 9-9-9 plan, a flat tax is once again at the center of public debate. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and some days Mitt Romney, are always spouting the virtues of a tax system that is “simpler, flatter, and fairer.”

While simplicity is generally desirable in a tax code, it has nothing to do with the tax code being flat. And being flat would be the opposite of being fair, unless people think it is unfair that they don’t pay more taxes.

Confusing a simple tax code with a flat tax is a cheap political stunt. The number of tax brackets doesn’t affect simplicity at all. Regardless of the number of brackets, there is only one calculation needed. The instruction is simple. It looks like this: “pay $1,000, plus 15 percent of income above $50,000.” You can have a flat tax or 100 tax brackets, it is the same formula. Even a Republican presidential candidate can figure it out.

The other part of the story is that the flat tax means a large tax cut for rich people. Every economist who has examined flat tax proposals over the years comes to that same conclusion: A flat tax means the rich pay less.

And if the rich pay less and we raise the same amount of money, then someone else has to pay more. And the someone in this story is the middle class. It really is that simple.

The flat taxers like to run around with Lake Wobegone economics where we are all going to pay less and still have the same amount of money, but the world doesn’t work that way. We have tried reducing taxes to raise revenue. People remember Reagan’s tax cuts and the large deficits they led to. They remember Bush’s tax cuts and the large deficits they led to.

No one is going to fall for this trick yet again. When we cut taxes on the rich, we get less money and the rest of us will have to make up the shortfall.

For middle-class people, a flat tax means that they will have to pay more taxes. If people think it would be fairer that they pay higher taxes, then the Republican Party has the presidential candidates for you.

Rick Perry, Pay-for-Play Jailer

(How is this guy this crooked? And he wants to be president? He's exactly what other crooked powerful unethical people look for in a candidate...-jef)

~~~~~~~~~~

by: William Fisher, Truthout | News Analysis

Sunday 25 September 2011

Given what we know about Gov. Rick Perry's keen predilection toward "crony capitalism," we should not be surprised to learn that he's a big fan of private for-profit prisons.

Lobbyists and executives from that industry have contributed generously to Perry's re-election campaign, and he returned the favor by proposing policies that would benefit the prison industry.

"Coincidence?" asks Tim Murphy of Mother Jones magazine in a major article that examines the governor's relationships with the for-profit prison industry.

Murphy writes: "Under the banner of closing the state's $27 billion deficit last winter, Texas Gov. Rick Perry floated a proposal to privatize the state's prison health care network.

Whether the plan would actually save the state any money was a matter of debate, but one thing was clear: The move would have been a boon for private-prison executives and lobbyists, including Perry's former chief of staff, who had donated generously to his 2010 reelection campaign."

He added, "The plan met bipartisan resistance in the state Legislature, but it was just one of a handful of recent proposals by Perry's office that would have benefited the industry - all in the name of deficit reduction."

Murphy goes on to tell us that private prisons are a big business in Texas, where the combination of federal immigration policies and one of the nation's largest inmate populations has led to a boom in construction over the last two decades.

Murphy continues: "As governor, Perry, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, has supported privatizing everything from public lands to highways, but according to Scott Henson, a criminal-justice watchdog who runs the blog Grits for Breakfast, the governor had remained largely quiet on the prisons issue - until this year.

That coincided with an influx of campaign contributions from private-prison executives and lobbyists, among them his former top aide, Michael Toomey, a political powerbroker who represents the nation's largest private corrections contractor, Corrections Corporation of America [CCA]."

CCA, per its web site "provides health care services to male and female inmates and youthful offenders who are housed in local jails, detention facilities, and correctional institutions around the country."

And there are more private prisons in Texas than in any other state in the country. In Texas, they are charged with supervising 75,000 inmates.

(Toomey told Mother Jones he had not lobbied Perry's office or the state Legislature on the prison health care plan; Perry's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

For-profit private prison companies primarily use three strategies to influence policy: lobbying; direct campaign contributions; and building relationships, networks and associations. The industry's so-called "think tank," known as ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), employs all three strategies and also undertakes to prepare "templates" for legislation that will benefit its members.

For example, there is significant evidence that ALEC worked with Arizona officials in the crafting of the infamous "papers please" legislation. It is also reported that, on the basis of that work, it was also able to help Alabama with the crafting of its immigration law.

Private prison companies make substantial contributions to help support ALEC, and senior executives from the for-profit prison industry often work there on temporary assignments.

Given Perry's record in similar situations - for example, the contributions from Merck & Co. and their relationship to Perry's executive order mandating HTD inoculations to help young Texas girls avoid cervical cancer - the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) was not a minute too late in issuing a new report, "Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies."

The report examines how private prison companies are able to influence legislators and criminal justice policy, a collaboration that ultimately results in harsher criminal justice policies and the incarceration of more people, the JPI asserts.

The report says that, over the past 15 years, the number of people held in all prisons in the United States has increased by 49.6 percent. Private prison populations, during the same period, increased by 353.7 percent, according to recent federal statistic.

The providers of private prisons have been reaping the benefits. In 2010 alone, the CCA and the GEO Group, the two largest private prison companies, had combined revenues of $2.9 billion.

The JPI report says, "not only have private prison companies benefited from this increased incarceration, but they have helped fuel it."

The report notes a "triangle of influence" built on campaign contributions, lobbying and relationships with current and former elected and appointed officials. Through this strategy, private prison companies have gained access to local, state and federal policy makers and have back-channel influence to pass legislation that puts more people behind bars, adds to private prison populations and generates tremendous profits at US taxpayers' expense.

"For-profit companies exercise their political influence to protect their market share, which in the case of corporations like GEO Group and CCA primarily means the number of people locked up behind bars," said Tracy Velázquez, executive director of JPI. "We need to take a hard look at what the cost of this influence is, both to taxpayers and to the community as a whole, in terms of the policies being lobbied for and the outcomes for people put in private prisons.

"That their lobbying and political contributions is funded by taxpayers, through their profits on government contracts, makes it all the more important that people understand the role of private prisons in our political system," Velasquez says.

Paul Ashton, principal author of "Gaming the System," noted, "This report is built on concrete examples of the political strategies of private prison companies.

