It looks like the three “scandals” brewing for the last week are, by any objective standard, petering out. The IRS scandal was at low levels, and neither Obama nor his staff knew anything at a time when it was relevant, nor tried to cover anything up. There is no evidence that Obama could realistically have been expected to do anything that would have prevented the violence in Benghazi, and the editing of the talking points was an interagency scuffle which did not involve him, nor did it really have any significant impact in real life. And the AP phone record incident, while reprehensible, was pretty pedestrian as far as national security snooping has been for the past decade; ironically, it’s the kind of thing Republicans have been pushing for, and which the administration has, at least in principle, been trying to weaken.

None of this will stop Republicans and their PR machine from claiming they are scandals worse than Watergate-times-infinity-plus-one, however. Republicans desperately want a scandal to be there, and will never stop investigating, will never stop reacting in false outrage, and will never stop making baseless accusations which they claim are high crimes and misdemeanors.

Republican leaders in Congress have refused to investigate who exposed covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose identity was leaked after her husband, Joe Wilson, challenged the administration’s claims that Iraq sought nuclear weapons. They have held virtually no public hearings on the hundreds of misleading claims made by administration officials about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda.

They have failed to probe allegations that administration officials misled Congress about the costs of the Medicare prescription drug bill. And they have ignored the ethical lapses of administration officials, such as the senior Medicare official who negotiated future employment representing drug companies while drafting the prescription drug bill. …

There is a simple but deplorable principle at work. In both the Clinton and Bush eras, oversight has been driven by raw partisanship. Congressional leaders have vacillated between the extremes of abusing their investigative powers and ignoring them, depending on the party affiliation of the president.

Nor were they really trying that hard to hide why:

Republican Rep. Ray LaHood aptly characterized recent congressional oversight of the administration: “Our party controls the levers of government. We’re not about to go out and look beneath a bunch of rocks to try to cause heartburn.”

In fact, they not only avoided investigations, they deplored them as unpatriotic and damaging to the nation. They went so far as to make the claim that any such investigations would derail the business of government and cause us to plummet into an abyss of anarchy and terror. And no, I’m not really exaggerating here. They claimed that such investigations would literally cause terror attacks. Starting in early 2006, Ken Mehlman, Chairman of the RNC, sent out multiple fundraising letters which warned that Democrats would try to investigate, censure and impeach Bush if they took back Congress. This warning, for example, went out in March:

The Democrats’ plan for 2006? Take the House and Senate, and impeach the President. With our nation at war, is this the kind of Congress you want?

Here’s another from May:

This year, we face another momentous choice. Fight and defeat the terrorists, or retreat from the central front in the War on Terror. Live up to our calling as Americans to stand for freedom, or choose Democrats, who are being as clear as they possibly can that they will censure and impeach the President if they win back Congress.

Republicans continued to use this scare tactic even after Pelosi specifically ruled out any attempt at impeachment should Democrats take back Congress.

Of course, Democrats did win back both houses in 2006—and did not try to investigate, censure, or impeach Bush, despite having a long list of offenses which richly merited such attention.

Like the post’s title said, this is nothing new. However, it does bear repeating from time to time when it is at peak tide.

In the United States, we live under the protection of religious freedom. This means that, as far as government and the law are concerned, we may believe, or not believe, as we wish.

However, this is a legal protection, not a cultural one. Culturally, there can be all sorts of religious discrimination. More than that, there can be religious bullying.

Think of it in terms of working at an office where most of the people there are, let’s say, die-hard Dodgers fans. They not only hang Dodgers pennants and other paraphernalia up, they get offended when you put up a banner for any other team (especially if it’s bigger than their pennant). In fact, they get upset if you don’t put up a Dodgers pennant in your cubicle or office. They get downright pissy about it, in fact. A coworker emails everyone:

Can I just say how disappointed I am that the Dodgers won yesterday, but Linda chooses to celebrate by hanging her daughter’s artwork instead.

And you know you’re going to catch all kinds of dirty looks and snide remarks all day.

You would probably dread working in an environment like that. Not just because you’re the outsider, but because the majority of people there are such asses about the fact that you’re not—and that you’re not praising or worshipping them or their favorite things.

Well, welcome to the United States of America. Today, Google did not choose to represent the mainstream holiday or event (as is often the case) and instead chose to post something out of the mainstream—Caesar Chavez’s birthday, in this case.

Conservative Christians across the nation were offended. Some were livid. A few representative tweets:

Google thinks Cesar Chavez is more important than Easter. #whoareyou #happyeaster

Why is Jesus not on google but Cesar Chavez and his 86th birthday is ???

Wow. Congrats Google, youve managed to alienate all Christians in America today: instead of celebrating Christ, they celebrate Cesar Chavez.

That last one has just about the right ring to it: fail to put us above and before everyone else, and you risk our wrath. Many reported their intent to move exclusively to Bing.

Seriously, you would think that Google is a church or something, in that not recognizing Easter is completely out of character, a slap in the face. Since when has it become a requirement for businesses to genuflect? Why expect them to celebrate Easter with a special graphic? Why on earth would you get upset if they don’t?

“You said ‘happy birthday’ to Mark on his birthday, but not to me on mine? Well, don’t expect me to give you the time of day from now on!”

Yes, it is just that petty and pissy.

Not that it is anything new. You know about the infamous “War on Christmas,” right? Same thing. It consists mostly of Christians whining about how a few people are saying “Happy Holidays” instead of joining the popular chorus of “Merry Christmas.”

“Happy Holidays” is inclusive: it includes Christmas, but also everyone else. It’s perfect when you are speaking to a large number of people or are unsure of what holiday a particular person celebrates.

“Merry Christmas,” on the other hand, while perfectly fine for addressing someone you know celebrates the holiday, happens to exclude anyone who is not a Christian.

Demanding that retailers say “Merry Christmas” and forbidding them to say “Happy Holidays” is like men demanding that crowds be addressed as “Gentlemen” only, and getting all offended when “Ladies and Gentlemen” is used instead.

Seriously, if you hear “Merry Christmas” two dozens times a day, hear Christmas carols on nearly every radio station, see special Christmas episodes of most of your favorite TV shows, are bombarded with Christmas decorations and jingles everywhere you go… is it really going to put you out that much to hear the occasional business cheerfully wishing you a happy holiday?

If you can’t be satisfied with hogging 99% of the pie and then sharing the last sliver with others, then you’re a whiny, selfish, self-centered ass.

And you’re giving Christianity a bad name.

Honestly, would you want to be a Dodgers fan if all their followers were dicks?

Republicans love to characterize Democrats as “Tax and Spenders.” They love to paint themselves as frugal. The problem is, they spend just as much as the Democrats, only with an emphasis on different things—and since they despise taxes, that makes them the party of “Tax and Borrow,” the party of “Tax and Debt.” Republicans are the chief architects of this nation’s debt; there is no question at all of that. And yet, fantastically, they try to blame it all on the Democrats.

Currently, Republicans are fighting a daily battle to blame Obama for all the debt, as if Republicans had not been handed a surplus by a Democrat, as if they had not obliterated that surplus in the name of tax cuts for the wealthy and massively costly wars and porkbarrel spending, as if they had not characterized the paying off of debts as a hideous injustice against taxpayers, as if $10 trillion in debt did not exist before Obama was elected, as if that debt was not chiefly created by Republicans, as if Obama had not been handed stupendous debts in a tail-spinning economy, and as if Obama had not been successful at lowering those deficits despite Republicans’ best efforts to make Obama fail.

In the latest round, John Boehner sent a memo to House Republicans, in which he cited Lincoln—a favorite pastime for conservatives vainly desperate to score on Lincoln’s gravitas. Boehner wrote,

The book Congressman Lincoln by Chris DeRose, which I recently read, includes a chapter focused on Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to help craft a new national agenda. At one point in the book, young Lincoln warns that government debt is “growing with a rapidity fearful to contemplate.”

“[Government debt] is a system not only ruinous while it lasts, but one that must soon fail and leave us destitute,” Lincoln warns his countrymen in Congressman Lincoln. “An individual who undertakes to live by borrowing, soon finds his original means devoured by interest, and next no one left to borrow from –- so must it be with a government.”

Well, it turns out that if you go to the source material for that quote, a campaign circular for the people of Illinois from March 4, 1843, you find that the quote is indeed authentic, and indeed Lincoln laments debt.

But here’s the thing: the very next words after that quote are,

We repeat, then, that a tariff sufficient for revenue, or a direct tax, must soon be resorted to; and, indeed, we believe this alternative is now denied by no one.

In other words, the very next words in Lincoln’s missive are a conclusion that revenues be raised—the precise solution Boehner and House Republicans have been fighting relentlessly to defeat! Not only that, but Boehner even quotes around Lincoln’s argument for taxation; Boehner cherry-picks the part about debt “growing with a rapidity fearful to contemplate,” but conveniently leaves out the very next sentence; the whole quote is,

By this means a new National debt, has been created, and is still growing on us with a rapidity fearful to contemplate—a rapidity only reasonably to be expected in time of war. This state of things has been produced by a prevailing unwillingness, either to increase the tariff, or resort to direct taxation.

Not just that, but Lincoln himself advocates tariffs over direct taxation not because he dislikes taxes, but because tariffs target the rich:

In short, by this system, the burthen of revenue falls almost entirely on the wealthy and luxurious few, while the substantial and laboring many who live at home, and upon home products, go entirely free.

But wait, it gets even better. Lincoln, as it turns out, was on Obama’s side, as pointed out by Greg Sargent:

Lincoln was also a firm believer in spending public money on infrastructure and boosting the economy.

