Practically Frothing For War

The redemption of Rick Santorum as Serious Foreign Policy Thinker(tm) comes courtesy of Michael Ledeen in the WSJ.

After leaving the Senate in 2007, Mr. Santorum wrote about foreign policy frequently for the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he was a fellow until June of 2011. In essays written for the center, he acknowledges that terrorists are indeed inspired by radical Islam—but he wants to work with Muslims who do not wage jihad, subjugate women or oppress minorities. He’s specific about the radicals: They are evil men who have perverted the meaning of “martyrdom,” changing it from the act of dying for one’s faith to killing others to advance the dominion of one’s faith.

His opposition to tyranny abroad has been a constant in his political career. Even in the final days of his losing 2006 re-election campaign, Mr. Santorum never stopped calling for action against Iran and Syria. Apparently, Pennsylvanians weren’t impressed by his Iran Freedom and Support Act, enacted in 2006, which imposed sanctions on the regime and authorized $100 million annually for the democratic opposition, or his 2003 Syria Accountability Act.

But today he looks prescient and gutsy. Back then, the Bush administration was trying to run away from such ideas. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at one point turned to a Democrat, then-Sen. Joe Biden, to block Mr. Santorum’s Iran bill, before it finally passed. But Mr. Santorum’s basic vision has prevailed.

And so it goes.  Clearly the Murdoch machine is hedging their bets when it comes to the very real possibility that the man who will carry the GOP’s standard into battle against President Obama is going to be a know-nothing fundamentalist dipstick.  So like Bush 43 before him, the same “scholars” who told us that it didn’t really matter that the Republican candidate is a moron because he would be surrounded by a brain trust of great minds led by the necessary vision and will to “win” are hard at work constructing the exact same fantasy with Iran as their target.

Ledeen and his crew of bloodthirsty ghouls have been after “regime change” in Iran now for over a decade.  To see him latch his lamprey maw onto Santorum’s back to try to ride him into a war with Tehran should be setting off alarm bells in the head of every American old enough to vote.  They want war, and Rick Santorum is the best way to get it.  Ledeen allowed out of his crypt to try to sell Santorum as Commander-in-Chief means that not only is the GOP establishment making plans for Santorum vs Obama in the fall, but that when it comes to all the truly important boxes to be checked, that Ricky will do for them just fine.

The GOP establishment will prevent Santorum from winning over Romney?  Really?  At best they are hedging pretty damn hard, and at worst they are sabotaging the increasingly failtastic Mittens to get the man they wanted all along.  If “probability of deciding to go to war with Iran” is your top criteria for picking a GOP nominee, then Santorum’s the clear choice.  If Murdoch and the neo-cons are backing him, the notion that Santorum will crash and burn long before Tampa is no longer so assured, is it?

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Your Master Class In Mansplaining

Here are the only things you really need to know about last night’s debate.  One, it’s more than likely the last one for the Republicans.  Two, they did this:

On Wednesday, contraception became the latest topic to raise the ire of conservative debate goers.

During a CNN-sponsored Republican presidential debate in Arizona, the crowd booed wildly at the mention of birth control.

Newt Gingrich then lied about President Obama “supporting infanticide”, Mittens then lied about the President’s “assault on religious freedom”, Santorum then lied about the “pill being dangerous”, and Ron Paul noted that as a doctor, if only women had morals, we wouldn’t need contraception at all.

The sound you heard during that roughly 8 minute segment of the debate was every female swing voter laughing and walking away from the Republicans for a very, very long time.

Conservative pundits sympathetic to Romney have been making the case this week that, whatever Santorum’s conservative merits, he drags the whole party down with his extreme rhetoric. They got plenty of evidence for their case on Wednesday after the GOP received a question on whether they support birth control. Gingrich and Romney practically fell over themselves to condemn moderator John King for daring to even bring it up, insisting that it was an irrelevant distraction from the important issues of the day and their only concerns with contraception were really about religious freedom.

Then came Rick Santorum, who completely deflated their case. He enthusiastically responded to a question about contraception with a lengthy (and seemingly unrelated) sermon about the over-sexualization of teenagers.