From noting campaign donations, $835,514 to federal candidates and $6,092,331 to state-level candidates since 2000, to the proposed plan from Ohio Gov. John Kasich to privatize five Ohio prisons followed by the appointment of a former CCA employee to run the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, 'Gaming the System' shows that private prison companies' interests lie in promoting their business through maintaining political relationships rather than saving taxpayer dollars and effectively ensuring public safety," Ashton says.

Other organizations have also investigated the private prison industry and have their own serious concerns about their political influence. "In the South and Southwest, the private prison industry has consistently targeted poor communities," said Bob Libal, the Texas campaigns coordinator for Grassroots Leadership.

"We believe that it's important to fight, particularly in these communities, to end for-profit incarceration and reduce reliance on criminalization and detention, and ultimately build lasting movements for social justice. This important report helps shed light onto this particularly troubling industry," he said.

Shakyra Diaz, policy director of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio added, "Research has shown that private prisons do not save taxpayer dollars and can in fact cost taxpayers more than public prisons. Additionally, privatizing prisons may undermine cost effective sentencing reforms and increase recidivism rates.

"Despite these well­documented concerns, private prison companies continue to promote policies that put money in their pockets and people behind bars."

The JPI declared, "If states and the federal government are interested in providing cost-effective, proven public safety strategies, investments in private prison companies will not help achieve that goal. Gaming the System  includes a number of recommendations for criminal justice policies that are cost-effective and will improve public safety ..."

The report says that states and the federal government "should look for real solutions to the problem of growing jail and prison populations. A number of states are already utilizing innovative strategies for reducing the number of people behind bars in their state. Reducing the number of people entering the justice system, and the amount of time that they spend there, can lower prison populations, making private, for-profit prisons unnecessary, and improving public safety and the lives of individuals."

"Private prison companies have been very successful in their effort to promote harsher sentencing policies and the privatization of correctional systems, and when they win, we all lose," added Tracy Velázquez, executive director of JPI.

"Taxpayers lose when their money is used to generate profits for shareholders and to promote policies that increase incarceration; communities lose when policies proven to be ineffective for public safety are pushed through state legislatures, and people involved in the criminal justice system lose when they are locked up in underfunded and sometimes unsafe facilities," she says.

But they have not been anywhere near as successful in operating professional-grade lockups. The federal government and several states have shut down a number of facilities that were found to be overcrowded, unsafe and deficient in health and hygiene. There have been a number of deaths in detention. There has also been a lack of transparency in dealings between the public and several leading private prison companies.

According to Paul Ashton, principal author of the report, "While private prison companies may try to present themselves as just meeting existing demand for prison beds and responding to current market conditions, in fact they have worked hard over the past decade to create markets for their product. As revenues of private prison companies have grown over the past decade, the companies have had more resources with which to build political power, and they have used this power to promote policies that lead to higher rates of incarceration."

He added: "As policymakers and the public are increasingly coming to understand that incarceration is not only breaking the bank, but it's also not making us safer, will this shrink the influence of private prison companies? Or will they use their growing financial muscle to consolidate and expand into even more areas of the justice system?"

He continues: "Much will depend on the extent that people understand the role for-profit private prison companies have already played in raising incarceration rates and harming people and communities, and take steps to ensure that in the future, community safety and well-being, and not profits, drive our justice policies. One thing is certain: in this political game, the private prison industry will look out for their own interests," Ashton concludes.

All the Bad News That's Fit to Print

Thursday, September 22, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by David Michael Green

 

Sometimes, when certain species (you know who you are) are too utterly daft to recognize the obvious, the Universe sees fit to scream it out in the form of big, bold block letters. "The story of American politics over the last generation," writes Green, "Is the story of the transfer of wealth from the people to the plutocrats. If you think there is anything else essential going on here, you don’t get it."

Such was the case just last week, when all of the following headlines were published, by one journal alone (the New York Times), and just in one 24-hour period. Read them and weep:

“Poverty Levels in 2010 Reach 52-Year Peak, US Says”
“Obama Looks For Big Health Cuts, Worrying Democrats”
“G.O.P. Scores Upset, Claims Win As Omen For Obama”
“Two-Tier Pay Now the Way Detroit Works”
“In Suburb, Battle Goes Public On Bullying of Gay Students”
“Student Loan Default Rates Rise Sharply In Past Year”
“What’s a Presidential Library to Do? An Admiring Approach at the Reagan. History, Warts and All, at the Nixon.”
“Obama Offers Jobs Bill, And the G.O.P. Balks”
“Government Pays More In Contracts, Study Finds”
“Ex-Senate Aide Will Be a Lobbyist”
“Fast-Track for Disaster Aid Is Blocked”

How’s that for a litany of shame and destruction? I didn’t even include the garden variety domestic violence scandals of mayoral aides and schools cheating on standardized tests, or anything in the sports section.

What’s most amazing, however, is the degree to which the American public still can’t put it together. Imagine if you were capable of recognizing letters on a page, but not able to string them together into meaningful words. Imagine if you could identify individual biological organs but not add them up to constitute a person. Imagine if every Cheerio in your cereal spoon was a source of fresh wonder, as if you’d never seen one before. Now imagine 300 million people who can encounter news stories like the ones above and still not tie them together into a coherent narrative.

Let me make it simple, in case anyone wants to share this essay with their idiotic, Republican (pardon the redundancy) cousin Buford: The story of American politics over the last generation is the story of the transfer of wealth from the people to the plutocrats. If you think there is anything else essential going on here, you don’t get it.

Of course, you’re not supposed to get it. And one reason why so many people can’t put the narrative together is because there is no one in the political class who is articulating that vision for them to consider. Not a single one among the elites in American politics and government.

Here’s what’s not being said, and not being understood:

That, thirty years ago, the ‘heroic’, venerated, practically deified, Ronald Reagan ushered in the age of plutocratic piracy, artfully hiding it behind any kind of fear that would sufficiently stimulate the amygdala of your garden variety troglodyte enough to hide the real agenda. You know, commies, fags, fur’ners, whatever.

That the folks who had traditionally been advocates for the rest of us who don’t own yachts were now every bit as bought off as those in the more overly corrupted Republican Party. These Democrats would mouth the words about “fighting” (if I hear that word again from another politician, I swear I will projectile vomit) for the middle class, but that they would actually screw us at every opportunity. Have you noticed how when they don’t control the institutions of government they are always somehow unable to block the Republicans’ worst crimes. But when they do control these institutions the Republicans are somehow always able to prevail from a minority position. Go figure. It almost seems like the Democrats aren’t really serious about the rhetoric they employ. But, of course, that would be dishonest...

