Low-effort Thinkers

Senator Tom Cotten, a Republican from Arkansas, recently took to the Senate floor to denounce the border adjustment tax Paul Ryan has been promoting. While Cotten, along with others, made some good points about the effect of the tax, Cotten also said something very telling. He said “some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them.”

A few years ago, Cotten's home state University of Arkansas conducted a study to determine the approaches conservatives and liberals take toward analyzing public policy proposals. They tested self-described conservatives and liberals by asking them to consider public issues under various stages of stress. They found, as stress levels increased, the opinions of the liberals became more like those of the conservatives. In other words, as thinking about the issues became harder, liberals became more conservative. While none of the researchers said so, the clear implication of the work was that conservatives are low-effort thinkers. They want public policies that are easy to believe not hard to understand. Tom Cotten's statement, that “some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them” clearly reflects that phenomenon. He seems to believe an idea intellectuals prefer is "stupid."

I'd like to think that our legislators don't think that way but after what we've seen coming from the Republicans I think they do. They want to give their supporters public policies that are easy to believe because low-effort thinkers can't handle anything that's hard to understand.

Easy to be Devout

Here's an article which deals with the resistance of evangelical preachers to deal with the problem created by red state rejection of Medicaid expansion, The Obamacare 'scandal' you haven't heard about.

The article notes the resistance of the preachers to condemn or even criticize the rejection of Medicaid expansion despite the great suffering which will result from it. The preachers say government has no part in providing relief to the poor and sick because it's the churches' responsibility.

Interestingly, those who don't trust Big Government do trust Big Religion. Perhaps it's because Big Religion has no power to compel compliance with its doctrine. Big Religion can tell us we should give relief to the poor and sick but if we don't we face no penalty. Big Government, of course, has tools to force compliance. Obviously, that makes being devout a good deal easier than being civic -- and gives us reason to doubt the sincerity of all who claim to be saved.

Don't Eat Rat Cake

Much has been made in recent weeks of the return to grocery store shelves of Hostess snack cakes. The iconic Twinkie is back and consumers are happy to be able to buy it. The happiness may be short lived, though. Twinkies are being baked by rats. Yes, rats -- non-union bakers and bakery workers.



The danger doesn't have to persist, though, the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) is offering the new owners a chance to end the danger to consumers. They're offering them a chance to work with BCTGM to bring back the experienced and expert professional bakers the last owners betrayed. As this article, Twinkies Union Wants A New Slice Of The Cream-Filled Pie reports, BCTGM is willing to let the past remain the past and make a new deal to safely deliver what American consumers want.

Let's hope they succeed but in the meantime, try Tastykakes. They're union-made and actually are quite tasty. Check the website for availability in your area.

Debunking the Second Amendment

When a parent of one of the Sandy Hook victims appeared before a hearing at the Connecticut Capitol to talk about stricter gun control, he may never have expected to be the target of verbal abuse in the hearing room. Apparently he expected too much from the gun cult.

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Parents of children killed in the Newtown school shooting called for better enforcement of gun laws and tougher penalties for violators Monday at a hearing that revealed the divide in the gun-control debate, with advocates for gun rights shouting at the father of one 6-year-old victim.

Neil Heslin, whose son Jesse was killed in last month’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, asked people in the room to put themselves in his position as he questioned the need for any civilian to own semiautomatic, military-style weapons.

‘‘It’s not a good feeling. Not a good feeling to look at your child laying in a casket or looking at your child with a bullet wound to the forehead. It’s a real sad thing,’’ said Heslin, who held up a large framed photograph of himself and his son.

A handful of people at the packed legislative hearing then shouted about their Second Amendment rights when Heslin asked if anyone could provide a reason for a civilian to own an assault-style weapon.

Newtown parents urge enforcement of gun laws

The gun cult are low-effort thinkers. As long as we allow them to lean on the Second Amendment, they will continue to resist strict gun control. We need an interpretation of the Second Amendment which denies it to the gun cult and that wouldn't be hard to create.