“What we’re seeing is a problem in our culture with respect the children being raised by children, children being raised out of wedlock, and the impact on society economically, the impact on society with respect to drug use and a host of other things, when children have children,” he said. “And so, yes, I was talking about these very serious issues.”

Pretty soon the entire podium was following his lead, joining in with their own denunciations of teenage pregnancy and calling for more abstinence programs.

These guys are toast.  Their party is toast.  Their ideas are toast.  The fact they spent a good 10+ minutes mansplaining how the spawn of Lilith  should really just epoxy their legs shut in a debate where the word “jobs” was completely absent showed just how out of touch these fools really are.

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Watergate Manufacturing, Inc.

As Steve Benen notes, pretty much everything is “Obama’s Watergate” to Republicans:  going on vacation, eating a hamburger, brushing his teeth, and he possibly may have farted once HISTORY’S GREATEST MONSTER ahem sorry.  This week’s Watergate, according to the American Spectator, is…Media Matters.

No, really.

They’re comparing the paranoid President Nixon’s private investigators hired to find anything they could on his political opponents to…a media watchdog group.  See, a media watchdog group that calls out Republicans on their lies HAS to be working for President Obama, who HAS to have an “enemies list” just like Nixon! Q.E.D.!

And former Reagan official Jeffrey Lord spends 8 pages on this tortured logic.  Well, really, he spends 5 and a half pages rehashing Watergate itself, and the rest on that bastion of journalistic freedom, Tucker Carlson, and his hit jobs on Media Matters at the Daily Caller.

Why?

Media Matters head David Brock wrote a book: The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine. And of course, the Obama White House HAD EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THE BOOK because of course the CIA and the FBI and the NSA and every other intel agency in DC had to have illegally mind-controlled the patriots at FOX to say bad things about the President because…umm…CHICAGO WAY!  WHITE HOUSE THUGS!  KENYAN TYRANT!  No way these guys are journalists who cracked the unknown secret that FOX News doesn’t like Democrats!

Investigations are needed! Questions must be asked! And Jeffrey Lord says the President must be shamed into resignation because this is the WORST THING A PRESIDENT HAS EVER DONE.  Just the fact that Media Matters exists is central to his point!  It is irresponsible not to speculate!

Seriously.  8 pages of this.  It’s hysterical.  There’s Obama Derangement Syndrome, and then there’s American Spectator, where tinfoil is a way of life.

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Afternoon Open Thread

It has occurred to me that my current home state of Kentucky is responsible for more than its fair share of absolute douchebaggery at a national level.  For this I apologize.  Also, Old-age Mutant Nimrod Turtle and The Amazing Rando!(tm) both can suck it.

Open thread.

 

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Gap-astrophic Failure

Steve Benen flags down the real story so far in the GOP primary:  it’s not Mitt’s finishing problem, or clods of Santorum gumming up the works, or even Newt’s ego self-immolating like a phosphorus elemental in a gasoline refinery, but the significant turnout deficit compared to just four years ago.

So, what were the totals last night? In Minnesota, with nearly all of the precincts reporting, 47,826 Republicans participated in the caucuses, down about 23% from four years ago.

In Colorado, with all of the precincts reporting, 65,479 GOP voters showed up, a drop of nearly 7% from the 2008 totals.

And in Missouri’s non-binding primary, with all of the precincts reporting, turnout stood at 251,868. That’s quite a few for a primary dismissed as a “beauty pageant,” though as Cohen noted, the comparison is admittedly flawed.

Nevertheless, we can start to take some larger lessons away from the larger trajectory. For one thing, none of this makes Mitt Romney look especially impressive—he’s losing states he won four years ago; he’s struggling to get his supporters to participate; and he’s failing badly to match his 2008 vote totals at this stage in the process. It’s starting to look like Romney only wins when he spends several million dollars on attack ads to destroy his main challenger.

