What's in a Name other than a Frame?

Via Joan McCarter at Daily Kos: 

Obamacare unpopular, unless it's not called Obamacare 

Another poll, and more confirmation that people really don't like Obamacare but ...

(Reuters) - Most Americans oppose President Barack Obama's healthcare reform even though they strongly support most of its provisions, Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Sunday, with the Supreme Court set to rule within days on whether the law should stand. Fifty-six percent of people are against the healthcare overhaul and 44 percent favor it, according to the online poll conducted from Tuesday through Saturday.

They don't like it—that is, until they hear about what's in it. Same old story. Greg Sargent got the partisan breakdown from Reuters/Ipsos on this poll.

* Eighty percent of Republicans favor “creating an insurance pool where small businesses and uninsured have access to insurance exchanges to take advantage of large group pricing benefits.” That’s backed by 75 percent of independents. [...] * Fifty two percent of Republicans favor “allowing children to stay on parents insurance until age 26.” That’s backed by 69 percent of independents.
* Seventy eight percent of Republicans support “banning insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions; 86 percent of Republicans favor “banning insurance companies from cancelling policies because a person becomes ill.” Those are backed by 82 percent of independents and 87 percent of independents.
* One provision that isn’t backed by a majority of Republicans: The one “expanding Medicaid to families with incomes less than $30,000 per year.”

Just don't call it "Obamacare" and it's all good, even with Republicans—except for that bit about making things a little easier for the working poor, because that's practically anti-American.

The problem, of course, is that you can't separate the law from the very effective (albeit shockingly untruthful) narratives the Republicans created against it. As of now, Republicans have decided they won't do anything to reinstate these popular elements. Even if they change their minds, they'll be relentlessly attacked by the even further Right.

But polls like this show what President Obama is going to have to do politically if the law is overturned. He's going to have to run against the activist, extremist Republican majority on the Supreme Court and what it has done to overturn these provisions, provisions that even normal (non-elected) Republicans support.

The linguist George Lakoff gives as an example of framing an exercise he gives to his students. 

The exercise is: Don't think of an elephant! Whatever you do, do not think of an elephant. I've never found a student who is able to do this. Every word, like elephant, evokes a frame, which can be an image or other kinds of knowledge: Elephants are large, have floppy ears and a trunk, are associated with circuses, and so on. The word is defined relative to that frame. When we negate a frame, we evoke the frame.

So too with the "negative frame" Obamacare that the Republican Tea Party have labeled the Affordable Health Care for America Act. The opposition is not is the parts, but in the part of the label spelled OBAMA!

 

A Message for Today in Pictures

HOPE

ASHAMED

INTRUSIVE

STILL?

OBAMA

The Many Frothy Faces of Rick Santorum

A reviewer of Santorum’s 2005 book, “It Takes a Family,” wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer that Santorum is “one of the finest minds of the thirteenth century.”  This is no insult: it is the heart of Santorum’s appeal to conservative evangelicals.

Rick Santorum likes to characterize himself as a working man. But in reality, since losing his last election in 2006, Santorum has earned $970,000 in 2010 despite seeming sort of unemployed.  He is good at criticizing others for a way of life he believes is other than Christian. In 2008, before he was running for president, Santorum actually argued that people who don't share his political views aren't really Christian. 

But is there such thing as a sincere liberal Christian, which says that we basically take this document and re-write it ourselves? Is that really Christian? That’s a bigger question for me. And the answer is, no, it’s not. I don’t think there is such a thing. To take what is plainly written and say that I don’t agree with that, therefore, I don’t have to pay attention to it, means you’re not what you say you are. You’re a liberal something, but you’re not a Christian. That’s sort of how I look at it.

When you go so far afield of that and take what is a salvation story and turn it into a liberation theology story, which is done in the Catholic world as well as in the evangelical world, you have abandoned Christendom, in my opinion. And you don’t have a right to claim it. 

Rick Santorum recently criticized Obama’s worldview as a “phony theology not based on the Bible.” That is his way of telling his followers that President Obama, a liberal, is not Christian. Although he doesn't spout biblical verse to support his political and social positions, he is the poster child for the evangelical movement by appealing to "natural law."

Santorum attacks gay rights and abortion not by spouting biblical verses or goading his audiences’ gut feelings, but by playing the medieval scholastic theologian and reasoning from first principles. There is no need to quote St. Paul to prove that homosexual sex is an affront to the natural order and same-sex marriage a detriment to civilization: Santorum appeals to natural law, what he calls the Catholic Church’s “operating instructions for human beings.”[...]

Santorum is not a fundamentalist frothing at the mouth, screeching out biblical commands (he cites “Divine Providence” often in his writing, but rarely turns to scripture). When liberal students booed after he expressed his views on same-sex marriage at an event in New Hampshire, he did not shout them down, but tried to engage them in a philosophical discussion. [...]

Natural law is a noble tradition that has shaped Western jurisprudence, but in the hands of conservative activists like Santorum it has become a dangerous cult of first principles. Santorum’s positions are perfectly logical if you accept his founding presuppositions — but, in his view, those presuppositions are not open to question. The genius of this emphasis on foundational assumptions is that if you can dismiss your opponent’s first principles, if you can accuse him of denying humanity’s “natural purpose,” you can claim to win the debate without ever considering the content of his argument.

This tactic destroys the possibility for real political dialogue, since one need only engage with those who share one’s own presuppositions. Despite Santorum’s calm debating style, his preference for home-schooling his children and rants against modern higher education suggest he has little genuine interest in open argument and free inquiry.

Natural law uses secular language and allows politicians to couch their public remarks in a more generic way other than citing biblical verse.

Will Bunch of Attytood has been following Santorum for years and has an excellent analysis of The Rick Santorum that America Doesn't Know.