That regressive policies have, with almost no exception, prevailed in every contest over the last thirty years, especially on questions of political economy. Taxes? Regressives won. Deregulation? Regressives got what they wanted. Labor relations? What’s this thing they used to call the “union”? Privatization? Why not? Debt? “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter”. Trade policy? Dude, where’s my job? (Hint: it speaks Mandarin now.) Bailouts for big banks? A hundred pennies on the dollar. Need I go on?

That we are now where we are, precisely because of regressive economic policies. This is the single most crucial and most frustrating fact of our time. It’s not exactly theoretical physics to figure out that slashing taxes will produce debt. And it did. Or that trade deals will ship our jobs overseas. As they did. Or that banksters with all the same latitude to indulge their greed that they possessed in 1929 will produce the same results as their grandfathers. Which they did. Or that the much-vaunted private sector is no more efficient and inexpensive at doing things than the government. And it’s not.

That the American public has simply and utterly been downsized over the last thirty years. That people work longer and harder to make less, and live with far greater insecurity than before, while corporations and plutocrats are far richer than they were three decades ago. That people are more miserable, have less time to spend with their families, are less healthy, more stressed, more insecure and more poorly compensated – when they can scratch out a job at all – than their parents were. All so that the über-rich can now be über-über-rich. So that millionaires can be billionaires.

That people are sick to death (often quite literally) of a government that is unresponsive to their most basic needs. That they have lost all faith in the once-given notion that someone in Washington has their back. But that they still continue to believe in the dream of democracy, and will cast a vote (no matter which way they choose) for precisely the folks who brought us this nightmare, and who will accelerate its delivery after the election of 2012.

This situation is becoming acute, and I foresee about sixteen different ways in which it will only get worse from here. It is a fact of stunning proportions and epic significance that – less than three years since the end of the Bush nightmare – America is about to turn back to a more extreme version of the same disastrous politics brought to us by the same disaster-loving politicians.

Rick Perry will be the next president of the United States, you can count on that. (A fact which does, believe it or not, have its certain virtues. At the very least it means that both the oleaginous scumbucket, Ken-Doll Romney, and the inner-circle-of-hell traitor, Barack Obama, will both be humiliated in losing.) And Perry will seek to Texafy the rest of the country as fast as he can. His state is one of the worst in the union on practically every measure of quality of life that there is (except for creating new, low-wage, non-union, no-benefit jobs, that is, and the wholesale murder of poor blacks and Hispanics on death row), and he will run successfully on the basis of his record as governor of Texas.

I tell you, some days it just feels like you’ve fallen into an alternative universe where the laws of nature cease to apply... Perhaps that little problem with physical reality also accounts for why regressives have such a hard time with evolution and climate change.

But I digress. A Perry presidency can only happen because the status quo is so untenable, and people therefore so badly crave change. Such seeming oscillations chart the course of American electoral politics during this Era of Corporate Rape. Where once we had stable centrist politics and even stable majorities in Congress, now every election is a referendum on the failed policies of the current incumbents. We make radical u-turns, switching from one party to the next, without switching from one policy to another. Every politician pretends to be for the people. Every one of them actually serves the oligarchs who buy them their stations and a small bit of relief for their raging personal insecurities. Nothing changes but the letter after their names.

This is precisely why Obama and his party are sinking so rapidly now. He is nothing more than Bush’s third term, and Bush was nothing more than a continuation of the Wall Street-friendly policies of Clinton, and so on, back to Reagan. Of course Obama is failing utterly. He is pursuing policies that are utterly failing the American people, as they have for three decades. The only difference between him and the public he’s meant to serve is that he well knows that that is precisely what they’re designed to do, while the American public still – still! – doesn’t get it.

I was delighted (not really) to see Obama do his big speech and finally get some spunk going, nearly three years since he was elected, to start “fighting” for jobs in America. The only problem is that his is the only job he’s actually trying to protect. Idiotic liberals need to face reality. The only significant difference between George W. Bush and Barack Obama is that the latter is the more skilled lying corporate hack. Look at his policies. Look at what he hasn’t done. Look at the people he’s surrounded himself with.

This will be even more clear than it already is for anyone who has the interest and the courage to observe the guy accurately (sorry, regressives, that leaves you out) when he details his big no-cost jobs plan. Why it took three years into his presidency to notice there is a small jobs problem in America (and the administration evidently still hasn’t noticed the mortgage holocaust going down), and why Obama couldn’t have had his big plan actually formulated when he gave the speech incessantly exhorting Congress to pass ‘it’, tells you a lot about his real priorities. We already know how fast he’d jump if the banks were hurting, because we saw him do it, giving them full public (that means your money and mine) bail-outs, with no restrictions and no requirements to loan taxpayer money, and doing so even though these are the very criminals who wrecked the global economy in the first place. For all you regular folk, it takes a lot longer to get some help, I’m afraid.

The speech was textbook bully pulpit. Apart from the small matters of content, timing and motivation, it was precisely what a president should be doing, and precisely the way it is effectively done by successful presidents. If you doubt that, recall that when the Bush junta began in late 2002 to market its plan for a wee skirmish in the Middle East, only about a third of Americans saw the wisdom in that manifestly ludicrous idea. By the time Karl Rove and his Mad Men were finished making their relentless and ruthlessly amoral pitch for invading Iraq, the figure had become about two-thirds on the eve of the attack. People who give Obama a pass for having to work in a difficult political environment fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the American presidency. The most effective ones are effective because they make their own realities through the power of persuasion.

But the only thing that Obama is serious about is appearing to be serious. This speech was excellent political theater, but substantively as hollow as a Hostess Twinkie. And about as nutritious for the country as well. But hollow well suits a president who capitulates so frequently he’s starting to be known around DC as the Caveman of Pennsylvania Avenue. 

In any case, he doesn’t care. The whole point of the exercise was to communicate to the American people (read: voters he’ll soon be needing again) that “I care”, and to trap the Republicans into either going along with his plan – which he knows they won’t, so no serious danger to the aristocracy there – or providing him with a nice campaign cudgel (“they don’t care”) to be used between now and November 2012.

