Month: July 2012

Deal For All vs the Grand Bargain

by digby

Isaiah Poole at CAF reports that progressive House Democrats have done something shocking. They are offering up an alternative to the Simpson-Bowles fiscal cliff CW nonsense. If we are truly facing a debt Armageddon, the people deserve to know that they do not need to sacrifice the future or their own security to do it:

Congressional Progressive Caucus leaders Reps. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Keith Ellison, D-Minn., are trying to get political support for a congressional resolution that would repudiate any “grand bargain” on the federal deficit that cuts Social Security, Medicare or other programs vital to economic security.

Their resolution calls for a “Deal for All” that would protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; contain “serious revenue increases,” including corporate tax loopholes and higher tax brackets for the highest-income earners; significant reductions in defense spending; and “strong levels of job-creating Federal investments in areas such as infrastructure and education.”

The Caucus co-chairs issued a joint statement that said, “Congress is gearing up for high-stakes tax and budget negotiations, and we’re standing with working families to make sure we build a stronger and fairer economy. While both parties will need to make sacrifices, we cannot do so at the expense of economic growth or the middle class. A balanced approach like the Deal for All would end tax breaks for the richest 2 percent, close tax loopholes for the wealthy and special interests, and ensure Americans don’t lose the benefits they’ve paid into for decades such as Social Security and Medicare.”

The “Deal for All” stands in sharp contrast to the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan offered by the co-chairmen of President Obama’s fiscal commission, Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson. That plan would, among other things, lower tax rates on the wealthiest Americans while cutting more than $400 billion from Medicare and Medicaid over the next 10 years and reducing cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security recipients.

Many Democrats are being pushed into believing that such policies are necessary to keep the government and the economy from falling over a “fiscal cliff” by the end of the year. Fortunately, some of these Democrats are pushing back, arguing that this is the time to end flawed tax policies that favored the wealthy at the expense of working-class Americans, and reject the austerity policies that we see failing miserably in Europe.

So far 38 members of the House have signed on to the resolution. Ask your member of Congress if he or she will also co-sponsor the resolution. The answer will tell you a lot about whether you are represented by a lawmaker who sides with rebuilding the middle class on a platform of shared prosperity or one who is all too happy to make a “grand bargain” with the 1 percent that shafts the rest of us.

It is an article of faith among the Villagers that the deficit is the greatest problem facing our country. They give lavish attention to Paul Ryan and his dystopian budget document and take it as an article of faith that Simpson-Bowles represents the “common sense” approach to dealing with it. It isn’t true. There are better ways to deal with the deficit besides the conventional wisdom that says slashing spending on social and safety net programs and lowering tax rates are a given it’s just a matter of how much.

.

The real crime is talking about the causes

by digby

So I understand from the twitter scolds that we are not supposed to talk about this mass murder except to share clinical details about what happened and express condolences to the victims. The shutting down any discussion of the social, cultural and political implications of yet another horrific act of deadly gun violence is becoming more and more successful after each event.

Some people are talking anyway, although I’m sure they’ll be excoriated for their bad manners and divisive conduct:

The truth is made worse by the reality that no one—really no one—anywhere on the political spectrum has the courage to speak out about the madness of unleashed guns and what they do to American life. That includes the President, whose consoling message managed to avoid the issue of why these killings take place. Of course, we don’t know, and perhaps never will, what exactly “made him” do what he did; but we know how he did it. Those who fight for the right of every madman and every criminal to have as many people-killing weapons as they want share moral responsibility for what happened last night—as they will when it happens again. And it will happen again.

The reality is simple: every country struggles with madmen and ideologues with guns, and every country—Canada, Norway, Britain—has had a gun massacre once, or twice. Then people act to stop them, and they do—as over the past few years has happened in Australia. Only in America are gun massacres of this kind routine, expectable, and certain to continue. Does anyone even remember any longer last July’s gun massacre, those birthday-party killings in Texas, when an estranged husband murdered his wife and most of her family, leaving six dead?

But nothing changes: the blood lobby still blares out its certainties, including the pretense that the Second Amendment—despite the clear grammar of its first sentence—is designed not to protect citizen militias but to make sure that no lunatic goes unarmed. (Jill Lepore wrote about the history of the Second Amendment in The New Yorker recently.) Make sure that guns designed for no reason save to kill people are freely available to anyone who wants one—and that is, and remains, the essential American condition—and then be shocked when children are killed.