The Second Amendment has been said to be the least clear and most ambiguous of the Bill of Rights. That shouldn't surprise anyone. We've been arguing about it for decades and only found in it a personal right to guns in 2008 when the judicial hacks of the Supreme Court created one. That came after years and years of gun cult propagandizing.

The thing about propaganda is, it can be made to work both ways. It can do good as well as bad. To be successful, a strict gun control movement would have to create its own view of the Second Amendment. It would have to forget about fighting with gun cult stooges in Congress and create a pervasive new understanding of the Second Amendment which doesn't include a right of personal gun possession.

That would be relatively easy to do. The Second Amendment is not about guns. It is about the military. It never was intended to declare a right gun possession. It was intended to ensure the military comprised common citizens. The "right of the People to keep and bear arms" means we should have common citizens in the military not everyone can have a gun. That's what the Founders intended.

Filibuster-reforming with the Devil

Apparently, the Senate has its filibuster reform. To me it deosn't seem to be much and that sentiment is confirmed by a Republican Senator:

“The rules change doesn’t really do a lot,” Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) told TPM, saying he’d vote for it. “It certainly preserves the 60-vote threshold, preserves the blue slip procedure. It preserves the filibuster. And that’s important heritage for the Senate.”

Apparently, preservation was Harry Reid's goal. Maybe he thinks the Democrats will be able to use the rules when they don't have the majority. If that's the case, Reid seems foolish. Republicans don't respect tradition. They're perfectly willing to throw-aside tradition if they see a political advantage in doing it.

Reid should be more cautious. Not just for what he's doing to the Senate but also for what he'd doing to himself. Negotiating with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is like dealing with the Devil. Anyone who attempts it deserves to be regarded with some suspicion.

A Loyalty Oath for Social Security

At National Memo, Eric Laursen asks What Do Americans Really Think About Social Security?

According to Laursen, Americans have been overwhelming supportive of Social Security for just about forever. Survey after survey has reported a solid majority of Americans like the program and have since its inception. Regardless of what the policy-makers say, about it and its problems, they want it protected under any circumstance. That support, however, creates a bit of a puzzle. Why do we have so many in Washington and the power centers opposing it?

One reason may be that these lawmakers, policy wonks, lobbyists, and upper-tier journalists tend to see Social Security—like many other things—as a quantitative puzzle rather than a human problem.

Why do we elect lawmakers who don't see SS the same way we do? Is it because support for SS among the voters is so widespread and so strong we just assume the candidates hold the same opinion we do? If that's the case, we ought to become more active in ensuring the policy-makers understand the depth of support for SS. This seems like a political problem and one which may be easy to solve. No candidate ever should elected without making a pledge to protect SS.

Maybe we need a Grover Norquist-like loyalty oath to SS. Each candidate for public office should be offered a chance to sign the pledge. Anyone who doesn't should be opposed as a threat to economic security of the American People. The loyalty oath seems to work for right wing extremists--policy-makers are terrified of Grover Norquist. Maybe it's time to take a lesson and use their tactics against them.

Ann Wagner Embarrasses Missouri

Ann Wagner is the newly elected US Representative for my home state of Missouri's Second District. She replaced the disgraced Todd Akin who embarrassed the citizens of Missouri with his comments about "legitimate rape." While Wagner may never sink to Akin's level, she's already embarrassing Missouri.

HR 152 was the House's legislation to fund Hurricane Sandy relief efforts. Ann Wagner voted against it. Despite all the help Missouri received when a killer tornado devastated Joplin, Wagner voted against helping our fellow Americans in the Northeast.

It disgraceful and shameful. According to Wagner, it's OK to take but not to give back. I never thought that's the shame we'd have to bear, that we'd be known as deadbeats.

Gun-free Zones or Free-fire Zones?

Gun-free zones or free-fire zones. That's the choice the NRA and the gun cult are asking us to make. Shall we keep guns out of our schools or shall we put a gun in every hand so school staff can shoot at anyone they perceive to be a threat?