For another, this is part of a pattern. As was reported on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Monday night, if we look just at self-identifying Republicans in the exit polls, turnout dropped 11% in Iowa, 15% in New Hampshire, and 16% in Florida. Though turnout in South Carolina was strong, it’s proving to be the exception, as evidenced by additional weak numbers in Nevada and in yesterday’s contests.

The GOP bet everything on the “Tea Party as the new majority” after 2010, and that assumption is rapidly turning into one of the biggest political meltdowns in a long time.  Awesome.  The further to the right they go, the more they lose from everyone else.  Even their primaries are self destructing.

If you were a woman, a minority, a non-Christian, LGBT, a government or union employee or you make less than six figures a year, why would you care to vote in the GOP primaries since the party already classifies you as the enemy?  I mean what what, literally leaves the 27% if that much?  More like 2.7% at the rate they’re going.  The only state where turnout was up?  South Carolina.  That speaks volumes.

We’ve still got loads of work ahead of us, but damn it feels good to see the sun again.

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I Think That’s Some Sort Of Bomb Iranian Mix

Well, since John Yoo is on vacation this week or something waterboarding herds of unicorns and John Bolton’s Mustache is busy with trying to adapt drone controls for use by facial hair (hard to fly straight and hit the red button at the same time when you’re only a mustache) to bomb Syria, it’s up to Niall Ferguson at the Daily Beast to yell LET’S BOMB IRAN as loudly as possible at the Village today.

The single biggest danger in the Middle East today is not the risk of a six-day Israeli war against Iran. It is the risk that Western wishful nonthinking allows the mullahs of Tehran to get their hands on nuclear weapons. Because I am in no doubt that they would take full advantage of such a lethal lever. We would have acquiesced in the creation of an empire of extortion.

War is an evil. But sometimes a preventive war can be a lesser evil than a policy of appeasement. The people who don’t yet know that are the ones still in denial about what a nuclear-armed Iran would end up costing us all.

It feels like the eve of some creative destruction.

And really, Ferguson’s entire argument is “We could so take Iran because our aircraft carriers have more hit points.”   Also, the whole “Oil at $160 a barrel if war breaks out” thing is so 2008 because the Saudis can just make more, or something.  It’s like the last 11 years never happened, and he’s just expecting us to buy the argument and go “LET’S DO IT!” like we’re playing Team Fortress 2.  Our bombs are filled with awesome cartoon sound effects and FREEDOM, so it’s cool anyway because AMERICA!

Meanwhile, the really awesome part is 49% of Americans are already on board with Operation Here We Go Again, so before you have a good laugh at Niall here, understand that the universe has spotted him a hell of a spread.

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Over There

While I have so recently been reminded by our friends in the 101st Chairborne that I’m some arugula-chomping, word-chopping, bubble-bound faux-American, it happens that even folks from my particular corner of Alinskystan talk to people whose daily life is as real as it gets.

Which is to say that one of my friends most often in my thoughts is an infantryman to the bone, decades in uniform, absolutely dedicated to the idea of service and his men.  He’s an enlisted man, on his third tour in the Iraq/Afghanistan long war—and you can take this to the bank:  if you or your child had to hump up some hill where folks sought to do you or yours ill, you’d want my friend there too.  He’s one of nature’s sergeants, I’m trying to say, the kind of guy who knows what he’s doing to some very deep level, and takes the use of that knowledge as an obligation he owes anyone under gaze.

In December, I wrote him a quick note—just a “happy holidays – hope you’re OK” kind of thing.  When I got his reply, I asked for permission to post it here—which I’ve just received.

My friend speaks for himself. I’m not going to gloss it further except to say this:  I’m past tolerating being told by comfortable American Exceptionalists about the necessity of the next war, or the war after that.  My friend and his friends carry the load for all such  Dulce et Decorum posturing.

So.  Notes from Over There:

I am still in Afghanistan in [Deleted] province at an altitude of [Deleted] feet. We have no heat in our bee huts (plywood shacks that sleep six), the temperature at night is in the low teens. They tell us they are working on getting a heater.

