A Marathon of Idiots

What it takes to run a 2012 GOP presidential campaign

Every election year there are a few very disconcerting candidates who run for president. 2012 seems to be a special year though, bringing out candidates whose views span right of center to the far ends of the right-wing political spectrum. But the one thing they have in common is their connection with reality, or lack thereof.

THE FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT

Yesterday, Rick Perry brazenly attacked Obama’s decision to require US agencies working internationally to promote equal rights for gays as a "war on traditional American values." Perry is further quoted saying, “This is just the most recent example of an administration at war with people of faith in this country. Investing tax dollars promoting a lifestyle many [Americans] of faith find so deeply objectionable is wrong. President Obama has again mistaken America’s tolerance for different lifestyles with an endorsement of those lifestyles.”

In reality, between 2010 and 2011, more than half of Americans expressed support for legalizing same-sex marriage, with increases not only among Democrats and liberals, but also among Republicans, conservatives (if only a small increase) and those aged 55 or older, according to a Gallup poll in May of this year. In November, over 70 major companies, including Google, Microsoft and Xerox, filed a brief in court in support of repealing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), complaining that it forces them to discriminate within their companies.

Michelle Bachman recently got the wind knocked out of her by an 8-year-old at a book signing in South Carolina. "My mommy -- Miss Bachmann, my mommy's gay but she doesn't need fixing," said 8-year-old Elijah. Even elementary school kids know that her husband’s “reparative therapy,” also referred to as the “pray the gay away” theory, is a load of crap. And little Elijah is a perfect example of how the conservative view on same-sex parenting is wrong.

While Bachman gets the award for most awkward goof, Rick Santorum got a more, shall we say, viral award back in 2003. Due to his fire-breathing rhetoric on gay rights, sex columnist and gay-rights activist Dan Savage asked his readership to associate “santorum” with a subsequently offensive sexually based definition. Savage then created a website promoting the definition, which remains the first search result for Rick Santorum’s name on several search engines.

All three have said at different times that gay rights are not civil rights. But given the fact that civil rights refers to the rights of every human being, they are all, once again, wrong. Civil rights consist of a vast range of universal rights: the abolition of slavery, voting rights for women and the destruction of anti-black voting laws, the downfall of lawful segregation, legalizing interracial marriage and many others. So why should gays and lesbians not be given the rights of everyone else now that we have successfully given all genders and ethnicities equal rights.

It seems that to be part of the GOP one must reject today’s society as reality and instead become a believer of the dogma that is handed down to you by the GOP. Fox News will become your staple news source. Legalizing same-sex marriage will destroy our country from the ground up and will mistakenly teach our children that being different is acceptable. Climate change is a myth and the wealthy are still not wealthy enough. And “no” is always an appropriate answer.

“I REJECT YOUR REALITY AND SUBSTITUTE MY OWN”

Perry, Bachman and Santorum hold the strongest connection between religion and society. They all denounce Obama and Democrats in Congress as waging a war against “traditional” and “family” values among the population. But what they fail to do is to take into consideration the facts about what this country is supposed to stand for: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The writers of the Constitution explicitly noted in the First Amendment that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof,” therefore separating government from involving itself in religious affairs.

While the definition of these words spans dozens of interpretations, Thomas Jefferson further clarified the separation of religion and government in a letter to the Danbury Baptists stating the first amendment creates “a wall of separation between the church and State.” This separation has allowed the country to become the religious melting pot that it is, guaranteeing everyone the freedom to express his or her own religion.

America prides itself as “the land of the free,” where anyone can come and earn a living and enjoy more freedoms than any other country in the world. In reality, we are not as free as we so proudly tout ourselves to be, because not everyone has the same rights. And the lack of these rights restricts everyday people from living a life of liberty and happiness.  

The Red Muppets

In a previous posting I mentioned reported on a recent poll finding viewers of Fox News to be less informed and more likely to be given false information. 

