WillyK Posts

Missourians who believe in live and let live when it comes to religion ought to know that Todd Akin, the GOP candidate for the Senate, is, theologically speaking,  best buds with one David Barton. Barton is the founder of Wallbuilders, an organization that, as Wikipedia puts it, "advocates the view that U.S. constitutional separation of church and state is a myth."  Here's a video of Akin and Barton discussing the obligation of religious leaders to speak out from the pulpit and lead their flocks on political matters:

This type of effort to shape political policy through the medium of fundamentalist Christian religion is typical of a strain of evangelical fundamentalism called "dominionism," or Christian reconstructionism, which advocates for the establishment of a Christian theocratic government in the United States that would give religious institutions control over political, social and cultural life. (Sound like any other countries we know about? Perhaps Iran under the Imams or Afghanistan under the Taliban?) According to journalist Frederick Clarkson, under the dominionist/reconstructionist regime:

... society would feature a minimal national government, whose main function would be defense by the armed forces. No social services would be provided outside the church, which would be responsible for 'health, education, and welfare.' A radically unfettered capitalism (except in so far as it clashed with Biblical Law) would prevail. Society would return to the gold or silver standard or abolish paper money altogether. The public schools would be abolished. Government functions, including taxes, would be primarily at the county level.

Women would be relegated primarily to the home and home schools, and would be banned from government. Those qualified to vote or hold office would be limited to males from Biblically correct churches.

Take a look at the statements of a certain Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri and tell me Todd Akin (oops!) isn't toeing the reconstructionist line right down the road - at least to the extent that he can and still manage to get elected.

Barton's  styles himself an historian although he lacks the requisite academic credentials - he has a Bacelor's degree in Christian Education. His contribution to the  reconstructionist movement has been to lend it legitimacy by purporting to show that the Founders intended the United States to be a "Christian Nation" in the reconstructionist sense. His scholarship has been repeatedly debunked in academic venues which, of course, has had little effect on the true believers - such as Todd Akin - who continue rely on his scholarly veneer to justify their authoritarian goals, as well the more run-of-the-mill, right-wing politicians who find his willingness to give a biblical luster to their corporatist goals exceedingly covenient.

Yesterday, however, NPR's All Things Considered aired a segment on Barton (worth listening to or reading in its entirety) that might help to shine a light on the pernicious nature of his undertaking and, at the same time, help to expose the squishy intellectual underpinnings of theocrats like Todd Akin. The program "fact-checked" Barton's most quoted claims and found that they were almost all entirely unfounded. Further, they pointed out that his most recent book, The Jefferson Lies, which was on the New York Times Best-Seller list, was withdrawn by its publisher because of the number of factual errors it contained.

All well  and good, shining a light on charlatans is always helpful, but considerations of truth and real scholarship aside, it's unlikely that Barton will see his influence diminished any time soon - he's too useful to the right-wing. And that's a bad thing since, as John Fea, chairman of the History Department at evangelical Messiah College, and fellow evangelical, who was quoted during the NPR piece, declared that Barton is a "danger because he's using a skewed version of the past to shape the future," and also noted that Barton is

... in this for activism," he says. "He's in this for policy. He's in this to make changes to our culture."

And one of the tools reconstructionist activists like Barton will use to change our culture, are simple souls like Rep. Akin - if they can keep him in Washington.

Don't get me wrong - politicians have a right to their religious beliefs, but not at the expense of our religious freedom - real religious freedom, not that self-indulgent, authoritarian crap coming from the Catholic Bishops and the "war on Christmas" fanatics these days, but the type of freedom that does not subject our children to Christian triumphalism in their schools, or the pretense that religious freedom amounts to tramping the rights of liberal Christians and non-Christians. David Barton's lies aside, real historians agree that the Founders wanted us to have just that type of freedom.  

Conventional wisdom has it that Claire McCaskill was the real winner of the GOP primary yeterday since its putative winner, Rep. Todd Akin, will present an easier target in the general election race. For example, today Steve Benen outlines some of Akin's more outlandish pronouncements, and  The Plum Line's Greg Sargent spells out some of the ways that McCaskill can go after Akin.

Sargent's shares the belief that the McCaskill is overjoyed to have an opponent who is so far on the right-wing fringe that he will, rightly, scare any sane person to the left of Barry Goldwater, but he also points out that she  will be able to make excellent, well-seasoned hay out of Akin's voting record:

But Dems believe Akin may have another serious vulnerability - not just what he has said, but how he has voted. Akin has repeatedly voted against measures that passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support, votes that Dems will point to as evidence of how far Akin is out of the mainstream, even among Republicans: ...