You’ve probably heard all the good ones about GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum by now. The one about his “Google problem.”  The one about the “man-on-dog sex” (prompting the greatest journalistic response ever, when the reporter told Santorum that he was “sort of freaking me out.”) The one about how the Catholic Church’s priest sex abuse scandal was caused by Boston liberalism, or the one about how President Obama should be anti-abortion because he’s black and abortion is like slavery. And so on and so forth.

That’s the Rick Santorum that America has come to know over the last 15 years or so – an unapologetic and almost goofy culture warrior whose obsessions – like thinking that gay sex is a gateway drug to bestiality – make him a hero to social conservatives and often a laughing stock to most everyone else. Santorum’s rise in the 2012 presidential race has people talking about whether his views on social issues – talk of annulling gay marriages, seemingly questioning the right to even birth control --- make him too extreme to be president – and that’s an important topic to discuss.

But I also think Santorum’s weird sexual bluster can obscure who he really is, and what truly matters about his suddenly surging campaign. As a Philadelphia-based political reporter, I arrived in town just seven months after Santorum became my state’s junior senator. I followed his 12 years on the Washington political stage closely, and I think people obsessing on the “man-on-dog” stuff are missing the bigger picture. For one thing, the self-styled “family values” expert has a surprisingly ambiguous record with his own personal ethics. Also, Santorum’s legislative record shows that his real workaday agenda was not so much waging culture wars as protecting the interests of the 1 Percent, the millionaires and billionaires who funded the modern Republican Party. You could say that Rick Santorum is just another politician. But that would be giving him too much credit.

Here’s a Pennsylvanian’s brief guide to the Rick Santorum you don’t know:

1. This compassionate Christian conservative founded a charity that was actually a bit of a scam. In 2001, following up on a faith-based urban charity initiative around the 2000 GOP convention in Philadelphia, Santorum launched a charitable foundation called the Operation Good Neighbor Foundation. While in its first few years the charity cut checks to community groups for $474,000, Operation Good Neighbor Foundation had actually raised more than $1 million, from donors who overlapped with Santorum’s political fund raising. Where did the majority of the charity’s money go? In salary and consulting fees to a network of politically connected lobbyists, aides and fundraisers, including rent and office payments to Santorum’s finance director Rob Bickhart, later finance chair of the Republican National Committee. When I reported on Santorum’s charity for The American Prospect in 2006, experts told me a responsible charity doles out at least 75 percent of its income in grants, and they were shocked to learn the figure for Operation Good Neighbor Fund was less than 36 percent. The charity – which didn’t register with the state of Pennsylvania as required under the law --- was finally disbanded in 2007.

2. Likewise, a so-called “leadership PAC” created by Santorum that was supposed to fund other Republicans instead seemed to mostly pay for the lifestyle of Santorum and those around him. My investigation of the America’s Foundation PAC showed that only 18 percent of its money went to fund political candidates, less -- and typically far less -- than any other “leadership PACs.” What America’s Foundation did spend a lot on with what looked like everyday expenses, including 66 trips to the Starbucks in Santorum’s then hometown of Leesburg, Va., multiple fast-food outings and expenditures at Wal-Mart, Target and Giant supermarkets. Campaign finance experts said the PAC’s expenses – paid for by donations from wealthy businessmen and lobbyists – were “unconventional,” at best and arguably not legal. Santorum also funded his large Leesburg “McMansion” with a $500,000 mortgage from a private bank run by a major campaign donor, in a program that was only supposed to be open to high-wealth investment clients in the trust, which Santorum was not, and closed to the general public.

3. Santorum was never above mingling his cultural crusades with the everyday work of raising political cash. In 2005, Santorum made headlines – not all positive – for visiting the deathbed of Terri Schiavo, the woman at the center of a national right-to-die controversy.What my Philadelphia Daily News colleague John Baer later exposed was that the real reason he was in the Tampa, Fla., area was to collect money at a $250,000 fundraiser organized by executives of Outback Steakhouses, a company that shared Santorum’s passion for a low minimum wage for waitresses and other rank-and-file workers. Santorum’s efforts were also aided by his unusual mode of travel: Wal-Mart’s corporate jet. And he canceled a public meeting on Social Security reform "out of respect for the Schiavo family"  even as the closed fundraisers went on.

4. Santorum didn’t seem to be against government waste when it came to his family. During his years in the Senate, Santorum raised his family in northern Virginia and rarely if ever seemed to use the small house that he claimed as his legal residence, in a blue-collar Pittsburgh suburb called Penn Hills. So Pennsylvania voters were shocked when they found out the Penn Hills School District had paid out $72,000 for the home cyberschooling of five of Santorum’s kids, hundreds of miles away in a different state. The cash=strapped district was unsuccessful in its efforts to get any of its money back from Santorum.

5. Washington's lobbyist culture -- Santorum was soaking in it. The ex-Pennsylvania senator spent much of his final years in government trying to downplay and defend his involvement in the so-called "K Street Project," an effort created by GOP uber-lobbyist and tax-cutting fanatic Grover Norquist and future felon and House majority whip Tom DeLay. By all accounts, Santorum was the Senate's "point man" on the K Street Project and he met with Norquist -- at least occasionally and perhaps frequently -- to discuss the effort to sure that Republicans were landing well-paying jobs in lobbying firms that were seeking to then access and influence other Republicans.

6. Santorum had no problem with big government if it was supporting his campaign contributors in Big Pharma.It's little wonder that Santorum ultimately supported Medicare Part D, a prescription drug plan for the elderly that has added hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal deficit and was drafted in such a way to best help pharmaceutical companies maximize profits from all the unbridled spending. When Santorum was defeated for a third term in 2006, an internal memo at the drug giant GlaxoSmithKline said his departure from Washington "creates a big hole that we need to fill.

7. The defender of family values was also slavish in his devotion to a large American corporate behemoth, Wal-Mart: In the wake of the report about Santorum's travel in the Wal-Mart corporate jet, I counted the many ways that Santorum had done the bidding of the world's largest retailer in the Senate, including battling to limit any increases in the minimum wage and seeking to make changes in overtime rules that woulld benefit the company and hurt its blue-collar workforce, tort reform to limit lawsuits against what is said to be the world's most-sued company, and changes in charitable giving laws and of course eliminating the estate tax that would benefit the billionaire heirs of Sam Walton.