As an Illinois state legislator, Lincoln was a leading proponent of using the proceeds from sales of public lands to pay for the digging of canals and building of railroads. As a member of Congress, Lincoln defended the idea of federal subsidies for internal improvements. Indeed, Lincoln was an ardent believer in Henry Clay’s “American System,” which was heavily predicated on government sponsored internal improvements and was one of the most significant instances of government intervention in the economy in the country’s history.

“Lincoln was a tremendous advocate of government spending on infrastructure and economic development,” leading Lincoln historian Eric Foner told me. “As president Lincoln presided over a tremendous increase in government spending, not just because of the war but also on the Homestead land grant system and aid to construction of the transcontinental railroad.”

Huh. How about that. Lincoln wanted to raise revenues on the backs of the wealthy and use the money to pay off debts and invest in infrastructure improvements.

Well, Boehner? Any comments about how Abraham Lincoln was a Commie Socialist Fascist?

Unfortunately, the fact that a Republican, whose party has left us in financial ruin, attempts to heap blame on another man after repeatedly sabotaging that man’s efforts to alleviate that ruin, should selectively quote Lincoln in an effort to defeat Lincoln’s principles… well, let’s just call it “par for the course.”

Republicans, as if it is not obvious, and as if I have not said this repeatedly, are the most egregiously asinine lying hypocritical dirtbags you can imagine.

Wow. After Republicans use every dirty word in the book against Democrats, and attempt to vilify every word in liberalism that’s not dirty, they get all offended at Obama for name-calling.

What unspeakable name did Obama call them?

“Right-wing.”

Yes, the party of “political correctness is fascism” is now seriously offended at being called “right-wing.” Which means that Fox News and the vast majority of those in the conservative media must have Tourette’s Syndrome.

And no, I am not making any of this up. This comes directly from David Avella, President of GOPAC. He appeared on Bill Maher and acted like the president was being so unreasonable and insulting. His words:

AVELLA: The president also talked about not making absolutism for principle, substitute spectacle for politics, and treat name-calling as reasoned debate. This is a week before he sit and name-called and made critical of Republicans in his last press conference! So which Barack Obama are we going to get?

MAHER: What did he call them? What name did he call them?

AVELLA: Oh, he talked about “right-wing Republicans,”…

MAHER: That’s a name-call? “Right wing”?

AVELLA: Sure.

MAHER: “Right wing” is a name-calling now?

AVELLA: It is a name-calling.

Words fail me.

I’ve mentioned before about conservative projection, whereupon right-wingers will have a certain quality or perform a certain act to an extreme, and then accuse their opponents of exactly that.

John Boehner:

And given what we heard yesterday about the president’s vision for his second term, it’s pretty clear to me that he knows he can’t do any of that as long as the House is controlled by Republicans. So we’re expecting over the next 22 months to be the focus of this administration as they attempt to annihilate the Republican Party. And let me just tell you, I do believe that is their goal – to just shove us into the dustbin of history. I’ve been in these spots before. I remember November of ’06, January of ’07 — we’ve been through these periods before. And you know, our members get down, our supporters get down.

Republicans have savaged liberals over the years.

They have viciously attacked the Democratic support bases. If you are a social or political group which provides any substantial backing for the Democratic Party, the GOP will demonize your reputation and work night and day to destroy you as a group. Unions have been brutally decimated by conservatives. Teachers have been made into pariahs. Groups like ACORN, which tried to raise voter registration in poorer communities, was literally obliterated. The list goes on. If you are a significant supporter of Democrats, you go on the hit list, and it is not a metaphorical one: the Republicans will destroy you.

Conservatives have vilified Democratic causes. Reproductive rights was transformed into near-demonic support for murdering babies in the form of the “partial-birth abortion.” Equal rights for non-white male groups were depicted as “special privileges.” Secularism and fairness in religious belief was drawn as a “war on Christianity.” Racism was said to not even exist in our “color-blind” society, where the real evil was Affirmative Action, which somehow made life hell for poor white males. Minorities were told that not only should they not complain about racism, but that they should feel devalued and ashamed if there was even the slightest chance that they received favor through some form of Affirmative Action at any point in their lives.

Republicans have pulled every trick in the book to destroy Democratic voting rights and efforts. While they make completely baseless accusations of Democratic fraud after their own thorough investigations revealed nothing, they attempt to bring back Jim Crow laws even more destructive than ever to block Democratic voting. They resort to all manner of fraud, from voter caging to bogus felons lists. They attack Democratic voter registration organizations and shut them down. They gerrymander the crap out of states, even outside of census cycles, and are now set upon ramming through electoral vote distribution based on gerrymandered districts so that a Democratic candidate for president could win a state like Pennsylvania by 10% of the vote but get only 5 of 16 electoral votes for that state, and would still lose the national election even if they won the popular vote by 10 million ballots.

Politically, they leave only scorched earth. They now besmirch any form of compromise. Complete and utter obstruction is their policy when out of power, and ramming everything through wile leaving the other party in the dark is their policy when in power. If even their own policies become adopted by the other side, they suddenly turn and call them vile.

For Christ’s sake, conservatives have even done their best to make Democratic names into slurs. The campaign to smear the word “liberal” worked so well that many liberals now avoid the word and use “progressive” instead. To this day, conservatives refuse to utter the modifier “Democratic” and instead childishly say things like “the Democrat Party,” in an attempt to disassociate the party from its core values, while pushing the “DemocRAT” slur they so smugly adore.

All of this while their extremist PR arm, Fox News, works 24/7 to ludicrously defame and condemn anything Democratic or liberal, aided by bastions of “news” outfits, think tanks, bloggers, and action groups.

That doesn’t just break irony. It vaporizes it. It reaches back into time and makes sure that irony died as an infant. It is so far beyond irony that it would take the light from irony two billion years to reach it.

And yet: conservatives will take this statement seriously.

The Republican Party is dying not because the president wants to get rid of them—something which, sadly, he has more or less done the opposite of—the GOP is dying because it is becoming so extreme that it is making extremists shake their heads in dismay. It is dying because their supporters are dying while the groups they vilify are growing.

Five years ago, I put up a post titled, “Are You a Democrat?” I asked questions which I felt demonstrated values held by those on the left. The list still holds true, which I take to support the idea that they are indeed representative of principles and values of liberals, and not just for-the-moment causes or rationalizations.

For fun, I thought I would re-post it—in reverse—and ask the questions if they were to point in the opposite direction. While it is true that the two extremes are not always polar opposites, reversing these questions is a fairly good yardstick. Here they are, followed by clarifications and elaborations below:

• Do you favor going into debt instead of paying for what you get? Do you prefer perpetually maintaining your debts as opposed to paying them off?
• Do you support only the parts of the Constitution you find appealing?
• Do you believe that people who have more should support society less?
• Should people with certain talents and background be treated better than others beyond basic remuneration?
• Do you believe it is the role of society to tell people what they can and cannot do in their private matters?
• Do you agree with the idea that everyone in society should fend for themselves, as opposed to everyone supporting each other?
• Do you favor waiting for something bad to happen and paying greatly for it over paying a lower but immediate cost for preparation and prevention?
• If you feel certain that a man is guilty, but cannot definitively prove it, would you punish him even though it means there is a chance you are punishing an innocent man?
• If treatment for a crime works better than punishment, would you favor punishment instead of treatment anyway?
• Do you respect people more for being effective than for being honest?
• Do you believe that true patriotism means never criticizing your own country even when it is clearly wrong, or denying that it ever commits a wrong?
• Could you support the statement “America is better than everyone else in the world” over the statement “America is as good as anyone else in the world ”?
• Do you believe that your leaders should be average Joes instead of intelligent, people who excel at their work?
• Would you rather hear news that makes you feel good rather than the truth? Do you feel confident that you are always right on important issues?

I know a lot of conservatives would see this as an unfair or inaccurate portrayal of their values, but that would be more an artifact of their own internal inconsistencies. Inconsistencies between what they say and what they do, sometimes between what they say and other things they say, and all to often, between what they believe and what instead is real.

Do you favor going into debt instead of paying for what you get? Do you prefer perpetually maintaining your debts as opposed to paying them off?

Conservatives paint themselves as deficit hawks who hate spending. The problem is, they primarily act this way only when the other party is in power, or when it comes to programs they do not support. However, they consistently spend more and tax less, a policy push that was prominent under Reagan and skyrocketed under Bush 43—a policy which is a certainty to create deficits. The Bush years are absolute proof: given a budget surplus, they incurred massive spending increases and revenue decreases, leaving the nation $5 trillion more in debt than when Bush arrived, and the yearly deficit at the level of $1 trillion per year and rising fast.

Conservatives say that they hate debt—but only when a Democrat is in the White House. When they hold the presidency, debt is not important, or is even useful. Nowadays you will hear many Republicans say that they were against the deficits racked up by Bush, were against the pork and uncontrolled spending by fellow Republicans, and spoke out against it. Funny how we never heard them during the years they claimed to be speaking out, nor did any of their words sway their fellow conservatives one bit.

In the end, despite what conservatives say, what they do is more important—and what they do is to borrow and spend, in ever more massive amounts.

As for perpetually maintaining that debt, remember that when we were just beginning to get budget surpluses and so could pay off our national debt, conservatives argued that a surplus meant taxes were higher than they needed to be, and therefore we should cut taxes. In short, never pay down the debt you have accrued.

Do you support only the parts of the Constitution you find appealing?

This should be self-evident. Total dismissal of the Ninth Amendment, disparagement of the fourth through eighth, and the virtual enshrinement of their specific interpretation of the second. The ninth is dismissed because it grants the right to personal privacy, a right that conservatives do not wish to be recognized. William Rehnquist himself defined a strict constructionist as someone who will “generally not be favorably inclined toward claims of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs.” And the Second Amendment, clearly an outdated “historical document” if there ever was one, obviously refers to militia and not personal ownership (although personal rights to keep and bear arms are, ironically, guaranteed under the Ninth Amendment).

