Elitist Snobbery Projection

Think Progress: While talking about education during a campaign stop in New Hampshire today, Santorum stated that Obama “said every child should go to college,” then declared, “What elitist snobbery out of this man!” The claim drew cheers from many in the crowd.

Because in GOP world it's elitist snobbery to want everybody to have the chance at a good education, but it's not elitist snobbery to restrict that opportunity to the children of the rich. Attacking, restricting, and denying public education is a major way in which Republican party public policy reduces upward mobility, making America very much less the land of opportunity. But it's no surprise. Fact of the matter is conservatives have been working on behalf the plantation owner since this country was founded.

He Already Did

Raw Story: Failed Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s endorsement of current candidate Mitt Romney may being doing more harm than good.

At an event in South Carolina Thursday, the Arizona senator managed to confuse the candidate he was supporting with Democratic President Barack Obama.

“I am confident with the leadership and backing of the American people, President Obama will turn this country around,” McCain told the Charleston crowd before Romney and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley both stepped in to remind him who he was campaigning for.

The only time Republicans are right about such things is when they mistakenly say the opposite of what they intend. Obama already turned this country around after Romey's team 1% left us is economic and fiscal meltdown. Any vote for a Republican is a vote for economic devastation. We all lived it. Let's not live it again.

Eat Racist Rhetoric

Gingrich: I'll tell blacks not to be satisfied with food stamps.

And we'll tell Republicans it's more than difficult to get a job, much less an education, if you're starving. Pretty much every Republican party policy has the effect of reducing upward mobility, making America very much less the land of opportunity.

Corrupt, Destructive, Counter Productive

CNN: Former CIA Director Michael Hayden says the sectarian strife in Iraq was predictable and could have been lessened if the Obama administration had kept troops there.

Huffington Post: MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry hit President Obama for ending the Iraq war and pulling out U.S. troops -- carrying out a Status of Forces Agreement first negotiated between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government. "I would send troops back into Iraq," he said ... Perry added, "We're going to see Iran, in my opinion, move back in at literally the speed of light. They're going to move back in, and all of the work we've done -- every young man that has lost his life in that country will have been for nothing. Because we've got a president that does not understand what's going on in that region."

The Sunni/Shia strife has gone on in Iraq for a thousand years. It will go on for another thousand. Republicans know this. They want us spending taxpayer money in Iraq forever because the military-industrial complex turns around and uses some of it to bankroll the Republicans grip on power. It works out for them; they spend some of their billions of get Republicans elected, Republicans start bullshit wars, they get even richer, tens of thousands of Americans get killed and maimed.

As for the part about Iran moving in, that's true. With a majority Shia population, that outcome was ordained the minute the GOP power structure decided to get rid of Sadam. Perry and his fellow Republicans handed Iraq and the worlds second largest oil reserves to Iran on a silver platter. But that's certainly not a reason to vote for them.

Big Lie # 467

Fox News host Gretchen Carlson: “Is the mainstream media trying to spin the election?”

The implication being that long standing GOP lie that the media is Liberal. Garbage. We could go all the way back to the way the corporate media treated Bill Clinton over a marginal lie about sex vs the way they kept their hands off Bush/Cheney for lying us into a disaster of a war in Iraq, but we don't even need to do that. The proof is more immediate. If the media was anything but a tool for the monied interests, they would be telling us every day that Republican party public policy results in economic and fiscal disaster. Because that's what the evidence shows. They don't say that. Case closed.

Letting The Psychopaths Run The Asylum

Bloomberg's William D. Cohen asks if psychopaths have taken over Wall Street:

[A]ccording to Boddy’s “Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis,” these men were “able to influence the moral climate of the whole organization” to wield “considerable power.”

They “largely caused the crisis” because their “single- minded pursuit of their own self-enrichment and self- aggrandizement to the exclusion of all other considerations has led to an abandonment of the old-fashioned concept of noblesse oblige, equality, fairness, or of any real notion of corporate social responsibility.” [...] These psychopaths “present themselves as glibly unbothered by the chaos around them, unconcerned about those who have lost their jobs, savings and investments, and as lacking any regrets about what they have done. They cheerfully lie about their involvement in events, are very convincing in blaming others for what has happened and have no doubts about their own worth and value. They are happy to walk away from the economic disaster that they have managed to bring about, with huge payoffs and with new roles advising governments how to prevent such economic disasters.”

One of the most important differences between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats understand we need a big and capable government by the people to regulate these psychopaths. Republicans on the other hand, not only want to destroy governments' ability to watch over these transnational robber barons, they want to let them rule.

Smallish Government

Raw Story: Legislation introduced to the Indiana Senate would make it a crime to stray from approved lyrical or melodic guidelines while performing the national anthem at any event sponsored by public schools and state universities.

The bill was proposed by Sen. Vaneta Becker (R). She told The Indianapolis Star that it was inspired by a constituent who emailed her after being upset by a parody of the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

Republicans only want small government when it comes to things that promote the greater good and upward mobility, education, healthcare, the safety net, emergency response, etc. They want big government when it comes to controlling your personal life, who you can marry, what you can smoke, what language you speak, and now apparently, how you sing.