Either way, this is likely to be one of the most sickening campaigns ever in modern American history. By all rights, according to the essence of the democratic idea, Obama should lose. He has failed dramatically, by any serious measure, and the voters’ natural inclination is to seek change – which, by the way, is precisely why he is today president himself. So the White House will be desperately seeking to change the story such that the election is about anything but themselves. This is just what the chickenhawk-in-chief Bush did in 2004, with the assistance of the hapless John Kerry (or was it the hapless Jimmy Carter? or the hapless Walter Mondale? or the hapless Michael Dukakis? I get all these punching-bag Democrats so confused!). Bush the Vietnam coward actually managed to turn the Silver Starred and Purple Hearted Kerry into a knock-kneed wimpy-burger threat to American national security. Anything to get people talking and thinking about something besides the dismal incumbent.

Watch Obama do the same in this cycle, and do it hard because Perry will not be coming at him with wiffle balls. What that means is that the ‘hope and change’ guy who won hearts in 2008 with his appeals to our better angels will now be running a campaign Nixon and his Plumbers could be proud of. And it’s all the more reason why he’ll lose. I mean, how inspirational, Barack! It also explains why he’ll continue in his remarkable efforts to eviscerate the Democratic Party – even the corporate obeisance version we have today. I mean really, in what bizarro universe is this worthless chump not being shown to the nearest home for retired politicians by members of his own party? First there was Scott Brown snagging the more-or-less-most-Democratic-Senate-seat-in-the-country because of Obama, then a wholesale mass bloodletting in the 2010 midterms, also because of the president, and last week the loss – by nearly ten points – of what is probably the most Democratic congressional district in the entire country, for yet again the same reason. Now he’s hurdling headlong into pissing away the White House and loads of Congress and state-level Democratic-held positions along the way in 2012. Does Obama have to launch predator drone missiles against the FDR monument on the Washington mall for Democrats to realize the extent of his destructive capacity against their party?

In any case, 2013 is when history will get interesting, in a Chinese curse sort of way. The Republicans will own Washington, and will viciously destroy the welfare state and otherwise turn over every bit of national wealth and middle class prosperity to the country’s plutocrats that they can, as fast as they can. Their program will, of course, have no effect on stimulating the economy (shhh!, don’t tell anyone, but it’s not intended to), and will very likely make it worse through reducing government spending and laying off public sector employees. As if we’ve learned nothing this last century. As if Keynes had been a botanist or something.

What then? It is possible, as happened to Reagan, that the GOP will get lucky and happen to be sitting in the White House at the moment the economy recovers. That’s a nightmare scenario, for it means that progressive, New Deal-style, ideas about the national social compact will be utterly buried for a generation or more.

Alternatively, and more likely, the economy will remain awful or get worse. It’s then possible that the public will just tolerate their downsizing like docile lambs, just as the Japanese have done for over a decade now. But the moment may also provide an occasion for people to rise up and demand an end to he national theft that’s been plaguing them for thirty years now. Perhaps that seems unlikely, but there are signs of stirring in Europe and Israel and elsewhere that are rather promising. If the Arabs can have their Spring cleaning of kleptocratic oligarchs, why shouldn’t Americans too?

The thing is, though, there’s pretty much nothing that I put past the right in this country. And, if they’re about to head down the toilet because people are starting to catch up to the bankruptcy of their policies, the question becomes what might they do to change the channel before it’s too late? A little racism or gay bashing, maybe? Nope. It wouldn’t be on a grand enough scale for this project. They’ll need something powerful, like a good national security scare or a full-on war, just like the Argentinean regime invaded the Falklands/Malvinas when they were in trouble domestically, and just like Margaret Thatcher responded in kind when she was in trouble domestically herself. Scary, eh?

It is scary, actually. And not just for, oh, I dunno, the Iranians or Cubans or Venezuelans in a desperate GOP’s crosshairs, either. This is the sorriest state I’ve seen the country in during my lifetime. What were once political outrages of epic proportions are now standard issue Republican Party rhetoric and policies. What was once a Democratic Party largely for the people is now a bunch of corporate hacks hiding behind faux political cowardice to mask their real commitments. You know you’re really hurting when appearing to be a coward is more attractive than telling the actual truth about your politics.

Meanwhile, the country adopts stupider and stupider policies, turning to more and more idiotic characters, in hopes of salvaging our sinking ship. Iraq, tax cuts for the wealthy, unabated global warming – those sure turned out great, eh? Hey, well then, let’s do even more of that!

Sorry, but nowadays the only thing that makes me feel better about the present is thinking about the future.

How to Make a Creationist Weep

 (And remember kids, no where in the theory of evolution does it state that man evolved from monkeys--the monkeys, the great apes, and man all evolved from the same common ancestor, not from each other. Sorry, it's a creationist pet peeve of mine.--jef)


Thursday, September 22, 2011 by The San Francisco Chronicle

by Mark Morford

 

 

Do you want to know the real reason Barack Obama is going to win the 2012 election? The big, grinning hunk of overwhelming evidence that has little to do with the not-very-terrific job he's doing and not nearly enough to do with the fact that the man has actually accomplished quite a lot, despite being savaged and hobbled and compromised at nearly every turn? 

The reason, as most comparable explanations are, is sort of awesome in its pure form power. The most interesting part is that it has almost nothing to do with Obama at all and everything to do with the fact that his opponents are, largely and comfortably, insane.
What, too harsh? Too mean? Not even close, honeybomb. 

Let me back up for a second. Because here I am, reading over this swell little science item that whipped through the newswires recently, all about how some paleoecologists just discovered some stunning prehistoric feathers locked in a tiny hunk of amber they calculate to be about, oh, 70 million years old. 

It's a fascinating little finding, really, one of thousands like it happening all the time in the science world; it tells of life long past, how protofeathers later evolved into actual feathers, how flight first came to be. Wonderful. 

Then it strikes me. There was that magic word, "evolved." Oh my sweet goddess, to many Americans, these scientists are totally lying. They are part of some mass liberal conspiracy begun hundreds if not thousands of years ago, specifically designed to ruin homeschooled kids' minds and taint the blood of virgins and demean angry Almighty God. 

Is it not true? Is this not the belief of many of the nation's current crop of top GOP presidential candidates? You bet it is. 

See Rick Perry over there? He doesn't really believe in evolution. Says "It's a theory that's out there" which "has some gaps in it," which is not even remotely true, but he's been far too busy killing inmates in his home state and rallying evangelical homophobes to, you know, care much for book learnin'. 