I could go on—in particular in regards to how the First Amendment is considered—but I think the point is clear.

Do you believe that people who have more should support society less?

Do I even have to explain this? Recent events make this painfully clear.

Should people with certain talents and background be treated better than others beyond basic remuneration?

This is a bit tougher, as it overlaps universally accepted areas of meritocracy, and what one might define “better treatment” to mean. However, the question is not posed to mean whether you agree or disagree about people getting a better salary if their talents or efforts justify it; I think everyone agrees that this should be the case, no matter what the nutballs on Fox & Friends seem to think.

What I mean in this question regards what could be called a “level playing field.” If your background is that of a poor family, should your education, at the very least K-12, be less than that of someone from a wealthy family? Should your baseline health care be significantly worse? Should the opportunities you are presented—not what you do with them, but just the doors that are opened for you—be less? Should people of equal talent be forced to work harder and perform better in order to receive equal benefit?

If you are a conservative, this is what your stand on the policies generally says. Wealthy families get to have a first-rate education while poor families get crap; people who cannot afford private insurance deserve to die alone and cold in the street; people with connections deserve them, no matter how much they hinge on accidents of birth or other forms of discrimination; and women, minorities, gays, and other groups discriminated against deserve no “special rights” to protection that white males do not need because they are not even remotely set back by such discrimination. Again, you may mouth approval of equal treatment, but when it comes to what you will actually approve and support, reality differs greatly with the platitudes.

Do you believe it is the role of society to tell people what they can and cannot do in their private matters?

For all of the right-wing talk about individual liberty and freedom, and how conservatives just want to be left alone, this sentiment only applies to them when it is something that they want to do, like owning guns and not paying taxes. When it comes to anything else, including things that do no harm to anybody, they make every effort to push their way into the lives of others and tell them what to do.

Their views on sexuality allow them to tell you who you can have sex with, how, and whether or not you are allowed to wed. Their beliefs on when life begins allows them to dictate whether you can have an abortion or even take a day-after pill. Their ideas about the value of life allow them to tell you that you have to suffer horribly for months or years with an incurable illness which has robbed you of any meaningful existence, destroying your family and your own dignity as you go, as they decide whether you have the right to put a merciful end to your life. Their values of what drugs are dangerous allows them to drink and smoke as much as they want, but allows them to tell you that you’ll go to jail for smoking marijuana.

But if they begin to stockpile military grade weapons with no safeguards in their house next to where your kids play, you have no right to tell them anything, no matter what the threat to your children’s safety.

Do you agree with the idea that everyone in society should fend for themselves, as opposed to everyone supporting each other?

Again, recent events make this painfully clear.

Do you favor waiting for something bad to happen and paying greatly for it over paying a lower but immediate cost for preparation and prevention?

Again, there is a void between what is said and perhaps believed, and what comes to pass. If it is an imaginary threat of nuclear war, you will feel your answer to this is “no,” but in practice, it has led to paying greatly rather than otherwise.

When it comes to providing a quality education, maintaining strong infrastructure, deploying preventative medicine, and a host of other wise and profitable long-term investments, the answer is a definitive, “Hell yes we shouldn’t pay for that stuff!” “Let the private sector do all the work,” you’ll say, and they won’t, and we’ll pay the price.

In general, conservatives are all too often short-sighted in such matters, preferring immediate gratification in the short run rather than building vital foundations in the long run.

If you feel that a man is guilty, but cannot prove it, would you punish him even though it means there is a chance you are punishing an innocent man?

This is another of the fuzzy ones, as “proof” is often conflated with guilty verdicts. This refers in part to those who would feel it better to be safe than sorry, and/or to convict on faith rather than fact. In a larger sense, this question is intended to refer to the death penalty as well as recent “national security” policies which ensnare innocents in a panicked rush for security or justice, and the fact that conservatives usually seem to prefer to sacrifice the archetypal innocent man lest, not one hundred, but even one guilty man go free.

If treatment for a crime works better than punishment, would you favor punishment instead of treatment anyway?

Again, do I really need to go in to this. Not just recent events, but the events of the past half century make this one rather clear-cut. Conservatives see treatment as coddling, as unnecessary spending (again a reference to pound-foolish avoidance of prevention), a dodge for people to milk the system, or simply as a way for liberals to avoid blaming people for their own actions. Any and all of these are easier than actually recognizing what has been proven again and again, as it would then lead to the next step of actually acting on it.

Do you respect people more for being effective than for being honest?

Then why did you vote for Mitt Romney? Not the best example though; he was neither effective nor honest.

This question actually came out of the debacle of the Bush administration and the recent decades where conservatives prefer lying bastards who can get the job done over honest people who do what is right instead of what is popular. I have heard more than one conservative state a direct preference for the former over the latter, and certainly conservative behavior in general bears this out.

Do you believe that true patriotism means never criticizing your own country even when it is clearly wrong, or denying that it ever commits a wrong?

Once more, need I even explain? Conservatives hate any American who suggests America has done wrong (except when it’s about Democrats they happen to despise). Bombing Hiroshima, going to war in Vietnam and Iraq, covert meddling in politics in the Middle East and Central America, the genocide of American aboriginals, so forth and so on. The entire swagger about “American Exceptionalism” and “Apology Tours” make their stand on this clear.

Could you support the statement “America is better than everyone else in the world” over the statement “America is as good as anyone else in the world ”?

This is an extension of the point above. Again, it should be obvious.

Do you believe that your leaders should be average Joes instead of intelligent people who excel at their work?

There are some fascinating contradictions here. First, they sneer at those they call “elites,” a term which should indicate actual intellect and capability. What they mean, of course, is the definition wherein the “elite” are “a small group of people who control a disproportionate amount of wealth or political power.” Does that describe Obama? Biden? Clinton? Carter? Mondale? Dukakis? Kerry maybe, but most Democrats? Nope.

How about Romney? McCain? Bush? Recent GOP candidates and presidents have not just been elites, they have been extreme elites.

Conservatives claim to detest “elitists,” and yet they vote for them over and over again. Mitt Romney was the epitome of an elitist, both Bushes were elites (the first literally and the second by association), and even Reagan was a rich movie actor—if he were liberal, they’d use his Hollywood connections to vilify him as elitist. In contrast, Obama, Clinton, and Carter all had very humble roots. You’d have to go all the way back to Kennedy to find an elected Democratic president who could be called an “elitist.”

Here we see an interesting contrast: GOP candidates tend to be far more rich, entitled, and elitist, but Republican voters always claim they want the man they vote for to be an ordinary person they’d feel comfortable having a beer with.

In a more specific sense, conservatives paint those they call elite as people who think they know better than anyone else. That, however, describes pretty much everyone, including themselves. Nevertheless, conservatives usually loathe the idea of highly intelligent, capable leaders.

Would you rather hear news that makes you feel good rather than the truth? Do you feel confident that you are always right on important issues?

Do I even need to mention Fox News? Not that this is the entirety of the extent that conservatives feel this way, but it stands as an exceptionally clear example of it. Regarding faith as more important than reason and facts is another. Self-doubt is hardly endemic among right-wingers.

Will you, upon reading this list of questions, ignore it, dismiss it, argue not the list but rather set up straw men, or attack only the least persuasive point within the list, instead of either answering each point honestly and in detail with reasonable logic and cited basis in fact, or, heaven forbid, regarding this list seriously to reflect on your values?

Or, instead of that, I might just as easily have asked, “Did you quit reading long before you got to this question?”

Guess what? 67 Republican House members voted against federal aid for Hurricane Sandy. Appropriately called “a bunch of jackasses” by former New York Senator Al D’Amato, these pearls of human compassion come predominantly from states that have gotten far more than their share of federal assistance, and many are absolute experts at begging for disaster aid.

The states most heavily represented in the GOP anti-aid block are Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.

Arizona has made 8 major disaster declarations for FEMA aid over the past ten years, and has requested aid from FEMA on more than 30 other occasions over the same time period.

Georgia, which also made many major disaster and other declarations to FEMA, received $300 million in federal mortgage relief aid, and kept 95% of it, as they have similarly tucked away hundreds of millions of federal dollars which were supposed to have been spent on highway projects.

North Carolina must have forgotten that it begged for and got federal aid after Hurricane Irene hit, while South Carolina, which receives $1.35 per tax dollar paid and has begged for federal relief for droughts and other disasters, has also tucked away hundreds of millions of federal aid dollars intended for mortgage aid.

Tennessee, still the proud home of the Tennessee Valley Authority, gets $12 billion a year in federal spending, ranking 7th per capita, and 12th in federal aid received by state, and has made 12 major disaster declarations to FEMA in just the past three years alone.

Texas, meanwhile, received billions in federal aid after Hurricane Ike in 2008 and blasted the federal government for a slow response. In fact, Texas tops the national list of FEMA disaster applications, with a total of 332.

Not long ago, Republican senators tried to block a larger overall bill for Sandy relief:

…since 1989, states represented by senators who voted against the package have been among the biggest beneficiaries of a similar pot of money: the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which nationwide has provided at least $8 billion to help states recovering from disasters prepare to face future catastrophe.

Mississippi Rep. Steven Palazzo, meanwhile, who voted against aid for Sandy because it was not “paid for,” just 6 months ago cheered federal aid being granted to his own district in response to Hurricane Isaac.

Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs, Colorado, begged the feds for extra FEMA spending following a summer fire in 2012—just two months after he tried to pass legislation limiting the aid, and six months before denying it to Sandy victims.

Many are trying to claim that Democrats loaded the bill up with “pork,” a demonstrably false claim.