It's always been my contention that lots of GOPers who voted for Akin were not aware of how extreme his positions really are, so I'm delighted about the optimism everyone expresses about McCaskill's ability to enlighten them, along with the rest of Missouri. And, indeed, she's getting to work post haste. Already, she's got a website ready to go, TruthAboutAkin.com, that offers some examples of Akin's worst rhetorical offenses and backs up her claims that he opposes such crucial pillars of middle class life as Social Security and Medicare.

I'm still, however, a little worried that Akin survived the primary, given the way that Missourians seem to have tolerated inexcusable antics on the part of state-level GOP legislators who have rendered Jefferson City all but moribund. Could it be that they're so blinded by Tea Partyish ebullience that they no longer have the type of intellectual depth-perception that would permit them to detect political BS? Just think of being stuck with the colossal embarrassment of Senator Todd Akin - not to even mention the practical consequences for Missouri and the country.

This level of instinctive revulsion that Akin excites in liberals, though, is probably just another ace in the hole for McCaskill, who hasn't exactly been a beacon for progressives. Even those of us who abhor what we think of as her tendency to pander to the center-right, understand just how important her survival will be if we want to keep Akin out of the Senate - and keep it from falling into Republican control.  According to Markos Moulitsas at The Daily Kos, "if McCaskill can hang on, the math [for Republicans] becomes all but impossible." All I can say is that she'd better know what she's doing.

There was a very brief, but interesting letter to the editor (Titled "Before and After") in today's (Aug. 8) St. Louis Post-Dispatch - the writer claimed that politicians are making big promises right now, but when, after the election, the dust settles, the GOP will look out for the rich, the Democrats will work for the poor, and the middle class be dammed. The writer's rhetoric is, however, sadly behind the times. Take for instance the old GOP standby, the claim that Democrats want to raise taxes,  and then consider this video about the Romney tax plan:

You can calculate your own savings at the new Website, RomneyPlan.org.

We're going to hear the Democrats tax-and-spend mantra from the crop of GOPers who won their primaries in Missouri last night along with lots of similar lies from anonymously funded attack ads. GOP Senatorial candidate Todd Akin, for instance, has already attacked the new taxes that pay for the extension of insurance in the Obamacare law - even though they're mostly levied on insurance providers and those with big incomes. Just keep in mind that the only parties who'll see their taxes go down if Romney wins the election and we hand him a GOP House and Senate will be the millionaires and big corporations - entities that have, arguably, not been paying their fair share for some time.

Of course, we're Democrats and the GOPers are right - taxes aren't our be-all and end-all. We understand that taxes buy us the things we need to succeed and have a good quality of life. Unlike the Republicans who support the slash-and-burn economies of the Ryan budget, we understand that evaluating benefits is an integral part of benefit/cost analysis. Nevertheless, we don't want to pay more taxes so that Mitt Romney, the Koch brothers, and monster corporations can pay less.

And as for the writer of the letter I cited and his claims pitting the poor against the middle class, please don't get me wrong. I hope Democrats continue to worry about the poor along with the middle class - although maybe that desire is not entirely unselfish. Right now, Democrats are all that stand between the middle class and the poverty attendant on our growing inequality.  

Talking Points Memo is out with the startling revelation that there's not much space between the three Missouri GOP primary senatorial candidates, Rep. Todd Akin, Businessman John Brunner, and Sarah Steelman. What differences there are tend to be expressed in how the candidates present themselves. TPM's Eric Kleefield lays out their distinguishing traits as follows:

- - Akin has a suburban St. Louis base and is maybe a little farther out on the shaky edge of the right wing than the others. And he's very, very, religious in a scary, right-wing Christian way.

-- Steelman plays to the rural Central and Southwestern part of the state, which probably accounts for her cowgirl act - what TPM calls a propensity to "make trouble a la Sarah Palin," whose endorsement Steelman has tried to exploit twenty ways to Sunday.

-- Brunner is very rich and very inexperienced politically and thinks that's why he should be elected.

Sounds about right to me - we'll know by this evening which of these minor cosmetic variations in the generic Tea Party Missouri politician prevails.  

Voter suppression efforts in the form of Voter ID bills have had a fraught history in Missouri. To date, Democrats have succeeded in warding off this GOP ploy to make it harder for traditionally Democratic constituencies to vote.