During last weeks program, “Follow the Money,” commentator Eric Bolling rolled back the clocks to the Cold War when he proclaimed that the new "Muppets" movie was the latest in Hollywood’s supposed liberal-agenda. Joined by Dan Gainor from the conservative Media Research Center, things got pretty interesting.

"It's amazing how far the left will go just to manipulate your kids, to convince them, give the anti-corporate message," said Gainor. "They've been doing it for decades. Hollywood, the left, the media, they hate the oil industry." He continued giving more examples, including Oscar winners “Syriana” and “There Will Be Blood,” and of all things, the kids movie “Cars 2.”

All of this “liberal-media” steam blowing stemmed from the fact that the textbook kids movie bad guy’s name is Tex Richman, an oil baron out to destroy the Muppet’s theater. But despite the fact that there is no mention what-so-ever of big oil companies, environmentalism or anything else above the comprehension of toddlers and young kids, the blowhards from Fox News will find anything that they think smells remotely of a liberal-agenda in the most random of places.

Republicans Support Taxes? Oh, Wait, Never Mind.

While Republicans in Congress have been constantly stating their stonewall opposition to any sort of tax increase they have surprisingly agreed to Obama’s plan to extend the payroll tax cut. But while they agreed that it should be passed, the agreement comes with a caveat, per today’s GOP standards.

While the Democrats would like the tax cut to be funded by adding a 3.25 percent surtax on those making $1 million or more a year, the Republicans would like to put all of the weight on middle-class federal workers. Their plan would incur a pay freeze until 2015 on all federal workers and would slowly reduce the overall federal workforce by 10 percent, effectively putting over 200,000 people out of work just so millionaires could keep some pocket change.

While the Bureau of Labor Statistics has recently stated that the unemployment rate has dropped to a 2-½ year low, down from 9% to 8.6% with an additional 120,000 jobs added, the Republicans in Congress would rather continue to put more people out of work.

The Real Deal: How We Came To The Budget Crossroads Part 2

Contrary to popular opinion, creating a deficit is easier than many people think. A deficit is the difference between how much money has been spent and how much has been brought in as revenue. Deficits happen all the time and are not usually a big problem, as long as the government has enough money remaining. But when the government spends significantly more than it brings in on a regular basis, not only does the deficit increase exponentially, so does the national debt.

During the final years of the Clinton administration, the government spent less money than it brought in, which created an annual surplus and the projected surpluses for that the second Bush administration. Government projections issued in 2001 showed that if we continued along the path of spending that we were on during the Clinton administration we would have potentially had upwards of half a trillion dollars in surplus.

Despite having only a multi-billion dollar surplus at the beginning of his term in office, Bush decided to fund two simultaneous wars, a multi-billion dollar Medicare drug benefit plan at the same time he cut top rate taxes, corporate taxes, the estate tax and many others that were aimed at the very wealthy. The tax cuts alone cost over $1.8 trillion, while the Iraq and Afghan wars (along with other defense spending) cost nearly $1.5 trillion. Bush continued to spend more money while systematically reducing the government’s annual revenue with more tax cuts, drastically increasing the deficit and the national debt.

                                               (New York Times)

And where did the ever-flowing stream of money come from? While the government was handing out money to the rich, it had to borrow, increasingly from other countries, namely China and Japan, to be able to continue funding the spending spree. The reasoning behind the additional tax cuts was based on the “trickle-down” theory in economics, whereby if the rich spend more with their increased revenue, and the money they spend will in turn “trickle down” to the less wealthy. This same theory was used as the basis behind the Reagan cuts back in the 1980’s. And as with Reagan’s cuts, Bush’s new cuts did the exact opposite to the economy.

The continued spending of the Bush administration, along with all of the tax cuts, dug the country into such a deep hole that it will take decades to bring the debt out of the red. One of the surefire ways to increase the government’s annual revenue reduce the annual deficit and in turn the dept, is to increase the taxes on the rich. Along with closing tax loopholes for large corporations and the wealthy the government could consistently bring in billions if not trillions of dollars that would have been given to the rich as if it were pocket change. And with a solid line of revenue, the government could put more focus on refining Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and helping create jobs to return the economy back to level ground.