Perry "knows" only one thing. We came from God. That's it. He's just not really sure what happened next. Probably some combination of confused monkeys and flying iguanas and, like, oil or something. Poor Rick. The world must be so weird. 

Over there, it's Michele "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann, who, aside from being a grade-A nutball conspiracy theorist of terrifically paranoid dimensions, is an avowed creationist, believing all existence began less than 10,000 years ago, during which man and dinosaurs co-existed, prehistoric cave paintings never happened and the planets are nothing but God's little sack of marbles. 

Bachmann believes in teaching creationism in schools. She says we should "put all the science on the table and let kids decide," as if creationism has the slightest whiff of fact behind it, as if there was some sort of valid debate happening anywhere but in her own madly short-circuited brain, as if kids were somehow savvier than, say, Richard Dawkins. Isn't she adorable? Keep her away from your pets. 

Mitt Romney! He's not so bad, right? Romney actually believes evolution is fact, more or less. He believes God created everything and then, well, then Joseph Smith found it all etched on some shiny plates under a rock one day while out evading his seventeen petulant wives. Yes! Who needs creationism when you've got a whole religion to "translate" on a whim? 

Awesome. Let's sum up! To the majority of the "serious" GOP presidential hopefuls -- and let's toss Sarah "I Really Love the NBA" Palin in there for kicks and adulterous, coke-snortin' giggles -- our little 70-million-year-old golden nugget, well, it does not actually exist in current spacetime. 

It's a fake. A sham. It cannot be real. Carbon dating is a gimmick. The Ph.D scientists in question are frauds and swindlers as are the major university programs and departments to which they belong. And the media? Oh, honey. The media is clearly the devil himself for reporting such bogus findings as "fact." 

Do you see? It all provides a deliriously high level of raging ignorance against which, I firmly believe, the nation will calmly recoil when it comes time to weigh the presidential options at the polling place. 

Put the other way: No matter what you think of Obama's performance to date, the man's intelligence is undeniable, his education formidable, his values regarding science and truth unshakable. Among this gaggle of science-denying misfits, he's the only real adult in the room. 

And me, I believe in intuition. I believe in a certain collective wisdom, a deep instinct among the hoi polloi when it comes time to pull the lever. I still believe most Americans, if they actually vote, will sense at some deep level just how destructive it would be to basic human intelligence to have a single one of these mental infants at the helm. 

Of course, I said the same thing about Bush versus Gore. And Kerry. Whoops. But now the chasm is, unbelievably, even wider. 

We must be careful. We must not deride these creationist nutballs too nonchalantly. We must remember that a mere 20 years ago the vast majority of the nation, upwards of 93 percent of us, knew evolution to be a fact, and only seven percent walked around smacking themselves in the face with coloring books and wondering when Jesus was going to return with lollipops and hugs. 

And now? Bad news, America. According to a new survey, in a scant two decades, the number of Americans "uncertain" about evolution has tripled. What's worse, roughly one third of the nation believe evolution to be "absolutely false." Only Turkey ranks lower in such basic smarts. Thanks, megachurches! 

But is this sad report really irrefutable evidence that we're on a collision course with a great wall of dumb and the gas pedal is nailed to the floor and the passengers are all snorting oxycontin and chortling at Rush Limbaugh as we hurl toward the great Walmart in the sky? I'm not so sure. 

For here is our not-so-big secret. (And here, for that matter, is how to make a creationist weep. I know! Finally!) 

Tell them advanced civilizations do not ever really intellectually degenerate. Tell them that, developmentally speaking, the human brain is not really designed to unfurl and regress, to suddenly erase complex, deeply learned wisdom. It is not our nature to understand, say, electromagnetic waveform and photosynthesis and suddenly revert to thinking it's all magic fairies and gnome spit. 

You can say we will never return to slavery. Our hospitals will never again lop off gangrenous limbs with rusty hacksaws and no anesthesia. Never again will we believe the earth is flat, that we are the center of the universe, that trepanning will release evil spirits from your skull. And sorry, but we will never again believe that everything was created when angry bearded grandpa suddenly snapped his fingers and belched. 

You can thusly summarize: If the arc of history bends toward justice, it also lurches, hiccups and stumbles toward basic progressive intelligence. Barring some sort of environmental cataclysm and starting all over, there really is no going back. 

As the tears begin to flow, you can offer solace: "It's OK," you can smile, "we just evolved that way."

America, On Your Knees

President Rick Perry

by SAUL LANDAU

 

 

Imagine this scene: 3 million Christians brought together in Washington DC in 2013 by incoming President Perry – to pray to God to stop warming the climate and promising in return to stop sinning: having abortions, practicing homosexuality – even same sex marrying.

Since Perry announced his disbelief in man’s contribution to climate change and has attributed the hurricanes, tsunamis, droughts, floods, earthquakes and fires (best of all) to God, the Texas governor called a prayer meeting in Houston.

On August 7, standing on a stage surrounded by more than 30,000 Christians, Perry – picture Burt Lancaster playing Elmer Gantry — beseeched Jesus Christ to bless and guide the nation’s military and political leaders and “those who cannot see the light in the midst of all the darkness.” His address to the prayer rally, which he sponsored as he “weighed” his decision to run for president, characterized the man and his constituency.

In the cadence of televangelists, dressed in his tailor-made duds, and with the solemnity of a Jerry Falwell, he looked toward the sky: “Lord, you are the source of every good thing.”  Perry then lowered his head, with eyes closed and put his mouth to the microphone. “You are our only hope and we stand before you today in awe of your power and in gratitude for your blessings, and humility for our sins. Father, our heart breaks for America. We see discord at home. We see fear in the marketplace. We see anger in the halls of government, and as a nation we have forgotten who made us, who protects us, who blesses us and for that we cry out for your forgiveness.”

Perry then read Bible passages. “There is hope for America,” Perry’s website says. “It lies in heaven, and we will find it on our knees.”

Members of the public rose; others fell to their knees. Some let tears pour down their cheeks; others wiped them away. Heads nodded. Voices shouted: “Amen!”

Perry absorbed evangelical modes of communication in his Texas pores, mixing Jesus and flag as interchangeable icons. “Like all of you, I love this country deeply,” he confessed. “Indeed, the only thing that you love more is the living Christ.”

