If anyone was wondering where Sen. Rand Paul went, he was detained by the TSA for refusing a patdown.  He was never a fan of the TSA, but rules are rules, and a senator is no better than the grandma or 5 year old that gets pat down at the security checkpoint.

Biggest Jerk of the week, Pastor and Rick Santorum’s “Florida chairman”, Rev. O’Neal Dozier made some controversial statements.  One about Mitt Romney and the Mormon church being racist and another about God hating gays sooooo much, that God would vomit.  Yes that means, God would vomit all over us.  I put quotations marks around him being Santorum’s “Florida chairman”, because it’s too hard to believe.  No way I can believe this guy is involved directly with the campaign and can make these statements and not receive more than a weeks worth of media coverage from MSM…I don’t care how nice his hightop fade is.

Recommended Read: I had a friend who is extremely liberal that I often find her annoying.  However, she mentioned that if forced to vote republican, she’d vote for Ron Paul.  After pointing out how ridiculous that is and how his position on war is irrelevant as to the bigger picture.  Well I found this blog post which is extremely on point about Ron Paul.  Ron Paul looks reasonable on the outside, but people need to look further before going on a honeymoon with him.  Here’s, Let’s Be Clear, Ron Paul Fucking Sucks. Here Are 20 Reasons Why.

Last night during the South Carolina primary, Newt Gingrich should not have won.  Clearly Mitt Romney didn’t learn his lesson that not only does below the belt negative campaigning not work or go (un)attacked anymore, but also that being married multiple times does not matter anymore in this society.  You can view the ad that was played here, note the subtle underlining theme here about marriage.  We all like to bring up the Newt Gingrich’s fidelity and marital issues, but in this decade is it unlikely that even christian conservatives can’t relate to either knowing someone or being married multiple times.  And lets not forget Romney tried this before on McCain who was married twice and no one really cared.

Looking at the exit polls from South Carolina, Mitt Romney has more issues than negative campaigning.  He has an elitist – rich guy – issue.  The exit poll results are via CNN.

He only won with those making over $200k! At this point, he should have learned how to relate to those below his income category.  Though education means little to whether someone is elitist or not, it’s good to mention that he only attacks postgraduates.  Pres. Obama also displayed this trend when just starting, however Romney has essentially been campaigning longer and should be more in tune with the rest of the public.  Unfortunately Newt is correct in that Romney puts out this aura of elitism.  Romney tends to use the words “I” and “me” a lot, he often spends his time defending why and how he got to be so rich, which is a big no-no.

Romney, with no surprise, has issues with christian conservatives.

This issue here is that Romney was mainly able to attract the more liberal thinkers in the South Carolina primary.  Which is probably not the best indication of whats to come if he’s going up against Pres. Obama.  Even Santorum, who has little chance of winning, able to beat out Mitt Romney with the very conservative crowd.

Which candidate can beat Obama? Apparently NOT Romney.  Though Gingrich is a great debater and has experience…he has also been around longer and has more skeletons than Romney.  I personally do not think Gingrich stands a chance, but he’s better than Romney simply based on the fact that his positions aren’t as aligned with Pres. Obama.

I truly think Mitt Romney will win the Republican primary, whoever, the general election is not looking good at this point.  Next primary is Florida where Romney is likely to win.  But the exit polls from that state will give a better indication on the split within the republican party as it pertains to Romney.  Sure, many of the more populated parts of Florida are occupied by northerners, but the 18% or so of evangelical Christians could mean a lot in what is now a swing state.  Hopefully for Mitt Romney, doesn’t mention marriage or morals of other candidates, because in the end no one will care about Newt’s marriages or morals, it will only remind people that Romney is a Mormon.  And though I think it’s ridiculous Christians would be against Romney for this reason, it is a serious issue that factors into polling decisions.

First, I do agree that infidelity in his marriage really doesn’t dictate how he’ll be as a President.  However, the rest of his theories and conclusions are a little far from reality and “reasonable” as he puts it.  Dr. Ablow writes,

1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.

Really? That’s a major assumption, not only assuming that these women wanted to be with him because of his “emotional energy and intellect” but also for assuming Gingrich has great emotional energy and intellect.

2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.

3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.

Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.

Really now!? Because three women wanted to be with Newt Gingrich, that means we’d be clamoring for a third term.  One piece of information not here is that having women all over Gingrich doesn’t indicate the effectiveness of his policies.

4) Two women—Mr. Gingrich’s first two wives—have sat down with him while he delivered to them incredibly painful truths: that he no longer loved them as he did before, that he had fallen in love with other women and that he needed to follow his heart, despite the great price he would pay financially and the risk he would be taking with his reputation.

