Drawing Board, Back To

Oops. Teensy problem. After two previous and opposite rulings by federal judges, a Bush-appointed one is the first to say the health-care insurance mandate is unconstitutional. Not unreasonable. Unconstitutional. Having always argued for single-payer or, at minimum, a "public option," I'm tempted to say "told ya so." It always seemed a little dicey, constitution-wise. No matter which judge is "right," it'll eventually get to the S. Court, one must assume.

The good news is that, in a society that makes sense, governed by legislators who had wisdom, this would mean retooling and returning to the Itoldyahowtodoit plan. The bad news is... reality.

Assuming the ruling stands -- and with our current Supreme Court who could predict otherwise? (in fact, admitting to zero scholarly background, I'd say the decision is correct even though I think it's too bad, sort of) -- the last thing that'll come out of our newly dumber Congress is a public option or single payer. The only question is whether they'd take it up at all, or just let health care reform once again become excardiized on the Republican alter of tax cuts.

[Addendum: about the judge (written before the ruling.)]

Two other federal judges have ruled that the law passes constitutional muster. No judge has ruled the law unconstitutional. Many observers think Hudson will be the first.

That prediction is built partly on Hudson's roots in Republican politics. He was elected Arlington's commonwealth attorney as a Republican, briefly ran against U.S. Rep. James P. Moran (D-Va.) in 1991 and has received all of his appointments - as U.S. attorney, as a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge in 1998 and to the federal bench in 2002 - from Republicans.

Actually, it's even worse, as Sam Spade pointed out in the comments.

Genius Bar

For a long time I've wondered if there's some sort of social science-y calculation that allows one to figure how many genii per capita are required for a society to survive. There seems little doubt that, on a statistical basis, the US is falling behind other countries in education rankings, based on various testing scores. There are, one intuits, several reasons; among them are the diversity of our population and the fact that, in general, we seem committed to the idea that all kids deserve a shot at, and have the potential to gain from, a decent education. Strengths, I'd say, in both of which we differ from many countries to which we are comparing ourselves.

But that's not the point, or the question. The question, to which I have no idea of the answer, is how our best and brightest graduates compare to those of other countries. Because if it's true -- and it may not be -- that we're doing as well as or better than our competitors in producing top caliber graduates -- elites, one might call them -- then the only remaining question is the original one: how many do we need to make it in the world? How many does it take to come up with the next antibiotic, a better computer chip, MRI, automotive battery, to provide the ideas that will never come from the kids left behind, the ones deliberately mis-educated by the right wing christianists? (A corollary question, of course, is whether we're committing enough to identify and nurture those people, their labs, their workbenches. Knowing a few people in various corners of academe, I'd say no.)

My thoughts along these lines also include noticing the obvious: take a look at the top grads from high schools and colleges around the country; the award-winners, the grant-getters. Note how many are immigrants themselves or first-generation children of immigrants. Names like Kim, Nguyen, Singh, Hadad. Most, I'd say.

I'd been thinking about writing something about this for a while. What reminded me was a recent letter to the editor in my local paper. It said, in part:

.... truly fixing the (education) problem is going to involve having a moratorium on current immigration and only allowing targeted immigration to move the country back to its former 90 percent white status.

Reality trumps hope. I try to convince myself that it's possible we might still be okay in spite of ourselves if it's true that we're still producing that unspecified number of bright, motivated, highly-capable graduates. On the other hand, even if it is true, it seems it won't be for long, if political trends continue.

Because if Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and their deaf, dumb, and blind followers have their way, we'll shoot ourselves in the head while stabbing ourselves in the heart. What more perfect formula for self-destruction than the gutting of quality education while slamming our doors in the face of immigrants, the last people on Earth who retain the idea of The American Dream? The very people who have a chance of producing it for themselves and, as a consequence, for the rest of us? The ones capable of rising above the impediments of crowded classrooms, over-burdened and underpaid teachers, politically- and religiously-based curricula that teabaggers and RWS™ demand and which Texas is showing are, most surely, on the way.

The Letter

I suppose it could just be their cynical politics as usual, leaping on the tiniest issue and turning it, with the help of Fox "news" and the rest of the RWS™, into a cause célêbre. Same sh*t, different day, and all that. Maybe that's all it is, in which case, ho hum. Except that whether they believe it or not, they know everyone in their flock does: it gets votes, it gets money, it gets power. And it gets us further down the path to immolation by self.

