The Wingnut Welfare Gravy Train Rolls On

Judith Miller, once of the lofty New York Times, is now a correspondent for ... wait for it ... Newsmax. You know, the conservative rag peddling black helicopter conspiracy theories funded by Richard Mellon Scaife. It’s only slightly more credible than WingNut Daily -- but not much.

This news has prompted me to wonder what happened to the rest of the Iraq War boosters.

• Dick Cheney and Halliburton narrowly skirted bribery charges in Nigeria by forking over a cool $250 million the day before Christmas:

Meanwhile, the Nigerians still wanted a pound of flesh, and because it appears to be easy for a multibillion-dollar energy company like Halliburton to throw money at problems, that's what they seem to have done. Halliburton and KBR will pay $32.5 million to the Nigerian government and $2.5 million to the Nigerian lawyers, and release some frozen assets in a Swiss bank account to the Africans. Total payout: about $250 million.

In return, Cheney, Halliburton, and KBR can walk away from the situation, and the Nigerians get even more than the original $180 million from the former vice president's company.

Remember: Halliburton and KBR already pled guilty to those $180 million bribery charges in a U.S. court. I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea that someone is able to avoid jail time for bribing Nigerian officials with $180 million by .... paying Nigerian officials $250 million. Oh well, nothing to see here, move along folks ....

• Donald Rumsfeld is doing the rubber chicken circuit/book tour that is part of the Wingnut Wurlitzer. He (or, more likely, his publicist) has been teasing his pending memoir with coy Tweets which the neocons at the Wall Street Journal have been eating up like ice cream. When the book comes out it will be promoted heavily at conservative media outlets like, well, Newsmax, which frequently offers subscribers tomes such as this one at steep discounts. Neat how that works.

• John Bolton returned to his office at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank, and in that capacity is spouting his nonsense on the Wingnut Wurlitzer. Serving just 16 months as United Nations ambassador -- too crazy even for Republicans like George Voinovich and John McCain, his nomination was filibustered and he was a recess appointment -- it seems the conservative media has found Bolton a useful stick to poke at the Obama Administration. His frequent criticism of things like the START treaty and defense spending cuts are dutifully reported across the Fox landscape. Falling upwards, indeed.

• The disgraced/disbarred Scooter Libby appears to have disappeared into a black hole, though with the new Valerie Plame flick soon to hit theaters, I’m sure someone will drag him out of his undisclosed location. The Wingnut Wurlitzer is always looking for fresh meat.

• Paul Wolfowitz always creeped me out. The whole comb-licking thing just made we want to throw up in my mouth. Forced to resign from the World Bank in 2007 after some serious ethics breaches were discovered, he has also joined his buddy John Bolton at the American Enterprise Institute as a “visiting scholar,” where at least one observer noted his lack of productivity. In his position he pens the occasional op-ed for papers like the London Times and Wall Street Journal, all part of the glorious Bush Administration Whitewash Campaign designed to protect the legacy of the most disastrous Administration in this country’s recent history.

If you’re detecting a pattern here, well, join the club. Conservatives through their “non-partisan (wink wink) think tanks” and established media outfits like Fox News and Newsmax are able to get their message out across the world. This is the Wingnut Welfare Gravy Train, where no fail is too big, no embarrassment too great, no policy too disastrous to keep the conservative family from closing ranks and enveloping their failed leaders in a warm, fuzzy embrace.

You can always go home again, if you’re a neocon wingnut (Scooter Libby being the sole exception). The American Enterprise Institute will give you a home and get your op-eds published in the Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, London Times, New York Times, not to mention conservative outfits like the Weekly Standard. Your memoirs will be published and your name will be in the Rolodex of every Fox News booker. Your appearances on Hannity (and even the occasional network bobblehead show) are a given. This is how the legacy is protected, even promoted.

The right-wing has this established, well-funded infrastructure which assures the continued influence of people who by all rights should have been tossed away when they were discredited. I mean, you started a fucking war based on lies, misinformation, faulty intelligence. You were colossally wrong and people died and the national treasury was raided. We have spent and will spend trillions of dollars on your fuck-up. Some folks think you should be in jail; at the very least you should be kicked out of the club. But that’s not how it works in Wingnuttia.