Here is a list of the 67 who voted “no,” by state, with contact phone numbers:

Trent Franks (Ariz.) (202) 225-4576
Paul Gosar (Ariz.) (202) 225-2315
Matt Salmon (Ariz.) (202) 225-2635
David Schweikert (Ariz.) (202) 225-2190

Tom Cotton (Ark.) (202) 225-3772

Tom McClintock (Calif.) (202) 225-2511
Ed Royce (Calif.) (202) 225-4111

Doug Lamborn (Colo.) (202) 225-4422

Ron DeSantis (Fla.) (202) 225-2706
Ted Yoho (Fla.) (202) 225-5744

Doug Collins (Ga.) (202) 225-9893
Tom Graves (Ga.) (202) 225-5211
Paul Broun (Ga.) (202) 225-4101
Tom Price (Ga.) (202) 225-4501
Rob Woodall (Ga.) (202) 225-4272

Randy Hultgren (Ill.) (202) 225-2976

Marlin Stutzman (Ind.) (202) 225-4436
Todd Rokita (Ind.) (202) 225-5037

Lynn Jenkins (Kan.) (202) 225-6601
Tim Huelskamp (Kan.) (202) 225-2715
Mike Pompeo (Kan.) (202) 225-6216
Kevin Yoder (Kan.) (202) 225-2865

Garland Barr (Ky.) (202) 225-4706
Thomas Massie (Ky.) (202) 225-3465

John Fleming (La.) (202) 225-2777

Andy Harris (Md.) (202) 225-5311

Justin Amash (Mich.) (202) 225-3831
Dan Benishek (Mich.) (202) 225-4735
Kerry Bentivolio (Mich.) (202) 225-8171

Steven Palazzo (Miss.) (202) 225-5772

Sam Graves (Mo.) (202) 225-7041

Steve Daines (Mont.) (202) 225-3211

Steve Pearce (N.M.) (202) 225-2365

George Holding (N.C.) (202) 225-3032
Richard Hudson (N.C.) (202) 225-3715
Mark Meadows (N.C.) (202) 225-6401
Virginia Foxx (N.C.) (202) 225-2071

Brad Wenstrup (Ohio) (202) 225-3164
Jim Jordan (Ohio)(202) 225-2676
Steve Chabot (Ohio) (202) 225-2216

Markwayne Mullin (Okla.) (202) 225-2701
Jim Bridenstine (Okla.) (202) 225-2211

Keith Rothfus (Pa.) (202) 225-2065
Scott Perry (Pa.) (202) 225-2565

Jeff Duncan (S.C.) (202) 225-5301
Joe Wilson (S.C.) (202) 225-2452
Mick Mulvaney (S.C.) (202) 225-5501
Trey Gowdy (S.C.) (202) 225-6030

Louie Gohmert (Texas) (202) 225-3035
Michael Conaway (Texas) (202) 225-3605
Randy Neugebauer (Texas) (202) 225-4005
Mac Thornberry (Texas) (202) 225-3706
Randy Weber (Texas) (202) 225-2831
Roger Williams (Texas) (202) 225-9896
Bill Flores (Texas) (202) 225-6105
Kenny Marchant (Texas) (202) 225-6605

Phil Roe (Tenn.)(202) 225-6356
Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) (202) 225-2811
Scott DesJarlais (Tenn.) (202) 225-6831
John Duncan (Tenn.) (202) 225-5435
Stephen Fincher (Tenn.) (202) 225-4714

Bob Goodlatte (Va.) (202) 225-5431

Tom Petri (Wis.) (202) 225-2476
Paul Ryan (Wis.) (202) 225-3031
Sean Duffy (Wis.) (202) 225-3365
Jim Sensenbrenner (Wis.) (202) 225-5101

Shame on Obama for giving Republicans exactly what they want with Kerry as the new Secretary of State.

Far more shame for “America First” Republicans for engineering Kerry’s placement only so they can get a chance at a Senate seat.

I could forgive Obama if, as is likely, he actually believes that Kerry is the best person for the job—something that seems likely considering that he’ll be giving up something rather significant to get Kerry.

Republicans, however, are a completely different story. They are not trying to get the best person appointed. They are not trying to get someone more conservative nominated. They are doing all of this—to an extent, probably also fiercely opposing Chuck Hagel for Defense as well—for purely strategic and unprincipled political reasons.

A whole lot of Republicans are now falling all over Romney with recriminations about how he threw the election.

Here’s a news flash, kiddos: you chose him.

And not only did you choose him, you knew who he was when you chose him. You knew that he was an out-of-touch plutocrat. You knew he was a major-league flip-flopper. You knew he was an awkward, goofy gaffe machine. You knew that his ideas and policies were vague, inconsistent, and unworkable.

What I’d like to hear is a Republican who is saying, “Man, we really screwed up. We should have gone with Huntsman.”

Maybe someone out there is saying it, but I haven’t heard it spoken very loudly.

The thing is, Republicans tend to do this—run away from their choices after they fail.

Remember the George W. Bush administration? Most Republicans don’t seem to have.

A pet peeve of mine is all the Republicans who are now claiming that they not only disagreed with Bush when it came to his deficit-busting spending and other bad choices, but they claim that they spoke out against him while he was in office. I have heard so many Republicans make that claim, you would think that 2001-2008 was a time thick with right-wing complaints against Bush.

Funny, I don’t remember any of their voices saying that back then. Maybe they were whispering.

Whenever a Republican makes that claim, they should be required to provide sources. They never do. And I bet it’s because, if you looked up those sources, you’d find them as small caveats or minor quibbles within a greater text of praise and support for Bush. As in, “Well, I love the president’s budget and I heartily approve all his policies, but we will, at some point, have to deal with the budgetary impact.” Which, of course, is not “opposing” or “speaking out against.”

Of course, we’ll never see those sources referenced. These are people who screwed up big time; the whole point of the exercise is to lie.

A related point is when Republicans appear on talk shows and try to sound reasonable. “You don’t know it,” they say, “but not all Republicans are like that. Many of us are [insert reasonable stand on a specific policy here].”

Many of these are people who are staunchly conservative on most issues but have one where they are moderate, and so try to paint themselves—and the party as a whole—as reasonable and mainstream. A good example is Bill O’Reilly, who makes a point about how he is for gun control, as if that makes him a moderate or something. A few of these people actually are moderates—but they are such a minority that they never have an impact within their party.

And that’s the real test: if you can not or will not advance your moderate views within the Republican Party so they have any chance of moving the dial even a tiny bit, then your moderate leanings are meaningless. What matters are the policies which get presented, advocated, and passed—not the policies that a few wish for but never do anything about.

You can’t take credit for things that never materialize.

Now, this may not be the fault of the true moderates, as they are marginalized by the extremists in their own party. Which brings us back to how Romney won the nomination. Virtually everything the Republican Party puts forth these days must pass extremist muster—which is why only a bunch of clowns were potentially successful candidates this year.

I remember seeing a Hispanic Republican on a talk show recently, who claimed that she was offended by a lot of stuff that Romney said, and didn’t like him—but supported him wholeheartedly because he was the GOP candidate. However, you can’t do that: the only way he’ll stop being offensive is if you criticize him for it when it matters, not afterwards. Criticizing him now helps neither you nor him at all. It’s pointless, self-serving criticism, like saying, “I didn’t say it at the time, but I knew you should have taken the left turn at Main Street, we would have gotten here much faster. I was right and you were wrong.”

Nor did I feel that this person could claim much credit for being so reasonable. It comes down to this: if you march in the Clown Parade, then you belong to it. If you come over to the sidelines and tell me, “Man, I wish they’d stop wearing so much makeup and piling into Volkswagens all the time,” I am not going to be impressed if you then step right back into the Clown Parade and fully support their actions.

If you back someone without making your reservations known when it matters, then you own their whole deal, whether you like it or not.

Sure, Republicans can be disappointed with Romney. But they can’t act like they didn’t make him what he was—which means they have to be disappointed with themselves as well.

This seems to be the core outcome of Petraeus’ testimony, at least as far as Republicans are concerned:

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), exiting yesterday from a closed door meeting with Petraeus, said the retired general told the House Homeland Security Committee that the original CIA-drafted talking points named two militant groups — Ansar al-Shariah and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb — but that those references were removed from the version ultimately used by Rice.

King, recounting Petraeus’ testimony, said, “It was a long process, an interagency process and when they came back it had been taken out.”

There was instead only a passing reference to “extremists” in the final draft.

Petraeus reportedly told the lawmakers he wasn’t sure which agency replaced the groups’ names with the word “extremist” in the final draft.

“The fact is, the reference to al-Qaeda was taken out somewhere along the line by someone outside the intelligence community,” King said. “We need to find out who did it and why.”

Ah. So, in an intelligence report which informed the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., the names of groups seen as responsible were scrubbed somewhere along the line.

Let me see, where did we see this before? Oh, wasn’t that is the Bush administration, when Colin Powell went before the U.N. with all that fake info?

Gee, what was Congressman King’s reaction when he discovered that Powell’s information was entirely wrong? Apparently, he was not very concerned and did not call for an investigation. In fact, King was later a vocal supporter of Colin Powell when there was speculation that Powell would Run for Hillary. Instead, King among others is calling Rice incompetent, apparently for reporting what she had been told.

Whatever the case, incorrect information about security affairs was publicly given by the Obama administration. So, should I be condemning them the way I would equally condemn the Bush administration?

Let’s see. Powell’s testimony was slanted, but we now know it was intentionally slanted by those inside the Bush administration. That testimony helped start a war which cost the lives of thousands of U.S. troops, tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, and helped bankrupt the nation.

There is no outcome in the current case which is even remotely similar. No decade-long ground war in Libya or anywhere else that will begin as a result.