I refer to this. Another example of the self-destructive and delusional path on which the teabaggers and the RWS™ who represent their liturgy, have put us.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and her colleagues on the Congressional Prayer Caucus penned a letter to President Obama Monday, attacking him for his alleged failure to the use the word "God" and "Creator" more in his public speeches, especially abroad.

I know I repeat myself on this subject. But if people are afraid to speak up, it'll be a done deal. We'll become a Christian nation.

But not a Christian nation like, say, England.

A Christian nation like Jonestown.

Bad Medicine

Warning to people planning to get sick sometime in their lives: just because a guy has "M.D." after his name, it doesn't mean he's intelligent, competent, or able to process data. It's like the old joke: what do you call a guy who graduated last in his class in medical school? "Doctor."

With that in mind, I give you the most public embarrassment to my chosen profession, Dr Tom Coburn, Senator from Oklahoma:

I'd issue this challenge: anyone who thinks we oughta pay for tax cuts, oughta have to put up a list of programs that we oughta eliminate to pay for them. I put up every time when people are wanting to spend money a list of options that we can do to make it that we don't increase the very problem — hole that we're digging in.

Admittedly it's hard to figure out what he's saying. But I think it's safe to conclude that somewhere in the salad he's implying that it's up to those who reject the idea of tax cuts to propose who and how we should pay for them. I'm gonna do something stupid, he says, but it's up to you to deal with the consequences.

Any way you deconstruct it -- and the points are severally obvious -- this has to be among the top ten stupid things ever said by a politician. And that's in the era of Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney. So let's narrow it to the last two years. Rarified air still, if ever there was.

At least he's in Congress, where the only thing he can kill is the idea of America. If he ever goes back to his former profession, he could kill you. Especially if you're a woman.

Weekday At Bernie's

As I write this, Senator Bernie Sanders is doing his version of a filibuster, with the occasional help of some friends. He's been at it about five hours, honoring the rules of the Senate instead of using them cynically, and making nothing but strong and compelling points about the unwisdom of renewing tax cuts for the very wealthy. Listing the many needs of our country going wanting, enumerating the numbers of businesses not paying any taxes (Exxon Mobil made $19 billion last year, paid zero taxes, and got a tax rebate of $150 million!), documenting the increasing disparities between rich and poor and its effect on the economy, the diminution in education funding, he's making a compelling and incontrovertible case. He ain't reading the phonebook. One after another, the facts flow: we're behind the world in every important category. Significantly. Shamefully. Self-destructively.

It is, of course, falling on absent Republican ears. Teabaggers don't care. The occasional commenters here who are outraged by the idea of restoring reasonable tax rates, will remain unconvinced, even if they were to watch and listen.

The disconnect between claims of fiscal responsibility by the right and their evangelical belief in tax cuts for those that don't need them will continue to be ignored by voters, reporters, and the RWS™.

It's not a complicated concept. It's as obvious as Glenn Beck's demagoguery. The Bush tax cuts went too far. The Bush tax cuts went too far. The Bush tax cuts went too far. Period. Even Ronald Reagan's chief economic adviser and budget director agree. If allowing the very wealthy to keep their current tax rates would create jobs, why hasn't it happened, ten years down the road? The spending cuts required to finance the cuts would be devastating to infrastructure, education, safety net, even (maybe -- I'm not convinced) the military.

I fully agree there was a time when tax rates were far too high. (Those times, generally, were under Republican presidents. Reagan, after he cut them too drastically, went on to become one of the greatest tax-raisers of all time. For the record. And to his credit for recognizing he'd gone too far.) But the scalded screaming at this time is simply indefensible. We're not talking about going back even to Reagan's rates. Contrary to the disinformation campaign of Fox "news" and the RWS™, it's not about either hating or punishing the rich. It's about getting back (toward. We have a long way to get "back") to a modicum of sanity. People argue for a flat tax, the end of most deductions, and claim it's more fair. Decent argument, even though I've never seen a convincing crunching of the numbers. But as long as we have progressive tax rates the most wealthy will have a higher rate at the top. To me, it's sensible and fair, and well-established. Were the Bush rates on the rich, which have been a large factor in our imminent demise, to expire, we'd simply get back to the Clinton era, when the rich did fine indeed.

President Obama says, and he's probably got a point, "show me the votes." He says he thinks it's indefensible and damaging to continue the current rates for the very wealthy; but he claims there aren't the votes to change it. He may be right, in which case perhaps there really is no choice.