Voter ID has widespread popular support in Missouri, however - it is one of those ideas that sound good until you realize what it entails and, consequently, appeals to the more casual voter. Which is why it is interesting when Jonathan Chait points out a hole in the GOP Voter ID rhetoric that was opened up by Mitt Romney's most recent effort to denigrate President Obama - something that we should perhaps file away for later use when the Missouri Voter ID zombie climbs back out of its most recent grave.

Liberal bloggers - like SMP's Blue Girl - have almost uniformly been scandalized by Mitt's claims that the Obama administration has filed a lawsuit intended to curtail military voting privileges. The implication is, of course, that the Obama administration is trying to suppress military voting that might, traditionally at least, be expected to tend toward Republicans. Today Politifact took up the Romney camp's assertion and declared it unequivocally false:

Indeed, Obama's lawsuit clearly states that it seeks to permit all Ohioans - not just members of the U.S. military -  to vote during the three days before the election, as was the case in 2008. The suit in no way suggests restricting early voting by members of the military.

It is simply dishonest for Romney and his backers to claim that Obama's effort to extend early voting privileges to everyone in Ohio constitutes an attack on military voters' ability to cast ballots on the weekend before elections.

So what does Jonathan Chait have to say about this piece of dishonesty that relates to Voter ID? He points out a key element of Romney's pretend outrage:

Obviously this is your basic political smear, but there's also a little more going on here. Consider Romney's justification for longer in-person voting windows for members of the military:

The brave men and women of our military make tremendous sacrifices to protect and defend our freedoms, and we should do everything we can to protect their fundamental right to vote.

If the ability to get to the polls is the "fundamental right to vote," then why shouldn't all eligible citizens enjoy that right?

Chait concludes:

If Romney is conceding that voting is a fundamental right rather than a privilege - not all Republicans concede this anymore - and, more importantly, that practical impediments can interfere with that right, then what justification do they have for their wide-ranging campaign to deny the same convenience to other Americans?

Clear enough?

All this time, I've been reading Mitt Romney's reluctance to pick up on the Michele Bachmann anti-Islam crusade as an example of his political cowardice. Bachmann's efforts to instigate a Muslim witch-hunt were so egregiously hateful that even a small number of GOPers who still have a remnant of conscience were willing to risk the ire of their mean-minded base and call her out.  I assumed Mitt' reluctance to discuss the issue reflected the dilemma of man who like John McCain, also knows better,  but who can't afford to alienate his only real supporters - the folks who hate Obama and Muslims enough to vote for Romney just because he isn't either.

Seems, though, that I was wrong - either that or Mitt's cowardice just hasn't paid off as regards the aforementioned base. None other than St. Louis fringewing luminary, Dana Loesch, wants us to read Mitt's silence on the topic of Bachmann as a simple failure to take up the cudgels for free speech, which she presents a potentially useful political gambit (via DailyKos):

If I were -- which I'm not, I'm not advising him, he couldn't afford me -- it just seems so easy to do. Like, if they're asking him, "What is your thought on the Chick-fil-A story, what do you think about Michelle Bachmann and the Muslim Brotherhood?" he could say, "I don't have a problem with free speech, do you?"

And that report that Congresswoman Bachmann -- the inquiry that they presented towards Congress -- that raised a lot of questions. And who's against free speech?

Who, indeed, is against free speech? Not I certainly. Michele Bachmann has every right to speak freely - but that does not make the content of her speech right, nor does it mean that anyone else should let her get away with inciting hateful action without speaking out. I, for example, also have the right to speak freely and point out that Bachmann's a hateful moron which in no way contravenes Bachmann's free speech rights.  So if Loesch is saying that folks should feel free to speak their minds, I agree - and I'll go a bit further even and say that it would be great if Mitt Romney would do so and, just once, be up front with us about what he really thinks - and not continually try to game the political angles, even in the way suggested by Loesch.

After all, you can only go so far in politics and avoid all specifics. However, it's also reasonably clear that you can't go too far at all if you're given to defending obvious bigotry. Nobody asked Mitt if Bachmann had a right to say what she did, just whether or not he agreed with the content, her call to take action against Muslims in government. Which fact just might explain why Mitt has hesitated to take advice of the sort Loesch is handing out.

And, just for fun, what's that business about Mitt Romney (multi-billionaire beneficiary of political donors who fit the same description) not being able to afford Loesch? She's trying to say she's too principled to work for his prevaricating likes, or is it the case that the poor baby has delusions of grandeur?. Particularly since her advice seems to consist of just about the same drivel he'd get from any random Tea Party celebrant.