With Powell’s testimony, there was a clear motive for releasing false information. With Rice’s testimony, there was no motive—Obama stood to gain nothing from misrepresenting the cause of the attack. In fact, he may be lauded for not crying terrorism—we recall that Bush, in 2004, did exactly that, inflating claims of imminent terrorism to make people more aware a policy area that favored Bush, just as that exact same policy area now favors Obama. Obama, however, was cautiously quiet, where he would have benefitted to make a big deal out of it. The opposite of a scandal.

In the case of Powell’s testimony, it was clear that the data was intentionally altered in order to promote an agenda of war. In the case of Rice’s testimony, there was no motive for anything; it appears to be nothing more than a bureaucratic or clerical screw-up at least, or some minor intrigue within the intelligence community at most.

We still do not even know how the names were taken from the reports, or even if there was any intent to do so. But even assuming the worst, there is nothing more than a need to fix that cog in the machine.

So King, who overlooked an intentional intelligence scandal when his party was in charge, will likely be trying to invent an equivalent scandal where none exists. As will McCain and the rest of the GOP.

Because, you know, they’re all so bipartisan and stuff. America First. Reaching across the aisle to strangle the opposition.

The question is coming up: what if Obama wins the electoral vote but loses the popular vote? In particular, how would conservatives react?

It’s easy to predict of course. Remember, they had no problem at all with Bush being elected despite losing the popular vote and winning Florida by just a few hundred votes despite the illicit felon’s list and the botched-ballot voting in Miami-Dade, both of which leave zero doubt that Florida intended to elect Gore, that Gore would have been the winner had actual intention of voting, not the bungled outcome, been respected. Not only were they OK with that, they were adamantly, even aggressively resolved to make sure it stuck, and suggested that anyone who disputed it was a whining partisan crybaby.

So, naturally, they would, if grudgingly, accept Obama, right?

Of course, you know the answer to that.

They would either completely forget about 2000, or else would use it as a reason to claim Obama didn’t win the election—on the basis of liberals protesting Bush’s election legitimacy. They would equate the Florida scandal with imagined widespread voter fraud, having primed right-wing America into believing that there must be millions of stolen Democratic votes, imagining the current “fraud” to be far worse than anything in Florida—thus erasing any doubts about Bush’s election while assuring themselves that Obama cheated and stole the vote.

Despite, of course, the fact that such theft is virtually non-existent. No matter that the fraud went completely the other way, with who knows how many Democrats discouraged, intimidated, suppressed, or outright blocked from voting this year. No matter that Republicans, controlling more state houses in key areas, gerrymandered the crap out of their states. No matter that early voting has been curtailed or shut down wherever possible to depress Democratic turnout, even while attempts were made to expand early voting for Republican counties. No matter than non-English ballots were distributed with the wrong election date. No matter that even states ordered to cease Voter ID suppression tactics still put up billboards using taxpayer money, in particular in Spanish, telling voters that IDs were still required, while other billboards threaten low-income and minority voters with jail should they dare to vote. Even non-partisan evaluations of how Hurricane Sandy depressed votes in the solidly left-leaning Northeast will be explained away or dismissed.

Above and beyond all of that, many will simply cry foul over the simple fact that he didn’t get enough votes. Despite the fact that back in 2000, many claimed Bush even had a mandate (including, most prominently, Bush himself), and the right wing went along with that—none of that will matter, none of it will register.

If Obama gets elected while losing the popular vote, the vast majority on the conservative side will instantly begin railing about illegitimacy and how he’s not the “real” president. The myth of “voter fraud” will become a legend, a rallying cry. I would not be too surprised if calls for impeachment were to arise and be picked up by some sitting Republicans in Congress, or if there were major surges in calls for more “voter fraud prevention” laws, amid a host of conspiracy theories and renewed calls for secession of the South.

The same people who admonished protesters in 2000 on the principle of maintaining the legitimacy of the process and unifying the country would easily tear that process to shreds and the country asunder—if it’s not their guy who gets rallied around.

Marco Rubio is flashing his conservative credentials in the only way possible nowadays: by acting like an idiot.

“Just because they call a piece of legislation an equal pay bill doesn’t make it so,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” “In fact, much of this legislation is, in many respects, nothing but an effort to help trial lawyers collect their fees and file lawsuits, which may not contribute at all whatsoever to increasing pay equity in the workplace.”

The 2009 law makes it easier for women to sue their employers if they’re being paid less than men for doing equal work. Rubio said he supports the principle but opposes the Ledbetter legislation as a way of achieving it.

“If you’re the most qualified person for the job, you should be able to get paid — you should get paid as much as your male counterpart,” he said. “Everyone agrees with that principle.”

Yes, what we need is a law which actually outlaws unequal pay! That would completely fix the problem, without any need for trivial stuff like a need for a means of redress!

If only there were a law on the books which makes it illegal for an employer to discriminate between employees on the basis of sex by paying women at a rate less than paid to men for equal work on jobs which require equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions!

Oh, wait.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is a United States federal law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex. …

The law provides (in part) that:

No employer having employees subject to any provisions of this section [section 206 of title 29 of the United States Code] shall discriminate, within any establishment in which such employees are employed, between employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees in such establishment at a rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment for equal work on jobs[,] the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions, except where such payment is made pursuant to (i) a seniority system; (ii) a merit system; (iii) a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production; or (iv) a differential based on any other factor other than sex [ . . . . ]

So… what Rubio is complaining about is that women, who, famously because of Ledbetter, were not able to get any form of redress if an employer cheated them for years or decades, now have the ability to do so.

He is claiming outright that the only effect the Ledbetter Act will have is to line the pockets of trial lawyers.

Hmm, let’s see. Before the Ledbetter Act, it was already illegal to discriminate, but if the employee found out, then there was, according to the Supreme Court, nothing that they could do about it, because, according to them, Congress had not made sufficent provision for redress.

So, what reason would there be for an employer who is already unscrupulous enough to discriminate by gender to not do so? As far as I can tell, none.

With the Ledbetter Act, however, they can now be sued for violating the law.

In short, there is now a reason for them not to discriminate.

Senator Rubio, am I going too fast for you?

Of course, Rubio likely knows this full well. The whole “trial lawyers” attack is now a conservative standard. People hate lawyers. Make them hate trial lawyers even more, because trial lawyers contribute to Democrats. Why? Because Democrats side with ordinary people who, when screwed by wealthy people hiding behind corporate shields, have only one way to get redress, which is to sue them. Which, as a by-product, profits trial lawyers.

So, instead of defending the fact that conservatives are really trying to protect wealthy people from any responsibility or liability for intentionally harming the public in any number of ways, instead pretend that its all about scummy trial lawyers.

Which is why Rubio is acting like an idiot.

Ryan recently showed up in a photo washing pots at a homeless charity. What a guy, right? Selflessly serving the poor.

But wait—something smells fishy. Ryan is a Rand devotee; serving others like that is an evil to someone like him.

Oh, right. He wasn’t actually helping the homeless, or serving a charity. He was faking it:

The head of a northeast Ohio charity says that the Romney campaign last week “ramrodded their way” into the group’s Youngstown soup kitchen so that GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan could get his picture taken washing dishes in the dining hall.

Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, said that he was not contacted by the Romney campaign ahead of the Saturday morning visit by Ryan, who stopped by the soup kitchen after a town hall at Youngstown State University.

“We’re a faith-based organization; we are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” Antal said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there, and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.”

He added: “The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.”

Well, at least he washed a few dishes, right?

Um, no. The dishes he “washed” were already clean.

But at least his boss is actually compassionate, right? After all, he instituted that Romneycare program which provided insurance for a lot of poor people. And he’s proud of it. I think. Maybe. Or was that last week? Hard to tell, it’s like the wind direction changing. We need a RomneyVane.

But Obamacare, that’s an abomination. How dare Obama do for the nation what Romney did for Massachusetts! Nope. Obamacare has got to go, and Romney has vowed to deprive tens of millions of Americans of health care the moment he steps in to the Oval Office.

Sorry, poor people. That money is needed to pay for a fraction of the ginormous tax cut for wealthy people. You need jobs, after all, right? And we all know that a five-trillion-dollars-over-ten-years tax cut will create zillions of jobs, right? An accurate statement, as “zillions” is not a real number, just as jobs created by tax cuts are not real, either.

So, what will poor people do for health care? Not to worry, Mitt has a safety net to catch them:

Sunday on CBS’a 60 Minutes, Romney gave a hint about what he would replace Obamacae with. Scott Pelley asked him: “Does the government have a responsibility to provide health care to the 50 million Americans who don’t have it today?”

Romney replied “Well, we do provide care for people who don’t have insurance, people– we– if someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care.”

Pelley was taken aback. He told Romney “That is an expensive way to do it…. in the Emergency Room.”

Romney responded: “Different, again, different states have different ways of doing that. Some provide that care through clinics. Some provide the care through emergency rooms. In my state, we found a solution that worked for my state. But I wouldn’t take what we did in Massachusetts and say to Texas, ”You’ve got to take the Massachusetts model.“

This idea is not new; one could call it ”The Republican Option,“ as Republicans have been suggesting the ER as a health care option for some time now. Essentially, it says, ”we’re not going to provide health care, and the states may or may not leave you to die.“

Paul Krugman has a little bit of data for Romney. Not to suggest that Romney is interested in data or anything. But you might be interested:

Even the idea that everyone gets urgent care when needed from emergency rooms is false. Yes, hospitals are required by law to treat people in dire need, whether or not they can pay. But that care isn’t free — on the contrary, if you go to an emergency room you will be billed, and the size of that bill can be shockingly high. Some people can’t or won’t pay, but fear of huge bills can deter the uninsured from visiting the emergency room even when they should. And sometimes they die as a result.

More important, going to the emergency room when you’re very sick is no substitute for regular care, especially if you have chronic health problems. When such problems are left untreated — as they often are among uninsured Americans — a trip to the emergency room can all too easily come too late to save a life.

