Red-state Republicans Can't Believe a "Loser School" Beat New Mexico

Number-14 seed Harvard's 68-62 defeat of Number-3 seed New Mexico on Friday night astonished many red-state Republicans who get all their information about universities from sports news.

Reactions on the "Fox Nation" Web board ranged from astonishment, to denial, to disbelief. "Bush-Cheney 2004" posted the question, "How could a loser school, this 'Harvard,' or whatever it's called, beat such a powerhouse like New Mexico?"

The latest Ass-Munchin' [Rasmussen?] poll showed 52% of Republicans had never even heard of Harvard before their win Friday night--the same percentage who don't believe in global warming.

[Joke]

Ten years since Bush ordered Iraqi invasion on false pretenses

It was 10 years ago this evening that the court-appointed President Bush ordered the illegal invasion of Iraq* based of the false pretense that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

A year-and-a-half after failing to prevent the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, the spin-meisters in the Bush White House were working incessantly to transform that tragic failure into Bush's supposed "greatest strength." The facts that Americans were scared to death and that Bush had no actual strengths made this easier that it sounds.

Bush had already had his fabled BULLhorn scene at ground-zero where he said, "I hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." That part about the people who knocked those buildings down soon hearing from us was a lie, unless by "soon" he meant, soon after we had a competent, democratically elected president take office again. Bush had already ordered the invasion of Afghanistan. I (God help me!), much of the world, and something like 90% of Americans approved of Bush during this time because even though he was an unelected idiot, in the wake of 9/11, he was our unelected idiot.

But Bush had learned a lesson from his father, that even though President George H.W. Bush had a similarly high approval rating after his relatively successful Gulf War in 1991, he would not be re-elected because of his failure on the economy. Hence, Bush-the-more-stupid ordered the invasion of Iraq ten years ago today just so he could get re-elected. Mission Accomplished.

*The lying liars who tell lies at Fox News [sic] spun this to their non-news watching audience to be United Nations' General Secretary Kofi Annan's blunder.

See also: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/22/1196307/-Mea-Culpa?showAll=yes
and http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Happy_Anniversary

The Footprints Prayer, Updated

One night I had a dream...

  

I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord, and

Across the sky flashed scenes from my life.

For each scene I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand;

One belonged to me, and the other to the Lord.

When the last scene of my life flashed before us,

I looked back at the footprints in the sand.

I noticed that many times along the path of my life,

There was only one set of footprints.

I also noticed that it happened at the very lowest

and saddest times in my life

This really bothered me, and I questioned the Lord about it.

"Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you,

You would walk with me all the way;

But I have noticed that during the

most troublesome times in my life,

There is only one set of footprints.

I don't understand why in times when I

needed you the most, you should leave me.

The Lord replied, "My precious, precious

child. I love you, but at those times I was

helping Tim Tebow score touchdowns."

President Obama gave the Tea-Party Congress exactly what they wanted

Jon Stewart had a good analogy. He compared President Obama's way of responding to a Congress refusing to raise the debt ceiling with the sequestration deal to a father who catches his son smoking and forces him to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes. The only problem is, this Congress is like Denis Leary.

The economy is being "secastrated", at least in the short term. Sequester is in the same family of words as the Spanish word, sequestro, which means kidnap. Republicans are trying to kidnap the second term away from President Obama.

Grover Norquist's Pledge and Plan Live On

If you haven't heard of Grover Norquist before that's OK. He is a fringe, far-right wack job that no one in their right mind should pay attention too. And no one in their right mind does, but 258 Republican members of congress do (including one of my Senators, Marco Rubio, and my Congressman, John Mica). These members of congress have forsaken the constitutional purposes of the United States government:

We the people of the United States, in order to [1] form a more perfect union, [2] establish justice, [3] insure domestic tranquility, [4] provide for the common defense, [5] promote the general welfare, and [6] secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

 And have pledged their allegiance to Grover Norquist's agenda:

I, ____________________, pledge to the taxpayers of the state of ____________________, and to the American people, that I will:
ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal tax rates for individuals and/or businesses, and,
TWO, oppose any net reduction, or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

Reports of the death of this pledge have been greatly exaggerated. The January 3 "fiscal cliff" did not raise anyone's taxes. The Bush Income tax cuts and President Obama's payroll tax cuts both expired as of January 1, 2013. On January 3, Congress allowed President Obama's payroll tax cuts to remain expired, but reinstated the Bush tax cuts for everyone making less that $400-450K per year.

Because the January 3 tax cuts were not as comprehensive as the previous President Obama/Bush tax cuts combined, this serves as pretense for Republicans to now claim that their have already increased taxes to reduce the deficit, and only spending cuts should now be implemented.

With the brief exception of the 1999-2000 Clinton boom years, the United States has been falling short on revenues ever since President Reagan reduced the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% during his two terms in the 1980s. Despite reductions in safety-net programs that have led to increased poverty, hunger, and homeless, the national debt has increased sixteen-fold since the Reagan tax cuts: from less than a $1 Trillion when President Reagan took office to over $16 trillion now.

The current sequester and opposition to raising tax revenue is all part of Grover Norquist's plan:

My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.

To illustrate this drowning in the bathtub metaphor, just picture the way the United States was unable to help the city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and imagine the same disaster happening to the U.S. government today. This is Norquist's plan and pledge all along.