In 2008 when Obama proved to be a tougher nut to crack than Hillary Clinton's campaign had expected, they resorted to the famous "kitchen sink" attacks. Part of that unfortunate strategy were what most of the noncomatose adult population read as obvious if not overt efforts to stoke the anti-black resentment of the white working class that formed the backbone of Clinton's support.

History, it seems, really does repeat itself. Now that Romney's been backed into several corners all at the same time, it's not surprising that a special "independent" Super PAC is getting ready to run with a piece of excrement that stands in relation to the the tentative Clinton efforts as hardcore porn compared to a romance novel:

Nothing like fomenting white resentment by telling outright lies - although to date, this type of thing has been restricted to fringe web-sites and chain emails.

According to Think Progress a shorter version of this video will be made into a TV ad. It's the work of a brand new pro-Romney Super PAC with the Orwellian name, FightBigotry.com, which was founded by one Steven Marks, a GOP opposition researcher who, by his own admission, specializes in "the dark side of politics."

Needless to say, the PAC's first product, the ad above, is riddled with distortions and outright lies designed to stoke racial fear and hatred. It resurrects the discredited right wing Black Panther brouhaha in a particularly dishonest way. Think Progress details a couple of the more egregious distortions:

Beyond the obvious race-baiting, the ad is riddled with factual errors. Holder's March 2011 statement was criticizing a Congressman for equating an a 2008 New Black Panther Party incident with the much more violent assaults against voting rights advocates in the 1960s - not about "pursuing the New Black Panthers."

And what this group terms a "racist altercation with police" involved a Harvard University professor being stopped by police for trying to enter his own home. Even conservative Fox News legal analyst and former New Jersey state Judge Andrew Napolitano called it an "improper arrest."

Of course the real issue will be whether or not Mitt Romney will disavow the claims of this PAC if and when television ads are aired. Based on his record so far, I would guess that it's not likely that he will show that kind of integrity. If he can't even condemn Michele Bachman's muslim-baiting, McCarthyist attack on Clinton's aide, Houma Abedin, it's not likely he'll want to upset the racists flocking to vote for him - the guy just wants to be president sooooo very, very bad.  

Until now, the Medicaid debate has been about budgets and states' rights. But a statistical study by Harvard researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine found a 6 percent drop in the adult death rate in Arizona, Maine and New York, three states that have recently expanded coverage for low-income residents along the general lines of the federal health care law.

It seems that Missouri's Rep. Billy Long (R-7) and a group of fellow congressional freshmen gathered with reporters to warn of a grave threat to liberty: contraception. According to CNSNews.com (an entity that, incidentally, brings us the "news that the liberal media are hiding"), Long waxed uncharacteristically eloquent on the theme that when women get free contraception, "we're still home of the brave, but we're not the land of the free anymore":

Long said, "America 2012.  Land of the free, home of the brave.  Are we still the land of the free and home of the brave? Let's examine that for just a minute. I know we're the home of the brave because if we walk off that House floor five days a week, three or four days, they'll be a wounded warrior sitting there just like the one that was there yesterday."

"He had no right arm, he had no left arm except for an artificial arm and an artificial hand, he was proud to shake my hand, with his artificial hand to show me how it worked," Long said.  "He had no legs below the thighs.  His wife was standing next to him with less than a 1-year-old child in her hands."

"You don't have to worry about the brave," he said. "We're still home of the brave, but we're not the land of the free anymore. And we need to get that straight.

"When you're not free to practice religious freedom in this country, what in the world have we come to?" said Long. "Seriously, goodness gracious."

Goodness gracious indeed. Where is H.L. Mencken when we need him. (Mencken did offer an apt observation about the birth control wars of his day: "It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.")

As I indicated earlier, the occasion for this diatribe was simply the old news that under Obamacare, insurers must, starting yesterday, offer women a full range of reproductive health services. Billy and friends, of course, focused on the services CSNNews.com characterizes as "sterilizations, contraceptives, and abortifacients" - the last, of course, a bit of overreach in order to pander to those folks who think a single fertilized cell should have full human rights.

What's actually going on here that's got Billy so exercised?

I used to get insurance through my employer in order to take advantage of the economies of scale.  My employer paid for part of the coverage, and every year sent me a statement showing what my actual salary was when the money diverted to benefits like insurance coverage was added in. The fact that insurance paid for by employers is simply another form of income came up during the the debate over Obamacare, and centered on whether or not these diverted wages should be taxed as income.

