Nice To Know Democratic Officials Promote Rape

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh quoted The Weekly Standard quoting Vice-President Joe Biden noting

In 2008 when Flint had 265 sworn officers on the police force, there were 35 murders and 91 rapes in this city. In 2010, when Flint had only 144 police officers, the murder rate climbed to 65 and rapes, just to pick two categories, climbed to 229. In 2011 you now only have 125 shields. God only knows what the numbers will be this year for Flint if we don't rectify it. And God only knows what that number would have been had we not been able to get a little bit of help to you.

While there are many factors affecting the violent crime rate, the prevalence of law enforcement officers in crime-ridden areas is one of them. The American people know it, Joe Biden knows it, and presumably God knows it also. That would be practically everyone- except Limbaugh, who commented

Rush complained that the federal government would be funding the police officer slots for only one year, an odd complaint from someone opposed to the federal government assisting states in funding any public sector jobs. He accuses the Vice-President, arguing that cops on the beat deter crime, with "fear-mongering" and argues

Has anybody ever considered that there might be so many rapes in Flint, Michigan, because there are so many Democrats there elected by Democrats? Anybody ever considered that?

Well, no, no one with any sense. Nor does Rush present any evidence, though he rarely does. What the evidence does, suggest, however, is that the incidence of death by gun is higher in states which vote Republican, on the congressional, state, and national levels, than in states which usually vote Democratic.

According to opposingviews.com (emphasis theirs) from statistics provided by the Violence Policy Center

States with the Five HIGHEST Per Capita Gun Death Rates

-- Louisiana--Rank: 1; Household Gun Ownership: 45.6 percent; Gun Death Rate: 19.87 per 100,000.

-- Mississippi--Rank: 2; Household Gun Ownership: 54.3 percent; Gun Death Rate: 18.32 per 100,000.

-- Alaska--Rank: 3; Household Gun Ownership: 60.6 percent; Gun Death Rate: 17.62 per 100,000.

-- Alabama--Rank: 4; Household Gun Ownership: 57.2 percent; Gun Death Rate: 17.55 per 100,000.

-- Nevada--Rank: 5; Household Gun Ownership: 31.5 percent; Gun Death Rate: 16.21 per 100,000.

States with the Five LOWEST Per Capita Gun Death Rates

-- Hawaii--Rank: 50; Household Gun Ownership: 9.7 percent; Gun Death Rate: 2.82 per 100,000.

-- Rhode Island--Rank: 49; Household Gun Ownership: 13.3 percent; Gun Death Rate: 3.51 per 100,000.

-- Massachusetts--Rank: 48; Household Gun Ownership: 12.8 percent; Gun Death Rate: 3.63 per 100,000.

-- Connecticut--Rank: 47; Household Gun Ownership: 16.2 percent; Gun Death Rate: 4.27 per 100,000.

-- New York--Rank: 46; Household Gun Ownership: 18.1 percent; Gun Death Rate: 5.07 per 100,000.

The gun death rates are not especially high specifically because Republicans usually control four of the five states (Louisiana maintains some Democratic traditions, at least on the local level) and four of the five consistently vote for the GOP presidential candidate (Nevada being a swing state). Nor are the gun death rates especially low in those five states because Democrats rule the roost in each; the connection between crime rates and the (D) or the (R) after a politico's name is too tenuous to make the case otherwise. Of course, the association between gun ownership and gun death rates is more plausible, though other factors intervene.

Still, Rush Limbaugh believes- no, strongly implies- that rapes increase because Democrats hold office. That is absurd; that more guns in the hands of civilians leads to more murders, not nearly so.

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They Just Have It Too Darned Easy

Why do Republicans hate the troops?