Meanwhile, we’ve kicked Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod off Liberal Mountain for ... well, what, exactly? If these folks were conservatives their calendars would be full of speaking engagements, television appearances, and their op-eds would be in every influential newspaper in the English-speaking world. They’d be working on their memoirs and they’d have regular features in The New Republic and The Atlantic. But Google “Van Jones” and all you get are attacks from conservative blogs like Hot Air.

There simply is nothing comparable on the left to the Wingnut Wurlitzer. I don’t know why that is, except perhaps the perpetual myth about “liberal media” and so forth. I think this more than anything is the biggest challenge the left faces moving forward. And while I'm not the first to observe this, I can't for the life of me understand why no one has done anything about it. You can't win the argument if you can't even get your message out.

Pat Buchanan Is A Racist Asshole

As long as Buchanan is penning racist screeds like this current one at Townhall, I just have to ask that eternal, perpetual question: how much longer will NBC and MSNBC continue to shred their credibility as legitimate news organizations by using him as an expert?

What’s particularly galling about Buchanan’s current Townhall column is that he actually quotes Steve Sailer and Dr. Robert Weissberg, both contributors to the anti-immigrant VDARE.com (identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center). Both men promote in their writings the idea that Hispanics and African Americans are by virtue of their very DNA less intelligent than whites and Asians; Weissberg devoted an entire book (Bad Students, Not Bad Schools) to that idea. I don’t know about you, but where I come from that’s pretty blatantly racist.

Yet Buchanan quotes generously from both men, without bothering to mention the controversial and racist nature of their writings. Indeed, he quotes these racist assholes as legitimate scholars. For example:

"America's educational woes reflect our demographic mix of students. Today's schools are filled with millions of youngsters, many of whom are Hispanic immigrants struggling with English plus millions of others of mediocre intellectual ability disdaining academic achievement."

In the public and parochial schools of the 1940s and 1950s, kids were pushed to the limits of their ability, then pushed harder. And when they stopped learning, they were pushed out the door.

Writes Weissberg: "To be grossly politically incorrect, most of America's educational woes vanish if these indifferent, troublesome students left when they had absorbed as much as they were going to learn and were replaced by learning-hungry students from Korea, Japan, India, Russia, Africa and the Caribbean."

”Politically incorrect?” That’s not politically incorrect. It’s racist, bigoted and wrong. It ignores economic disparities, disparities between urban inner city schools and white suburban schools, and institutional roadblocks which oppress the poor and economically disadvantaged. It ignores the achievement of tens of thousands of people of color who have reached the highest levels of American society, despite insurmountable odds -- including, let me point out, the sitting president of the United States and some notable Supreme Court justices.

There’s this thing conservatives have about “political correctness” as if it’s some kind liberal plot designed to trip them up; conservatives just want to hew to some basic facts about the world, which we dirty libs are in deep denial about. The conservatives I know rail against “political correctness” with a missionary zeal. But this isn’t about political correctness, it’s about your facts just being wrong. Blacks and Hispanics are not less intelligent than whites, no matter how you may wish it were so. No, things weren't so much awesomer in the 1940s and 1950s, when "those people" knew their place, no matter how much Pat Buchanan thinks it's so. And no matter how many columns Pat Buchanan pens saying if only we kicked the brown people out of our schools America’s test scores would soar it won’t change the basic fact that test scores are the way they are because of institutional and systemic reasons, not biological or genetic. You know, those same institutional and systemic barriers which were firmly in place in the storied 1940s and 1950s which Buchanan and his ilk look back upon with such nostalgia.

I'm just really sick of this shit. I'm sick of conservatives kicking immigrants in the shins, over and over again. Just fucking stop it already. And I'm sick of powerful news networks like NBC and MSNBC promoting the racist assholes who are doing the kicking. Cut it out. Enough.

We’ve all known Pat Buchanan is a racist asshole. We’ve all wondered why NBC and MSNBC continue to promote him as some kind of “reasonable” conservative. This latest column is just another in a long stream of bigoted screeds from NBC’s go-to conservative voice. I get that. But honestly, how much longer are we going to be saddled with this crap? When are we going to stand up and say, America is better than this?