Now, a group of Republican congressmen think that employers with certain types of religious beliefs have the right to impose those beliefs on American women and tell them what services they can and cannot purchase with the money they earn and that their employers divert from their salaries for insurance. And they call this religious freedom.

Somebody ought to break it to these folks that freedom's a bigger issue than making political hay out of the hissy fits of our more authoritarian religious leaders. Margaret Sanger, the birth control pioneer and founder of Planned Parenthood, understood that one person's freedom cannot be another's subjugation:

Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers -- and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.

Today's polling info re the battle for Claire McCaskill's Senate seat (via The Daily Kos):

MO-SEN (Rasmussen):

John Brunner (R) 49, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) 43;

Sarah Steelman (R) 49, McCaskill 43;

Todd Akin (R) 47, McCaskill 44

MO-SEN-R (Internal poll, as reported by Dave Catanese): John Brunner 29, Todd Akin 27, Sarah Steelman 25

What to make of the Senate poll? McCaskill's working her way up - maybe folks are beginning to learn just that crucial bit more about her opponents as the campaigns heat up? If greater knowledge of the candidates is the reason for McCaskill's improved figures, it looks like there are some people at least who don't like what they're learning. I assume it's this type of consideration that prompts John Brunner to say as little about policy issues as he can - aside from the obligatory GOP boilerplate. Unfortunately, in a three-way primary, nobody else is going to observe the "quiet" rule when it comes to Brunner; it's fair to expect that he'll get his sooner or later.

When it comes to the question of the GOP primary candidates, is it too early yet to assess whether or not Palin has done anything, good or bad for Steelman? And do I remember incorrectly, or is Todd Akin inching up? Maybe McCaskill has done him some good after all.  

GOP senatorial primary contender John Brunner's got a foolproof strategy: go on the attack with all the dirt you can shovel about your opponents, but when it comes to substance, keep your mouth tightly shut unless forced to do otherwise.  

Not only does Brunner run attack ads (doesn't everybody?), he's also put up special Websites for those who need time to parse the mud he slings at this opponents. Check out Akinfacts.com and Steelmanfacts.com. Pretty slick production values conveying a harsh message (is the "paid for by Brunner for Senate" note at the bottom of the page really almost impossible to read, or is it just my computer?).

Today, however, when Akin and Steelman will engage in debate (11:30 a.m. on "Up to Date," 89.3 FM, KCUR), Brunner will be a no show.  

Let's see:  John Brunner, a multi-millionaire, is running an ad attacking Todd Akin, a poor man by Brunner's standards, claiming that Akin secured earmarks that were intended to  benefit him personally:

Brunner's campaign is running advertisements accusing Akin of securing millions in federal funding for the highway project to increase the value of the acre plot and has said the six-term lawmaker has tried to hide his stake in the land.

Akin disputs the corruption claim, of course. On his campaign Webpage, he states that the property was his parents and the "project was a critical priority to local leaders across the political spectrum." He then pivots, attempting to change the subject to spending issues per se rather than corruption, noting that he has "returned over $1.3 million to the tax payers by managing his Congressional office with fiscal responsibility."

I've got to hand it to him - putting what is estimated to be billions in earmarks in the balance against a paltry million and change in office expenses does indeed have the hallmarks of what he identifies as "conservative leadership in action." It's certainly of a piece with current conservative leaders who jabber about balancing the budget by cutting the paltry amounts allocated to social spending while leaving the big-ticket items like military spending untouched.

Akin also produced an ad in which he attempts the same strategy of refocusing the earmarks issue on something other than Brunner's actual implications that he used earmarks to enrich himself; he tries to show that when it comes to earmarks, he's on the side of the angels. In the ad, a young woman, Liezi, defends Akin's earmarking:

Roadside bombs were killing our troops, the vehicles didn't have enough armor. Congressman Todd Akin went to Iraq, and after an investigation helped get newly armored vehicles to our troops. After getting the new armor, my husband's humvee was hit. He's alive today because of Todd Akin. Now Todd Akin is being attacked for supporting what some call earmarks. But just remember, that funding for armor saved my husband's life.

What "some" call earmarks! Is she trying to imply that Akin's earmarks are called something else? Manna from God, maybe? I hate to break it to Todd and his friend Leizi, but I think almost everybody calls earmarks ... earmarks. Nevertheless, it's all fine and good as far as I'm concerned, even though it's not clear that Akin deserved all the credit for Leizi's husband's survival:

Actually, it was another congressman - not Akin - who inserted the earmark requiring the additional armored vehicles in 2003 or 2004, said Akin campaign spokesman Ryan Hite. What Akin did, he explained, was support the earmark and then lobby the Pentagon to get the vehicles on the ground in Iraq.