It is a tough tour.  We lost six men to an IED three days before Christmas, [not his unit] we worked closely together and I knew them well. We have lost twenty Americans since I arrived. Today I was on an air mission we flew high into the mountains in a heavily Taliban controlled area, luckily we had no trouble. War is a strange thing, going out on missions almost everyday and not knowing if it will be your last day on earth.

We work with the provincial governors and sub governors to build roads, bridges, schools, and give out humanitarian aid, but the leaders steal most of the money and little gets down to the people. I am out in the boonies, we fire artillery all day and night and they rocket us. Soldiers...are killed and wounded almost weekly, the call goes out over the loud speaker all this type or that type of blood report to the aid station. I have carried wounded on to helicopters in the field and carried others off the helicopters back at base. It always makes my eyes water and heart hurt to see their broken bodies. It is surreal. I will finish my tour in [Deleted], I had a short leave home in [Deleted]. It is interesting; we raid villages at night and capture terrorist responsible for the bombings, we caught the ones who killed the [men lost before Christmas] the night before last.

I am fine. I am an old soldier, and still tough, I plan missions and lead them and so far, thank God, I have not lost one of my men. The fighting in Ramadi Iraq was more bloody, but this place is no joke either. I will never understand why nations go to war, I know the politics, countries do bad things, but it is so ugly. I now have a collection of faces of men that I knew who have been killed in action that live in my head. I am sorry to write like this but I guess I was feeling philosophical.

I hope you join me in sending every good wish and hope to my friend and those with whom he serves.  That is all.

Image:  Rembrandt van Rijn, Old Soldier, undated—first half of the seventeenth century.

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GOP CURIOUS

For the lulz.

He just can’t help himself.

It’s this simple. One party talks about the debt, one party is trying to do something about it. One party wants to slash taxes and follow policies that would make the debt worse, the other is willing to come to the table and make hard decisions. That’s the reality of the matter; that is what is undeniable. Yet every Friday night, Sullivan finds himself in bed with the Burkean/Hayakian eunuchs sitting on the corner of the bed telling him how good it is going to be this time. Just wait, this time will be different.

It’s both sad and hysterical to watch.

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Why am I the designated loser?

I was talking to a local Democrat the night before last about Obama’s chances. He’s the former county chair, now retired. He said he was done with politics when he retired, said he was going to spend time with his grandchildren and follow Notre Dame football and to hell with all of us, but he didn’t mean it, because he still calls me all the time. He’s (generally) a pessimist, a dour person, although I recently borrowed his car and the one and only CD he had in there was called something like “Silly Songs for the Very Young”. Now I imagine him cruising west on I-80 towards Indiana, huge sedan full of his tiny grandkids, singing merrily along. I don’t “know” anyone, really.

Anyway, he worries about things I forget to worry about, and he’s fretting about the health care lawsuit. He told me it’s “bad for Obama”. I thought about that, and I’m not sure that’s right. I think the health care lawsuit carries risk for both sides.

Why is it assumed that 5 judges repealing the Affordable Care Act is good for conservatives, politically? The polling isn’t at all conclusive, despite what we’ve been told. This isn’t a slam-dunk. Republicans support repeal, and Democrats oppose repeal.

Conservative lawyers and donors are asking the Supreme Court to throw out the whole law, which is of course consistent with their long-held principle of judicial restraint. But, conservative lawyers and donors (and federal judges) have health insurance, and if they win this ideological battle they’ve draped in legal garb, 2.5 million young people who are now covered under the Act will get very, very nervous.

And, conservative lawyers and donors aren’t just suing on Obamacare. They’re gunning for Medicaid, which of course has huge implications for those people who are dependent on Medicaid. Conservatives mischaracterize Medicaid. Medicaid is a program for old people, children, and disabled people. And, you wouldn’t know it to listen to the pundits chatter, but Medicaid is actually very popular with Real Americans.

It’s a program for poor people without insurance, yes, but many more people fall into that category than you might realize. There are, first, the working-age Americans, along with their children, for whom Medicaid provides basic health insurance. And then, there the elderly and the disabled, for whom Medicaid provides supplemental coverage (to pay for the deductibles in Medicare, for example) or long-term care insurance (most famously, to pay for nursing homes). In many cases, these are people who were not poor until they needed long-term care, spent down their savings, and eventually became eligible for Medicaid once they ran out of money.