I agree except for that last sentence. We aren’t shocked anymore when children are killed. It’s become a normal part of American life. The taboo has shifted from horror at the shootings to horror at talking about shooting. This is called “politicizing tragedy” as if these mass murders are an act of nature rather than an act of human evil or madness (or both) enabled by easy access to the tools of mass murder.

But let’s not go there. We will mourn the casualties the way we mourn the deaths of those in hurricanes and tornadoes. Gun violence is now a “natural” event in America, as unpredictable as the weather, and there’s nothing we can do about it except gather together in the aftermath to help the victims. Indeed, the only enduring threat these events foretell is from those who would question a culture that deifies the gun as if it were a religious symbol rather than a lethal weapon.

.

Republican Humor

By tristero

Asshole:

Introduced to a man who had just been fitted for a new hearing aid, Pawlenty decided to josh him by “moving my lips as if I were talking but without saying anything so he’d think something was wrong.”

.

Aurora

by digby

Let me just say up front that I have no idea why this person did what he did and neither does anyone else. But I’m fairly sure this had nothing to do with it:

“You know what really gets me, as a Christian, is to see the ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs, and then some senseless crazy act of a derelict takes place,” Gohmert said.

“Some of us happen to believe that when our founders talked about guarding our virtue and freedom, that that was important,” he said. “Whether it’s John Adams saying our Constitution was made only for moral and religious people … Ben Franklin, only a virtuous people are capable of freedom, as nations become corrupt and vicious they have more need of masters. We have been at war with the very pillars, the very foundation of this country.”

“People say … where was God in all of this?” Gohmert said. “We’ve threatened high school graduation participations, if they use God’s name, they’re going to be jailed … I mean that kind of stuff. Where was God? What have we done with God? We don’t want him around. I kind of like his protective hand being present.”

Gohmert also said the tragedy could have been lessened if someone else in the movie theater had been carrying a gun and took down the lone shooter. Istook noted that Colorado laws allow people to carry concealed guns.

“It does make me wonder, with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying a gun that could have stopped this guy more quickly?” he asked.

I’m surprised it’s taken so long for someone to say that the answer to the problem of someone spraying rooms full of innocent people with smoke bombs and gunfire is to start a gunfight.

As for the rest. Well, whatever.

.

Jobs. Filibustered.

by David Atkins

The filibuster makes it nearly impossible to get anything done in this country:

Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked the No.1 item on the president’s congressional “to-do-list,” refusing to allow a vote on a bill that would give tax breaks for companies that “insource” jobs to the U.S. from overseas while eliminating tax deductions for companies that move jobs abroad.

In voting against the bill, Republicans raised both substantive and procedural problems with the measure.

The bill fell four votes short of the 60 needed to bring it to debate, with 42 voting against it. Four GOP senators — Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Dean Heller of Nevada — voted in favor of the bill.

With job creation the top issue this campaign season, and outsourcing being blamed as a big contributor to the high unemployment rate, Democrats saw the bill as an election-year winner. Sponsored by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, who is running for reelection, the bill made it to the top of the “to-do list” for Congress President Barack Obama unveiled earlier this year.

The Bring Jobs Home Act would provide a 20% tax break for the costs of moving jobs back to the United States and would rescind business expense deductions available to companies that are associated with the cost of moving operations overseas.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, had warned Democrats before the vote that his party would want to amend the bill — possibly with hot-button issues like repealing the health care reform law or extending the Bush-era tax cuts for all income levels.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, responded that those amendments were not germane to the bill and he would not allow votes on them.

The Senate is an antiquated, undemocratic and deeply conservative institution even without the filibuster, weighted dramatically toward small states, which are mostly rural and Republican. It’s nothing short of ridiculous that North Dakota gets the same two votes as California or New York.

Throw in a requirement to get 60 votes to pass any bills, and the hurdles to any sort of legislative become nearly impassable.