8. Santorum has frequently insisted that his political values are guided by his religious values, and that John F. Kennedy's famous 1960 speech describing a separtion between the two had done "much harm" in America. But despite inviting such scrutiny, there's been little discussion of Santorum's ties to ultra-conservative movements within the Roman Catholic Church Santorum's comments about JFK were made in Rome in 2002 when he spoke at a 100th birthday event for Jose Maria Escrivade Balaguer, founder of the secretive group within the church known as Opus Dei. Although Santorum says he is not a member of Opus Dei -- which has been criticized by some for alleged cult-like qualities and ties to ultra-conservative regimes around the world -- he did receive written permission to attend the ultra-conservative St. Catherine of Siena Church in Great Falls, Va., where Mass is still conducted in Latin and a long-time priest and many parishioners are members of Opus Dei, mingling with political conservatives like Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and former FBI director Louis Freeh.

9. Santorum isn't above big government-funded boondoggles -- when they're linked to his allies and campaign contributors. Consider the type of project that the Tea Party loves to hate, a $750 million energy plant in Schuylkill County, Pa., that was to convert coal to liquids but needed massive subsidies. Santorum boasted of his rule in securing an $100 million federal loan for the project -- which had hired Pennsylvania's top Republican Party power broker of the 2000s, Bob Asher, as a lobbyist and paid him at least $900,000. Despite Santorum's efforts, the plant has not been built.

10. Santorum apparently believes in "an entitlement culture" when it comes for former politicians. After Tuesday night's virtual tie in the Iowa caucus, the Pennsylvanian spoke eloquently about his immigrant grandfather working for decades in the Pennsylvania coal fields and his massive hands; the grandson probably won't have that problem. Losing an election in 2006 allowed Santorum to become a poster child for how ex-pols quickly and easily cash in in America, as a lawyer-rainmaker and joining a "think tank" (that for a time was called America's Enemies) and as an analyst for the Fox News Channel and as a board member for Universal Health Services, an ethically challenged company where executives had supported his Senate campaigns. The New York Times' Gail Collins noted that Santorum had earned $970,000 in 2010 despite seeming sort of unemployed.

The real Rick Santorum is indeed a frothy mixture -- of self-interest, loose ethical standards, and careerism in a career that's been largely devoted not so much to the social causes about which he makes headlines as looking out for the interests of big corporations and the wealthiest 1 Percent of Americans. It's a shame that more voters don't know that yet. That is the "Google problem" that Santorum actually deserves.

The dialogue that has surrounded the GOP Tea Party primary has revealed a newly arisen Rick Santorum. It appears that his goal is more focused on social justice rather than corporate needs. There are those who will argue that Rick Santorum wants change our current secular legal system into one that incorporates religious law.

In reality is Santorum really any different that any other Republican when it comes to holding onto a common Republican double standard.   Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who regularly attend church, have their faith questioned repeatedly; while Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who rarely attended church, were not subject to any such doubts.  

The Idiocy of the Culture Wars

As the song goes, "War...what is it good for...absolutely nothing!"  Of course, those words sung by Edwin Star in 1969, represented a blatant anti-Vietnam War protest song.  In 2012, we are still fighting wars in other countries while the U.S. continues its wars against crime, drugs, and terrorists. And now the new escalated war on the scene is the 'culture war.'  

 
While economic problems are a reality for the middle class and poor, the politics of the conservative movement has been focused on social issues. The conservative swing to the far-right has its basis in the religious fervor of those who find moral objection to anything that they believe is not granted in the Constitution or by God in the bible.  This broad spectrum of negatives that are morally objectionable to the conservatives will have devastating effects on public education, science based teachings, women's health care and equal rights for all.

This is apparent in the backlash that has erupted over the legislation that the Tea Party Republican's have recently purposed.  As Lauren Kelley writes, "Ordinary citizens aren't the only ones protesting the GOP's anti-gay, anti-woman measures -- several lawmakers and a judge recently did too."

Political history has repeated itself recently, in a terrible way, with the return of the culture wars. Rather than focus on much-needed steps to improve the economy, Republican lawmakers have been focusing in recent months on efforts to roll back women's rights, including access to abortion and contraception, while homophobia runs rampant among the 2012 GOP candidates.

Activists have responded to these attacks by attempting to dispel hateful myths and draw attention to the harm that could be done with Republicans' social agenda. For instance, about 1,000 activists gathered at the Virginia statehouse earlier this month to silently protest the invasive transvaginal ultrasound bill the state legislature was considering (and has since withdrawn).

But ordinary citizens aren't the only ones protesting these anti-gay, anti-woman measures; several lawmakers and a judge recently made headlines for their creative and inspiring efforts to highlight the absurdities of the new culture wars.

1. Gay judge in Texas refuses to marry straight couples.

Texas judge Tonya Parker takes a very straightforward stance on officiating marriage ceremonies: she won't do it. Why? Because under Texas law, Parker, who is gay, does not have the right to get married herself.

Parker recently told a members of the Stonewall Democrats of Dallas (via the Dallas Voice):

"I use it as my opportunity to give them a lesson about marriage inequality in this state because I feel like I have to tell them why I'm turning them away. So I usually will offer them something along the lines of 'I'm sorry. I don't perform marriage ceremonies because we are in a state that does not have marriage equality, and until it does, I am not going to partially apply the law to one group of people that doesn't apply to another group of people.' And it's kind of oxymoronic for me to perform ceremonies that can't be performed for me, so I'm not going to do it."

Parker has a point -- why should she have to perform marriage ceremonies when she would not be able to waltz into a courthouse and get married to her own partner?