In August, Mark Howard compiled a list of complaints of prominent Republicans apoplectic about the IRS code allowing approximately 47% of their fellow Americans not to pay any federal income taxes. Here they are:

• Rick Perry (R-TX): We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.
• Michele Bachmann (R-MN): A system in which 47 percent of Americans don’t pay any tax is ruinous for a democracy.
• Sarah Palin (R-AK): The problem is more than 40 percent pay no income taxes at all.
• Orrin Hatch (R-UT): 51 percent don’t pay anything.
• Jim DeMint (R-SC): Over half of Americans pay no federal income tax.
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY): In fact, about half of Americans don’t pay any income taxes at all.
• John Boehner (R-OH): Fifty-one percent — that is, a majority of American households — paid no income tax in 2009. Zero. Zip. Nada.
• Eric Cantor (R-MD): We also have a situation in this country where you’re nearing 50 percent of people who don’t even pay income taxes.
• Alan West (R-FL): Currently we have some 40-45 percent of Americans who are not paying any taxes.

Of course, the vast majority of Americans- at least 90%, as of 2009- do pay other federal taxes, whether payroll, excise (including, but not limited to, gas), or others. And even the other 10% end up paying various state and local taxes, especially sales, income, and property.

Though aghast that so many middle income Americans do not pay federal income taxes, Republicans have been silent about repealing the earned income tax credit or the child care tax credit. Nor have they suggested that elderly people cough up some bucks from the IRS. Better to be vague and hope your followers imagine that you're talking about the shiftless and lazy, drug addicts, and illegal Mexican immigrants.

Among those exempted from the federal income tax are citizens who work abroad and earn less than $91,400 (as of 2009). That would include virtually everyone deployed abroad by the U.S. government, including soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a travesty, (many) Republicans apparently believe, that these parasites have "no skin in the game," as they often put it.

So, let's review. The GOP wants families earning less than $20,000 (which comprise 75% of the freeloaders), single women with children, elderly people, and soldiers to stop glomming off the backs of oil industry executives and hedge fund managers. Sounds like a winning formula.

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Entitled To Her Own Facts

True, Michele Bachmann will not become the Republican presidential nominee in 2012 (or beyond). Nor will she be the vice-presidential nominee, as her popularity among candidates dip below chain-store pizza enthusiast Herman Cain. She exists mainly for entertainment value, operating much as a sound track does for television sitcoms, laughing loudly at anything even vaguely humorous uttered by one of the male presidential candidates during debates.

Bachmann is, further, one of a kind. At last night's GOP presidential debate (transcript here) in New Hampshire, she called herself "a federal tax lawyer. That's what I do for a living." Apparently, being a member of Congress is a mere hobby to Bachmann, who neglected to mention that her service as a "tax lawyer"- long past- was with the dreaded I.R.S.. Later, she would claim "I spent my whole life in the private sector," presumably confused about the status of the Internal Revenue Service.

Presumably confused. Criticizing the Community Reinvestment Act, she maintained "if banks failed to meet those rules, then the federal government said we won't let you merge, we won't let you grow." Switching gears later, Bachmann condemned the "Dodd-Frank bill" (Dodd-Frank Consumer Protection and Wall Street Reform Act), claiming "I have spoken to - to Iowa bankers, and they told me that they are going to see the collapse of community banks.... all across the state." One moment she wants to see community banks "merge" with national banks (not unlike piranha "merge" with other fish); the next moment it's a calamity.

Bachmann did not explain why the legislation would lead to "the collapse of community banks"- or name any of these banksters or the institutions they represent. If you let your mind wander a bit, it might have sounded like Bachmann claiming "a woman" told her the HPV vaccine led to mental retardation in her son. That charge was virtually debunked; the one about the community banks probably will go unexamined.

It always has been too easy to imply that Representative Bachmann is ill-informed, a flake, or makes rash judgements. But her remarks, including comments about the Community Reinvestment Act and about the alleged government role in the financial meltdown, or about the Independent Payment Advisory Board, may be prompted by something simpler.

In this debate, the giveaway occurred when Bachmann claimed

We asked him not once, but three times, "President Obama, what is your plan to save Medicare?"

and the president mumbled and he didn't give an answer the first time, the second time. And the third time the president said something very interesting, Karen. He said Obamacare.

Yes, because President Obama always refers to health care reform as "Obamacare."

But it's all okay. Representative Bachmann, asked about the source of her "spiritual growth," has attributed it "to the teachings of Jesus Christ and to the Old and New Testaments."

Some might call that slanderous.