While 5 judges overturning Obamacare and chipping away at the legal foundation for Medicaid may be popular with the conservative base and complicate Obama’s campaign message and chance at re-election, I think it’s safe to say that 5 judges throwing 2.5 million young Americans off health insurance, knocking the pins out from under Medicaid, and destroying President Obama’s signature domestic achievement will also complicate Mitt Romney’s campaign message.

Conservatives have nothing to offer on access to health care for the uninsured. They’ve spent the last thirty years avoiding the subject altogether, hoping the uninsured would go away and quit bothering them. Mitt Romney is going to run around celebrating the fact that 2.5 million Americans just lost their health insurance, by judicial fiat? Mitt Romney is going to be cheering as all the states that are putting Obamacare into practice are ordered to STOP? Romney’s going to come out and crow that we’re now back to the status quo on health care? It’s morning in America! The Supreme Court got rid of any chance you had to get covered under Medicaid or purchase affordable health insurance, and, oh, by the way, I plan to end Medicare too? Is that Mitt Romney’s winning message?

There’s going to be political repercussions on both sides no matter what the outcome of the court case, and I don’t know that conservatives benefit, automatically and inevitably. They certainly didn’t benefit from the S-CHIP battle. They were left defending denying health care to children. They lost.

On the flip side, if the law is upheld, what is going to be the reaction of the perennially angry and vindictive Tea Party faithful? First they were told a House majority would overturn the law, and then they were told that 5 judges would overturn the law. The House majority didn’t repeal the law, because one chamber can’t repeal a law in America, despite what they were told. What if the 5 conservative judges let them down too?

Seems to me there’s political risk on all sides. Seems to me conservatives might want to have waited and repealed the law the old-fashioned way, by winning elections.

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Why Stupid Talk About Violence Matters (Up from the archives edition)

The story of the White House shooter John wrote about last night sent me digging into my archives to find a piece I wrote in the wake of the appearance of someone carrying a long gun at an appearance by President Obama.  Or rather, in the wake of old friend Megan McCardle’s attempt to deflate what she saw as excessive lefty concern at the rise in threat displays at such events.

I thought of this piece a lot in the wake of the Gabby Giffords shootings, and though, happily, no actual harm was done this time, I’m reminded again of the same basic point:  playing with the kind of rhetoric with which the right seems much too comfortable these days is simply dangerous.

So—and especially as my day job is making it almost impossible to come up with much useful original blogging, I offer what follows below the jump as a (to me) still on point response to those who think that it’s mere political correctness that decries this kind of talk these days.

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Getting Another One Past The Goalie

Fresh off his success getting Congress to pass legislation to help find jobs for returning Iraq and Afghanistan vets, the next stage in President Obama’s push for jobs bill is a similar $1 billion measure to hire, train, and deploy healthcare workers.

The Obama administration will announce Monday as much as $1 billion in funding to hire, train and deploy health-care workers, part of the White House’s broader “We Can’t Wait” agenda to bolster the economy after President Obama’s jobs bill stalled in Congress.

Grants can go to doctors, community groups, local government and other organizations that work with patients in federal health-care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. The funds are for experimenting with different ways to expand the health-care workforce while reducing the cost of delivering care. There will be an emphasis on speed, with new programs expected to be running within six months of funding.

“This will open the inbox for many innovators and organizations that have an idea to bring to the table,” Don Berwick, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said in an interview. “We’re seeking innovators, organizations and leaders that have an idea to bring into further testing.”

On the surface, this seems like exactly the kind of program Republicans want in their approach to health care: venture capitalism for the doctors, hospitals, and medical device corporations to find better real-world solutions to lower Medicare and Medicaid costs.   The reality is I fully expect Republicans to scream “Obamacare!” and unanimously vote against it because they are fully in the grip of The Crazy.