If Perry’s honesty competed with religious rhetoric, he might have added money to convert his love duet into a ménage a trois. Behind his rally and his candidacy stood the American Family Association pushing its collage of ultra right evangelical doctrines – denouncing the usual parade of horrors, like homosexual marriage, abortion and evolution and several multi millionaires like Bob Perry (no relation) of Swift Boat, smear John Kerry notoriety.

Coincidentally, Perry has added lower corporate and wealth taxes and de-regulation to his gun-totin’ religious liturgy.

“It is a monstrous lie,” he orated at the September 7 Republican presidential, non-musical hoot nanny. “It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you’re paying into a program that’s going to be there.”

The dictionary defines Ponzi scheme as “An investment swindle in which some early investors are paid off with money put up by later ones in order to encourage more and bigger risks.”

I’ve been receiving Social Security for ten years and I naively don’t consider it an investment. I paid a little all my working life and now I receive my monthly check like most of my fellow 54 million recipients.

Since the Social Security system had collected more than it had to pay out, Congress allowed it to lend money to pay for other government items – like wars. It got paid back in Treasury securities, which now total more than $2.5 trillion.

Ponzi schemes – like Bernie Madoff’s — come unglued after a short time and investors lose their money. The Ponzi schemer hides or gets arrested.

Yes, Social Security faces funding problem 25 plus years down the road, but the accountants think they can manage it before 2040.

Like most of the Republican aspirants, Perry implores his audience to not trust government and put faith in God’s creation: the free market and Christian prayer.

Did God listen and observe Perry’s giant prayer meeting to beg and pray for rain? If He did, ponder his response. On September 7, 57 wildfires had torched more than 1,000 homes across dryer-than-a-bone Texas. People died. Thousands went to shelters. Water rationing went into effect. One fire, raging out of control, even crept up on Austin, the state’s capitol.

As of September 7, 100,000 plus acres had burned and Texas stood as the Rain Starved instead of the Lone Star State. Firefighters had not contained the blaze, Perry admitted. He didn’t say he had endorsed cutting funding from $30 million to $7 million for volunteer fire departments that combat wildfires.

As fires roared, Perry left for California’s Reagan Library to duel with Republican contenders –a higher purpose, for higher office. After all, as he has several times indicated, God talks to him.

Perhaps a more plausible explanation for his references to such Divine communications came from a sign on a St. Catherine’s Episcopal Church in Texas.

“Gov. Perry. God Here. The Voice In Your Head Is Not Me. Take Your Meds. Choir Practice Wed. 7 P.M. Sign up.”

Signs God Is Furious With the Right

Whatever disaster strikes, there's always an upside in religious rightland, always somebody to point the finger at with glee. Let's turn the tables. September 16, 2011 

Editor's note: the following is satire... for the most part.

Why is it that whenever disaster strikes, right-wing religious nuts seem to have all the fun? Some might say it's just because they're sadists, but they always seem to find the silver lining. 9/11? God's calling on America to repent! (No, not for it's foreign policy, you dummy!) Hurricane Katrina? It was that darned homosexual parade the organizers forgot to tell anyone about!

Whatever disaster strikes, there's always an up-side in religious rightland, always somebody to point the finger at with glee. How come they get all the fun?

So when the East Coast got a one-two punch last month, earthquake-hurricane within a few days of one another, it got me thinking. When another hurricane followed up afterward, it was more than I could bear. And so, I offer you a list of God's Top 10 Targets from a not-so-right-but-possibly-more-righteous point of view.

There are at least three different ways to approach this subject, and we have examples of all three. First is to identify specific target groups for repeated offenses—sinners who just won't mend their ways. Second is to identify geographic targets for specific offenses—sin city or state, as the case may be. Third is to identify specific individuals.

1. Republicans, for bearing false witness.
It's not just one of the Ten Commandments -- the Bible has repeated warnings against slander, false testimony and plain old lying. But Republicans apparently think that God was talking to somebody else—the exact opposite of their usual assumption—especially since Barack Obama arrived on the scene. Obama was born in Kenya, he is a Muslim, he's a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist, he hates white people (like his mom and his grandparents), he hangs out with terrorists. It goes on and on and on.

God has repeatedly told them not to act like this—yet they pay Him no mind. It's not just Obama, either. When it comes to science, things get just as bad, be it evolution, global warming, reproductive health, or gender orientation; when the science isn't on their side, the lying and slander take up the slack. It's not just that the science is against them, you see. Scientists are fraudsters; they are always conspiring against God and his people, according to some of the more whacked out types—like GOP senators, for example. God may have a great deal of patience, but when folks start trying to drag Him into the mix, that's when the earthquakes and hurricanes begin.

2. The Religious Right, for ignoring Jesus on the separation of church and state.
More than 1,600 years before John Locke and 1,700 years before Thomas Jefferson weighed in on the subject, Jesus said, “Render therefore unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God those things which are God’s.” (What's more, he said that, in part, as a way of opting out of a tax revolt!) But the Religious Right defiantly continues to oppose Him. God's been extremely patient with them over the years, but that patience has finally run out, as the most anti-separationist elements of the Religious Right—known as dominionists—have come increasingly to the fore. Some might say they're embarrassing Him personally. Others will say it's starting to get really dangerous. Whatever the reason, God's had enough.

3. The nativist right and the GOP, for a rash of anti-immigrant laws.
“Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Exodus 22:21 could not be clearer—unless, of course, we switched from the King James Bible to the New International Version: “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.”

But for some in the GOP, them's fightin' words. All they can think about is disobeying God. They are positively possessed with the Satanic spirit of disobedience. It began with Arizona's SB-1070 last year. And while a number of states followed Arizona's lead with anti-immigrant laws of their own, the most notorious was Alabama, which faced "a historic outbreak of severe weather" in April.

The same day the law was signed, Alabama’s Episcopal, Methodist and Roman Catholic churches filed a separate lawsuit, claiming the law unconstitutionally interferes with their right of religious freedom. Church leaders said the law “will make it a crime to follow God’s command.” Among other things, the suit said, “The bishops have reason to fear that administering of religious sacraments, which are central to the Christian faith, to known undocumented persons may be criminalized under this law.”  If criminalizing Christian sacraments isn't inviting divine retribution, what is?