Conclusion: I can only hope Mr. Gingrich will be as direct and unsparing with the Congress, the American people and our allies. If this nation must now move with conviction in the direction of its heart, Newt Gingrich is obviously no stranger to that journey.

Basically Gingrich is wish-washy about women, doesn’t know what he wants and that’s seen as having a truthful honest character?  I’m not denying Gingrich is probably one of the most straightforward politicians on the republican side, but how is this also not an indication that when he’s president, he wouldn’t be able to make solid decisions and stand by them?  If Dr. Ablow can make his conclusions about Gingrich, then surely my conclusions would also be applicable.

5) Mr. Gingrich’s daughters from his first marriage are among his most vigorous supporters. They obviously adore him and respect him and feel grateful for the kind of father he was.

Yeah, because he’s their father! Probably got them into the best ivy league schools based on name recognition alone and probably pays for their expenses….what child wouldn’t be a vigorous supporter.

If Dr. Ablow is correct to say that his marriage and infidelity issues means nothing to indicate bad presidential material, then neither are the good conclusions he comes up with.

“Name one thing government has run successfully?”

Republicans always seem to ask this question to democrats as to say, “check-mate, can’t answer that, huh!”.  The idea seems to be that smaller government is better and this is because government can’t run successfully like a business.  However, I would say, they’re right, government can’t run anything successfully and I wouldn’t expect government to run anything successfully.

First lets address that government can’t be as small or live up to republican expectations of “small government”.  The U.S. population has grown significant and we’re faced with newer problems than decades ago.  Just imagine if government was smaller, you’d have one small office handling millions of incoming calls and paper work to take care of a hundred different things.  It’d take more than a 2 weeks to transfer information from one tiny department to another.  It’d a month to receive notification that a document was received and processed.  It’d take more than 6 hours on hold to reach someone to talk to.  Then the new argument from republicans would be that we need faster government.  Government will never be smaller.

Next, I would argue, what is the definition of success.  Are we saying government isn’t successful because it isn’t as successful as business?  If that’s the definition of success, then that is correct.  However, it’s a bit unreasonable, because government is supposed to do what businesses cannot and shouldn’t do.  Just think if businesses were running libraries or deciding who gets a passport…or better yet, issuing driver licenses and running the courts….it would be absolutely horrible.  I’m sure Walmart would love to run our courts while treating employees like crap.  The point is that government ultimately doesn’t profit from the services.  I would also argue that in a perfect world without economic constraints, government would run successfully.  We have great teachers in the public school sector, awesome firefighters and dedicated policemen.  I can confidently say in a surplus economy, without cutbacks or layoffs, many government agencies and sectors would be able to provide services better and run successfully.

Unfortunately, that is not the world we live in and the economy plays a heavy role in the success of government. It’s a vicious cycle which not only relies on the personal responsibility of individual Americans, but courage of politicians to be selfless and implement often what are unpopular policies.  A major difference between the government and business is that when the economy is hurting, more people rely on government.  Unlike businesses, when the economy is hurting, fewer people rely on the private industry.  Of course, no one really calls a business “unsuccessful” when the economy is hurting, because it’s the “government’s fault” they have to “downsize” and layoff employees.  Which brings me to another point in which government cannot really downsize and be functioning as expected.  Even if a business is downsizing, that is its’ way of keeping it afloat and negating further loss and can later increase their business to how it use to be which is greatly dependent on the economic climate.  Government doesn’t have that much leeway when there’s more individuals relaying on it.

I would hope republicans look at the reality of what’s happening now and stop hoping government would be a business.  Sure, government can always improve in some way but the reason government is often strained is due to the economy.  The ideas republicans are offering have not worked and they need to update their economic plans to work in this current climate.

Now like many of us…this ad probably creeps you out.  Mainly the creepy grin (or smile) in the end.  In fact, I planned to blog about this days ago but after waiting and watching a few more times, here’s my analysis (other than it’s creepy).