And no, forcing the filibusterers to read the phonebook from the floor won’t accomplish anything. Remember: these are people whose entire goal is to prevent anything from getting done to help the economy, and to further besmirch the reputation of Congress and government in general. They don’t care if the entire nation’s government is tied up in reading recipes for a month. With 45 committed plutocrats, they can easily just take turns.

Yes, getting rid of the filibuster is a scary proposition. With the possibility of a Romney presidency combined with the likelihood of a GOP Senate takeover and a slight GOP hold on the House, it’s quite possible that the Ryan budget passes absent a filibuster. But without the ability to pass significant reforms, it’s all moving deck chairs around the Titanic anyway. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. And in this case, gaining nothing is tantamount to disaster.

.

Ooopsie.Looks like Uncle Karl had it right

by digby

From Demos:

Despite near-record levels of economic inequality, many politicians and pundits still don’t think this widening chasm is much of a problem in a country supposedly dedicated to egalitarian ideals.

Inequality, the logic goes, is a natural result of different degrees of work and creativity. Some people strive harder and have better ideas, as well as take more risks, and giving them outsized rewards is a good thing, since it encourages others to emulate this behavior and makes us all wealthier in the end.

Related to this, low-wage jobs aren’t anything to worry about either, since people who put in the effort can climb upward to better jobs and, also, low wages allow business owners to hire more people and generate more growth so that, again, we all win.

The only problem with this story, of course, is that it’s persistently contradicted by the actual facts about inequality today. In truth, inequality in America tracks more closely with a classic Marxist analysis whereby the owners of capital exploit a surplus of labor to keep wages low and generate high profits for themselves — depriving workers of a fair share of the value they are creating for companies. Yes, there are smart entreprenuers taking big risks in America, but the more dominant face of the economy is well-established corporations run by professional managers who keep finding new ways to drive labor costs down and profits up.

Consider a new study out today by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), which shows that most low-wage workers aren’t employed at struggling start-ups or local businesses trying to expand. Instead, says NELP, the majority of such workers are employed by large corporations. And the reason these workers make chump change is not because such corporations are battling to maintain their razor thin profit margins in tough times. Rather, these companies are making plenty of money — more in many cases then before the recession. According to NELP, of the top 50 low-wage employers in America: 92 percent were profitable last year; 63 percent are earning higher profits now than before the recession; and 73 percent have higher cash holdings now than before the recession.

Just a little FYI.

.

Norms! (and the betrayal of trust)

by digby

I’ve been musing a bit about the erosion of norms the last few weeks, trying to understand how it is that our society has lost its former counterbalance to harsh, dog-eat-dog capitalism, something I do believe it had more of in the past. Matt Yglesias flagged something earlier this week that adds to that discussion. He’s talking specifically about the critique against private equity’s use of debt, which he rejects. I’m not going to take a position on that, I’m interested in this:

The strong case against private equity comes from an old 1988 paper from Lawrence Summers and Andrei Schleifer titled “Breach of Trust in Hostile Takeovers” which mostly uses ’80s terminology rather than contemporary PE lingo.

Their starting point is Ronald Coase’s observation that the existence of companies (“firms”) is left a bit mysterious by econ 101 reasoning. Why don’t free agents just contract with one another for services as a means of economic cooperation? One reason, he argues convincingly, is that trying to spell out each and every obligation in contractual terms would be both laborious and absurdly inflexible. If you think about the way your workplace actually functions, people have roles and obligations vis-a-vis each other that are considerably richer and more nuanced than what’s spelled out in legal documents. These roles evolve over time in various ways, but they also have some stability to them. The point is to create a space of collaborative endeavor that isn’t dominated by constant lawyerly bickering.

Summers & Shleifer observe that this often creates substantial arbitrage opportunities. You can buy up a company and then exploit your formal rights as owner to the hilt completely ignoring inumerable tacit bargains and promises. Indeed, since you the new owner didn’t actually make the promises you may feel that you’re not bound by them.

The big socialized loss in the case of this kind of “breach of trust” scenario is loss of trust and economy-wide loss of ability of managers and workers to form flexible implicit arrangements with one another.

I think this applies more broadly than this specific sector of the economy. The “breach of trust” scenario is an even bigger cultural phenomenon — the erosion of social norms. I don’t know if this wider problem can be traced to this change in capitalistic practices, but I suspect it is at least related.

