Month: May 2012

Lab rats

by digby

Hey, I wonder what they’re cooking up in the wonderful laboratories of democracy today? Let’s take a look at one of our favorite states, Arizona, where we already know they are turning back the clock on immigrant rights to the 1940s. This week they took another step backwards on women’s rights to well, the days when only “bad girls” had sex:

Arizona businesses that designate themselves to be a “religiously affiliated employer” will no longer have to include contraceptives in the insurance coverage they provide for their workers.

Gov. Jan Brewer signed legislation to broaden an exemption to a 2002 law which spells out that businesses which provide prescription drugs as part of their health insurance plans cannot exclude birth control pills. The governor said she was satisfied with the last-minute compromise worked out by lawmakers.

“In its final form, this bill is about nothing more than preserving religious freedom to which were all constitutionally entitled,” Brewer said in a prepared statement. “Mandating that a religious institution provide a service in direct contradiction with its faith would represent an obvious encroachment upon the First Amendment.”

In a separate development, the governor signed legislation designed to ensure that the state cannot take away the license of a professional because of that person’s religious belief.

Arizona law already protects pharmacists and doctors who refuse to prescribe or dispense contraceptives. This measure extends to all state licenses.

Proponents could not cite any example where this has occurred.

But they pointed to an attempt — eventually abandoned — to expand the oath that lawyers have to take that they will not permit considerations of gender, age, race, nationality, disability social standing to influence how they do their jobs to extend to sexual orientation. Foes of that move, which eventually was abandoned, said it could have force religious attorneys to represent gay clients who want them to take up some legal issue related to their orientation.

Of course I’d imagine you’ll have the ability to beg for coverage if you’re willing to prove to your religious employer that you have endometriosis or some other reproductive malady that requires it, so it’s no problem. I know that I used to enjoy sharing my intimate health issues with my bosses. It promotes such a respectful working relationship, especially if you happen to be young and single and working for a conservative company.

You’ll notice that this is actually getting worse, not better. The original law, passed in 2002, only gave churches the ability to opt out. Now, it’s any employer with religious affiliation. Soon it will be any employer who calls himself religious. Long established rights to birth control, like abortion, are under siege in states throughout the country.

I’ve spend some time recently studying the Tenthers, since they are the most organized of the modern states’ rights adherents, and it’s worth noting where they intersect with liberals and libertarians. (Indeed, I’ve called Ron Paul more of a tenther than a libertarian since he often is more forceful in defending the rights of state governments than universal individual liberty.)

Adherents oppose a broad range of federal government programs, including the War on Drugs, federal surveillance, and other limitations on privacy and civil and economic liberties, plus numerous New Deal legislation to Great Society legislation, such as Medicaid, Medicare, the VA health system and the G.I. Bill.

Tenther movement should not be confused with libertarianism, although the two often have similar positions. Whereas libertarians oppose programs such as the War on Drugs on ideological grounds, seeing them as unjustified government intrusion into lives of its citizens, tenthers hold that such programs may be perfectly acceptable but only when implemented by individual states. Libertarians are opposed to sodomy laws and believe that “the government has no business in the bedroom”. In contrast, it has been argued by tenthers that the 2003 Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which invalidated sodomy laws in all U.S. states where they remained, was an unconstitutional federal intrusion into what should have been a states’ rights area; from the tenther perspective, “there clearly is no right to sodomy found anywhere in the Constitution” and “the State of Texas has the right to decide for itself how to regulate social matters like sex, using its own local standards”.

You can see the difference, which is subtle but important. It’s this fetish for federalism that’s driving these regressive rollbacks of civil rights and individual freedoms that are sweeping through the laboratories of democracy. Ron Paul and many of his followers seem to be blurring the difference, but all over the country states are showing they are perfectly capable of being as totalitarian, theocratic and authoritarian as the feds are. Tenthers are fine with that. Libertarians shouldn’t be.

Update: Check out this editorial in the Arizona Republic about an upcoming Arizona ballot measure:

Arizona voters will face a lot of serious decisions on this year’s ballot. They shouldn’t have to waste time on an unconstitutional referendum that would seize federal land.

In Arizona’s centennial year, House Concurrent Resolution 2004 would explicitly violate the act that allowed our state to enter the union. That law requires the state, as Arizona agreed in its Constitution, to disclaim all right and title to federal lands here.