This is what American has become. This is the choice we must make. America has failed. Whatever it is in American culture which has taken us to this place is a threat not only to our way of life but to our very existence. We should concentrate on finding it and eliminating it.

Romney's Success

Mitt Romney want's to be know as a successful business man. We could call him that if he created something from nothing. Our history is full of men like that: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, J. C. Penny, Bill Gates.

Romney is not any of those guys.

Romney's claim to fame is creating nothing from something. He made millions by slashing jobs, gutting businesses and forcing bankruptcies. The American landscape is littered with what once were thriving businesses but now are empty shells because Romney and others like him sucked the life out of businesses the way parasites suck the life from healthy bodies. That may be success to Romney but it's dirty business to the rest of us.

Romney's Stonewalling

Romney goes on network TV to explain his stories on Bain Capital...and says nothing. He repeated the same nonsense he's been saying for days. Someone should tell him it's not the crime, it's the cover-up that causes the trouble. He's going to have produce a resolution to this issue or deal with it all the way up to the election. The voters can't overlook it. Romney looks like he's hiding something and we can't tolerate that in a President.

On the Republicans' Vote to Repeal Affordable Care

Today the Republican run US House of Representatives repealed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This makes the 33rd time the House has repealed all or part of it.

As it is for many others, the depth of the Republican party's hatred for this law is unfathomable to me. Their single-minded forcus on denying health care to so many millions of Americans is a mystery of conservatism and I suppose I never will understand that. I can only suppose it is part of the nature of Republicans. This latest repeal of PPACA is like the scorched earth campaigns dictators order when their regimes are defeated. They're willing to destroy their countries and kill their own citizens rather than admit defeat. So are the Republicans.

Frankly, It's hard to imagine a group of elected officials as despicable and malicious as the current crop of congressional Republicans. Even in history's most vile regimes, the evil came mostly from a single malevolent person at the top. In today's Republican party, the evil extends from top to bottom. Malice and evil pervade the Republican party and are ingrained in it as its credo.

A Warning to Those Who Try to Understand Conservatism

Conservatism is the result of low-effort thought. It's what happens when public policy issues are filtered through ignorance or laziness. That should be a warning to anyone who wants to understand the administration of American institutions. When an administrator claims to be a conservative, expect him to be incompetent. Expect him to be appalling ignorant of well-established principles of the sciences most important to public policy administration.

Economics, especially, is a area of mystery to conservative elected officials. They ignore what has been shown to be effective in favor of fads and misunderstandings. Supply-side economics is an example. It reigns over conservative public financing theory despite its proven failure. Why? Who knows. Maybe supply-side just feels good. It's a way to convert a human vice, greed, into a principle.

Now we're seeing a new manifestation of conservative incompetence. Despite the triumph of the Affordable Care Act in the Supreme Court, conservatives in state government are vowing to prevent it from being implemented. They say they will not accept the Medicaid expansion and will not create the health insurance exchanges which are important to the expansion of health care to all Americans. What possibly could be driving such resistance to what is an obvious benefit to millions of Americans -- and not just any Americans but residents of their own states. What could be causing them to filter-out the obvious good of expanded health care access to leave only intransigence?

The only answer immediately apparent is their flawed approach to public policy analysis. Somewhere between the presentation of a new idea and its final understanding, the facts are pummeled with ignorance. The resulting reaction to new ideas leaves the rest of us to conclude the conservative brain is a jumbled morass where knowledge is lost to wander aimlessly forever if it has survived at all.

Be warned!

The Truth About the President's Record

Today President Obama is beginning a two day bus tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania to focus on the economy before the monthly jobs report is released. While the report is expected to announce 90,000 new jobs, that will be less than number of jobs our economy needs to maintain healthy progress toward full recovery and it will provide the Republicans with an opportunity to distort the President's record.

The Hill website reminds us "(n)o president since Franklin Roosevelt has won reelection with an unemployment rate over 8 percent." That may be true but we also should note no President ever has faced an opposition so single-mindedly focused on denying him a second term and so willing to do anything to achieve their goal including destroying the economy.