I believe we have a group of elite actors — across sectors — exploiting their formal advantage and actively “ignoring inumerable tacit bargains and promises” (also called norms.) I’ll give you a good example: the impeachment of President Clinton.

The truth is that the congress can impeach a president at will, subject only to the voters in the next election. Now, there is a powerful disincentive to do it against a popular president. But why don’t they commonly do it against unpopular presidents? “High crimes and misdemeanors” is a very vague term and as we saw with the Clinton case, you can fit nearly anything into it if you want to. But we’ve only had two presidential impeachments in more than two centuries. The first one was the political tail end of our bloody civil war, with the country still reeling. And then we had nothing until suddenly, at the end of the 20th century, with the country at peace and brimming with prosperity, the House of Representatives decided to hit the trip wire over a private indiscretion for purely partisan purposes.

Until then it had been one of those “tacit bargains and promises” that this power would not be used except in the most dire circumstances. Obviously, there was no law against it — it was explicitly provided for in the constitution. But everyone understood that the spirit of our democratic system was that a president was to be allowed to serve for four year terms at the pleasure of the voters unless something extremely unusual happened. The destabilizing effect of putting a president on trial for anything but the most serious reasons was assumed to be an irresponsible act that no one would attempt.

In the end, it was the displeasure of the people and the founders cynical view of human nature that stopped it. (The polls supported the president and the super-majority requirement for a Senate conviction couldn’t withstand a purely partisan action.) But what’s significant about this is that the taboo was broken by people who believed they could gain a partisan advantage by exploiting the letter of the constitution, even if it destabilized the entire system that’s kept us going for a couple of centuries. (This is the essence of our current fascination with clever opportunism, the extolling of the smart operator (like Romney) who knows how to work the system.)

And, frankly, it worked. The GOP was not punished for its actions. Indeed, it turned around and did the same thing in the next election when it manipulated the electoral system to take the presidency and was rewarded with legitimacy by the American people in spite of it. We are seeing a similar phenomenon in regards to our economic institutions in the wake of failure.

Something shifted. I don’t know how big a shift it will turn out to have been. But just as the banking system nearly collapsed under the weight of enormous complexity, our political system isn’t as stable or as able to handle the complexity of governing a giant, powerful nation as it needs to be. And I think this has something to do with it.

.

I get mail from Mitt Romney

by David Atkins

In addition to all the mail I get from Democratic/progressive candidates and organizations, I also get mail from a variety of conservative interest groups and candidates. They seem to believe I’m a significant donor.

Here’s one of the latest pieces I received from Mitt Romney:

Dear David,

I am running for President of the United States and because you are one of America’s most notable Republicans, I want to personally let you know why. It’s simple, really. I believe in America.

Yes Mitt, thank you. I truly am one of the nation’s most notable Republicans. Karl Rove has my cell phone number on speed dial. You run a campaign of remarkable honest and humility.

Anyway, what is Romney’s main argument? Once again, it’s that going into debt has somehow hurt the economy:

President Obama’s policies created a deeper recession and hampered our efforts to recover. He has mortgaged our future, increased spending by more than 20%, and allowed our debt to skyrocket. The consequence is soaring numbers of Americans enduring unemployment, foreclosures, and bankruptcies.

As we all know, this argument is perverse. There’s an argument to be had over whether increasing debt is truly harmful for the country over the long term. But there’s no rational argument in the world to suggest that it harms an economy in the short term. So long as borrowing costs remain low–and they do–it doesn’t damage the economy at all. It can only help.

That Romney is sending out this message to his base of ostensibly wealthy and presumably mostly well educated donors is mindboggling. It means that there is a large part of this country that not only has little in the way of critical thinking skills or economic knowledge, but has bought hook, line and sinker into a totally counterfactual understanding of fiscal policy. To state that high unemployment is a direct result of government debt is as demonstrably false as claiming that the sun revolves around the earth.

As I said before:

The big lie still remains: under no circumstances whatsoever has the spending or the deficit hurt economic recovery. There’s not even a coherent argument based in economic fantasy to claim such a thing. In order for spending to hurt an economy, it would have to do so by causing a deficit. Spending alone has zero negative impact on an economy, unless it comes theoretically at the cost of increased taxes–also not harmful in the right proportions, but irrelevant since the President has actually lowered taxes since taking office.