But what does that say about our democracy and its ability to govern itself, to provide leadership and smart choices when they are most needed? Loudly and undeniably, it says we're on the way to becoming a failed state. If there's any hope -- and the recent election suggests the opposite -- it's in the flickering possibility that people, voters, could find the wherewithal to reject the ways in which they're being manipulated, tricked, deluded, and overtly lied to by the right-wing propagandists and raise their voices.

Sadly, such a sea change would also require deeper thinking and the sort of actual patriotism and, yes, perhaps, Christian charity, of which they've shown themselves, in numbers enough to be meaningful, constitutionally incapable.

You go, Bernie. Would that people could hear. And call their senators. Email them. Raise hell.

[Here's a brief clip of it:]

Mind Games

Here's an article referring to an article based on an article about the fact that only 6% of scientists identify as Republicans:

I can think of three testable hypotheses they might look into. The first is that scientists are hostile towards Republicans, which scares young Republicans away from careers in science. The second is that Republicans are hostile towards science, and don't want to go into careers in science. The third is that young people who go into the sciences tend to end up becoming Democrats, due to factors inherent in the practice of science or to peer-group identification with other scientists. In the absence of data, I leave it to you to decide which you find most plausible. But by all means, social scientists should look into this.

Maybe it's a little of all three; but I think we know that the last is closest to the truth. To be interested in learning something new, to be open to where the facts take one, to be committed to basing one's beliefs on what can be shown, and constantly to challenge and push at the edges of what is known -- that is science; and it's what it is to be a liberal thinker. It also -- need it be said? -- explains the negative correlation between science and religion; at least of the fundamentalist highly dogmatic literalistic kind.

Once And For All

I know people who watch Fox "news" (I stopped watching all cable news a long time ago.) I even know people who cling to the idea that it's "fair and balanced." (Which is like saying grits ain't groceries, eggs ain't poultry, and Mona Lisa was a man.) Shall we now all admit that watching Fox "news" is an exercise in bias-reinforcement? If that's what you need, fine. But call it what it is. Propaganda, pure and simple.

At the height of the health care reform debate last fall, Bill Sammon, Fox News' controversial Washington managing editor, sent a memo directing his network's journalists not to use the phrase "public option."

Instead, Sammon wrote, Fox's reporters should use "government option" and similar phrases -- wording that a top Republican pollster had recommended in order to turn public opinion against the Democrats' reform efforts....

...Two months prior to Sammon's 2009 memo, Republican pollster Frank Luntz appeared on Sean Hannity's August 18 Fox News program. Luntz scolded Hannity for referring to the "public option" and encouraged Hannity to use "government option" instead.

Luntz argued that "if you call it a 'public option,' the American people are split," but that "if you call it the 'government option,' the public is overwhelmingly against it." Luntz explained that the program would be "sponsored by the government" and falsely claimed that it would also be "paid for by the government."

"You know what," Hannity replied, "it's a great point, and from now on, I'm going to call it the government option." ...

... The next morning, October 27, Sammon sent an email to the staffs of Special Report, Fox News Sunday, and FoxNews.com, as well as to other reporters and producers at the network. The subject line read: "friendly reminder: let's not slip back into calling it the 'public option.' "

Foxians like to separate their "opinion" shows (ie, ones based on craziness) from their "straight news" (ie, thinly disguised manipulation based, among other things, on highly selective editorial choices.) But here's an example of one of their so-called straight ones:

First, on Bill O'Reilly's show Tuesday, ("news"man James) Rosen argued, with a perfectly straight face, that President Obama had raised some serious concerns about national security because he had described Republicans in Congress as "hostage takers" with whom he had negotiated:

Rosen: One other point, Bill, if I may, and this should concern a broader spectrum than just the president and his supporters. And that is the potential national security implications of a president of the United States broadcasting to the world that he is willing to negotiate with hostage takers if he believes the hostage is being harmed.

O'Reilly actually burst out laughing, assuming that Rosen was kidding. He wasn't.

Then yesterday, on Happening Now, Rosen followed up with a segment about Obama's record regarding how well he's keeping his promises. It featured a clip of Obama saying, "Look at what I promised during the campaign. There is not a single thing that I said that I would do that I have not either done or tried to do," and "And if I haven't gotten it done yet, I'm still trying to do it."