Every year, the Legislature huffs and puffs about the federal government’s relation to Arizona. But this sort of silly posturing is usually reserved for resolutions that conservative lawmakers fire off to Washington when they can round up the votes.

HCR 2004 would ask voters to amend the Arizona Constitution to assert state sovereignty over air, water, wildlife and, with a few exceptions including reservations, land.

Lawmakers are taking aim at two favorite targets: environmental regulations and federal land. Yet both bring benefits to Arizonans. It was only under the pressure of federal clean-air laws, for instance, that legislators took steps that reduced carbon monoxide in Maricopa County to healthful levels.

Federal land serves a wide spectrum of purposes, from recreation to grazing to mining.

Are there rules? Sure.

Just as there would be on private land. The national forests, meanwhile, provide critical protection for our watersheds.

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Catfights and communists

by digby

I don’t think you need to read any more than these two paragraphs to understand what a total piece of wingnut garbage this new book about the Obama White House is:

As the person who controlled access to the first couple, Valerie Jarrett saw Oprah as a potential threat to her power. If Oprah went unchecked, she would bypass Valerie and go directly to the president and first lady. What good was it being the gatekeeper if you couldn’t lock the gate when you wanted? And so Valerie set about turning Michelle against Oprah. Oprah was too close to the president . . . Oprah was acting like she was the first lady . . . Oprah didn’t know her place . . . Oprah was a bad influence . . . Valerie advised Michelle to “distance herself” from Oprah and cut her out of the White House inner circle.

IT didn’t take much to convince Michelle. As Michelle knew only too well, her husband had a compelling need to win the approval of strong women like Oprah. He seemed to be in awe of the talk-show host, sometimes giving her advice priority over Michelle’s. For instance, Oprah thought that Obama was overexposing himself on television and told him to pull back. Though Michelle disagreed, Obama listened to Oprah and restricted his TV appearances. As far as Michelle was concerned, Oprah’s billions and her elite lifestyle disqualified her as an adviser to Barack, who had no truck with wealthy people, except as a source of campaign contributions, and was a redistributionist at heart.

First of all, the whole cat-fight narrative is ridiculous. In fact, it doesn’t get any stupider than this:

“Oprah only wants to cash in, using the White House as a backdrop for her show to perk up her ratings,” Michelle was quoted as telling her staff. “Oprah, with her yo-yo dieting and huge girth, is a terrible role model. Kids will look at Oprah, who’s rich and famous and huge, and figure it’s OK to be fat.”

Oprah went through the roof when she heard about Michelle’s remarks. “If Michelle thinks I need more fame and money,” said Oprah, “she’s nuts.”

I ASKED a White House insider to explain Michelle’s animus toward Oprah. “Michelle is furious that her husband makes late-night calls to Oprah, seeking ideas on how to improve his sinking popularity,” the source told me. “Michelle thinks he should turn to her, not Oprah, for that kind of advice. What’s more, Michelle suspects that at one point Oprah secretly encouraged Hillary to consider a run against Barack in the 2012 Democratic primaries.

“Barack just laughs at the idea and so does Oprah. But Michelle still believes Oprah has been getting too close to Hillary, whom Michelle calls ‘a snake.’

Considering the author’s previous sexist hit-job on Hillary Clinton (thoroughly debunked here by Media Matters) I’ve got to assume this is some kind of personal problem with him. (Why do I get the feeling that he’s a big soap opera fan?)

But I wanted to draw attention to the lines I bolded. I don’t think you need to read anything else to know exactly where this fellow is coming from. It isn’t just that he’s an obviously sexist jerk. This line about how Obama hates rich people because he a communist — oh, excuse me, he’s a “redistributionist” — tells you everything you need to know about his political bias. Only the veriest wingnuts in the land talk that way.

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GOP Bizarroworld 2012 edition

by digby

I thought after Paul Ryan’s bizarroworld statement that Democrats are trying to enact European austerity was probably an anomaly. It certainly couldn’t be that we were going back a decade where Republican leaders routinely told the American people, “you can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes.” But it appears they are:

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Republican conference and a lead critic of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, warned Sunday against jumping to the conclusion that the $2 billion loss JP Morgan Chase incurred on a risky bet means regulations need to be tighter.

“We need to make sure we get all facts before jumping to conclusions about the need for greater financial regulation,” he said on Fox News Sunday, “it is important that we make sure we have got some good safeguards in place but in a way that doesn’t impair their ability to mitigate risk and to protect themselves and their balance sheets as well.”