The ad works for him with conservatives who are his base.  It may seem ultra weird, but I bet it works for those Christian conservatives in states like…South Carolina.  He is showing that a white guy is willing to work for Herman Cain’s campaign thus making the cultural conservatives feel a little better.  And the camera is zoomed in on the guy’s face and showing his tough exterior (wrinkly, imperfect skin), thus making him come off as a regular everyday guy that’s working for a man he truly believes in.  The testimony he gives is pretty good and honestly doesn’t come off as contrived as it could have been.  Also, notice the guy takes a smoke in the end, I thought it may be interpreted as the guy being stressed so much to make a fake testimony that he needs a smoke…but to the “real Americans” in the south that comes off once again as him being a normal guy (either with an imperfection like a smoking addiction or someone that they can imagine standing outside, talking and smoking with).  Now, the music is also very Americanized and plays to the younger Christian conservative crowd.  Though she is singing about America being united, I also felt the Christian Rock genera vibe.  And the Herman Cain grin shows that he’s kinda nice and not all his teeth are straight and perfect like Barack Obamas’.  This gives the impression that he is a manly man who doesn’t care about straightening his teeth because he is too busy working hard to put food on the table for his family.

But the most important thing this ad does is grab media attention to take away from the talk about how he may have flip flopped on important issues like abortion and how his 9-9-9 and 9-0-9 plan is horrible for America.

Unfortunately for Tim Pawlenty, he put too much resources in a straw poll that doesn’t really matter and a straw poll where substance on the issues isn’t valued by people who voted in Ames.  Also noting that Michelle Bachmann is from Iowa, he really didn’t stand a chance.

Pawlenty poured a million into trying to win this insignificant poll.  A poll only represents the far right of the republican party, not the (relatively) sensible sect of the GOP that would likely vote for him.  The sad part is that Tim Pawlenty was finally getting his mojo, taking on Michelle Bachmann and her little achievements (her only achievement being passing the light bulb bill).  Pawlenty could have been a moderate alternative to Mitt Romney who conservatives feel can’t trust.  He could have exposed more of Romney’s flaws and argue on the issues and substance of his “achievements”.

However, as a moderate democrat that sees nothing enticing about the GOP field that would make me change my vote from Pres. Obama, I’m quite content with Pawlenty’s decision.  That’s one less person that will make it hard for Pres. Obama to win another term.

Another thing to note is how this reflects on the republican party as a whole.  We have to think, did Pawlenty quit only because he came in a distant third in the Ames straw poll? No! It’s because of that, that he won’t be able to raise the money required to run his campaign.  Donors don’t believe in keeping relatively substantive candidates in the field.  Most only care about supporting the candidates that to the far right of the country.  The candidates that don’t have a chance of winning in a general election.  The GOP is kicking out the politicians that with some time could be stars within their party.

The weird part about this is that after all the back and forth, he was still unable to answer the question thoughtfully.  He only answered by saying, “I’m not going to raise taxes”, then he went on about Obama and how he will raise taxes.  In the end, that’s not a valid answer, all he did was spew out a key republican talking point which isn’t even a practical answer when social security and Medicaid are only becoming more expensive programs to upkeep.  Romney’s solution must also be to keep printing off money and not raising the revenue.  I love how the crowd reaction of mostly republicans are to applaud like mindless fools whenever they hear “not raise taxes”.

The next clip of Romney at this Iowa State Fair tops the cake.  He literally said that “corporations are people”….here’s the clip.

What Romney said may be true to a fraction of a degree, but he is failing to once again understand where the attendees are coming from.  He said, “corporations are people” and went on to defend them, he doesn’t understand the issue with saying that.  Corporations pocket the money they earn (and rightfully so in my opinion) but a major portion goes to the top few including the huge bonuses and trickles down in very low wages to the thousands of workers.  That’s how the cookie crumbles in our society…I’m not saying that’s entirely wrong.  I support capitalism in our society, but it has flaws.

Saying corporations are people, is the same as saying Walmart or Target is one person that should have a say.  Maybe he truly believes and supports this since I’m sure he’s the top republican candidate that receives the most money from corporations.  Corporations have been controlling political decisions behind the scenes for decades through lobbyists and favors for politicians.  Only recently (especially since the Supreme Court decision) have they been coming out to lobby in the open.

Romney has to decide whether it’s his decision that a corporation should have the same privileges in our political system as a person.  Is it really fair that Target decides to send 10 million to X-candidate, the CEO of Target sends 7 million to X-candidate, while most of Target employees send $10 each to support  X-candidate?  Do you not think that if X-candidate wins, that Target and it’s CEO will have more influence than the employees about the direction of the country?

Romney needs to get real, address the issues, not use talking points that explain nothing, or once again he will fail as a candidate.

By the way, how is she the queen of rage?  Or maybe that’s why they chose this picture…to make her look scary and raging?