The fact of the matter is after Friday’s Senate vote to approve a jobs measure for veterans, the Tea Party will expect their wishes to be heeded on this, and you should expect to see a number of Republicans dismiss the measure as part of the President’s evil death panel machine or whatever.

It would be outstanding if I’m wrong on this preemptive hoocodanode, but I don’t think I will be.  All that matters to the GOP is that Obama must be defeated so they can repeal this “horrible assault on our liberty” so we can die from not being able to afford healthcare like the Founding Fathers wanted, then turn around and pass the same legislation with the word “Freedom” in the title.

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Clowning Is An Honorable Entertainment Profession That These Fools Are Besmirching

Yes, Herman Cain added a couple points to his scumbag multiplier with the “Princess Nancy” crack and Perry.exe encountered reality and blue screened on stage, but the real problem at last night’s debate was a number of GOP candidates (Newt and Ron Paul End The Fed) gleefully saying that as President they would basically end government student loans, at a debate at a college, with a college audience, presumably the college kids at the college due to government-backed student loans, and the college kids cheering the end of the aforementioned loans.

Paul was asked about student loan program at a Republican presidential debate. He called it a “total failure” and said student loan debt of nearly $1 trillion could be “dumped on the taxpayer.” He said he supported getting rid of student loan programs and the Education Department.

“There’s no authority in the Constitution for the federal government to be dealing with education,” the Texas congressman argued. “We should get rid of the loan programs. We should get rid of the Department of Education and give tax credits, if you have to, to help people.”

Gingrich said the loan program expanded the ability of students “to stay in college longer because they don’t see the cost.” He called it “an absurdity.”

I mean how long before the official GOP platform plank on college is “not if you can’t pay cash you don’t!”  The number of things America can no longer afford because we have to get the top marginal tax rate as low as possible in order to Magically Create Jobs is getting a bit long, yes?  Somehow, I don’t think that our revenue problem is going to be solved by the “Michele Bachmann Two Happy Meal Alternative Minimum Tax Plan” either.

This notion that the federal government should do nothing whenever possible is one thing, but actively running on a platform of promising to assure that government doesn’t help its citizens is just grimly bizarre stuff.

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Everything You Need To Know About Iowa Republican Caucus Voters

The “but Republicans will never tax me, just those other people” scam is arguably the most successful example of wishful thinking and voting against your own self-interest that I’ve ever seen.  From the Des Moines Register:

Two-thirds of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers earning less than $50,000 a year believe they personally would be better off or in the same situation under Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan, The Des Moines Register’s new Iowa Poll shows.

Research-group reviews of the plan have found that most families making $100,000 or less would pay thousands of dollars more each year.

“The larger point is that people don’t really understand what the 9-9-9 plan actually is, and they’re assuming incorrectly that they may not pay one or any of these taxes,” said Joe Rosenberg, a research associate for the Tax Policy Center, a group based in Washington, D.C., that bills itself as a nonpartisan economic research institute.

That “incorrect assumption” is of course the entire point of the plan.  These are folks that expect the GOP to stick it to the “47% that pay no income tax” which of course would never, ever include any Real Americans voting in GOP primaries.  The cloud of ignorance that makes it so easy to lead the nation off a cliff is largely self-inflicted, and that’s just how the GOP and their corporate masters like it.

More importantly, Iowa Republicans are honestly expecting the GOP’s flotilla of flat tax nonsense to punish the Others, (you know, “welfare queens”, “young bucks on the street corner”, and “those people in the day labor parking lot”) not any of them.  That’s what the dog whistle semaphore is spelling out for them day after day on FOX and El Rushbo. They truly believe that the notion that a consumption tax would ever be levied against working-class Republican voters in the Heartland is nothing more than a cruel liberal media trick.

The rest of the flat tax supporters know full well they’re being asked to pay higher taxes along with the Others but also think that the super rich will reward them for their suffering, like the Midwest is full of roaming packs of Job Creation Angels who will zoom out of the sky and tag the deserving like Oprah used to give away prizes to her audience.  (“You get a job and YOU get a job and YOU get a job and YOU ALL GET JOBS!”  Cue giant box of jobs.)  These celestial hiring managers of course only visit the worthy, so you’d better be able to take your suffering like a Real American.  They’re counting on getting a little something from the guys up at the top the trickle pile and calling it rain.