I think we can all see the absurdity of that statement, can’t we? The vaunted risk managers JP Morgan Chase just acted like a bunch of degenerate gamblers and lost at least 2 billion dollars. But the worst thing that could happen would be to inhibit their ability to mitigate risk? Is he implying that government regulation is what caused JPMC to act like riverboat gamblers? Could be. In the opposite world of modern GOP economic theory, when too-big-to-fail banks place gigantic risky bets, the worst thing that can happen is if the government makes it harder for them to place gigantic risky bets because it interferes with their ability to stop themselves from placing gigantic risky bets.Or something.

We are not just in bizarroworld, we’ve also gone back in time. This is from Michelle Goldberg in Salon back in February of 2005:

It’s a good thing I went to the Conservative Political Action Conference this year. Otherwise I never would have known that, despite the findings of the authoritative David Kay report and every reputable media outlet on earth, the United States actually discovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, vindicating all of George W. Bush’s pre-war predictions. The revelation came not from some crank at Free Republic or hustler from Talon News, but from a congressman surrounded by men from the highest echelons of American government. No wonder the attendees all seemed to believe him.

The crowd at CPAC’s Thursday night banquet, held at D.C.’s Ronald Reagan Building, was full of right-wing stars. Among those seated at the long presidential table at the head of the room were Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, Dore Gold, foreign policy advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and NRA president Kayne Robinson. Vice President Dick Cheney, a regular CPAC speaker, gave the keynote address. California Rep. Chris Cox had the honor of introducing him, and he took the opportunity to mock the Democrats whose hatred of America led them to get Iraq so horribly wrong.

“America’s Operation Iraqi Freedom is still producing shock and awe, this time among the blame-America-first crowd,” he crowed. Then he said, “We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq.” Apparently, most of the hundreds of people in attendance already knew about these remarkable, hitherto-unreported discoveries, because no one gasped at this startling revelation.

When all else fails, just pretend that up is down and black is white and your “team” will follow, no matter how absurd it is.

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Respecting Motherhood

by David Atkins

Today is Mother’s Day, the day when we stop to reflect and give thanks to those who gave us birth for their patience and sacrifice in bringing us into this world, and (hopefully) for caring for us throughout our childhood and beyond. And good thing, too: mothers have it harder now than ever. As Ann Romney and Hilary Rosen wage their Mommy Wars, what is often left out of the discussion is that whether or not one views women’s liberation and out-of-home career aspirations as good things or not, the move of women into the workplace is driven just as much by necessity as by choice. It now takes far more than two incomes to produce the same standard of living that one income used to produce just a few decades ago. Productivity continues to increase in American corporations even as wages essentially stagnate, forcing both partners to work to earn money even if they would prefer that one of them stayed home.

Throw parenthood into the mix, and the situation becomes even more difficult. A child must be taken care of during the day. In the brave new economy, two working parents can use the public education system as mostly as a babysitting device once the child reaches a certain age–to the detriment of both the child and an education system ill equipped to stand in loco parentis. But before then childcare of some sort is a necessity during the regular workday–and that alone can often be expensive enough to almost negate the second parent’s salary.

But then there’s home life. Children have to be taken care of during the evening as well, usually by parents exhausted after an increasingly long and stressful workday and commute. And unfortunately, as Arlie Hochschild amply demonstrated in The Second Shift, most of the burden of that care falls on women. On mothers. Mothers who increasingly work the same or longer hours for pay than their spouses, if their spouse is even present at all.

Part of the problem, of course, is a set of cultural expectations placed on both genders. My own mother was a brutal victim of the Second Shift. My father taught us at home (that was in essence his “job”), but being very patriarchal and conservative about gender roles, he adamantly refused to do what he considered “women’s work.” All the dusting and scrubbing, the dishes and laundry, and most other similar work was women’s work. “Man’s work” was basically vacuuming (interestingly), and outdoor yardwork (in which women were also supposed to participate, but not in operating machinery.)

The injustice of this situation became apparent to me early on as a child. As a young teenager I “rebelled” by daring to help my mother do the laundry, for which I was roundly mocked by my father for being variously gay or playing the part of a female maidservant. My given nickname was “Maria” for about a month, and I was called a “fa**ot” more times than I can possibly count–simply for having the audacity to do the dishes and laundry, thus betraying my proper gender role.