4. The predatory lending industry and all who enable them. 
There are numerous Bible passages condemning usury. Typical of these is Exodus 22:25: "If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest." Naturally, the whole of modern capitalism is built on ignoring a broad reading of this. But predatory lending is a particularly egregious form of defiance. It's proved rather costly to our country as well.

A Wall Street Journal article on December 31, 2007 reported that Ameriquest Mortgage and Countrywide Financial, two of the largest U.S. mortgage lenders, spent $20.5 million and $8.7 million respectively in political donations, campaign contributions, and lobbying activities between 2002 and 2006 in order to defeat anti-predatory lending legislation. Such practices contributed significantly to the financial crisis that plunged us into the Great Recession. But it seems that wasn't a clear enough lesson, especially since those who lobbied most intensely benefited most from the bailouts as well, according to an IMF study. So earthquakes and hurricanes are an old school, Old Testament way for God to make his point.

5. The GOP, for its contempt for the poor. 
For more than half a century, the GOP has attacked Democrats and liberals for their concern for the poor. At least since the 1980s, the neo-liberal wing of the Democratic Party has tried to distance themselves from the poor, and reposition the party as defenders of the middle class, instead. The GOP has responded with policies to impoverish the middle class as well, so that they can be safely demonized, too.

But the GOP's venom for all but the wealthy has reached new heights during the Great Recession. Not only should those who caused the crisis be taken care of while all others suffer—far too many national Democratic politicians seem to agree on that one—but a renewed rhetoric of contempt for the poor has emerged, in direct contradiction to what Jesus said, in Luke 6:20: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God."

Increasingly, it seems, Republicans don't think poor people are even human. In January 2010, South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Baurer (R) compared poor people to stray animals: He told an audience that his grandmother told him "as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed." He compared this to government assistance, which he said is "facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that.

And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better." Then, in early August, Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, the frontrunner for the GOP senate nomination, compared poor people to scavenging racoons. Talk like that is what causes earthquakes and hurricanes.

6. Privatized public utilities, for the worship of Mammon. 
Public utilities are natural monopolies, totally unsuited to private enterprise, since there is no competitive marketplace. This, of course, makes them perfect targets for monopoly capitalists—Mammon's greatest worshipers.

Against them, God struck a mighty blow. In Mansfield, Massachusetts, which has had its own municipal power service since 1903, electrical service was restored for most customers within 24 hours after Irene hit, even though 4,000 out of 9,500 households had lost power—quite unlike what happened to nearby communities served by a commercial outfit. According to a local report, the storm “uprooted old trees and knocked down utility lines all over town.”

“Unlike homes and businesses in Easton, Norton and Foxboro, however, local customers did not have to wait for National Grid to respond with crews or listen to a recording on the telephone.... [M]uch of Easton waited three days for power to return and areas of communities such as Foxboro are still in the dark.” According to another report, about Foxborough, “The outrage expressed... is similar to the movie Network in the scene where people flung open their windows and said, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore.'”

Then there are a couple of geographically specific targets:

7. Virginia. 
Virginia was the site of the earthquake's epicenter and the second state where Irene made landfall, so the state is a target-rich environment.

There's House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. On God's bulls-eye scale, the epicenter near Mineral, Virginia is in Cantor's district—a direct hit. And in budget negotiations this year, Cantor's contempt for the poor came through loud and clear. He's been the most aggressive congressional leader when it comes to budget-cutting and pushing the economy as hard as possible over the cliff. Then, after the earthquake hit, Cantor said any federal relief would have to be offset with spending cuts, and quipped, “Obviously, the problem is that people in Virginia don’t have earthquake insurance.” He reiterated his demand for offsetting cuts when Hurricane Irene hit shortly afterward—even though he voted against such a provision after Tropical Storm Gaston hit the Richmond area in 2004.

Then there's Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. No way he escapes God's wrath. Cuccinelli's widely criticized witch-hunt against eminent climate scientist Michael Mann represents the most extreme right-wing attack on the mythical “climate-gate” scandal, which consisted primarily of scientists making snide remarks about ignoramuses like Cuccinelli. He's all wrapped up in sin of bearing false witness. Which is where Hurricane Irene comes in—although it surely doesn't help that Cuccinelli is suing to keep people sick, and has told Virginia's colleges and universities that they can't ban anti-gay discrimination.

And, of course, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has tried to have it both ways with God, as well as with the people of Virginia. On the one hand, all the way back in 1989, he wrote a Christian Reconstructionist M.A. thesis, “The Republican Party’s Vision for the Family: The Compelling Issue of the Decade” at the College of Law at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. McDonnell's authorship of the thesis came to light during his 2009 campaign for governor, but because the establishment is in deep denial about Dominionism in general, and Christian Reconstructionism in particular, the full weight of his thesis never really sunk in. On the other hand, McDonnell has tried very assiduously to walk away from that past, given that almost no one wants to admit to such extreme views. He's wobbled back and forth on a number of issues, but generally tried to strike a reasonable demeanor—in sharp contrast to Cuccinelli. But God doesn't like folks who run hot and cold, which is why McDonnell's a target, too.

Finally, just to be a wee bit bipartisan about it, we need to include Virginia's Democratic Senator Mark Warner in our list—though with a bit of twist. On the day of the earthquake, Warner was scheduled to speak at the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation in Culpepper, Virginia. He arrived about 10 minutes after the quake, according to the local Star Exponent, which reported:

The building had been emptied of its staff and the approximate 75 people who came to hear Warner so the former governor talked from under a tree atop Mount Pony. 

“I was not going to mention the fact that one of the last times I was in Culpeper there was a tornado,” he said of an appearance years ago at CulpeperFest marked by wild weather. “If you don’t want me to come back, there’s an easier way to do this. If we start seeing frogs, it may be a sign of things to come,” he said. 

So it's not that God is angry with Warner, exactly. He just targets Warner for amusement, to see what he'll say next. And, of course, because he, too, represents Virginia, truly a state of sin.

8. North Carolina. 
Hurricane Irene could have barreled directly into South Carolina, but it delivered a stiff upper-cut to North Carolina instead. And why not? Governor Bev Perdue tried her darnedest to protect the state. She vetoed its draconian budget bill, only to see her veto over-ridden. It too was an attack on the poor -- the bill didn't just fail to balance spending cuts with tax increases, it actually let a temporary one-cent sales tax expire, along with some income taxes on high earners, while cutting $124 million in local education funding on top of $305 million cut in previous years. Perdue also vetoed a highly restrictive abortion law—one that, among other things, has a 24-hour waiting period, and force-feeds anti-abortion propaganda to women seeking an abortion—call it the “Bearing False Witness By Doctors Act.” But that veto was over-ridden as well—by a single vote in the state senate. So, really, God's hand was forced on this one. He had no choice but to strike North Carolina, and strike it hard.