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Hamas, As With The Rich, Is Not Like You And Me

What is the value of a life? The question has vast political implications, as The New York Times explained in February

To protests from business and praise from unions, environmentalists and consumer groups, one agency after another has ratcheted up the price of life, justifying tougher — and more costly — standards.

The Environmental Protection Agency set the value of a life at $9.1 million last year in proposing tighter restrictions on air pollution. The agency used numbers as low as $6.8 million during the George W. Bush administration.

The Food and Drug Administration declared that life was worth $7.9 million last year, up from $5 million in 2008, in proposing warning labels on cigarette packages featuring images of cancer victims.

The Transportation Department has used values of around $6 million to justify recent decisions to impose regulations that the Bush administration had rejected as too expensive, like requiring stronger roofs on cars.

And the numbers may keep climbing. In December, the E.P.A. said it might set the value of preventing cancer deaths 50 percent higher than other deaths, because cancer kills slowly. A report last year financed by the Department of Homeland Security suggested that the value of preventing deaths from terrorism might be 100 percent higher than other deaths.

In their role as human beings, most Americans, pro-life and pro-choice, pro-death penalty and anti-death penalty alike, believe life is sacred or at least so valuable as to defy pricing. In the Middle East, however, Israel and Hamas appear to have a different perspective. Reuters (by way of Talking Points Memo) reports

Israel and Gaza's Hamas Islamist rulers have agreed to swap hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for the lone Israeli captive soldier Gilad Shalit, resolving one of the most emotive and intractable issues between them.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in Jerusalem that the deal was "finally summarized and both sides signed."

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas confirmed that it only remained to conclude technical arrangements for the exchange in the coming days.

The breakthrough pact, after many false dawns in years of secret efforts to free Shalit since he was captured in 2006, has no direct bearing on Middle East peace negotiations.

You read that right. Israel gives up "hundreds of Palestinian prisoners" in return for the freedom of one Israeli, presumably Jewish. Hamas obviously demanded hundreds of Palestinians; Israel probably wouldn't give up a bargaining chip just for the heck of it.

This is not the first time a deal so apparently tilted toward one side has been made by Israel with forces out to destroy it. And there may in the future be another Israeli held prisoner by Hamas, for which Israel better have hundreds of Palestinians to give up in return.

If you ask me, one Christian life= one Jewish life= one Muslim life. For that matter, the life of an agnostic or an atheist (many of whom are Christians, Jews, or Muslims) is worth exactly 100% as much as that of the others.

But the Netanyahu government didn't ask me- or you. It asked Hamas. And it got its answer.

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Troubled By The 1960s

David Sirota sees hysterical GOP criticism of Occupy Wall Street as part of the ongoing Republican war against the 1960s. Rep. Paul Brown (R-Ga) calls OWS an "attack upon business, attack upon industry, attack upon freedom and I think that’s what this is all about;" House Majority Leader Eric Cantor slanders these Americans as "mobs;" and Mitt Romneydescribes it as "dangerous, this class warfare."

As Sirota noted in his book Back To Our Future, "the 1960s, a time of unprecedented social and economic process, has been successfully recast since the Reagan era as an era of tie-dye, not thin, ties; burning cities, not men on the moon; LBJ scowls, not JFK glamour; redistributionist War on Poverty 'welfare,'not universalist Medicare benefits." Many Republicans suggest "the 1960s brought about horrific changes, and that if we could just return to a time before civil rights, women's rights, environmental policy and antiwar accomplishments, America would be a better place."

But New York's Representative Peter King most vigorously tries to connect the protests to the 1960s when he argues

I’m old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy.... We can’t allow that to happen.

This brings to mind these words from March 25, 1965:

I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?"....

I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth crushed to earth will rise again.

How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.

How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow....

How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Sirota notes that the comments of King- the congressman, not the fellow who "took to the streets in the 1960s"-

remind us that it’s not just the fringe of the fringe that still fundamentally opposes equal rights for minorities and women, voter enfranchisement, protecting the environment and ending adventurist wars, it’s the leaders of today’s Republican Party.