While mine is obviously an extreme case, this sort of gender typing is extremely commonplace. Fathers teach their sons and daughters what their “proper” roles are in dividing work at home, and mothers are all-too-often complicit–sometimes eagerly so–in the training. That in turn makes the extraordinary burden of motherhood a generational one, a curse passed down from patriarchal generation to patriarchal generation, ensuring Second Shifts well into the next several decades and beyond.

And that, more than anything Ann Romney or Hilary Rosen might say, is the gravest insult to motherhood.

So on this Mother’s Day, the best gift both men and women can give to their mothers is this: a devout promise to help break the cycle, and to end the social and economic practices that lead to the Second Shift and the additional burden on motherhood.

A promise to increase wages so that both mothers and fathers who wish to stay home to take care of their children can actually do so, even if they aren’t married to multi-millionaire vulture capitalists. A promise to assist the burdens of single mothers and fathers. And a promise to end the gender stereotypes that keep working mothers indentured to a life of Second Shifts and endless stress. And, of course, a promise to make sure that women have the ability to choose at all times the times and circumstances under which they will or will not become mothers.

Let this generation be the last to so poorly respect as a society the amazing women we honor today.

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Saturday Night at the Movies

A house divided between the Real Americans and the parasites

by digby

Remember that tumblr called “We are the 53%”? It featured “stories” like this one:

It was in response to the popular “We are the 99%” theme, with “the 53%” referring to the hard working Americans who allegedly sacrifice for the deadbeats who pay no income tax (because they don’t make enough money.) This 47% would include children, sick and elderly people, all of whom should get out there and work like this fine woman is doing.And just because you are working at a low paying job doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be forced to go without food so that these lovely people can maintain the illusion that they don’t receive any benefit from the taxes they pay.

In any case, these people have a new hero who is predicting a civil war between the decent 53%ers and the 47% parasites. It’s Richard Mourdock, the newly anointed GOP candidate for Senate in Indiana, who explained it this way:

The Republican Party’s nominee for Indiana’s U.S. Senate seat recently compared the fight over tax rates and reform to former president Abraham Lincoln’s concern over slavery, alluding to Lincoln’s famous “House Divided” speech ahead of the Civil War….

“MOURDOCK: What he meant by that was that slavery was either going to be totally eliminated from the United States or it was no longer just going to be restricted to the Southern states, it was going to go everywhere. I am here to suggest to you that we are in a house divided. You know this past April, when our federal taxes were paid, 47 percent — 47 percent — of all American households paid no income tax. In fact, half of that 47 percent almost, actually got tax money back from the government that they never paid — because a few years ago we revised the welfare program to make it part of the tax code. When 47 percent are paying no income taxes — they do pay Social Security — but they are not paying income taxes, and 53 percent are carrying the load, we are a house divided.”

Ed Kilgore quipped:

Hoo boy! Aside from the great historical and moral insight that leads Mourdock to compare the antebellum Slave Power to people with no power at all, you do have to wonder if he’s suggesting another Civil War may prove necessary to crush the Rebellion against the rights of the better-off to fully enjoy the fruits of their labor, their capital gains, their inheritances, and their own government benefits without having to share any of them with those people. Hell, isn’t it enough that those people were the beneficiaries of the first Civil War, earning the precious right to earn their own wealth as sharecroppers? No wonder there’s a Tea Party Movement!

Just don’t call it a class war because that would be very rude and demeaning to our fine fellow Americans.

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Colin Powell is still trying to cover up his crimes

by digby

Are they really going to let Colin Powell get away with this? Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution lays out the particulars:

In his new book, It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership, Colin Powell writes this about his 2003 presentation at the United Nations about Iraq’s supposed WMD: “I get mad when bl*ggers accuse me of lying – of knowing the information was false. I didn’t.”

Well, I’m a blugger, and I accuse Colin Powell of lying. The evidence is overwhelming that he knew much of what he said in front of the Security Council was false.

This may not seem plausible to people who know Powell only via the media image he’s carefully constructed over decades – that of being Washington’s last honorable man. As journalist Margaret Carlson said in 2003, “Whatever Colin does, I’ll go with.”