Rosen then told his audience: "That leaves little terrain as ground for contradiction, and yet the Pulitzer Prize winning website PolitiFact.com lists more than 500 broken Obama campaign promises."

But as Simon Easter at Media Matters observes, that's a far cry from what PolitiFact actually reports -- namely, that of the 506 campaign promises they've monitored, Obama has actually broken only 24 of them:

Perhaps it's just stupidity: it is, after all, hard to read a graph with all those numbers on it. Categories 'n stuff. Nor do any of their bright lights emanate a lot of candlepower. So, yeah, guess the guy could just be an idiot. Or, to put it more properly, his idiocy could be all-encompassing. Still, it's a pretty hard thing to misread.

Many people refer to Fox and MSNBC as if they're two pees in a pot. I admit KO can get pretty sanctimonious and -- what shall we call it?? -- screamy. But I've never heard him boldly lie about something the way the opinionators do at Fox. And when he makes an error, he corrects it. Quickly. Moreover, there's simply no equivalent on Fox to Rachel Maddow, whom I've also stopped watching (but because she's so right and so informed and so smart, what she says is irrefutably depressing.) None, over there. None with her smarts, her precision, her fairness -- yes, fairness -- to people from the other side that she invites on her show (fewer and fewer of whom are willing to be seen forced to defend themselves against actual facts.) Nor is there any equivalent on Fox of Joe Scarborough.

So, Foxophiles. At least admit why you watch and what you get out of it: validation, reinforcement, the ability to maintain tightly-held beliefs in the face of controverting fact. Recognition is the first step to intellectual freedom.

Then, maybe, we can get you to see -- and then admit -- how dangerous and damaging is a network with no scruples whatsoever; with an extreme agenda for the promotion of which they'll stop at nothing. Certainly not at any line beyond facts.

Wrong Again

The disastrous consequences of the ACA, predicted by the RWS™, insurers, and the Congressional Rs who take their instructions from them, have, so far anyway, failed to materialize.

One of the most significant savings envisioned in the new health- care law - limiting payments to the private health plans that cover 11 million older Americans under Medicare - is, so far, bringing little of the turbulence that the insurance industry and many Republicans predicted.

The law, which sets in motion the broadest changes to the U.S. health-care system in decades, will hold down the amount of money the government gives to Medicare Advantage plans, which are available to patients who prefer a managed-care version of the program. The savings is forecast to amount to $145 billion by the end of the decade.

Whether the payment changes are warranted was a contentious subplot in the protracted debate over the legislation. Democrats argued successfully that the private plans were being overpaid and could withstand the changes. Republicans warned that such plans would raise prices, lower benefits or cause defections from the program, stranding the elderly people who rely on them.

Early clues to the actual effects have now materialized, as elderly Americans may sign up for a health plan for 2011 during an enrollment period through the end of the year, and the warnings of swift, serious damage to the program are not borne out. Fewer health plans are available for the coming year, but the decrease is largely for reasons unrelated to the new law. Premiums have not jumped substantially, and benefits have not tended to erode.

I've expressed disappointment in the law for the extent to which it leaves insurers in the middle of the transactions between providers and patients; and I've been skeptical of the predicted savings said to be the result of the legislation. But the usual right-wing suspects, while proposing nothing substantial (and ignoring that the law pretty much mirrors proposals made by Republicans and instituted by the mittster), provided nothing but scare tactics (like the above) and lies (like "death panels").

I can't see far enough to know the true costs or impacts of the act. But it's a pretty safe prediction that even people as pig-headed as teabaggers will eventually have the data in front of them to show, once again, that they were lied to and manipulated by the Foxobeckian screamers. What they might do with the data, of course, is another thing entirely.

Sarah Says No

I found it pretty amusing that the teabaggers seriously asked Sarah Palin to run for RNC chair. The woman who resigned an easy governorship of an oil-rich socialist state two years into her first term in order to ride her faux (pronounced "Fox") populism to multimillionairehood? She'd take a job where she'd have actually to work? Every day? Face the press, often? Become conversant on policy? Hell no, she said, in a hurry. Because she doesn't like to ask people for money.

Because she doesn't like to ask people for money!

Because she doesn't like to ask people for money!

If anything tells you (assuming you're among those to whom it wasn't obvious from the beginning) of the enormous con-job that is Sarah Palin, and the willing suspension of critical thinking by her followers, this is it.