So spending isn’t a problem. What about the deficit? Well, deficits are only a problem if they lead to inflation and if they make it harder to borrow money–the latter only a problem because it causes forced austerity measures which weaken an economy (I needn’t mention that these would be the same austerity measures Mr. Romney would like to impose on us in advance.) The country doesn’t have a serious inflation problem (as Paul Krugman has been noting incessantly), and despite S&P’s bogus downgrade of U.S. debt, the Treasuries market hasn’t suffered. Not only has it not suffered, but one hedge fund manager “earned” (a word I’ll use very loosely) $3.9 billion last year mostly from investments in U.S. treasuries.

So we have low taxes, low inflation, and a strong Treasuries market. Under those circumstances, it is quite literally economically impossible for government spending to have “deepened the recession and delayed the recovery.” At worst it had no impact–and nearly every economist agrees that that itself is also untrue. Government spending had a considerable effect on lowering unemployment.

If we had a real press establishment in this country, it would be constantly at pains to point this out. Instead, we get Erin Burnett running a quotidian tracker of how many days it’s been since the country lost its all-important AAA rating from the unassailable S&P ratings agency. As if it mattered a whit.

.

The lower classes have the right to contemplate the splendor of the higher classes and to be inspired by it

by digby

Dear me, it appears that Lady Romney has lost her patience with the riff raff and their unseemly questioning about money. One simply doesn’t respond when the lower orders begin to believe they’re better than they ought to be:

“We’ve given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation and how we live our life,” she said.

Indeed they have. The very idea that a man of Mitt Romney’s obvious superiority could be questioned about his finances is utterly offensive. Enough.

Here is your lesson for the day from Nobility.org:

Not a few Americans have an aversion to social and economic inequalities. This repulsion arises not so much from philosophical convictions as from a temperamental disposition at the heart of which lies a serious misconception about the nature of compassion.

Such mentalities believe that inequalities, particularly those of a social or economic character, invariably cause suffering in those of lower status. According to this misperception, even those with the means to lead a comfortable life suffer from the fact that others are richer than they. Behind this attitude, one perceives the unspoken presence of a philosophy of envy.

This attitude results from an erroneous interpretation of true Christian compassion in the face of socioeconomic inequalities.

Christian compassion does not oblige one to feel sorry for someone who has what he needs to live in a manner suited to his social level. Christian compassion simply elicits the desire to help those who lack the means to lead a dignified life according to the demands of human nature and their status. Accordingly, there is no reason for someone to feel guilty simply because he is richer or has a higher social standing than others. Nor does having less than others make the upright man suffer; rather, he is satisfied at seeing that others have more than he.

The erroneous interpretation of compassion affects some members of the traditional elites in a curious manner. They deem it their duty to disguise their high station, education and splendor. In doing so they misguidedly believe they are fulfilling their Christian duty to prevent others from suffering the humiliation of seeing people who are higher than themselves.

The precise opposite is true. The higher classes have the duty to shine in the eyes of the lower classes. The latter have the right to contemplate the splendor of the higher classes and to be inspired by it. In effect, the condition of the higher classes should stimulate members of the lower classes to improve their own situations. The contemplation of the higher classes can inspire members of the lower classes who are gifted with exceptional talents to aspire legitimately to a higher condition.

This desire must not be confused with the reprehensible “coveting of thy neighbors’ goods” prohibited by the tenth Commandment. Such coveting occurs when someone becomes envious because another person is or has more than he; or when he comes to hate his neighbor and is consumed with a passion to deprive him of what is justly his. Base sentiments like these should not be confused with the noble desire to equal, or even surpass, through diligent effort, the situation one admires in another.

It cannot be denied that there are situations in which it is understandable for an aristocracy to retire from public view. If, for example, the upper classes perceive that the splendor of their social lives will be misunderstood and maliciously manipulated against them, they have the right to maintain a more discreet position in society in accordance with their good judgment.

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII: A Theme Illuminating American Social History (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), American Appendix, pp. 197-1985.