Just last week a second federal judge deemed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional, paving the way for the law to head to the Supreme Court, and both Washington and Maryland moved to legalize same-sex marriage in the past month. So here's hoping Parker will be able to start performing both gay and straight marriages sooner rather than later.

Watch Parker's speech to the Stonewall Democrats of Dallas:

 

2. Oklahoma lawmaker sneaks "life begins at ejaculation" amendment into "personhood" bill.

"Personhood" measures that would give legal rights to fetuses are all the rage among anti-choice Republican lawmakers these days, with bills popping up in Mississippi, Colorado, and most recently, Virginia and Oklahoma. The legislation proved to be highly unpopular in Mississippi and Colorado, and was roundly defeated. But personhood could become law in Oklahoma very soon, as it has already passed both state legislative chambers.

Women's rights advocates are obviously enraged at this development, which, as Sarah Seltzer wrote recently:

threaten[s] the legal standing of everything from in vitro fertilization to the morning-after pill to miscarriages to many kinds of birth control -- and this particular bill has no rape or incest exceptions.
In a less legal sense, it pathologizes women who struggle with fertility (are their bodies murderers?), and contrary to its name, makes them into less than full persons. If this bill gets signed into law, it will be the first genuine personhood law that goes into effect.

Democrats in the state are also upset about the measure, and one Dem lawmaker, Constance Johnson, decided to do something about it by inserting the following language into the personhood bill:

However, any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman's vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child.

Johnson just took the Republicans' logic to its logical extreme: if they want to say life begins at conception, then why not go ahead and say that life begins at ejaculation? It was a wiseass move that wasn't meant to be taken seriously, but what it did do is pretty great. The move garnered headlines and drew attention to the absurdity of anti-choice legislation. Brava, state Sen. Johnson.

3. Virginia lawmaker: if women must undergo an ultrasound to get an abortion, men should have to get a rectal exam before receiving Viagra. 

Another troubling anti-choice legislative trend is the transvaginal ultrasound requirement. Under such measures, many women seeking abortions would be required to undergo an invasive vaginal procedure that is not medically necessary -- in other words, to endure state-sanctioned rape. (At least a few Republicans have poo-poohed the outrage over such measures by arguing, absurdly, that women consented to vaginal penetration when they had sex, so that consent should carry over when seeking an abortion.)

Texas already has a transvaginal ultrasound law on the books, and such measures have also been considered in Pennsylvania and Virginia, where, as mentioned above, more than 1,000 women's rights supporters gathered recently to protest the bill.

Another person who protested Virginia's ultrasound bill was Democratic state Sen. Janet Howell, who introduced an amendment into the legislature that would have required men to obtain a rectal exam and cardiac stress test before they could receive a prescription for Viagra. As Howell told the Huffington Post, "We need some gender equity here. The Virginia Senate is about to pass a bill that will require a woman to have totally unnecessary medical procedure at their cost and inconvenience. If we're going to do that to women, why not do that to men?"

Amid all the outrage, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell revised the legislation to do away with the transvaginal ultrasound requirement. However, women seeking abortions in the state still would have to undergo a medically unnecessary external ultrasound.

4. Congresswomen boycott all-male hearing on contraception.

By now virtually everyone has heard about Rep. Darrell Issa's recent hearing on whether employees at religiously affiliated institutions should be required to receive insurance that covers birth control without a co-payment. People were up in arms because the panel debating the issue looked like this:

Not a woman in sight. In fact, when a woman tried to testify, Issa refused to let her participate, arguing that "As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration's actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness."

Enraged by the all-male panel, Democratic women present at the Issa hearing staged a walk-out. As Think Progress reported :

Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) walked out of the hearing in protest of his decision, citing frustration over the fact that the first panel of witnesses consisted only of male religious leaders against the rule. Holmes Norton said she will not return, calling Issa's chairmanship an "autocratic regime."

The good news is that Sandra Fluke got a chance to speak a week later, at an alterna-hearing organized by Nancy Pelosi.

Rather than roll over and admit defeat, these lawmakers, and the judge from Texas, channeled their outrage over the GOP culture wars into creative, meaningful activism. Might we all learn something from them.

This conservative narrative is also apparent regarding other social issues. There is now a movement among conservative think tanks to create confusion and controversy regarding whether or not humans are changing the weather and the issue of public education.

Leaked documents reveal a right-wing think-tank's plans to undermine the teaching of climate science -- and defund public education in the process.

Though the various “reform” proposals these groups support typically involve rhetoric about “choice” and “markets” and “accountability,” when you boil off the vapors what you are left with is nothing more than a plan to take money away from public schools and hand it over to religious academies in the form of vouchers.

A conservative Republican Tea Party platform will continue to fight the rights of women, fight the rights of marriage and equality for all individuals, promote tax cuts to the rich, promote teaching creationism and abstinence in schools as well as defunding welfare, healthcare, medicare, social security and the public schools.  It is a misogynistic, homophobic, fear-based, religious platform.

Fanning the Flames of Culture War

 

The Republican Tea Party presidential primary is in flux.  Rick Santorum had previously been discounted by the politic pundits until he recently started winning among the voters.  Santorum is now the new GOP Tea Party frontrunner.  The most recent Gallup national tracking poll shows Santorum with a 6-point lead over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

In his recent campaign speeches, Santorum is repeating his assertion that President Obama’s agenda is based on a "phony theology."  Santorum is claiming that the Obama administration is anti-church. He was quoted by the New York Times.

“It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology,” he said. “But no less a theology.” 

In later comments to reporters, Mr. Santorum said while there are “a lot of different stripes” of Christianity, he believes that “if the president says he’s a Christian, he’s a Christian.” 

“I’m just saying he’s imposing his values on the church, and I think that’s wrong,” he said, adding that he did not believe Mr. Obama was less of a Christian for doing so. 

But the Obama campaign called the comments “the latest low in a Republican primary campaign that has been fueled by distortions, ugliness and searing pessimism and negativity.”