The devil convincing the world he never existed, and all that.

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It’s Peanut Butter Bubble Time!

Anyone who still thinks record-breaking drought patterns in the South don’t matter because Al Gore is fat, red state immigration laws chasing off migrant farm workers is only a good thing, and rampant food commodity speculation by the financial sector is a way to boost the economy, and that a few giant food conglomerates controlling all the market for the stuff you eat is a super capitalistic idea, meet the confluence of all four of these lovely occurrences in your supermarket aisle as you’re about to see the price of peanut butter go through the freakin’ roof.

Kraft will raise prices for its Planters brand peanut butter by 40% starting Monday, while ConAgra  has instituted increases of more than 20% for its Peter Pan brand that went into effect this month. 

J.M. Smucker , which makes Jif, will introduce price hikes of around 30% starting Tuesday.

Consumers, meanwhile, are already seeing these increases reflected at grocery stores.

Maria Brous, a spokeswoman for the Publix chain, said the store had already made slight increases in retail prices and expects them to go higher “as the cost of goods continue[s] to rise”.

Dick Roberts, a spokesman for Giant Eagle grocery stores, said that “like all retailers,” the store is “being affected by industry factors on peanut butter pricing”. Chris Brand, a spokesman for Giant food stores, said the “outlook does not look good until next year’s crop is harvested and produced”.

Yes folks, we’ve finally gotten to the point where the Invisible Hand just Rochambeau’d you for your frackin’ peanut butter.  Is there anything that the conservative “greed is good”, “deregulation at all costs” policies of the last decade or so can’t destroy and doesn’t result in the average American having to pay the check?

Peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat, indeed.

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Passing The Political Football

Once again my senator Mitch McConnell continues to show America that Republicans are focused like a laser on the most important issue facing the country right now: jobs the economy abortion national security screwing with college football conferences.

Earlier this week, the Big 12 conference appeared ready to admit West Virginia into the league—a move so certain that university officials began tipping off members of their current conference, the Big East. But on Tuesday, the Big 12 abruptly backed off its overtures to the Mountaineers, leaving school officials in limbo and wondering what had happened.

On Wednesday, West Virginia received a key clue. The New York Times’ Pete Thamel reported that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had lobbied officials at two Big 12 schools on behalf of his alma mater, the University of Louisville, which also is vying for a spot in the conference.

Everything Republicans do is about personal gain.  That’s the point of political power, one leads to another in a cycle.

Not surprisingly, McConnell’s alleged lobbying prompted anger among the two senators from West Virginia, Jay Rockefeller and Joe Manchin, who are both Democrats. They have called on the Senate to investigate whether McConnell inappropriately interfered in the football drama.

“The Big 12 picked WVU on the strength of its program—period. Now the media reports that political games may upend that,” Rockefeller, who is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and has jurisdiction over college athletics, told reporters. “That’s just flat wrong. I am doing and will do whatever it takes to get us back to the merits.”

Manchin, a West Virginia alum, went further, questioning McConnell’s ethics.

“If a United States senator has done anything inappropriate or unethical to interfere with a decision that the Big 12 had already made—then I believe that there should be an investigation in the U.S. Senate, and I will fight to get to the truth,” Manchin said in a statement. “West Virginians and the American people deserve to know exactly what is going on and whether politics is interfering with our college sports.”

So yes, it seems now that while the country is busy having a gut check over the direction of the country, over social equality, economic fairness, over the role of government in America and the true power of the wealthy, the most august deliberative body in the world is out back behind the outhouse fighting over the size of each others’ “conferences” and Republicans are abusing their power because they can.  Meanwhile, the one thing that gets Joe Manchin pissed off enough to fight back isn’t the economy or Republican intransigence on jobs but the fact that Mitch is messing with the Mountaineers.

Can we just Occupy Congress already?

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