But in fact Powell’s image has about as much to do with reality as what he told the UN. Though his entire career Powell has eagerly bent the truth to please his superiors. He started his climb up the Army ladder by covering up the massacre of civilians by U.S. troops in Vietnam, even serving as a character witness for a general who apparently shot Vietnamese from helicopters for fun. During the 1980s, when Powell was assistant to then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, he also helped cover up the Iran-contra scandal, and almost certainly deceived congressional investigators. (If there were a Museum of Washington’s Funniest Lies, it would have its own wing for Powell’s statement that, “To my recollection, I don’t have a recollection.”)

So everyone’s default assumption should have been that Powell would lie to Americans and the world at the UN. And – as anyone can see just by looking at what’s in the public record – he did. Below is a look line by line through Powell’s presentation to demonstrate the chasm between what he knew and what he said.

It’s very thorough. But scruffy bloggers aside, you’d think he’d at least be worried that the Villagers would believe Bob Woodward:

This appears in Bob Woodward’s book Plan of Attack:

[Powell] had decided to add his personal interpretation of the intercepts to the rehearsed script, taking them substantially further and casting them in the most negative light…Concerning the intercept about inspecting for the possibility of “forbidden ammo,” Powell took the interpretation further: “Clean out all of the areas… Make sure there is nothing there.” None of this was in the intercept.
Here’s the conversation as Powell presented it at the UN. As Woodward reported, the underlined sentences were simply added by Powell:

POWELL: “They’re inspecting the ammunition you have, yes.”
“Yes.”

“For the possibility there are forbidden ammo.”

“For the possibility there is by chance forbidden ammo?”

“Yes.”

“And we sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there.”

Powell then explained:

This is all part of a system of hiding things and moving things out of the way and making sure they have left nothing behind.

According to the official State Department translation (and confirmed for me by Iraqi Imad Khadduri), the Iraqi soldier merely said:

“And we sent you a message to inspect the scrap areas and the abandoned areas.”
And it’s no surprise the Iraqi said this. Here’s what the Duelfer report found about what was going on within the Iraqi government just before the January 30th intercepted conversation:

The NMD director met with Republican Guard military leaders on 25 January 2003 and advised them they were to sign documents saying that there was no WMD in their units, according to a former Iraqi senior officer. Husam Amin told them that the government would hold them responsible if UNMOVIC found any WMD in their units or areas, or if there was anything that cast doubt on Iraq’s cooperation with UNMOVIC. Commanders established committees to ensure their units retained no evidence of old WMD.
Again: Powell took evidence of the Iraqis doing what they were supposed to do—i.e., searching their gigantic ammunition dumps to make sure they weren’t accidentally holding onto banned chemical weapons—and doctored it to make it look as if Iraq were hiding banned weapons.

He lied. There’s no doubt about it. And he’s going to spend the rest of his life trying to airbrush history. But it isn’t going to work. This wasn’t about a personal indiscretion or even a corrupt business deal. He knowingly lied that the country was in danger of being attacked by a foreign nation in order to justify an illegal invasion. That’s a serious as it gets and Colin Powell’s reputation won’t recover. The internet never forgets.

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Ritual humiliation 101

by digby

This is an interesting post about Romney’s high school years as a bully ringleader and what it say about him today:

I don’t mean to suggest that Romney is without compassion. I believe, for instance, that he loves his wife and his children, and that he believes in God and the flag. But there is something in his character that I am starting to get frightened about, an unwillingness, or an inability, to feel remorse, to simply own up to a moral failing, to apologize not just if “somebody was hurt” but because you know, deep down, that you hurt someone.

Think about it: here are these half dozen men who took part in a savage act nearly fifty years ago. It has haunted all of them. And the ringleader, the guy who made the plan and led the mob and cut the victim’s hair off remembers … nothing?

It’s just bullshit, total fucking sociopathic bullshit. And it makes me sad that such an episode comes to light and all Romney can do—a guy who wants to be elected to our highest office—is nervously lie and make excuses, as if this were political problem. It’s not a political problem. It’s a moral problem. It’s a sin he committed for which any believer would seek atonement.

The other bully anecdote in the story has been somewhat overlooked, but it’s just as telling:

One venerable English teacher, Carl G. Wonnberger, nicknamed “the Bat” for his diminished eyesight, was known to walk into the trophy case and apologize, step into wastepaper baskets and stare blindly as students slipped out the back of the room to smoke by the open windows. Once, several students remembered the time pranksters propped up the back axle of Wonnberger’s Volkswagen Beetle with two-by-fours and watched, laughing from the windows, as the unwitting teacher slammed the gas pedal with his wheels spinning in the air.