Nobility.org Editorial comment: —

Faced with superiority, one must choose between two attitudes, one virtuous, the other sinful. Admiration or envy. They are irreconcilable opposites.
These very different roads result in two very different families of souls. Those who make admiration the guiding light of their actions and those who wallow deeper and deeper in the mire of envy.

The Church and Christian civilization invite us constantly to the path of admiration.
The egalitarian Revolution invites us at every instant to join it in the mire.

We should have no doubt as to which is the correct path: the path of admiration and virtue.

Understood?

.

Only the fetus is the image of God. Women who carry them? Meh.

by digby

I’ve written about this heinous bill before but I didn’t think it would make it to the House floor. But I expect they’ll get a vote. And I expect they will pass it.

H.R. 3803, a bill to ban abortions in the District of Columbia after 20 weeks gestation, is heading to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives after members of the GOP-dominated House Judiciary Committee yesterday voted in favor of it by 18 to 14. The bill would ban abortions in D.C. after 20 weeks, allowing an exception only to save a pregnant woman’s life.

The bill, sponsored by Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ), denies a woman access to a medically necessary abortion. It includes no exceptions for situations where continuing a pregnancy will place at risk a woman’s health or ability to have children in the future, for women who may have serious but non-life threatening medical conditions, are suffering from a severe mental illness, or who learn of a fatal or severe fetal anomaly. It would also subject a doctor to criminal penalties for performing a safe and legal medical procedure.

The majority of committee members rejected all proposed amendments that would have added minimal exceptions to protect women’s health. The GOP majority, for example, voted against an amendment by Congressman Mike Quigley (D-IL) to protect cancer patients in cases where chemotherapy or other treatments to save a woman’s life might interfere with her pregnancy.

Truly, we’re coming closer to the moment at which they declare that abortion is wrong even to save the life of the mother, which is what they really do believe. Women who refuse to give their lives for their fetus are obviously selfish and unloving.

Bria Murray wrote a response to Congressman Franks. This is just an excerpt, you need to read the whole thing:

And, to bring this letter full-circle, how dare you, Representative Franks. How dare you claim to care about pregnant people and the babies they are carrying when you voted to deny federal funding to Planned Parenthood, the very organization that helped empower me to keep my baby.

Because, you see, Representative Franks, after I found out I was carrying my rapist’s child, I was scared – more scared than you could ever possibly fathom. Originally, I went to one of those “life-affirming” crisis pregnancy centers, as it was closer to me than a Planned Parenthood.

It was there I was told that after I explained my situation, I was told that, face it, I would probably not make a good mother. After all, look at the “mess” I had gotten myself into. I was encouraged to “do the right thing” and give my baby to a couple who could “give it a better life” than I ever could. Why, I would have couples lining up at my door to adopt! After all, I was young and healthy and, most importantly, white. I ran from that center feeling more traumatized than the night I was raped.

It wasn’t until I took the hour bus ride to a Planned Parenthood that I was presented with the revolutionary option of carrying and raising my own child. I was given information about how to apply for runaway federal spending, er, excuse me, food stamps, TANF and Medicaid. I was asked if I had access to prenatal care, and, if not, did I know that I could get it right here? They gave me the information for a local rape crisis center that could connect me with counseling so I had some one to help me through the trauma that I had experienced. Yes, abortion was presented to me as an option, but it was in no way pushed on me. Abortion, adoption and parenting were all given equal credence. And, most importantly, I was told that Planned Parenthood would do their best to support me in whatever decision I made.

In case you are wondering, Representative Franks, this is what caring for women and babies looks like.

I didn’t know that these “crisis pregnancy centers” were in the business of procuring babies for their nice Christian supporters, but it doesn’t surprise me. Maybe someone should send in some hidden cameras as see what’s up.

This is a cruel law that won’t be signed into law as long as the Senate isn’t in GOP hands and Obama is the president. But they will keep trying until the moon and stars align for them. This is how strongly they feel about it — Trent Franks:

Obama’s first act as president of any consequence, in the middle of a financial meltdown, was to send taxpayers’ money overseas to pay for the killing of unborn children in other countries…there’s almost nothing that you should be surprised at after that. We shouldn’t be shocked that he does all these other insane things. A president that has lost his way that badly, that has no ability to see the image of God in these little fellow human beings, if he can’t do that right, then he has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity.

.