So what's the real story about Akin and earmarks? According to Kansas City's KMBC-TV he bowed to the realities of the budgeting process, tried to get what he could, and, in spite of all his self-righteous rhetoric about government spending, was at least occasionally willing to toe the GOP line when it came to hidden GOP earmarks:

Critics said Akin has voted for hundreds of earmarks that are worth billions. Before 2008, earmarks weren't tracked well. Since then, the website Open Secrets said Akin has sponsored or co-sponsored 32 earmarks worth $99 million.

"I absolutely refuse to stand by while Missouri tax dollars go to California or Illinois," Akin said. "I'm not going to do that."

Akin said he doesn't support hidden earmarks, but he voted for one of the most famous examples of that. In 2005, he joined other Republicans to fund Alaska's so-called "bridge to nowhere."

Looks to me like Brunner's effort to paint Akin's earmarking activities as corrupt are pretty weak, and, as several sources have noted, likely to boomerang on him. He has, however, managed to highlight the Tea Party caucus member's hyprocrisy. As I wrote about Akin's earmarking in 2010, what's interesting is the " gap between general GOP spending rhetoric and behavior." That's still true - and, in this case at least, the fact's not lost on the feared (by wingers) Club for Growth. Some days you just can't win for losing.

I kept meaning to write something about one of government's big success stories, Medicare, to celebrate it's 47th anniversary, which was yesterday. Now I don't need to write a thing since local activist Amy Smoucha has said it all a thousand times better than I could have.  A sample:

The idea of "waiting for Medicare" hit me hard. My mother was waiting for Medicare for years. As a retail clerk at Sears, she didn't have health insurance for most of her life. My mom was one of those amazing people who got up to go to work each day, took us to church on Sunday, played bingo Thursday nights, and was afraid to go to the doctor because she didn't have insurance. While she was waiting for Medicare, my mother developed high blood pressure and heart disease. We discovered this just as she turned 65, when her long wait for insurance was finally over. Her golden years involved struggling with congestive heart failure. She died at the age of 67, when I was 23. I take the idea of "waiting" for health insurance personally.

Right now, millions of people across America, in every state, rural community, city, and town, are waiting for Obamacare. I think especially of a friend's son who is a carpenter with a herniated disc. He was accepted by a local Community Health Center-a sliding scale clinic-and found a wonderful primary care doctor. But because he's uninsured, he is on a waiting list for surgery. Most recently, his foot started dragging, and the damage is affecting his urinary function. He is 40 years old and waiting for Obamacare.

Read it all here. And remember, if the Democrats lose this election, we could lose Obamacare.

Todd Akin's trying to say something - not quite sure what. Goes to show that it helps to worry about the filler words in between the Christian dominionist pander words:

This ad is being aired in progressive blogs around the country (I've encountered it three times already in national blogs). Ask yourself just why progressives are giving free time to the rightest of the rightwingers attempting to crawl into the Senate? Then watch the video again and if you can stop laughing long enough to think about it, all will be clear.

What does it say about Missouri that this bozo's currently polling ahead of McCaskill? Are folks who've been scared silly about fantasmagorical socialist dictators and Obamacare's fabeled death panels so ready to knee-jerk that they're kicking themselves comatose?

A recent poll shows Senator Claire McCskill trailing all three of her potential GOP challengers in spite of the fact that it would be charitable to characterize these particular GOPers as leftover dogs breakfast. And this is occurring even though McCaskill has carefully avoided identification with the progressive viewpoint and honed her "moderate" credentials, usually thought to be just the ticket for purple state Democrats.

McCaskill has tried hard to present herself as a pragmatist who takes a reasonable, open-minded approach, calibrating just which right-wing memes she needs to validate in order to buy a little credibility with out-state voters and which progressive principles are too precious to abandon. Take the recent senate vote on extending the Bush tax cuts for the middle class but not for the wealthy if you want an example of how McCasill balances one step on the left with a second step to the right:

Illustrating the potential high-voltage political impact of the vote, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who is in a tight re-election race, announced she had introduced a bill preventing the estate tax from rising next year, and Tester co-sponsored it. She issued a news release to that effect just minutes after voting for the Democratic bill, which would let estate taxes go much higher in 2013.

