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Today the Republican run US House of Representatives repealed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This makes the 33rd time the House has repealed all or part of it.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