Assertions that Mr. Obama is not a Christian, or that he is not an American, were rampant in the 2008 campaign. 

Rick Santorum's words are carefully chosen. His ideas are deliberately framed. The effect is knowingly to fuel the flames of a culture war.

Santorum isn’t really advancing a theological argument. He’s fanning the flames of culture war, speaking in a code that is easily deciphered by those determined to paint Obama as something other than a real American, those who want to believe he is a crypto-Muslim, those for whom his birth certificate is less than valid proof of his citizenship.

Santorum has many more novel, unorthodox and narrow minded ideas. He also believes that large-scale public education is an outdated idea.  He believes that any form of contraception is “not okay.” And he has  stated that he didn’t want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

Of course in true hypocritical Santorum style, he later claimed that he didn't say the word 'black'.  He actually said the word 'blah'.  

Many Protestants may looking at Santorum in a different light once they understand culture war extends to them.  Back in 2008, here is what Santorum had to say about the state of Protestantism.

In a 2008 speech at Ave Maria University, Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic, warned about the dangers of “the NBA” and “rock concerts,” but also said that while Protestants founded America, mainline Protestantism is in such “shambles” that “it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it”:

We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. [...]
Whether its sensuality of vanity of the famous in America, they are peacocks on display and they have taken their poor behavior and made it fashionable. The corruption of culture, the corruption of manners, the corruption of decency is now on display whether it’s the NBA or whether it’s a rock concert or whether it’s on a movie set.

Listen here: 

 

Meanwhile, the rest of Santorum’s speech dwells on his now-typical hyper-puritanical warnings about “Satan,” and the dangers of “sensuality,” “rock concerts,” and “the NBA” that sound like they were plagiarized from Dana Carvey’s Church Lady skits on SNL.

To that I say, Rick Santorum is a turd.  Oh, I didn't say turd, I said Rick Santorum is a 'blah!'

The Conservative Acceptance of Racism

Stephen Eric Bronner believes that the Republicans, the Tea Party, Libertarians and other conservative factions are "At Home With the Bigot." 

The rise of reactionary activists.
Republicans and their conservative allies insist that racism is a thing of the past. But their party still serves as the bastion of anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-black, and anti-feminist activism. Not since the Great Depression has its lower-middle class base experienced such disorientation and disruption. President George W. Bush left them with two failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bursting of the sub-prime housing bubble and the crashing of the derivates market in 2007. And then, on top of it, came the electoral defeat in 2008 that produced the first black president of the United States. Military miscalculation abroad, economic collapse at home, and burning political humiliation fueled the stubborn radicalism and small-minded resentment of what would become the Tea Party. Coming from non-urban areas mostly in the South and the Mid-West, but also from white immigrant enclaves in some big cities, its members have their own forms of moral cognition. They have little use for globalization, the welfare state, new social movements or the "adversary culture" inherited from the 1960s. Wearing revolutionary garb and tricorn hats, disrupting town meetings devoted to healthcare and other social issues, bullying progressive congressional representatives and holding rallies of their own, they constitute a new generation of reactionary activists calling for "revolution" - though, naturally, only one that will protect their privileges and interests.

The coming together of Libertarians, bigots and religious fanatics in to the Tea Party.

The Tea Party meshes libertarian capitalists preaching the gospel of the free market and reactionary populists intent upon rehabilitating "family values," rehabilitating religion, and a parochial vision of community. Over the last century, for the most part, these trends were diametrically at odds with one another: Libertarians had little use for rabble-rousing bigots, religious fanatics or the like, while populists hated big business, open markets, and the scientific culture of modernity. Ronald Reagan initially brought these contradictory trends together. He blended the anti-union and de-regulating interests of elites committed to the classical principles of the free market with the cultural conservatism and hyper-nationalism of the old "moral" majority and burgeoning religious movements. George W. Bush built on that coalition. But there was new urgency for an organizational alliance between liberations and populists following the economic collapse of 2008 and subsequent presidential victory of Barack Obama. Fears of dramatic state intervention into the economy blended with horror over the symbolic implications of having a black president for the image of community associated with old television shows like Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and Happy Days. Out of this alliance and these anxieties, indeed, the Tea Party was born in 2009.

The GOP embraces and then succumbs to the Tea Party.

The GOP was quick to recognize its importance. Seasoned operatives of the Republican Party were soon offering their advice and leadership. They originally thought the Tea Party might be manipulated. But the opposite took place: the tail wound up wagging the dog. There is an old saying: styles make fights. The new rhetoric was supplied by Fox News and a score of feral media demagogues, among whom Glenn Beck and Michael Savage were merely the most venal. Evangelicals and far-right groups associated with them and others like them, and the Tea Party routinely began referring to President Obama as the Anti-Christ and as an Imam. The bigot applauded. Advertisements compared him and his family to chimpanzees, portrayed the White House with rows of watermelons on the lawn, and implied that the president is a crack addict. But the problem apparently was not the bigot's friends who supposedly hate blacks: it was rather Obama who clearly hates whites. The new president was seen as the advocate of the (black) welfare cheat, the (Latino) immigrant, the anti-Christian (Arab) terrorist, the supposedly overpaid (lazy and shiftless) union worker, and anti-family (feminist and gay) forces. The Tea Party channeled the bigot's prejudices. It would become easy for him to identify with the (white) business elite whose (seemingly color-blind) policies attacking the bureaucratic welfare state appeared intent upon recreating a patriarchal world of white privilege.

Capitalist fundamentalism.