If the polls are to be believed, this strategy has done little for McCaskill apart from almost alienating progressives. I say almost because most progressives know how to balance reality with their druthers and can live with ambiguity in the person of politicians teetering on the centrist tightrope, at least when the other choices are wallowing in rightwing mud.

Conventional wisdom is that McCaskill is trying hard to please those amorphous creatures we usually term "independent" voters. There's some doubt that this designation actually pertains to a real entity, but McCaskill seems to be convinced that there are a few - or, at least, some erstwhile Republicans who are alienated by the circus freak show that now dominates the Republican party. The hope seems to have been that this group, if sufficiently cosseted, would provide her just enough votes in outstate areas that, combined with the Kansas City and St. Louis metro areas, it would enable her to prevail. It's worked before, but I'm wondering if conditions haven't changed since the election of America's first black president.

There's either not enough of these "independents," or they are, as many have claimed, low information types who're easily stampeded by negative sloganeering - of which we've had a steady barage since the election of Obama. Nasty, dishonest attacks of the same type used to slime the president and all of his initiatives have been lobbed at McCaskill as well, and it's likely that the rate of fire will accelerate even more as we approach election day. After all, corporate interests with a vested interest in a GOP win also seem to have nearly bottomless pockets.

Lot's of progressives sought to remind McCaskill that few among the GOP-leaning types were going to vote for a Democrat when they could get the real thing in the GOP shop. Nor does it seem that "moderate" is going buy McCaskill anything in an environment where the crazies are taking over, emotions are running high, lies are daily currency, facts - such as her "moderate" voting record - are easily overlooked, and where reasonable is just too ... reasonable.

One can only hope that McCaskill will still pull it out, and that the endgame will justify her strategic gamble. After the primary, when she knows which variety of dufus she'll be facing, she can direct a steady light on his or her particular strain of know-nothing Republicanism and maybe peel off a few real, erstwhile GOP moderates. Meanwhile, it's hard to resist saying I told you so even though we know how much is at stake.

It's always fun to take a look at particularly amusing past mistakes. In that spirit I offer this video of former State Rep. Cynthia Davis regaling a gathering with the reasons they should vote for her, the Constitution Party Candidate, for Lieutenant Governor this fall (h/t The Turner Report):

It's the standard sweetly oblivious Tea Party Cynthia we all remember so fondly, patting herself on the back for being the "most constitutional" legislator in Missouri, issuing the routine condemnations of government as incompetent and out to "ruin our lives."

Oddly, though, she doesn't seem to realize what it means that that she got a chance to fix what she perceived as wrong by serving in government. That fact might suggest to some that government actually serves a legitimate purpose. If, in democracies at least, individuals can enter government to correct perceived problems - and here I'm not making any judgments about the corrections a Cynthia Davis would pursue - it means that in general government has the power to self-correct through the agency of engaged citizenry, something that is not always true of other social institutions - particularly when it comes to private enterprise of which folks like Davis seem to be so enamoured.

Davis does, though, to give her credit, put her finger on a big problem facing our democracy right now. Seems that Cynthia has learned the hard way that politics involves money - and was shocked to learn that her fellow GOPers did favors in return for hefty campaign dollars. Pervasive corruption she implies, is why she, a seeming bastion "constitutional" purity, decamped from the GOP.

Of course, a meaner-minded person than I might ask if she hadn't actually been rejected by the party first - and perhaps might still be going great GOP guns if she had prevailed against Scott Rupp in the 2010 state Senatorial primary, or if her short tenure as Chair of the St. Charles Republican Party had been happier. Nevertheless, she deserves credit for speaking up now about a real and very obvious problem in Missouri (and in the wake of Citizens United, elsewhere) where untrammeled campaign donations flow far too freely with no accountability.  Ask yourself, though, if someone as lame as Davis can, in her halting way, identify the biggest problem facing our democracy today, the role of big money, hadn't we  better get busy and do something about it before it's too late?  

Talking Points Memo informed us a couple of days ago that most of the GOP House contingent is willing to bring on a government shutdown in order to stymie the implementation of Obamacare:

In a letter (PDF) dated July 18, some 127 House GOP lawmakers urged Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) not to permit "any legislation" to come to the floor that includes Affordable Care Act implementation funds. The implied message: shut down the government unless Democrats agree to defund President Obama's signature law.

Missouri House members who signed the letter (pdf):  Todd Akin (R-2); Vicky Hartzler (R-4); Billy Long (R-7); Sam Graves (R-6) and Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-9). Conspicuous by her absence on this list is Jo Ann Emmerson (R-8). Either she's got more sense than the other GOPers or she was absent the day the letter was shopped around.