Buchanan is peddling racism and intolerance and he’s using crackpot junk science from known bigots to support his views. No legitimate news outfit would ever make Lyndon Larouche a regular pundit, yet Pat Buchanan spouts the same hateful views and he’s on both networks regularly. It's just not cute anymore. We're heading into 2011, folks -- you've still got some old crank on your network spouting 18th century ideas? I'm just really fucking tired of it.

Hate is not okay. Bigotry is not okay. Racism is not okay. And as long as MSNBC and NBC pay Pat Buchanan to appear on their news shows, they are promoting this intolerance.

Really, it’s appalling. Time to say: no more.

Another Stupid Year End List

I’ve never done this before but folks everywhere are compiling their year-end lists of favorites, so I thought what the hell. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. First item listed is my favorite, others are honorable mentions.

I have to qualify my list by saying a couple things mentioned here were released at the end of 2009 -- notably the One EskimO album and the Margaret Atwood book. Both came out in September 2009, but they didn’t cross my radar until 2010 so I’m including them here. They’re just that good and fuckit, it’s my list, dammit.

Anyway, tell me what cool music/movies/books/TV crossed your radar this year. I’m always looking for good recommendations.

Music:

1- Ray LaMontagne & The Pariah Dogs, God Willing & The Creek Don’t Rise. If he doesn’t win a Grammy for this I’m gonna cry.

• Pacifika, Supermagique
• One EskimO, One EskimO

Books, Fiction:

1-The Passage, Justin Cronin. OMG clearly the best vampire novel ever written, bar none. Do not pick up this book if you haven’t cleared your schedule because you literally will be unable to put it down.

• The Year Of The Flood, Margaret Atwood
• Freedom, Jonathan Franzen

Nonfiction/Memoir:

It’s purely coincidental that both of my pics are music-related (on my to-read list is the Patti Smith memoir, which won the National Book Award. I’m sure I’ll love that, too). Oh, and if you’re wondering why the number of eff-bombs has escalated on my blog in recent weeks, blame Keith Richards.

1- Composed, Rosanne Cash. Loved this book, despite her infatuation with the word “elegiac.” For anyone wanting gossip about her marriage to Rodney Crowell or other kiss-and-tell subjects, you’re barking up the wrong tree. But if you want to know about how music can move a soul, well, this is the book for you.

• Life, Keith Richards


Movies:

This was a tough call because we haven’t seen a few biggies yet: “Black Swan” and “Winter’s Bone,” for example. And I’m trying to think if a movie really astonished me this year, in the same way that “District 9” and “Up In The Air” really moved me last year. I loved the three “The Girl...” movies, but the first one didn’t really make sense without the second, and the third was a throw-away. I didn’t love “Inception,” I thought it was an FX movie without any real story or character development. We tend to see documentaries but I missed a couple of the biggies as well. So my list is definitely incomplete.

1- The Social Network

• 127 Hours
• Exit Through The Gift Shop

Documentaries:

1- Casino Jack & The United States of Money. Damn. To think we went from this to the fucking Tea Party. Amazing.

• Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work

Television:

TV really sucked this year. I was disappointed in “Mad Men,” which seemed to kinda run out of steam. “Boardwalk Empire” was promising but I can't really say it was the best thing I saw all year. Probably the most interesting new show I saw was Bravo's "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist," which actually gave the contest reality show concept a little class. But really for this category I've got nuthin'.

Theater:

1- Time Stands Still. Heartbreaking story about two war correspondents dealing with the horrors of Iraq. Absolutely superbly acted. Will probably get ruined when someone inevitably turns it into a movie.

• American Idiot
• Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson

Magazines

1- Harper’s, my perennial favorite. If you aren’t reading Harper’s you’re just wasting your time.

• Cook’s Illustrated. I know they’re derided as cooking Nazis but I love the recipes and the information.

Go Ahead. Make Someone's Christmas. I Dare Ya.

It’s that time of year when I get to tell y’all about one of my absolute favorite non-profits, the Modest Needs Foundation. This is such a fantastic organization because it allows you to help people in need right in your own city.

Here's how it works: you make a donation to Modest Needs and your donation is turned into points. You can then browse through a list of hundreds of applications for assistance, and assign points however you wish. Applicants are people who may need help with school tuition, have fallen behind on their rent, can’t pay a utility bill, or have an unexpected car repair or medical bill -- it’s like a clearinghouse of tip jars.