Lingering economic recession, fear of radical social and economic reform, and fanatical mobilization (coupled with disillusionment of those expecting yet more radical changes by the new regime) brought about the sweeping victory of the far right in the Congressional elections of 2010. Now it was the Republicans' turn to applaud. The Tea Party was not simply nuts. Challenging the seemingly sacrosanct image of FDR and the New Deal, whatever its racist and intolerant elements, the Tea Party had become the agent of what might be termed capitalist fundamentalism. This meant highlighting the "invisible hand" of the market and the individual (not the accumulation process and class) as the units of social analysis. The state budget could now be equated with a household budget and everyone would now echo the mantra of Margaret Thatcher: "There is no society, there are only individuals." The welfare state would now be condemned (once again) not merely as wasteful - but immoral. Hard work brings rewards. Individuals are responsible for themselves, not others. Lack of ambition and foresight by individuals are the causes of unemployment and poverty. No free rides! Evangelicals know the "truth": no abortions, no condoms, and no gay marriage - women back to the kitchen and gays to the closet.

White is Right!

With the increasing influence of the Tea Party upon the Republican Party, indeed, the once modest home afforded the bigot turned into a mansion. Rooms would prove available especially for someone who is neither white nor male and who seemingly represents the less privileged. Women like former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin or Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-Minnesota) reaffirm the house-wife or the "soccer mom" in the face of an economy in which the single breadwinner has become an anachronism. A gay couple (two male earners) is trotted out occasionally to congratulate the Tea Party for its libertarian values. There is the Latino Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla), who is apparently terrified by the immigrant mob threatening to invade from South of the border. The bigot has also made friends with an African-American or two. Hermann Cain received his applause for insisting that Blacks were "brain-washed" into supporting the Democratic Party, thereby confirming the bigot's old belief that they are too stupid to favor egalitarian and redistributive policies on their own. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas champions tough love while his (white) wife champions the Tea Party. Then there is Congressman Allen West (R-Fla), whose idea of tolerance is to tell liberals "to get the hell out of the United States" and then identify the Democratic Party with the Nazi propaganda machine. This cast of characters, it should be noted, is not simply useful for propagandizing the undecided: it also reinforces the bigot's idea of what makes a real person of color or a real woman. These political figures validate the benevolent image of a bygone America in which taxes were low, government was small, women were in the kitchen, and the only important color was white.

US low among nations for Social Justice.

The clock has already been turned back. A study released on October 29, 2011, by the Bertelsmann Stiftung showed that the United States has plummeted into the bottom five among the thirty nations comprising the industrial world in "Overall Social Justice Rating," "Overall Poverty Prevention Rating," Overall Poverty Rate," "Child Poverty," and "Income Inequality." Libertarian economic policies championed by the Tea Party endanger democratic deliberation, diversity, and cosmopolitan ideals. New socio-economic burdens and constraints also threaten disadvantaged groups. People of color will disproportionately suffer from a flat tax as well as other regressive attempts to shrink the tax base and, subsequently, bankrupt the welfare state. African-Americans and Latinos will be disproportionately impacted by attempts to demand photo-ID, literacy tests, and the like in order to vote. Redistricting and racist zoning regulations are recreating segregation while the uncurbed use of private money in election campaigns is disenfranchising the working people and the poor. Privatizing the prison system has sharply increased incarceration, especially among minority groups: people of color constitute 70% of inmates, nationally, and one in three African-American males is currently either awaiting trial, in jail, or on parole. Since convicts cannot vote, hundred of thousands of primarily African-Americans and people of color are currently being disenfranchised by what has been called the "new Jim Crow."

Bigotry is accepted by the Tea Party GOP.

There is hardly a policy proposal forwarded by the GOP that does not disadvantage people of color, women, and working people - and, worse, there is hardly a single major Republican politician willing to publicly challenge the rhetoric or the proposals of the far right and the Tea Party. The mainstream has justified the extreme. All candidates for the Republican presidential nomination of 2012 seem to worry about a "disappearing white majority" as they take turns in attacking the Civil Rights Act of 1964, "food stamp presidents," and critics of religious dogmatism (as well as the Crusades). White supremacists of varying shades try to recruit and mix with luminaries of the Republican Party at conferences like that hosted by the American Conservative Union. Fragments of half-baked conspiracy theories float around in the minds of many grassroots activists in the Tea Party. Obama may look like he is in charge but (especially since he is black) the more paranoid insist that he is being controlled by more powerful interests and organizations like the Bilderberg banking group, the Trilateral Commission, Freemasons, Islamic terrorists, or Jews - or all of them working in concert. Conspiracy theory is common currency in the Tea Party and, again, there is hardly a single Republican willing to condemn it. Such talk makes no sense and thus frustration grows, resentment increases, and rage intensifies. It is taken out not merely on African-Americans but on other outsiders as well: gays, immigrants, Arabs, and Jews. Bigotry has become a commonplace of political life in the United States. The jargon of prejudice, sometimes veiled and sometimes not, is now so prevalent that most people simply shrug their shoulders. And the Tea Party has been in the vanguard. The influence of their words on action may be indirect: but it is, nonetheless, palpable.

"Racism is alive and well in the United States."

Everyday violence (that mostly goes unreported) against homosexuals, immigrants, and minorities is simply a routine fact of American life. Doctors performing abortions outside the larger cities do so at their own risk. The virtual obsession of the Tea Party with the right to own firearms (including AK-47s) does not merely express a desire to hunt ducks. Mainstream politicians of the Republican Party again fall into line. Sure: explicit calls for the use of violence come only from the margins. Just as the conservative mainstream has helped legitimate the Tea Party, however, the Tea Party is giving new hope to fanatics who stand even further on the right. The Republican Party has lacked the courage to take on the bigots in its own ranks - and its toleration of the Tea Party validates precisely what its ideologues wish to deny: racism is alive and well in the United States. And, all the while, the bigot is smiling. The approving winks that he gets are evident everywhere. What one reaps is what one sows. The prejudices of times past have not disappeared. One just needs to know where to look. Talk about the "end of racism" has become a bad joke. Conservative politics attests to its continuation. The Tea Party will probably find itself in the trashcan of history once Republicans suffer some serious electoral defeats. But its mass base will undoubtedly survive and take new organizational forms as it always has in the past - from the "Know-Nothings" to the KKK to McCarthy to the "Silent Majority" and the "Moral Majority" and God knows what other fringe groups. For the foreseeable future, however, the bigot has no need to worry. With the Republican Party, indeed, he has once again found himself a happy home.