If the electorate were as well-informed as we can only hope they were, they would see what has happened over the last three and a half years not as poor performance in the Presidency but as the triumph of good over evil. Despite all the dastardly schemes of the Republicans, they have not been able to stop the President from moving America away from the edge of the abyss their policy bungling and manipulation for the special interests have created. We have seen steady job creation over the course of his administration and for the first time in the life of any American the prospect of health care for each of us regardless of our economic circumstances. These are tremendous achievements and the President deserves the respect and admiration of every American for his perseverance. More that that, the President -- and all Americans -- deserve a second term.

President Romney: Day One

Let's suppose the worst happens and Mitt Romney is elected to the Presidency. What would he do on Day One?

In the unlikely event Romney is elected to the Presidency, his biggest concern in the early days, if not on Day One, will be stemming the "brain drain." Tens of millions of Americans, the best and the brightest, will be emigrating, most to Canada, of course, but some will leave for other countries. Romney will look at the exodus in horror, realizing that, with Progressives, Liberals and other Democrats departing in droves, he will left with his base. What greater nightmare could he face than the prospect of a country filled with those who elected him?

Romney's Character

As this campaign season progresses, we will hear more and more of Mitt Romney. He will talk and talk in ways which he hopes will put his character in the best light. Don't be deceived by it.

We already know all we need to reject Mitt Romney. He is a thug and a sociopath. That is the essence of his character. It developed early and continued to develop throughout his life. From the moment he picked-up a deadly weapon to assault a classmate, through his life in the business world slashing jobs and impoverishing workers, to the public policy proposals which will starve babies and leave seniors to die on the street, Mitt Romney has preyed on others. Their suffering at his hands has never given him a moment's pause. He has ignored it and continued to stuff his pockets with whatever their suffering has gained him.

Has America really sunk so low it would put this monster in the White House? Is that what we have become?

The Path to Perdition

All budgets are political documents. By choosing among the various sources and uses of public funds, they institutionalize the political philosophy of their creators. They tell us what they value and what has no value to them. Paul Ryan's budget, his Path to Prosperity, is no different. It shows us what conservatives value most, comfort for the comfortable and affliction for the afflicted.

This shameful document would be better-named the Path to Perdition. "Perdition" is defined as "final and irrevocable spiritual ruin." What better way can we describe a world organized along conservative principles? It would be a world where the poor and the sick and the elderly are cast out into the streets to make their way through their desperate lives as best they could. Ryan's budget does that. It would be a world where the rich became richer because government places the weight of their existence on the backs of common citizens. Ryan's budget does that.

This is the horror Ryan would have for America and it would brand America as a hell dominated by plutocrats and their stooges. It is a plot contrived by one of Satan's demons, Paul Ryan, to destroy the promise of America, to bring us finally and utterly to the complete collapse of everything which separates humanity from the world of predators and prey.

The Brutal Truth

The brutal truth is, the Republican Party is mostly old, white people but America isn't.

We've always called ourselves a nation of immigrants and were proud to so as long as the immigrants were from Northern and Western Europe . When they started coming from Eastern and Southern Europe, not so much. Now that they're coming from South and Central America or from Asia, Republicans have become far more concerned with the "wretchedness" of the refuse than the "goldeness" of the door.

Say No to Republican Control of Congress.

In GOP focus on control of Congress amid presidential doubts this fall, The Hill is reporting Republcan efforts to reduce the poltical damage its presidential candidates are doing to Republican influence on American public policy by bolstering its efforts to control Congress.

Americans ought view Republican attempts to control the House and Senate as the kind of political plotting more commonly associated with coups than democratic elections. While they likely are doing nothing illegal, their intentions and motivations are more like those of political extremists who support tyrants and dictators than the efforts of public servants.

The once proud Republican Party is little more than a cult. It has become the home of ideologues, zealots and stooges. Their efforts to retain control of the House and Senate in the face of increasing rejection of their presidential candidates illustrates their extremism. Rather than learn the lesson it teaches, that the American People are opposed to their obstruction of good policy and their support of bad policy, they are focused instead on imposing more of the same on the American People.