I hate to say it’s fun, because some of these applicants’ stories will break your heart. But it’s like you’re playing Santa Claus, and nothing feels better than that, right?

No dollar amount is too small, either. If you only have $10 but you want to help someone, that could be the final 10 points an applicant needs to buy eyeglasses for their child.

All of the applicants are thoroughly vetted by the Modest Needs staff, so you can be assured you aren’t being scammed. Non-profit groups are also among the applicants, if you’d like to help a group with a particular need -- say, the Rottweiler rescue organization seeking funds to neuter seven animals rescued from a puppy mill.

Modest Needs also has an excellent blog that will tug your heartstrings.

‘Tis the season to give, and so many people are in need this year. It feels good to help a family afford new tires for their car, or help a single mom catch up on her rent. Browsing through the applications is a real window on the struggles ordinary folks are facing these days.

By the same token, if you know someone in need, you might put them in touch with Modest Needs. Asking for help can be hard, but there are plenty of folks out there eager to give it. Applicants are anonymous -- (as are the donors, if they wish).

Nashville Airport Flash Mob

Apparently these "spontaneous" sing/dance-a-longs are all the rage with you kids. Here's one which happened at the Nashville International Airport earlier today:

Pundit FAIL

Andrea Mitchell on "Morning Joe" just now:

"President Obama never met one-on-one with Mitch McConnell."

August 4, 2010:



This is the "liberal" MSNBC. Someone make this shit stop. Just ..... shut the fuck up if you don't know what you're talking about.

Jesus Save Me From These Morons

Another wingnut tries to claim Jesus was a conservative, in fact, “The Perfect Conservative.”

How does he know this? Because:

He helped the poor without one government program. He healed the sick without a government health care system. He feed the hungry without food stamps. And everywhere He went, it turned into a rally, attracting large crowds, and giving them hope, encouragement and inspiration.

For three years He was unemployed, and never collected an unemployment check. Nevertheless, he completed all the work He needed to get done. He didn’t travel by private jet. He walked and sailed, and sometimes traveled on a donkey.

It goes on in this vein. I’ll spare you.

So, the moral of this story? You, too, can succeed in life without the government ... if you are the Messiah! The rest of us who are not the Messiah might need some government services at some point. Now fuck off.

This is almost as great as the news that Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips wishes to disband the Methodist Church (apparently the denomination’s support of the DREAM Act put him over the edge. Not that it wasn’t a short trip). Glenn Beck has been famously at war against social justice pastors for years. And there’s the hilarious Conservative Bible Project.

Hmm .. as I’ve said, oh, only a hundred thousand times already ... but it seems quite a few conservatives have noticed their politics is at odds with their religion ... and concluded that it’s their religion which is wrong.

Typical.

Dignity For The Trashman

This, from yesterday’s fishwrap, really shows how disconnected people are from how city services are provided:

QUESTION: Becky Becker got a surprise a week ago when she brought up her trash cart. Tucked under the lid was an envelope with a holiday greeting from her trash collector that included his name and address.

Becker wonders if this was a hint to send him a holiday tip. She did not plan to send a check to someone whom she did not know — or even know whether he was really her trash collector.

More important, Becker questions whether to tip someone for doing a tax-supported job.

She wrote to me: "They are paid a salary by me and the other citizens of the city. It's not so much that I am a Grinch as I am just tired of everyone having their hand out for a tip, especially when they are already receiving a salary."

Oh my God. Yeah, you are Grinch. Get over yourself. If you don’t want to send a tip, then don’t. Jeebus. And here I thought I was the biggest Grinch in the county.

It’s the whole “These are MY TAX DOLLARS and how dare you not bow down and kiss my feet for every penny I begrudgingly pull out of my ass despite all the bitching and moaning I do at every opportunity.” Listen, Becky Becker (can you even believe that name is for real? I can’t): the reason you got a little Christmas card is because Metro has privatized its trash collection. It’s that whole “private companies can do everything better/cheaper/shinier/prettier” mindset that people like you espouse at every Tea Party rally and Ayn Rand reading group. So yeah, it’s a private company doing your trash collection, and that means you have to take it up with them. You ceded your right to bitch about this stuff when you decided you no longer liked the idea of public employees doing public services. I’ve got a steaming cup of STFU with Becky Becker’s name on it.