The lesson that needs to be acted upon is that voices of protest against bigotry, racism, hate and disenfranchisement need to be loud, strong and now!

The New GOP Tea Party Quiz Show Game: #1 Purveyor of Non-Truths!

Via The Daily Beast

Most Ignorant GOP Presidential Hopefuls, from Herman Cain to Mitt Romney

#1, Rick Perry Total falsehoods: 19

Biggest whopper: The candidate with most falsehoods hails from the state where more is always better. Rick Perry’s biggest whopper has been repeated at several debates, including in Tampa in September and in Hanover in October: namely, that Texas created 1 million jobs while the country was losing 2.5 million jobs. The good governor goes back to January 2009 to get the national number, and during that span Texas created only about 100,000 jobs. Must be that Lone Star optimism. By Steve Pope Previous 11 / 11 Next

#2, Michele Bachmann Total falsehoods: 18

Biggest whopper: The U.S. representative from Minnesota has slowly but surely come back down to earth since her Iowa Straw Poll victory in August, but she continues to stretch the truth. During the Hanover debate in October, Bachmann said that the Democrats’ ostensible victory following the debt-ceiling debacle of the summer past gave the president “a $2.4 trillion blank check.” That money, however, was used to make sure the country could meet its obligations. (For the semantics sticklers out there, Factcheck makes a valid point that “a check for a set amount is not a ‘blank check.’”) By Richard Ellis Previous 10 / 11 Next

#3, Mitt Romney Total falsehoods: 15

Biggest whopper: With great airtime comes great opportunity to mislead, and the presumptive GOP nominee has taken advantage. Romney took aim at Obama during the September debate in Orlando, saying the president "went around the world and apologized for America." Romney was referring to the president’s tour of European and Middle Eastern nations shortly after he took office. But according to Politifact, the president’s mission centered around consensus-building, not apologies. By Nicholas Kamm Previous 9 / 11 Next

#4, Herman Cain Total falsehoods: 10

Biggest whopper: Somewhere in the middle of Herman Cain’s book tour disguised as a presidential campaign, the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO with no elected political experience found himself among the frontrunners for the GOP nomination. Repeated allegations of sexual harassment threaten to push Cain to the back of the pack, but he’s still polling strongly. During the October 18 debate in Las Vegas, Cain claimed that his flat-tax plan would not raise taxes for 84 percent of Americans. As Factcheck points out, a Tax Policy Center report says the opposite—that, in fact, a large majority of Americans, 83.8 percent to be exact, would face higher taxes under Cain’s plan. By Chip Somodevilla Previous 8 / 11 Next

#5, Newt Gingrich Total falsehoods: 6

Biggest whopper: If anybody comes in and takes over Herman Cain’s spot as the GOP’s favorite non-Romney candidate, it’ll be Newt Gingrich. After the Cain-Gingrich Lovefest 2011 this past weekend, Gingrich is now leading Mitt Romney but still behind Cain for the top spot in Iowa polling. Until Gingrich’s recent resurgence, he focused partly on perceived injustices committed during the debates themselves, telling the moderator in the Ames, Iowa debate that he was “handpicking” Gingrich quotes about Libya. The moderator wasn’t, and had correctly characterized Gingrich’s statement. By Ethan Miller Previous 7 / 11 Next

#6, Rick Santorum Total falsehoods: 5

Biggest whopper: Santorum lost his Senate reelection bid in 2006 amid that year’s Democratic backlash, but six years later he’s gunning for the White House. At the CNN debate in Manchester, New Hampshire, Santorum revived a tired GOP talking point when he said that health care for the elderly would be rationed under the federal health-care bill. As Factcheck points out, the law specifically says the health-care program “shall not include any recommendation to ration health care.” By Alex Wong Previous 6 / 11 Next

#7, Jon Huntsman Total falsehoods: 3

Biggest whopper: In a strategy that recalls Rudy Giuliani’s failed focus on the Florida primary in 2008, the former ambassador to China and governor of Utah is putting all his eggs in the New Hampshire basket. His peak in the Live Free or Die state was a 10 percent poll showing in September, and New Hampshire was also the site of Huntsman’s most egregious claim. At the Bloomberg/Washington Post debate in Hanover, he said the IRS would need to hire 19,500 new employees to deal with part of the Obama health-care bill. Not true. The Obama health- care bill will require many new IRS agents, but not as many as Huntsman claimed. By Win McNamee Previous 5 / 11 Next

#8 (tie), Ron Paul Total falsehoods: 2

Biggest whopper: Just like in 2008, everyone’s favorite libertarian septuagenarian is performing well enough in the polls to get invited to all of the GOP’s major debates. He served up a meaty whopper in Ames, Iowa when he claimed the country was bankrupt. Nope—Politifact found that the country can meet its financial obligations. There will not be any forthcoming Chapter 11 filings for Uncle Sam. By Steve Pope Previous 4 / 11 Next

#8 (tie), Tim Pawlenty Total falsehoods: 2

Biggest whopper: The former governor of Minnesota’s 2012 presidential bid lasted just four months, with Pawlenty bowing out in August. Still, he lasted long enough to score a couple of untruths. During the first debate in New Hampshire, he claimed when President Bush asked for National Guardsmen at the U.S.-Mexico border, he was “one of the few governors” to follow through. But Factcheck says that all 50 governors took the president up on his request. Tim Pawlenty: not so unique after all. By Chip Somodevilla Previous 3 / 11 Next

#8 (tie), Gary Johnson Total falsehoods: 2

Biggest whopper: The former New Mexico governor will likely go down as an also-ran in the 2012 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Few debate sponsors have invited Johnson, and with so little airtime, it’s tough to find a gaffe. At the Fox News/Google debate in Orlando on September 22, however, Johnson said that the U.S. government borrows 43 cents of every dollar it spends. In fact that figure is closer to 37 cents. By Mark Wilson

The winner changes each week with a new set of questions and non-answers. Stay posted to see who will be the '#1 Purveyor of Non-Truths' next week!!!