That is an outrage.

We expect our public servants to serve the interests of the American People. When they fail to do that, we expect them to fade away. Not so today's Republicans. Rather than honorably departing Washington, they are building bunkers and constructing last ditch defenses. With their threatened legislative outrages such as gutting Medicare, repealing health care for all Americans and coddling the 1%, they are intent on a scorched earth defense of their extremist ideology.

America must say No! We cannot allow the Republican Party to destroy America. Every patriotic American must take every opportunity to condemn it and its treachery.

Religion and Bad Faith

In Religion burns Obama again Niall Stanage and Amie Parnes at The Hill suggest President Obama's "accommodation" of the Catholic Church's objection to the Affordable Care Act's birth control mandate is the result of his difficulty in handling religion in politics.

I don't think so.

This isn't so much about religion as it is about the President's misplaced faith in the good will of the Republican Party. He should know by now they don't have any but that's a lesson he seems incapable of learning.

Far be it from me to lecture a black man who's gotten himself elected to the Presidency in the ways of American politics but something has to be done. Maybe, as a learning aid, he could create a White House group dedicated solely to simulating Republican reactions to his proposals and finding ways to avoid it. He could staff it with internet scam artists, convicted con men and late-night TV, infomercial pitchmen. They certainly would know how the Republicans operate. Then, he could make his proposals before them first and let them hammer-away from the Republican point of view until he develops a good way to divert or stop the attack.

When all you have is a hammer...

...every problem looks like a nail.

Mark Penn's advice to President Obama on his State of the Union Address, Opinion: Obama must bring back the opportunity society, is the perfect example of the old saw, "when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Penn is a public relations guy and his article is full advice to push the public's buttons by paying lip service to things we believe but just aren't much good. If Obama were to go to work on Penn's Jobs 1, 2, and 3, he might raise is poll number a bit now but the effort wouldn't do American much good.

Job 1: tell America the economy is on the way back.

OK. The economy is on the way back but the truth is, it's nowhere near as good as it could be and the Republicans are the reason. They've done everything they could to ensure everything Obama did wouldn't work. If Obama tells America the economy is coming back, the Republicans won't have to bear the consequences of their obstructions and obfuscations. Better Obama should say he's managed to stop the slide toward utter collapse but much has yet to be done but, unless the Republicans are stopped, it never will be done.

Job 2: Create opportunity

Forget opportunity. Opportunity in America is dead. The plutocracy have rigged our society so that the only opportunity anyone has is the opportunity he had when he was born. We now are class-based society and even that capitalist tool, Forbes magazine, admits it. In America, The New Class-Society they say:

...social mobility in America, the latest research shows, is less than it was, and considerably less than most Americans believe.

"Why?" you might ask. Forbes continues:

Class is changing yet again, and the new incarnation of the class-society is at its most advanced in the U.S. A good education is now the most important determinate of class, and in America access to good schools--whether private or public--is increasingly reserved for the well-to-do.

So, while Penn's advice might be on the right track and what Americans want to hear, it won't work because most Americans cant' afford good educations and the Republicans never will allow the government to help them. If Obama tries to raise the hope of a good education, he'll be deceiving America. Better he should tell America the Republicans are destroying opportunity in America and, until they're gone, we'll have no more.

Job 3: the deficit.

The deficit is what the Republicans want America to talk about. It's big and it's scary. But, like most paper tigers, it doesn't have teeth or claws. The deficit is not a threat to America. The danger is believing we must ignore our fundamental problems and do something about the deficit.

America's deficit was created by bad Republican policies; Bush's tax cuts, Bush's wars and a Medicare drug benefit designed to subsidize the pharmaceutical industry not serve Americans. Once we take care of these blunders, the deficit will evaporate. Obama should lay the blame for the deficit where it belongs, squarely on the backs of the Republicans.

Mark Penn is a PR guy. He's advising the President to tell America what it wants to hear instead of what it needs to know. That's bad advice.