Or, as The Tennessean more politely put it:

ANSWER: Some Davidson County residents get trash collection that is paid for through property taxes. Private companies under contract with Metro handle some of those routes.

That is the case at Becker's residence.

I alerted Metro Public Works to the card that Becker received.

Her trash route is handled by Red River Service Corp. Metro Public Works spokeswoman Gwen Hopkins-Glascock said the manager at Red River would speak to employees about this sort of solicitation.

This is what happens when you contract out city services to private, for-profit companies. They pay their employees like shit, and people who have to do a sucky job like collecting your garbage every week look to other ways to make ends meet. Instead of being grateful that she doesn’t have to haul her stinking garbage to a landfill herself in the August heat (or January ice) she begrudges some guy his Christmas card. If you’re offended by a Christmas card and perceived request for a holiday tip (which you are under zero obligation to acknowledge), then imagine how offended you will be when some private company decides to hire illegal immigrants to save a buck. Hey, could happen.

The Beale household has been getting these Christmas cards every year, by the way. Here it is (Note the guy even said MERRY CHRISTMAS, not the offending “Happy Holidays.” There’s just no pleasing some people):



We also get these from the newspaper delivery guys. If I think of it, and I don’t always do so every year, I pop $10 or $20 in a Christmas card and send it back to them. I figure it’s the least I can do for someone who has a sucky job I would never want to do myself.

I hate to break it you, Becky Becker, but the real reason you got that Christmas card is that it's really, really hard for working people in this state. We've privatized everything to save a buck, we refuse to raise taxes on corporations or rich people here because ZOMFG that would kill our "robust" economy, we deny people the right to organize into unions so they can collectively bargain for fair wages, we scream and bitch and moan about the very idea of raising the minimum wage let alone providing people a living wage, we force people to accept crappy pay for crappy work and so yeah, it's no surprise they’re gonna have their hands out. It's not because they’re greedy grabbers, but because they’re trying to pay their bills and send their kids to school and basically attain the American Dream which is increasingly out of reach for working folks because the people who got there ahead of them are pulling the ladders up.

I can’t link to this Financial Times article from August often enough, especially this part:

Dubbed “median wage stagnation” by economists, the annual incomes of the bottom 90 per cent of US families have been essentially flat since 1973 – having risen by only 10 per cent in real terms over the past 37 years. That means most Americans have been treading water for more than a generation. Over the same period the incomes of the top 1 per cent have tripled. In 1973, chief executives were on average paid 26 times the median income. Now the ­multiple is above 300.

People are working two and three times harder to stay in the same place. A lot of people are falling behind. And I think it’s this inconvenient fact which has the Becky Beckers of the country upset. It’s like they’re offended at being reminded that a lot of people are struggling. They want to stick their head in a hole and sing their happy songs. “America is the greatest country in the world EVAH! Everything is awesome!”

It’s like those folks who get ticked off at the vendors selling copies of The Contributor all over town. You’ve seen them with their yellow placards: it’s the alternative to panhandling. The paper is produced by homeless and formerly homeless folks through the Downtown Presbyterian Church. Vendors sell the papers for $1. The paper is actually quite good, - it’s won several national awards - and Mr. Beale and I always buy one.

Yet people bitch and moan about the vendors selling these papers in front of their businesses and on street corners. I’m like, WTF do you people want? First you put up “Please Help, Don’t Give” signs in your store windows. Then a local church devises a way for people to earn some money -- all of that pulling-up-by-the-bootstraps stuff you’re always harping on about -- and you begrudge folks that. You like to shout “Get a job!" but when someone actually does get a job, you're like "Well, not that job!" Jesus.

What you guys really want is for these folks to just go away, am I right? You want them to be invisible. You don’t like to see the wages of our national sin out there on display for all to see. Well sorry, but it doesn't work that way. You espouse the creed of greed and this is the result.

Christmas Crab

I really hate Christmas this year. I just want to fucking get it over with already.

I don’t know why I’m not in the Christmas spirit: we’ve already had a couple days of snow, the weather is crisp, I’ve baked brownies from scratch -- twice. We’ve even been to a Christmas concert. On top of that, we were in New York City for a few days and nobody does Christmas like New York. I’m just not into it this year. Mr. Beale says it’s the economy, people are just down. He doesn’t feel the Christmas spirit either.