Finally, there are two individual targets to consider:

9. Rick Perry.
While the one-two punch of the Virginia earthquake and Hurricane Irene were far removed from Texas Governor Rick Perry's stomping grounds, God had not forgotten Perry, but was merely preparing to toy with him. Perry, after all, had responded to a terrible drought in Texas not by implementing any long-term policy measures (which might make Texas better able to deal with the prospects of more severe droughts to come as global warming impacts increase), but by calling on Texans to pray.

Back in April, Perry proclaimed the "three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas.” Since then, however, things have only gotten worse, as Timothy Egan noted in the NY Times “Opinionator” blog, "[A] rainless spring was followed by a rainless summer. July was the hottest month in recorded Texas history....Nearly all of Texas  is now in 'extreme or exceptional' drought, as classified by federal meteorologists, the worst in Texas history. Lakes have disappeared. Creeks are phantoms, the caked bottoms littered with rotting, dead fish.”

Somehow, though, it seemed like most folks outside of Texas had no idea of Perry's failed prayer initiative. That's where God came in, following up Irene with the tantalizing prospect of a Gulf of Mexico storm that would finally bring relief to the Longhorn state. But alas no. First Tropical Storm Jose petered out entirely, then Tropical Storm Lee turned to Louisiana instead. If you pray with Perry, you obviously take the Lord's name in vain. As one frustrated Texan wrote on Reddit, “Perry's prayer has been answered. The answer was 'No'.” God is making things perfectly clear, as Richard Nixon would say: If you want someone praying for America in the White House, Rick Perry is not your guy.

10 God.
Yes, it's true, God Himself was one of the main targets of God's wrath, particularly during the earthquake, which did remarkably little damage to the living. But, as Rob Kerby noted at BeliefNet, churches took some pretty hard hits:

“Churches seemed to bear the brunt of Tuesday’s 5.8 earthquake on the East Coast.

“Significant damage was reported to Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral and St. Peter’s Catholic Church, historic St. Patrick’s Church near Baltimore, and two churches in Culpepper, Va., close to the epicenter — St. Stephen Episcopal Church and Culpepper Christian Assembly.” 

Okay, so maybe God's not self-flagellating. Maybe it's the tenants who are being targeted. But who's to say, really? And if the God's wrath biz is all about appropriating authority to cast blame around, then why not think really big, and proclaim God Himself to be the target? Pat Robertson & company have monopolized this gig for far too long. If the rest of us are to have any hope of catching up, we're got to make ourselves a splash. And what better way to make a splash than proclaiming that God is the target?

David Gergen says Many were 'Horrified' By Republican Debate

Campaign 2012 as a Classic Conflict-of-Interest Story

Wednesday, September 14, 2011 by TomDispatch.com

by Tom Engelhardt

 

If I hear one more radio or TV journalist or pundit tell me what Mitt Romney must do, I think I’ll scream.  Election 2012 is still 14 months away and yet the nattering commentators, the Iowa straw poll -- we were told it was meaningless and to prove it 800 reporters showed up from a downsizing media -- the first “debates,” the instant rise and fall of possible candidates (and the ignoring of others) have already been part of the scenery for months.  If the job of journalists is now to tell us what Mitt Romney or any other candidate must do, then we, the viewers or listeners or readers, essentially become millions of mute political advisors in an endless campaign. 

I mean what do I think Mitt Romney must do, now that what’s-his-name is on the rise and Michele Bachman’s advisors are jumping ship like so many proverbial rats, and what about that crowd in the Ronald Reagan library cheering Rick Perry’s Texas execution record, or the idea of social security as a Ponzi scheme, and -- sorry to harp on it -- but really what should Mitt do about the Tea Party, or evolution, or Obama-rama-care?  Or really, at this point, who cares?

And don't think you can find relief by visiting oppositional websites online.  They're already geared up 24/7 to feed off mainstream “reporting,” while discussing what Mitt and his pals have done -- their gaffes, stupidities, idiocies, etc. -- presumably for the next 14 months.  And here’s the shameful thing: they’re not even making real money off it!

For the mainstream media, especially TV, it’s another matter.  In fact, it’s one of the great, unmentioned conflict-of-interest stories of our time.  If, in a different context, someone was selling you on the importance of a phenomenon and at the same time directly benefiting from it, that would be considered a self-evident conflict of interest.  For campaign 2012, TV alone is likely to have close to $3 billion in ad money dropped into its electronic lap -- especially if news shows can drum up attention for the eternal election season as the political event of a lifetime.  So whenever those pundits go on about Mitt and his musts, they are functionally shilling for their owners’ bottom lines, though no one in our world bothers to say so.

Focused on picking and handicapping candidates, the media version of the political campaign is a process which now begins the day after the previous campaign ends.  As a result, elections have become the political equivalent of our ever-expanding, increasingly overlapping sports seasons.  If you don’t mind logrolling at three in the morning, sports is never absent from our onscreen lives, and it looks like the same may soon be said about electoral politics.

These days, of course, every crisis or alarum in American society -- take the most recent terror alert that coincided with 9/11 coverage as an example -- can be transformed with remarkable ease into eyeball-gluing screen fare and so into a money-maker for some complex or other (military-industrial, homeland-security, media-industrial, etc.).  So endless months before the first vote that counts, we get polls pouring in, elections coming out of our ears, and constant chatter. But democracy?  In a country where, in the best of times, only 60% of its citizens actually vote, don’t make me laugh.  The people’s representatives?  Please!

My apologies to the Roman Empire, but politics is now part of bread-and-circus time in the increasingly chaotic American version of empire.  The circuses are, of course, for us, the bread (and I mean dough, moolah) for them.  They grow fat.  We remain riveted to our many screens.  Meanwhile, out there in the real world, where towers are falling all the time, even American decline is undoubtedly being gilded, and readied to be put up in lights, and sold as yet more fun for the masses: disintegration, the last word in on-screen entertainment.  Time to turn off the TV and join Mike Davis for a eulogy at the graveside of an imperial America in decline.