RNC chair. Working for the aggrandizement of others than herself. Giving up her book tours. Lowering her profile to work behind the scenes. Making something not about her.

Yeah.

Book Learning

In a fascinating and challenging interview with C. Bradley Thompson, political science professor and author of Neoconservativism; An Obituary for an Idea, I was struck by several things he says about neo-conservatives and their particular -ism. These, the guys who got us into Iraq:

The single greatest threat to America, according to many neocons, is not communism or radical Islam but nihilism, and they see nihilism as the inevitable outcome of Enlightenment liberalism and America’s founding principles. The real problem with liberal-capitalist society for Strauss, Kristol, and Brooks is that individuals do not sacrifice themselves to anything higher than themselves and their petty self-interest. What America needs, therefore, is a two-step antidote for its cultural malaise: the inculcation of public virtue and the promotion of nationalism. The neocons seek to restore a public philosophy that promotes sacrifice as the great moral ideal and patriotism as the great political ideal.

The American people need something greater than themselves to live for. They need to learn the virtue of sacrifice, which means war. War–perpetual war–is the ultimate means by which the neocons can fight creeping nihilism and promote sacrifice and nationalistic patriotism. An aggressive, proactive foreign policy therefore serves a greater purpose–to raise ordinary Americans above their daily, selfish concerns. Nation building also provides neoconservative statesmen with a grand theatre on which to practice their statesmanlike virtues.

War as sacrifice by society. Not paying for the things we need, not actually serving, as in a draft. Just perpetual war, as if it raises our moral consciousness. How strange. How contrary to what we can observe in the ashes of Bush's and his neocon advisers' two wars.

And from the book itself:

The neoconservative vision of a good America is one in which ordinary people work hard, read the Bible, go to church on Sunday, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, practice homespun virtues, sacrifice themselves to the “common good,” obey the commands of the government, fight wars, and die for the State. . . . In summary, the neoconservatives are the advocates of a new managerial State—a State controlled and regulated by a new mandarin class of conservative virtucrats who think the American people are incapable of governing themselves without the help of the neocons’ special, a priori wisdom.

And:

....the neocons share important core values with the principles of fascism. They make us feel comfortable with certain fascist principles by Americanizing them. . . ...They have seduced the American people into believing that a free and virtuous society is somehow compatible with government controls over all aspects of man’s economic and spiritual endeavors. This is not the fascism of Nazi Germany or fascist Italy, but instead something rather different. It points toward what we might call fascism-lite—a fascism that is moderate, defanged, and well-suited to the smiley-face optimism of America’s Ronald McDonald culture

Rings true. The long-time reader of this blog will be familiar with the concept that it's they who are fascists, with their constant propaganda stream, lying, distractions, corporatism; not Obama -- not by any stretch of the imagination. It's a more erudite and studied form of what I've been saying. Getting all misty-eyed about war as patriotism is easy, especially for the neocons, essentially none of whom ever served. It's a smokescreen, a diversion, a substitute for the real sacrifices required of a democratic and pluralistic society, were it actually to focus on its own. How easy it makes it to ignore the hard stuff. How convenient to use war as a hammer to nail down their selfish aims, while calling it country-love.

That they see liberalism as leading to unwillingness to sacrifice for the common good is quite remarkable, given who is arguing for what nowadays. I'd laugh out loud, were I not sobbing into my soup. The neocon definition of sacrifice, evidently, is expecting someone else to fight their wars, someone else to address the life-long effects on those who come home, someone else to pay for them, someone else to suffer the effects of their failed economic policies. Who, and what, exactly, is being sacrificed?

My only tiny teeny quibble: I don't see the death of the idea at all. I see it renaming itself as teabaggerism, and becoming even more dishonest and pervasive, even more thoughtless and self-centered.

Republicans

See, conservative columnist David Brooks recognizes, as do I, that the current Republican Party as represented in Congress is damaging themselves and the country. They're not conservatives. They're Republicans. In 2010, there's a huge difference.

Better

Rather than keep adding to the previous post, which might get missed by those who've already read it, I'd like to say, separately, that I just watched the President's news conference regarding the tax compromise. (The video is now available and is at the bottom of this post.)

I still like the guy. I'm less upset than I was. And I defy anyone who still repeats the Foxian meme that he can't speak without a teleprompter, or that he's an America-hating Muslim terrorist socialist Nazi, to watch it and defend their position.