It might seem strange that contemporary Republicans would want to draw an analogy between Occupy Wall Street and the protesters of the 1960s, who helped to bring an end to the Vietnam War and were a primary impetus to ending legally-sanctioned racial discrimination. But it's part of their effort to demonize an entire decade and the Americans who helped shape it. And, then, this is today's Republican Party.

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Audacity, Demonstrated

In the early 1600s, it was "Tom's criticizing Dexter for dubious line calls is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, since Tom's about the worst line judge I've ever see," shortened, thankfully, to "a case of the pot calling the kettle black." Soon afterward, it was "it takes a thief to catch a thief" (actually, pretty ridiculous); later, "you say she's a bad cook? it takes one to know one!", this too thankfully shortened, to "it takes one to know one."

They all fit no one as well as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor who, criticizing Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for commending the Occupy Wall Street protesters, commented "Believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans." John Branch, before the action on Wall Street, was prescient (but regrettably his cartoon cannot be posted here without approval).

Fortunately, Steve Stegelin also was right on point:

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They're Really Not Into You, Mitt

Chris Christie has broken their hearts. Rick Perry, in whom much of the right has vested its hope to derail unreliable Mitt Romney, has proven to be a far worse candidate than expected, probably incapable of gaining the GOP nomination and otherwise, probably incapable of beating President Obama.

This week it was Chris Christie's turn to break the hearts of those unconvinced that a President Romney would singlemindedly set out to destroy public and private unions and widen the gap between the wealthy and the middle class. The New Jersey governor disappointed Home Depot founder Kenneth G. Langone; hedge fund magnate Paul E. Singer; personal investment titan Charles R. Schwab; financier Stanley F. Druckenmiller; hedge fund managers David Tepper and Daniel S. Loeb; and, most important of all, owners of the nation's second largest privately held company and 4th and 5th richest Americans, Charles and David Koch.

It's not only the nation's corporate superstructure pining for an alternative to the former Massachusetts governor. Romney has been slammed by several right-wing talk radio heavyweights, including Mark Levin, Michael Savage, and Neal Boortz.

And Rush Limbaugh. In early June, Limbaugh (in)famously panned Romney's admission that human activity plays a role in climate change. "Bye-bye, nomination,” he said. “Another one down. We’re in the midst here of discovering that this is all a hoax. The last year has established that the whole premise of man-made global warming is a hoax, and we still have presidential candidates that want to buy into it.” As The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur describes (video below, though Uygur later noted the 99.97% of scientists is 97%), Romney apparently doesn't want to do anything about it- but for the far right, even an acknowledgment of reality is disturbing.

It didn't end there, as Rush last week asserted "I can tell you this, who are trying to convince others, since Bill Kristol struck out on Chris Christie, they're throwing in the towel, and they're running around and they're trying to get everybody, "Okay, can we pick Mitt now, everybody unify, we gotta unify, we gotta pick somebody, do it now, do it early and get behind them a hundred percent." He declared, further, "I think, folks, the regime wants to run against Mitt Romney.

Limbaugh's skepticism about Romney may have its germ in the show host's characterization in 2009 of soldiers who returned from Iraq and decried U.S. involvement there as "phony soldiers." Romney's then-spokesman retorted "Governor Romney would disagree with the negative characterization of those men and women who serve with honor and distinction in the United States Military."

Now Romney, appearing at the right-wing Values Voters Summit, has criticized indirectly anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-ethnic minority Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, who was to speak after the former governor. Romney stated "Our values ennoble the citizen, and they strengthen the nation. We should remember that decency and civility are values too. One of the speakers who will follow me today, has crossed that line I think...."

That can only increase the suspicion on the far right of the GOP's leading presidential candidate. But Limbaugh and most of the right, especially those in the corporate sector whom Rush fronts for, are interested in cultural conservatives ("values voters") only insofar as they can suck voters into the Republican orbit. Langone, the Koch brothers, and their like-minded billionaires seek to undermine Romney before he can win primaries or caucuses in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and Florida.

Health care, global warming, the unpredictability of a politician who commonly has been on both sides of the same issue, or fear of anyone who doesn't consider science the enemy. Whatever the reason(s), for many of the economic royalists who run this country, There's Something About Mitt they just don't like.

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