A doctor followed up on that:

It’s true that EMTALA [the 1986 law requiring that emergency rooms treat you regardless of insurance status] requires a medical screening exam and stabilization of any emergency medical conditions. It does not, however, mandate admission to the hospital for treatment of conditions that are not currently emergent (e.g. cancer, kidney disease, and other more chronic conditions except related to certain complications). For example, if someone were to present to one of our emergency departments with some mild bloating and be found to have an abdominal mass, they may very well be discharged home for outpatient follow-up and treatment. If that person doesn’t have insurance, they will likely have difficulty obtaining that care.

So, got it, poor people? You no-good, parasitic 47-percenters? You’re covered for a heart attack, so long as you’re willing to dodge the debt collectors, but if you have anything that is not currently bleeding or gushing, you’re on your own. Cancer? Too bad. Tumor? Live with it. Or not. Liver problems? What, do you think this country is made of money or something? Go to your corner and wither, you pathetic loser. If you didn’t make it in the free market system, you don’t deserve help from it—because America is nothing more than the free-market system.

You should be thankful that Paul Ryan took the time to pretend to wash a few pots for you, you ungrateful wretch.

When Romney thinks you’re not listening—from a video taken in the spring:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them, And they will vote for this president no matter what.

And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49… he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. So he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years.

And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to is convince the five to ten percent in the center that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in come cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not.
[emphasis Romney's]

Hmmm. So, I’m dependent upon government checks, am I? Apparently, I don’t take personal responsibility, and I don’t care for my life. Et cetera.

What is significant about this… well, there are several ways that this is significant. The most obvious is that Romney is bashing nearly half the electorate. Way to win over people on the other side, calling 47% of the people irresponsible moochers.

Next, there’s the “47%” number. These are the non-taxpayers, he claims. He makes the remarkable claim that every single one of them is an Obama voter, while every single person in the country who pays taxes is a Republican or undecided. Every single one of them have no sense of personal responsibility; instead, they lay back, take it easy, and live the high life off of welfare checks, food stamps, and free government health care.

So, no Republican is too poor to pay income taxes? Or too rich? No Republican receives welfare, Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, unemployment benefits? And people who do are irresponsible, incapable of caring for themselves?

His statement pretty damning evidence that Romney, like many right-wingers, truly has a skewed view of reality.

The 47% he speaks of includes 17 million senior citizens on social security. These are people who paid into the system all their lives, and now use tax breaks to bring their effective tax rate to zero. Does Romney think they don’t deserve those tax breaks? Does he want to get rid of those breaks for seniors? Way to win Florida.

Another huge chunk of people he mentions are not poor, but middle class families taking standard deductions and getting breaks for the care and education of their children. Does Romney want to get rid of those tax breaks? Way to win middle class families.

Besides which, of course, is the fact that the entire supposition about the 47% is flawed: nobody pays no taxes, most pay their share in social security and medicare taxes, most have property taxes, most face state & local taxes, and everyone pays sales taxes. Add those up and you may have close to the 13% that Romney himself paid.

As for “people who believe that they are victims,” that’s a label much more appropriate for right-wingers. The whole canard about the 47% who pay no taxes is in itself a badge of right-wing victimhood—those poor people are victimizing the decent, hard-working, real Americans who vote Republican! The white males who believe that they never benefit due to their race or gender and that when they fail it’s due to affirmative action, these are people who believe that they are victims. The right-wing Christians who think they are persecuted because they can’t have prayer in every last nook and cranny of public life and because a few department stores print ads saying “Happy Holidays,” these are the people who believe that they are victims.

And entitled? How many conservatives get Social Security and Medicare, and would be enraged if they lost these benefits? How many depend on unemployment checks when they lose their jobs? Remember the right-wing crowds bused in to break up Democratic town halls, screaming “Keep your government hands off my Medicare”? These are people who want all the benefits, but only for themselves, and the people who are not as well off—most of whom paid in to these systems and are just as deserving of the benefits—should be cut off. “I’ve got mine, you go screw yourself” is their motto. That’s not a sense of “entitlement”?

There’s so much more to say about that statement, I can’t put it all down here. But above are the key points. Romney and so many conservatives really think this way, that they are the only ones who work hard and pay taxes, and are being victimized by every single Obama voter, who are lazy, irresponsible moochers who demand to suck at the government teat as if it were their god-given right.

Not just Obama, but all Democratic contenders should use this from now to election day in their campaign ads. Romney thinks that if you get Social Security, Medicare, or unemployment benefits, then you’re a bum who can’t take care of himself, you think you’re entitled. Tell Romney that he’s not entitled to the White House,, that’s he’s not entitled to give himself yet another whopping tax cut, that he’s not entitled to raise taxes on the poor and middle class.

Some blowback regarding the Pizza House owner and registered Republican who gave Obama a bear hug:

But once word got out that Van Duzer is a registered Republican who voted for Obama in 2008 and is planning to do so again in November, angry conservatives flooded his restaurant’s Yelp page with negative reviews and began staging a boycott. (Sample gem: “I cringe at the thought even of eating at this Big Crapple Pizza. Knowing O’Hussain was there totally creeps it out for me.”)

This from the same crowd who absolutely adored “Joe the Plumber”? That was a guy who approached Obama with an obviously fabricated premise about wanting to buy his boss’ business, clearly making up a projected income at exactly the level where Obama suggested we start taxing people higher. Joe was making nowhere near that amount, and so constructed a fantasy in order to put him in that range. And still he flubbed the intended “gotcha” moment, conceived to put Obama on the spot for raising taxes on an “ordinary” American like him: even under his artificially inflated income, Obama’s plan still would not have raised taxes on imaginary-Joe, or at least it would have done so very minimally. Even more ironic, under the two candidates’ tax plans, real-life Joe would have gotten a way bigger tax cut under Obama—and as things have turned out, Obama over the past four years has not even raised imaginary-Joe’s income tax level, either.

And yet this posing faker was immediately embraced, adored, and vaulted to celebrity-hero status among the same crowd that now heaps hatred and invective upon a small business owner who simply got a bit giddy at having the president drop by—attacking his business and trying to shut him down just for liking the Democrat in office.

That’s a great way to represent the “Real America” conservatives believe in.

Instead, conservatives should look towards this guy as a role model, not for who to vote for, but rather for attitude and reasoning skills. He makes an excellent point about what “building it yourself” really means:

So you’re not one of the people who feel like he’s let the country down in his first term?

The bottom line is this: I own a small business. I take accountability for my business. I’m not looking to blame the government. And if people had the same mentality of taking care of their own businesses instead of looking to blame somebody when things are a little bad—just tightening things up and doing the best they can—I think we’d be better off that way, too.

Read the interview with him; he comes across as not just reasonable, but smart and compassionate. The guy got his own—and then immediately started working to help others, raising money for families in need and organizing blood donation drives.

I’m not sure what makes him a Republican; I’m sure I would disagree with him on some issues. And even if he had voted for McCain and planned to vote for Romney, I feel like I would still really like this guy. He’s what you wish all, or even most Republicans could be like—and, for that matter, what more Democrats should be like as well.

Republicans don’t. Democrats do.

I am struck by how Republicans have begun to criticize Obama over Afghanistan. Clint Eastwood seems to think that Obama started the war. As with bin Laden’s capture, Romney and Republicans try to find any way they can to criticize Obama for a war Republicans fumbled and Obama has finally brought to a close. And though Romney has not, like many in his party, promised war in Iran, it is implied if we are to take his statements on the issue seriously—and a war with Iran could turn out to be even longer and bloodier than the last two we have only just now begin to close the door or.

And yet, somehow, still, Republicans have the reputation for being on the side of the soldier, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The public image is reversed, but the public image is wrong. As General Wesley Clark so aptly put it in 2004, “Republicans like weapons systems; Democrats like the soldiers.”

Republicans use soldiers as tools regardless of their safety. Republicans started two massive land wars in Asia, the longest wars in U.S. history, bound to be meat grinders for the soldiery. One was made necessary by a security blunder by a Republican administration and was not only mismanaged by that administration, but was all but forgotten about by them. Bin Laden at Tora Bora. Allowing the Taliban to resurge while Bush started a wholly unnecessary war in Iraq. Soldiers were sent in without body armor or armor for their vehicles. Oil fields were protected while armories full of weapons later used against the troops were left open to looters. Conservatives’ plans for Iran show similar disregard for how many of the military will be struck down as a result. A third land war in Asia within just 15 years? I would agree that a draft would be a bad but perhaps necessary way to bring the real cost into focus for these people, except that these people have always found ways to shelter their own, draft or no; Bush was an excellent example of this.

Republicans love to use the military as backdrops to make them look strong. It seemed that every other public speech given by Bush had a wall of soldiers in the background. Bush made huge PR runs on aircraft carriers (Mission Accomplished!) and on military bases (where soldiers who were not loyal Republicans were pre-screened and locked out of the Thanksgiving dinner Bush used as a PR event; non-Bush-supporters were kept in the barracks and given MREs instead). Meanwhile, military coffins and funerals were banned from sight, out of fear that Americans would care too much for the fallen, and Bush did not even deign to sign letters to families whose loved ones had given the ultimate sacrifice.

But worst, Republicans’ greatest abuse of the soldiery is to use them as a human shield. Reagan used the valor and sacrifice of the troops he sent needlessly and uselessly into Lebanon as a shield when a reporter questioned his reasons for sending them, castigating the reporter for daring to question the honor of the troops, when the reporter was only questioning Reagan’s judgment in putting them in harm’s way. Bush used this coward’s retreat often; any attack on him was morphed into an attack on the troops; a new rule was established that you cannot criticize the president while troops are in the field, a rule conservatives abandoned the moment Obama came into office.