As an underclassman, Romney accompanied Wonnberger and Pierce Getsinger, another student, from the second floor of the main academic building to the library to retrieve a book the two boys needed. According to Getsinger, Romney opened a first set of doors for Wonnberger, but then at the next set, with other students around, he swept his hand forward, bidding the teacher into a closed door. Wonnberger walked right into it and Getsinger said Romney giggled hysterically as the teacher shrugged it off as another of life’s indignities.

How different, really, is that from this?

I wasn’t joking when I said this would actually help Romney with the base. This bullying is one of the defining characteristics of modern American conservatism. The idea that the good people all work hard and it’s only the lazy that ever need help is fundamental to their worldview. Even the Tea Partiers who are on government assistance insist that unlike all the others, they have worked hard and so deserve it.

I’ve been writing about this for a long time, often in the context of the torture debate. But it also plays a large part in our political system. It’s actually a very well developed form of social control called Ritual Defamation (or Ritual Humiliation:

Defamation is the destruction or attempted destruction of the reputation, status, character or standing in the community of a person or group of persons by unfair, wrongful, or malicious speech or publication. For the purposes of this essay, the central element is defamation in retaliation for the real or imagined attitudes, opinions or beliefs of the victim, with the intention of silencing or neutralizing his or her influence, and/or making an example of them so as to discourage similar independence and “insensitivity” or non-observance of taboos. It is different in nature and degree from simple criticism or disagreement in that it is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by an organization or representative of a special interest group, and in that it consists of several characteristic elements.

It’s a form of control that Mitt seems to have shown an early talent for. It worked well for him in business and I’d guess he’s quite adept at using it in politics. One wonders how it will play on the world stage, especially considering this:

Mitt Romney’s recent declaration that Russia is America’s top geopolitical adversary drew raised eyebrows and worse from many Democrats, some Republicans and the Russians themselves, all of whom suggested that Mr. Romney was misguidedly stuck in a cold war mind-set.

But his statement was not off the cuff — and it was not the first time Mr. Romney had stirred debate over his hawkish views on Russia. Interviews with Republican foreign policy experts close to his campaign and his writings on the subject show that his stance toward Russia reflects a broader foreign policy view that gives great weight to economic power and control of natural resources. It also exhibits Mr. Romney’s confidence that his private-sector experience would make him a better negotiator on national security issues than President Obama has been…

Mr. Romney was a leading opponent of the most recent arms-reduction treaty with Russia, ratified by the Senate and signed last year by Mr. Obama. Russia figures prominently in Mr. Romney’s book, where he calls it one of four competitors for world leadership, along with the United States, China and “violent jihadism” embraced by Iran and terrorist groups.

Here’s hoping he doesn’t think he can lead a “coalition of the willing” to hold Vladimir Putin down and give him a haircut.

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Daddy knows best

by digby

Hey youngsters, hipster daddy-o Mitt has some advice for you:

On another topic, Romney said that he thinks the Occupy Wall Street protesters who targeted the Bank of America in Charlotte this week are too young to understand the economy or what banks do.

Asked what message he had for the protestors, Romney said, “Unfortunately, a lot of young folks haven’t had the opportunity to really understand how the economy works, and what it takes to put people to work in real jobs, and why we have banks, and what banks do. I understand — it’s a very understandable sentiment if you don’t find a job, and you can’t see rising incomes. You’re going to be angry and looking at someone to blame. But the people to blame and the person to blame is the president and the old school liberals that have not gotten this economy turned around.”

Why does that make me think of this?

Romney’s policies will make all these young people into indentured servants for life. Which, in his mind, is just how it should be. It’s good for business.

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QOTD:Rand Paul— “Call me cynical, but I didn’t think his views on marriage could get any gayer.”

by digby

How very libertarian of him:

(Skip ahead to 5:30 to see the comment.)

Rand is quite the bitch, isn’t he? But then he’s always been one with a quick quip when it comes to teh gays, and it’s usually used as a way to illustrate the villainy of federal power:

“I would rather have the local school districts decide things,” explained Paul at a debate against Democratic rival Jack Conway in the Bluegrass State. “I don’t like the idea of Suzie has two mommies being an appropriate family situation to talk about to kindergartners. That’s what happens when it gets to the federal level.”

That hasn’t always been his approach,though. Way back in 2010 he said this:

I wonder if those Values Voters he was speaking to today know about that?

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