Is it Funny or Pathetic?

A lack of empathy and aversion to facts were shared by of the eight Republican Party candidates and the audience attending the recent GOP Presidential debates. Cheers for the death penalty, executions and the death of a hypothetical uninsured man in recent debates have stunned liberals and left them wondering whether there are any moderate Republicans remaining in the GOP.

Bill Maher enlisted the help of Keith Olbermann to "try to use facts to get through to a "typical GOP voter" who was, in fact, sitting in a plastic bubble." WATCH:

Ronald Reagan vs GOP Tea Party

Bill Maher, comedian, TV host, political commentator, was on the Jay Leno show on September 9th, after the Republican Presidential Debate and President Obama's speech on the job situation. When discussing why Presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman's political stance does not fit into today's Republican ideology, Maher suggested that "at some point, the left moved to the center and the right right got on a short bus to crazytown!

If you think that Maher is extreme in his analysis, just look to Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, who recently observed: “Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican” in today’s party." To emphasize the obvious, Sally Kohn, in her article Forgetting Reagan, states that "by today’s Tea Party standards, the Republican icon would have been a Leninist-Marxist-socialist America hater." Kohn lists at least 5 ways Reagan would have been in hot water with the Tea Party.

At least by Tea Party standards, Reagan was kind of liberal—a fact that seemed to escape the GOP candidates claiming his mantle. Here are the top five ways the real Reagan would have landed in hot water with Republicans beholden to the Tea Party.

1. Reagan Gave Amnesty to Undocumented Immigrants

When the debate last night turned to immigration, John Huntsman said that if “President Reagan was here he would speak to the American people and he would lay out in hopeful, optimistic terms” how to get to positive immigration reform. It was a fitting homage from the race’s only moderate.

After all, when conservatives today complain that a stringent legalization program requiring all sorts of hurdles and fines in exchange for citizenship is equivalent to amnesty, they forget they’re swiping at The Gipper’s record. It was Ronald Reagan who passed the law making any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for real amnesty—no fines included. The bill helped millions of new Americans gain authorized residency in the United States.

In his farewell address as president, Reagan envisioned America as a city on a hill: “And if there had to be city walls,” he said. “The walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.” Strong words from the idol of those who now want to build even taller, electrified walls.

2. Reagan Shored Up Social Security

Last Rick Perry reprised his attack on Social Security, calling the program that has kept millions of seniors out of poverty a “monstrous lie.” But if Perry is going to keep insisting that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, that would make Ronald Reagan its Bernie Madoff.

After boasting of his plans to privatize Social Security so that “those who can make better provisions for themselves” be allowed to do so, Reagan bailed out the program to the tune of $165 billion. In fact, Republicans can thank Reagan that they even have a Social Security to rail against.

3. Reagan Was a Union Leader

Before running for office, Reagan was a union leader. He ran the Screen Actors Guild and boasted of being the first head to lead it in a strike. Once in the White House, Reagan said, “Collective bargaining … has played a major role in America’s economic miracle. Unions represent some of the freest institutions in this land. There are few finer examples of participatory democracy to be found anywhere.” True, Reagan is famous for busting the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (Patco) union, but he supported the right of government workers to form unions and bargain collectively—and extended these rights to public-sector workers when he was governor of California. And not only did Reagan win Patco’s endorsement for his 1980 presidential campaign; The New York Times reported that in pre-strike negotiations with the air traffic controllers, Reagan “directed his negotiators to go beyond his legal authority to offer controllers a pay raise before their strike—the first time a president had ever offered so much to a federal employees’ union.”

4. Reagan Opposed Weaponization

In his memoirs, Reagan wrote that he dreamed of “a world free of nuclear weapons.” During his presidency, conservatives within his own party accused him of “appeasing” the Soviets in signing a nuclear non-proliferation treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev. Following the negotiations, Paul Wyerich, a leader of the New Right, wrote, “Reagan is a weakened president, weakened in spirit as well as clout.” Yes, Reagan redeemed himself with conservatives by presiding over the greatest military buildup in U.S. history and, in so doing, increased the nation’s deficit by from $700 billion to $3 trillion—more than any president since George Washington combined. But by refusing to send more troops into Beirut in 1983 when Hezbollah murdered 243 U.S. service members, critiquing Israel’s preventative strike on an Iraqi nuclear reactor, and seeking to draw down the weapons cache worldwide, Reagan never quite fit the image of a right-wing hawk.

5. Reagan Raised Taxes

All of the candidates in last night’s debate pushed the conservative Kool Aid that tax cuts will save America’s economy. For kicks, Mitt Romney went a step further, endorsing tax cuts for the rich while complaining that poor people who don’t pay taxes aren’t doing their fair share to support the troops.

But when he was governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state” until that point in an effort to balance the budget (How would that sound to todays’ GOP candidates, all of whom indicated they would not raise taxes by a single dollar even if it were offset with $10 in spending cuts). Once president, Reagan raised taxes seven out of eight of his years in office—including four times in just two years.

Basically, Reagan was a giant disappointment for arch-conservatives. He did little to tighten restrictions against abortion as president and actually passed pro-choice legislation as governor of California. He grew the size of the federal government tremendously, adding 60,000 new government jobs (versus, for instance, Bill Clinton, who shrank government payrolls by 373,000). As governor of California, Reagan supported and ultimately expanded Medi-Cal, which is the nation’s largest Medicaid program. Both as governor and president, he was one of the most proactive presidents in restricting smog emissions and protecting wilderness. And after his press secretary was shot during an assassination attempt against him, the president came out in support of stricter gun-control laws.

Sally Kohn notes, "The GOP candidates may have been standing in the Reagan Library, but they were a million miles away from Reagan’s legacy."