Meanwhile, Republicans cut benefits for the troops, mercilessly extended their tours of duty, and left their families with less and less support, spending money primarily for enticements to get more people to sign up, but then ignoring their needs once recruitment is no longer an issue. While lavish fortunes were spent on mercenaries and fortunes are sunk into often unneeded Defense contracts, relatively trifling amounts that could make big differences for soldiers are struck down by Republicans. The IAVA gives methodologically sound ratings to Congress based upon votes that affect veterans, rating in which Republicans consistently score dead last.

Democrats, on the other hand, have acted with care and caution where it has concerned the troops. Clinton’s war in the Balkans and Obama’s actions in Libya were examples of modern war by Democrats: good causes (stability and human life, not oil) in actions defined by the surgical use of force with minimal or even no loss of life among the soldiery. What funerals there were were not hidden; due homage was paid. Obama has been less than satisfactory in Afghanistan, true; but had he been in charge from the start, do you really think the war would have lasted 11 years? The only bloody military actions Democrats have presided over since Vietnam have been ones left them by presidents named “Bush.”

In the meantime, after the last Bush left, al Qaeda has all but been decimated, with bin Laden at the bottom of the ocean with a bullet in his head. For which, conservatives have only complaint, studiously avoiding any praise for Obama where they would have ordered apotheosis had a Republican been in office.

Democrats do not shy from giving speeches in front of troops, but it is not the common standard that it was for Bush and Republicans that came before. They spend more time actually doing stuff for the troops as opposed to only using them as a convenient backdrop.

Democrats do not use the troops as a human shield. You did not hear Clinton and will not hear Obama saying that an attack on the president is actually an attack on the troops.

But mostly, Democrats care about the soldiers in a contrast with conservatives which could not be deeper or more sharp. Where Republicans cut benefits for the troops, Democrats restore and even shower the troops with help.

Republicans not only disapprove, they despise this.

That’s right. I do not exaggerate. Allow me to give a definitive example.

Less than a year ago, conservatives ripped Obama for praising the troops. They created the false impression that Obama had never said anything good about the soldiers, but then suddenly started praising them for political gain; a false claim, of course.

But the worst part was that they accused Obama of actually abusing the troops, making them into “victims dependent on social-welfare and medical services.” Yep, that’s right. By giving the troops education and job assistance, by giving them good medical care upon their arrival home and paying attention to the emotional scars which have increased the suicide rate, Obama is actually, in the conservative’s view, disrespecting the troops.

Better to do it the conservative way: give them a handshake, salute them, mouth a few cheap platitudes—and then leave them to fend for themselves in a shattered economy in which your are dismantling health care.

That, apparently, is how you “support the troops.” Use them, grind them down, pose with them for a photo shoot, and then abandon them so they can learn self-reliance.

What astonishes me is that the men and women in uniform still trend conservative. Well, maybe not so much, considering the conservative cultural and religious influences built into the military infrastructure; how Fox News and radio shows like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham are featured in military media.

No doubt the message below will be ruthlessly ripped by the conservatives. The troops are for swiftboating, not for supporting godless liberals.

Romney said on Hannity’s show, “It’s time for Harry to put up or shut up.” Essentially, stop making things up about the records I’m hiding.

But then Romney hits back with an equally egregious fabrication:

“It’s untrue, dishonest, and inaccurate. It’s wrong. So I’m looking forward to have Harry reveal his sources and we’ll probably find out it’s the White House.”

“You want to make up stuff about my tax records? Okay, I’ll make stuff up about your source.”

In one respect, Romney just did something we should have seen coming: he both whined about something the opposition did and then did the exact same thing himself. Usually, conservatives wait a while between the whining and the doing-the-same-or-worse, but Romney managed to accomplish both in just seconds. It’s a conscious strategy: make yourself out to be the victim, and the other guy can’t complain that you’re doing the same thing because he’ll look like a hypocrite. It’s kind of a political aikido move where you get to be a hypocrite but the other guy gets the blame.

It is, ironically, one of the more politically astute moves Romney has made in a while. Dishonest and hypocritical, but astute. In an honest accounting, however, Romney just ceded the high ground. Now they’re both on equal standing, and Romney has no right to complain.

According to the Brookings Institute Tax Policy Center (the TPC is a Brookings project), Romney will raise taxes on the middle class in order to pay for tax breaks for corporations, the rich, and especially the super-rich.

Brookings has been called “liberal” (as well as “centrist” and even “conservative”) in the past, but in fact is centrist, or at least a muddle of various positions. The Tax Policy Center is noted as being carefully non-partisan. While one of the three economists who made the analysis was an Obama adviser, another was an adviser to Bush 41. Furthermore, the institute went out of its way to make the analysis as favorable to Romney as possible. If there are any errors or misinterpretations, they are the fault of the Romney campaign for not making public all of the plan–probably because they know it’s bad news and are trying to hide it. But this analysis is decidedly not a liberal smear against Romney.

So, what is Romney’s plan? If you recall, he plans to:

• cut all income taxes by 20%
• reduce the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%
• eliminate the estate tax

This is all, of course, heavily slanted to the rich. Take the 20% income tax cut for “everyone.” Sounds fair, right? Everyone gets the same cut, right? Welllll, no. If you pay as much as 35% on your income, you get a 7% cut; if you pay, say, 10% (which the poorest tax-paying families do), you get a paltry 2% cut.

Yep, that’s fair, right? And why do this? Under the presumption that rich people will then use that money to create jobs. Which is complete BS. We know for a fact that this kind of tax cut is the least stimulative expenditure the government can possibly make.

Then corporations get a whopping 10% tax cut, or 30% of their current rate. And will they be required to add a single job? Hell, no. Nor will they, if they can manage it; corporations are about increasing profits, not jobs.

And the estate tax? Well, right now, a married couple would have to inherit more than $10 million for even one penny of an inheritance to get taxed. And farmers and small business owners–usually trotted out as the “victims” of the estate tax–are rarely, if ever affected by the tax. Only a handful of farms a year, for example, owe anything at all, and the family gets 14 years to pay it. Nope: this tax is ultimately a tax on the rich, and a tax on the rich only. Paris Hilton, this cut’s for you!

In the meantime, the cuts would hike the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars more than Bush’s standing cuts already do–more tax cuts for the rich that Romney wants to defend, by the way–and Romney has promised to be revenue-neutral on this. So, how can he pay for it?

By socking it to the middle class, of course:

His rate-cutting plan for individuals would reduce tax collections by about $360 billion in 2015, the study says. To avoid increasing deficits–as Romney has pledged–the plan would have to generate an equivalent amount of revenue by slashing tax breaks for mortgage interest, employer-provided health care, education, medical expenses, state and local taxes, and child care–all breaks that benefit the middle class. …

Millionaires would get an $87,000 tax cut, the study says. But for 95 percent of the population, taxes would go up by about 1.2 percent, an average of $500 a year.

Got that? Romney himself will get enough to pay for another car elevator, while Joe Six-pack has to give up, well, you decide–money for his kids’ college funds? Any hope of paying off his mortgage early? Cutting corners like buying enough clothes, or food, or what few luxuries the family can afford nowadays? Or, probably, more likely, just descending even further into debt.

Anyone who makes less than a couple hundred grand a year and votes for Romney is either a certifiable moron, or they care enough about conservative social values or foreign policy to pay through the nose for it. But then, 45% were stupid enough to vote for McCain, another nine-figure millionaire who forwarded tax plans which would also short-change poor and pay handsomely to the rich.

And none of this even touches on the fact that Republicans are on the record as wanting to tax people who are so fracking poor that they can’t even pay taxes in the first place. If Romney gets into office, the chances are that the Republican Poor Tax will be far more likely to pass.

Contrast this to Obama, who wants to end the deficit-bloating Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, while maintaining the tax cuts for the middle class–and in the meantime, has cut the payroll tax, as well as several other taxes, for the poor and the middle class. For people who work, not for people whose fortunes work for them.

Update:

Romney, predictably, is calling the study “biased” and “liberal.” Neither institution involved is “liberal,” and if they are biased, it was in favor of Romney, not the reverse.

Not to mention that when the exact same group that the Romney campaign is now calling “liberal” and “biased” came out with a report on Rick Perry’s tax proposal last November, Romney called it an “Objective Third-Party Analysis.”

Krugman takes a look at the study and confirms that not only were they fair, they actually went out of their way to be more fair than they needed to be:

The question one might ask is, did TPC – which is actually painstakingly and painfully nonpartisan – make questionable assumptions to get its results, so that some other set of assumptions might portray Romneynomics in a more favorable light? And the answer is no: TPC actually bent over backwards to literally give Romney every possible benefit of the doubt.

Here’s what they did. They took Romney at his word that he plans to offset his cuts in income tax rates by broadening the base, that is, limiting exemptions and other loopholes. They also assumed, however, that Romney would not be willing to tax dividends and capital gains as ordinary income, since he has made it clear that he opposes any rise in taxes on investment income. As they point out, this leaves a relatively small pool of loopholes to close – big enough that the Romney tax cuts could, in principle, be paid for by base broadening, but not with a lot of room to spare.

So which loopholes are closed? TPC made the most Romney-friendly assumption they could – namely, that base broadening is concentrated on top incomes as much as possible. First you eliminate all deductions that benefit those with more than $1 million in income; then all that benefit those with between $500,000 and $1 million; and so on. …

So they’re actually giving Romney every possible benefit of the doubt – and still his plan is a redistribution from the middle class to the rich. In practice it would surely be much worse.

Not much to decode in Romney’s charge: if the conclusion is unfavorable to Romney, it must be liberal. Forbes, which concluded that the TPC was impartial, or perhaps only slightly left-leaning, came to that conclusion in part by asking if the TPC analyses “loved” Obama’s or McCain’s tax plans better. That’s baloney–if Obama’s plan was fiscally more responsible and more accurate in its claims, the TPC would not be “liberal” for recognizing that. This is more of that BS “balance” in reporting–if Obama tells the truth and Romney lies, you can’t say that without being “liberal” or “pro-Obama.”