Truth is, I haven’t been into it for a couple years. Christmas is messy. It’s just more work, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll be vacuuming up pine needles from the damn tree until June, and every day I’m cleaning up broken ornaments.

The animals are denuding the tree horribly; the Christmas carnage numbers at over a dozen ornaments at this point, even though we were careful to put only non-breakable ones on the bottom branches. But one of the cats has figured out that she can get a bunch of ornaments down by pulling on the lights. After the cats are bored with the ornaments they leave them for the dogs, who turn them into chew toys. Perhaps the most alarming part of this whole scenario is realizing the cats are colluding with the dogs. This won’t end well.

And then the Christmas Nazis don’t help, the folks wearing their “Merry CHRISTmas” buttons (yeah, saw one of those at a recent office holiday party). Last week I heard a woman tell a clerk angrily, “And MERRY CHRISTMAS to you!” after being told “Happy Holidays.” Oh for God’s sake. You really think Jesus wants you using his birthday as a fucking battleground? Get over yourselves.

You know what I don’t get? Those people who decorate their cars. I can handle the reindeer antlers on the window and red nose on the grill, but some people don’t know when to quit. I saw someone who had a little Christmas tree, greenery and lights on the luggage rack of their SUV. Ridiculous.

Nashville people are big on decorating. Maybe it’s a Southern thing, I don’t really know. They’ll hang eggs from trees for Easter, and now those giant inflatable Easter bunnies have started showing up on peoples’ front lawns. I blame Wal-Mart, I figure that’s where people buy this crap.

Anyway, I’m really just over all of it. These people who are so militant about their religion being the ONE AND ONLY TRUE religion are the same folks eager trivialize the sacred with cheap crap made out of Chinese toxic waste. I really have no time for you people.

I’ll be glad when Christmas is over and I can put the ornaments back in their box and haul the tree to the recycling drop off and shove all of the boxes back in the closet where they belong.

For those of you who may have missed it, this is hilarious:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Blitzkrieg on Grinchitude - Gretchen Carlson & Christian Nation CHRIST-mas Tree<a>
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> March to Keep Fear Alive

Health Insurance Is NOT The Same As Auto Insurance

I’m getting really tired of explaining to people why the health insurance mandate is different from state auto insurance mandates. I keep hearing that argument all the time, as if a state’s auto insurance mandate somehow justifies the federal government’s health insurance mandate. It doesn’t.

Look, transportation and healthcare/life are not comparable. I rewind back to 8th grade Driver's Ed class where we had "driving is a privilege not a right" drilled into our heads. You don’t have to drive a car. But you DO have to live. There are other ways of getting where you need to go. You can walk. You can ride a bike. You can hitchhike. Or, you can take advantage of the public option: buses, subways and other forms of public transportation. So it is possible to live and function in America without buying auto insurance. Millions of people do.

But you cannot access healthcare in any affordable way without health insurance.

On top of that, auto and health insurance operate completely differently. The auto insurance market does adhere more closely to the general premise of insurance, which is to pool risk. Health insurance does not pool risk because the riskiest patients (the poor, the elderly, people with pre-existing conditions, etc.) are left out of the pool from the get-go.

So please, liberal friends. Stop using state auto insurance mandates as a justification for the healthcare law’s mandate. The mandate was always, in my mind, Constitutionally suspect. As I wrote in November 2009, government-run healthcare is not fascism, but the Affordable Care Act technically is. I simply don’t see how it passes Constitutional muster for the government to force you to do business with a private, often for-profit, corporation, without providing a public alternative.

Yes, I get why the insurance companies wanted the mandate to begin with. I get why Republicans originally suggested a health insurance mandate waaaay back in the ‘90s (they were for it before they were against it, don’tcha know). The failure to secure the Public Option was the biggest fail of healthcare reform because it left the mandate vulnerable to a court challenge, and without the mandate a major part of the entire bill unravels. The public option made the mandate Constitutionally acceptable, at least that’s how I see it. I’m not an expert in Constitutional law and if there are any out there reading this blog I’d love to hear you explain to me why I’m wrong.

In the meantime, the Democrats screwed themselves on their signature achievement by caving on the one element that may have allowed the healthcare bill to pass muster in the courts.

So.