He says he has the next two years to make clear the impact of the Republicans' intransigence on their disastrous positions. If he doesn't, we're screwed. There's no doubt -- and no objective way to refute the idea -- that the greatest danger to our country are the teabaggers and the dimwitted and self-interested politicians they've enabled.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Tax Reality

From the article:

This chart should be ingrained in the mind of anybody who cares about fiscal policy. The main things to note:

• Federal taxes are the lowest in 60 years, which gives you a pretty good idea of why America’s long-term debt ratios are a big problem. If the taxes reverted to somewhere near their historical mean, the problem would be solved at a stroke.
• Income taxes, in particular, both personal and corporate, are low and falling. That trend is not sustainable.
• Employment taxes, by contrast—the regressive bit of the fiscal structure—are bearing a large and increasing share of the brunt. Any time that somebody starts complaining about how the poor don’t pay income tax, point them to this chart. Income taxes are just one part of the pie, and everybody with a job pays employment taxes.
• There aren’t any wealth taxes, but the closest thing we’ve got—estate and gift taxes—have shrunk to zero, after contributing a non-negligible amount to the public fisc in earlier decades.

If you were structuring a tax code from scratch, it would look nothing like this. But the problem is that tax hikes seem to be politically impossible no matter which party is in power. And since any revamp of the tax code would involve tax hikes somewhere, I fear we’re fiscally doomed.

And yet, sadly, when it was time to point it out and stand firm, Obama caved. I don't think it'll help the country (yes, he said he did it to get some other "compromises") and I'm sure it won't help him. The facts -- even public opinion! -- were on his side. He could have made it as clear as Moosekiller Palin's unfamiliarity with a rifle that the R policies are unsustainable, that they favor the wealthy over the most basic needs of everyone else.

If it were really true that the compromise was the only way to get the other things he wanted, it'd be one thing; but it's hard to believe that a man who at one time had the rhetorical powers to convince people of the right thing couldn't have stood up to the bullying, called out the Rs, and drawn a line.

God knows they couldn't get any less helpful.

[Added: here's a contra-view, from a conservative who thinks Obama got the upper hand. I wish it were true.]

[Soon thereafter, there appear some very strong dissents to the "upper hand" proposition.]

Blowin' In The Wind

Mine Eyes Have Seen

This country is in enormous trouble. It's the sort of thing that ought to make anyone who loves America deeply disturbed. Which, of course, it doesn't. Because they don't.

When emails first appeared calling for dumping current Speaker Joe Straus in favor of "Christian conservative" leadership, Straus' more visible opponents initially dismissed accusations of anti-Jewish/pro-Christian bias. "I've never heard any one talk about Mr. Straus' religion," said Michael Quinn Sullivan, the head of Empower Texans and a vocal leader of the anti-Straus crowd. "There is no place in the speakership race for discussions of people's religion or lack thereof."....

... It seemed like things had died down, until I obtained an email exchange Tuesday between two members of the State Republican Executive Committee—Rebecca Williamson and John Cook. After Williamson sent a fact sheet to SREC members defending Straus, Cook responded by dismissing her claims and saying that "We elected a house with Christian, conservative values. We now want a true Christian, conservative running it." (You can see both emails here.) Since the SREC governs state Republican Party affairs, this marked the first time an elected party leader had semi-openly called for a "Christian conservative" Speaker.

... Cook, who stands by his email, doesn't mince words: he maintains that his demands are in no way bigoted. Here's a summary of our conversation, and I'll leave it to readers to judge.

"When I got involved in politics, I told people I wanted to put Christian conservatives in leadership positions," he told me, explaining that he only supports Christian conservative candidates in Republican primary races.

"I want to make sure that a person I'm supporting is going to have my values. It's not anything about Jews and whether I think their religion is right or Muslims and whether I think their religion is right. ... I got into politics to put Christian conservatives into office. They're the people that do the best jobs over all."

Then he asked me if I was a Christian....

The thing is, I doubt many on the right find this the least bit chilling. It's teabagger heaven. It's Palinbeckopalooza. It's without question where we're headed.

Education? Kiss it goodbye. Rational politics? Already gone. Collaboration, problem-solving, reaching out, inclusiveness, democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, respect for minorities -- in short, America. Going, going....

Think I'm over the top? Unfair? One-sided? Against this? This makes me sick. Physically, literally sick.

What's next? What the hell is next?