In the end, the real question is, was the TPC’s analysis fair? And the answer seems clear: it was more than fair.

As Krugman pointed out, and as I did earlier, if the Romney campaign doesn’t agree, they can release the details of the plan themselves and show everyone how ‘fair’ their plan is. Romney wants to be secretive about his religion, secretive about his taxes, secretive about just about everything–including, apparently, his proposals for what he would do as president. We, apparently, have no business knowing what they are, and we’re liberal and biased if we make the best possible guess while being as favorable to Romney as possible.

That’s fair, isn’t it?

So, Romney flip-flopped yet again. Initially faced with having to admit that he was the biggest tax hound in Massachusetts history, he coweringly sent out a flunky to say it wasn’t a tax, causing a huge uproar among the right wing who were salivating at the prospect of beating Obama to death with the word “tax.” Sensing that he had to jump on the bandwagon, Romney joined the chorus and called it a “tax.” He knows that he won’t pay much for the hypocrisy; he didn’t “tax” the whole country as governor of Massachusetts, and the media almost never calls out politicians for lies or rank hypocrisy anymore.

Of course, it’s not actually a tax in the usual sense, unless the money you pay when you evade taxes is a “tax,” or the money you pay when you get caught driving without insurance is a “tax.” The most onerous “burden” will actually be the fact that you have to get insurance–which is mostly onerous to those who want to get the best out of the system without paying full price for it.

Not that the penalty-versus-tax meme lasted long; the economic report came out, and it’s a lot less than we need right now.

Yes, Obama’s job numbers are lackluster. But that doesn’t mean that Romney will do better–quite the opposite, in fact.

Romney is, as predicted, having a field day with Obama’s numbers–but hypocritically so.

Never mind that it is the 21st consecutive month of growth following an economic catastrophe which ignited a depression–all caused by Obama’s predecessor.

Never mind that we are now adding more than 800,000 more jobs per month than when Obama came in to office.

Never mind that despite being handed a far less difficult economy, Bush took two and half years to return to stable job growth, while it took Obama only one year.

Never mind that at this point in his term, again despite far better conditions, Bush had only 12 months of growth, only four of those being over gaining 150,000 jobs.

And never mind that Obama has had to deal with the most extreme opposition in living memory, a Congress actually dedicated to sabotaging his attempts to repair the economy in order to make him fail.

That last is a key point. Yes, Obama could have done better–but not because he acted liberally, rather because he did not stand up the the Republicans to do what he should have known was right.

It is a key point for two reasons: first, as Obama was trying to carry the nation back up, Republicans were grabbing his heels and pulling him back down. And second, had we done what Republicans were clamoring for–more tax cuts for the wealthy, higher taxes on the poor, and less spending on infrastructure and other ways to get the economy pumping again–we would be in far deeper shit than we find ourselves today. As is only sometimes observed, Obama’s poor ratings are not just because he’s more liberal than the right is comfortable with, but also because he’s not as liberal as those on the left want him to be.

Romney, unconcerned with facts, likes to wave around “his record” as governor of Massachusetts:

Romney takes credit for vetoing more than 800 spending items passed by the Legislature, saying he wiped out unneeded programs, cut taxes 19 times, built up a $2-billion rainy-day fund and balanced the budget four years in a row. All of that, he says, shows he can stop overspending. “We can balance our budget and live within our means,” he recently told supporters in Ohio.

He leaves out a few tiny details, however:

But Romney’s telling omits key facts that clash with the agenda of his campaign for president:

• The Legislature overrode most of Romney’s spending vetoes.
• State spending rose by 22% on Romney’s watch, nearly double the rate of inflation.
• Romney increased corporate taxes and state fees by $750 million a year, outstripping his tax cuts.

In short, everything had to get past the Democrats, just as Obama has to now get everything pat the Republicans. And while the Democrats shot down a lot of Romney’s ideas, it was not to sabotage the economy–quite the opposite, it was to help the economy, to improve it. Directly the opposite of Republican’s in Congress during Obama’s term. Romney and the Mass. Dems may have been at odds, but it was a constructive rivalry.

In the end, Massachusetts increased spending and it raised taxes on the wealthy–this is what Romney is celebrating, despite his claims to the opposite. Furthermore, it is not what he would do as president.

The primary moves initiated by Romney that helped Massachusetts improve their economy were fee increases and closing corporate tax loopholes. As president, Romney would not be able to raise funds with fee increases, and he wants to slash corporate taxes, not close their national loopholes.

But that was not the main reason Massachusetts’ economy improved–it was because, at the time, the country as a whole was finally coming out of the recession.

So, Romney’s record as governor really reflects a Democratic agenda being pushed over his vetoes, tax and fee hikes he cannot or will not implement as president, and improvements in a more general economic environment which Romney will definitely not have to benefit from as president.

Just the other day, I got a belated comment to a blog post from April 2010. In that blog post, I pointed out that Democrats should run on a chart showing where Bush and the Republicans had been leading us versus where Obama had taken us.

That is very important, yet something that goes virtually unrecognized because it is the proverbial dog that didn’t bark–despite the economy being shitty, instead of focusing on what Obama could have done, imagine what would have happened had McCain won and Republican had control over Congress.

Anyway, the commenter linked to this chart:

It appears to be a chart the commenter made himself–and seems to be pretty bogus. The claim of measuring jobs by the “percentage of jobs lost or gained vs. 1st month in office” is misleading; this chart does not compare each successive months’ performance to the first month, thus showing performance against the initial benchmark (which would be a fairer way to judge).

Instead, it simply shows the number of existing jobs with starting number keyed to zero. The author pretends fairness by changing Romney’s numbers somehow so the nadir matches Obama’s, but it is far from accurate, for several reasons. For example, it is easier to recover from a stumble than it is to reverse direction when falling at terminal velocity. Obama was handed an economy in freefall and immediately set upon by an opposition bent on making him fail against the backdrop of a sputtering world economy. Romney was handed a state in mild trouble with a Democratic legislature trying to fix things their own way, against the backdrop of an improving national economy. So, yeah, “Apples to Apples” my ass.

Curious as to what the real picture was, I got the numbers on my own and ran them through a comparison that used the initial state as a benchmark against which you could compare future results, and got this result:

The “100%” mark means that you are gaining jobs as opposed to losing; 200% would mean that you are gaining as many jobs as you were losing at the start. Again, a huge advantage for Romney, as gaining 9500 jobs in Massachusetts is a hell of a lot easier than gaining 750,000 jobs at the national level.

As you can see, this shows a pretty different story than the ginned up chart above. As one might expect, Romney’s numbers show greater month-to-month variation due to the fact that he’s presiding over a smaller workforce. Whereas Obama deals with changes in the tens or hundreds of thousands, Romney was dealing in changes of no more than 15,000 in a single month. To smooth that out, I added a trendline–and interestingly, it tracks pretty much exactly with Obama’s performance.

Which means that Romney, in Massachusetts, got just the same level of job growth as Obama despite (1) starting off with a far less catastrophic situation; (2) having a far lower bar in order to claim accomplishment; (3) having a legislature that’s trying to help you instead of hurt you; and (4) getting buoyed by a greater economic environment. In short, he did exactly as well as Obama despite lacking virtually every great disadvantage that Obama had to face.

Imagine what would have happened if Massachusetts were imploding, were Romney pressed to create impossible numbers of jobs, had the Democrats been pitted against him, resolved to sabotage his recovery attempts, and the nation as a whole been in serious decline. Massachusetts would have been crushed under Romney’s governance.

Faced with that challenge at a far greater level, Obama has done passably well instead of impossibly great, for which Romney blasts him for being an abject failure. Kind of like a guy who directed a community theater play, which got good reviews on account of a great cast, heckling Steven Spielberg for not winning the Oscar.

If Romney becomes president and Republicans maintain control of the House, with Republicans blocking or even controlling the Senate, we can expect (a) even more and bigger tax cuts for the wealthy; (b) mild (obligatory) tax cuts for the middle class, offset by (c) tax hikes for the poor and the middle class in various forms, including forcing the poor to pay or pay more; cutting federal aid, thus forcing either tax hikes at state and local levels or reducing local services which essentially forces individuals to pay more, hitting the poor the hardest; and a much more antagonistic environment against the worker–less pay, fewer benefits, less union protection, less regulation against unfair pay and other worker abuses, etc. etc.

This along with spending austerity measures which Krugman points out is poison to an economy like ours right now.

Wow. It’s hard to imagine being more brazenly dishonest, hypocritical, and egotistical–all at once–as this.

I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet. So, I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back.

Well, I pushed the idea of a stimulus back in November of 2008, so I’ll take credit for millions of jobs saved. You’re welcome.

Oh, wait, you actually have to do something to get credit for it?

“Auto Czar” Steve Rattner is taken aback:

I’ve read, I think, everything Romney’s had to say on this subject, and the level of flip-flopping and dissembling is truly mind-boggling. He’s been on every side of the auto rescue at different times and said different things, so it’s hard to know what he honestly thinks.“

One notable area where Romney was relatively consistent was that he always pushed for private takeovers of the industry rather than using government money, though no private parties expressed any interest. He also advocated punishing the unions, which would essentially have meant devastating worker pay and benefits. Ironic, as well-paying America jobs were supposedly what this whole business was all about saving.

Like Obama’s call on bin Laden, the moves the president made with the auto industry were risky, unpopular, and could have sunk his presidency had he failed. However, he made them, succeeded–and, again as with bin Laden, Republicans who attacked him for even suggesting such moves now crowd in and try to take credit for their success.