“We can debate the strength of the analysis that they did, the history of S&P and so on,” Axelrod told CBS’ Bob Schieffer, of Standard & Poor’s, the credit rating agency that downgraded the U.S. market from AAA to AA+ on Friday. “They made an egregious analytical error here but theirs was largely a political analysis… They want to see the kind of solution that the president has been fighting for… that will be balanced, that will include revenues, that will deal with some of our long-term issues.”

“For months, the president was saying, let’s get together, let’s compromise,” Axelrod continued. “We thought we had such an arrangement with the Speaker of the House… then he went back to his caucus; he had to yield to the most strident voices in his party. They played brinksmanship with the full faith and credit of the United States. This was the result in that.”

“The fact of the matter is that this is essentially a Tea Party downgrade,” he declared. “That clearly is on the backs of those who were willing to see the country default.”

I do find it odd that the Tea Party is in control of the entire republican party.  Unfortunately the way the republican party behaved is why we were downgraded.   They decided to play a political game with the nation’s debt ceiling and willing to let us default (which would have caused more debt).  The S&P’s reasons for the downgrade was not the debt ceiling itself, because we did raise the debt ceiling (albeit last minute).  The issue was the way Washington could not handle the issue in a productive civil way.  The bickering on the right and the political discourse was discouraging and gave little hope that America can even turn around our debt problem.

Howard Dean also appeared on Face the Nation.  This is via, Politico,

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says the tea party was “totally unreasonable” in the deficit-reduction debate and warns that Republicans are being held hostage.

“This is a tea party problem,” Dean said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “They are totally unreasonable and doctrinaire and not founded in reality. I think they’ve been smoking some of that tea, not just drinking it.”

“This is ridiculous what’s going on here,” he said.

The firebrand Democrat and former Vermont governor said the Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the nation’s credit is “a good thing” because it underscores the need to raise revenue to address the nation’s fiscal crisis.

But he said certain elements of the Republican Party make it impossible for reasonable people to do what Dean said is right — raising taxes on the wealthy.

“The American people are there; Democrats are there. A lot of reasonable Republicans are there,” he said. “But they are terrified of these right-wing splinter groups, the radical right, because they are so powerful in the primaries.”

His analysis is right on.  Essentially the downgrading by S&P will wake people up about what really needs to be done to reduce the deficit and that is by increasing revenue.  Unfortunately with the GOP running far right so they can win an election next year, isn’t going to help us fix this long term issue.  Maddow said this morning, phrasing the republicans’ unwillingness to compromise as ‘Republican Intransigence‘.  We have no one to thank but Speaker Boehner for setting the tone back in December for the way his party will behave when it comes to compromise…

The United States has suffered the first downgrade to its credit rating in history, as Standard & Poor’s has reduced the nation’s rating from AAA to AA+.

The credit rating firm said the recent plan to raise the debt limit while reducing the debt “falls short” of its expectations, but also offered broader condemnations of America’s political process.

“The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed,” the firm wrote in its announcement. “The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy. Despite this year’s wide-ranging debate, in our view, the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge.”

S&P said it was “pessimistic” about the ability of Congress and the White House to reach a broader plan to rein in the deficit “any time soon.”

The Treasury Department immediately pushed back against the downgrade by S&P, accusing the rater of having major calculation errors that threw the firm’s entire rationale into doubt.

“A judgment flawed by a $2 trillion error speaks for itself,” said a Treasury spokesperson.

After being presented with S&P’s economic rationale for the downgrade, Treasury officials immediately pointed out a perceived error in the analysis, which found it had pegged discretionary spending levels at $2 trillion too high, compared to analysis from the Congressional Budget Office. That calculation error resulted in a much higher growth rate of the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio.

S&P acknowledged the error, and removed that portion of the analysis from its statement

The agency blasted elected officials for failing to make the tough choices to get the fiscal picture in order, but refused to weigh in on the fundamental fight in Congress — whether increased revenues should be part of any deal to reduce the deficit.

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It doesn’t even matter if we can restore our AAA rating or not because of possible errors made by S&P.  The bigger and more longterm issue is that the political laziness of the republican party by their refusal to work towards a good compromise is hurting America’s standing.  Even before we were downgraded, leaders of other countries were blasting politicians for playing politics with the debt ceiling.

But no, Cantor and speaker Boehner just couldn’t tell the Tea Party no. I know the Tea Party probably has a hard time wrapping their heads around the implications of a credit downgrade, but that does not mean the rest of us have to suffer for their inadequacies.  I’d like to applaud the entire Republican Party for trying to protect lobbyists and Wall St. while throwing the rest of the US under the bus.  Can’t wait to see them try to spin this into being the fault of the democrats.  Yet, again, thinking most Americans are stupid to believe their political spin.