Of course last time that these clowns played the economic brinksmanship game they cost the country $1.3 billion dollars and damaged its credit rating - all to avoid raising tax rates a few paltry percentage points for our wealthiest citizens. Now they're willing to do the same thing in order to indulge their spite against the Affordable Care Act.

But wait - these guys aren't quite as stupid as they seem. Today, we learn that while they don't plan on backing down in the long run, they are willing to delay their temper tantrum until after the election when they'll no longer have to answer to the constituents their ideological rigidity would have quite correctly angered:

House conservatives urged Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to back a stopgap spending bill that would extend into 2013 and take the issue of government funding off the table during the election and the jammed lame-duck session this fall.

Odds are that Boehner will go along with this demand because, as TPM puts it, he "must either subdue his right-wing members long enough to get through the election, or place his party's November hopes in serious jeopardy."

Up for one more interactive chart? This newest one is an interactive data wheel, prepared by the Annie E. Casey Foundation as part of its 2012 Kids Count Data Book. It compares the well-being of children by state.

Want to know how the welfare of Missouri's children ranks compared to the other fifty states? Look no further:

--General well being:  26th

--Economic well being: 21st

--Education: 24th

--Health: 33rd

--Family and Community: 27th

Middling to low on all measures, which does not bode well for the future of the state. Particularly note that while our GOP legislators are throwing tantrums about Obamacare, refusing to implement health care exchanges, and otherwise making asses out of themselves, the provisions that we now have in place for our children's health are ranked 17th from the bottom. There's lots that could be said here about how our de facto GOP leadership (our governor, Jay Nixon, is a Democrat, but has little appetite for losing battles) has short-changed average Missourians while fighting tooth-and-nail to keep tax rates low for businesses and wealthy Missourians.

It's true, of course that states like Alabama and Mississippi are ranked much lower than Missouri, but since the the philosophy of government embodied by the leadership of most of the ten states with the lowest overall rankings* is similar to that of our home state GOP (in nine out of eleven of the lowest ranked states), we should maybe start worrying that it's only a matter of time. Note, especially, that Texas, usually alluded to by Republicans in terms of the "Texas Miracle" because its supposed prosperity is the result of a GOP-defined, "business friendly" climate, is ranked 44th in terms of the general welfare of its children.

If you want to see how the criteria determining the rankings were evaluated, check the complete Data Book report.

* The eleven lowest ranked States:  Oklahoma (40); California (41); Arkansas (42); South Carolina (43); Texas (44); Alabama (45); Arizona (46); Louisiana (47); Nevada (48); New Mexico (49); Mississippi (50).  

The folks over at Lean Forward have put together an interactive map showing where states now stand in regard to opting out of the part of Obamacare that would expand Medicaid, as per the Supreme Court finding that participation in the expanded Medicaid cannot be compelled. The map assesses statements from legislators and governors to determine the current liklihood that a given state will participate in the Medicaid expansion, while noting that the situation is still fluid.

According to the map, Missouri is a "leans no" state, based on Jay Nixon's silence and our GOP legislators truculence when confronted with any aspect of Obamacare. So what harm can the latest "over my dead body" GOP posturing do? Lean Forward cites the following details:  

-- Missouri Population Uninsured:  853.3K (14% of state);

-- Uninsured eligible for expanded Medicaid: 207.7K;

-- Federal money available for Medicaid (through 2019): $8.4B.

Let me point out that that $8.4 billion federal dollars is, as my GOP friends like to point out, our tax dollars, and if the GOPers don't want some of what we send to Washington to come back home, I sure do. Let me ask this (rhetorical) question: What kind of imbeciles have we sent to Jefferson City? This is a good deal:

... states would spend only 2.8% more on Medicaid from 2014 to 2022 than they would have without the law, according to one study based on Congressional Budget Office (CBO) figures. And that doesn't even take into account the savings states would realize in health-care costs for the uninsured. By opting out, states would be turning their noses up at a very good deal.

That's not all. As health care writer Maggie Maher notes about the governors who have indicated they won't participate in the expansion:

If these governors dig in their heels, hospitals in their states will continue to struggle to care for millions of patients who cannot pay their bills. As the cost of uncompensated care mounts, these hospitals will shift that cost to insured patients, and premiums will rise.

Alternatively, if these states accept Washington's offer, those Medicaid dollars would create jobs. As more low-income patients have access to care, hospitals, community health centers, labs, and nursing homes will need to hire new workers.

States desperately need those jobs. And their poorest citizens desperately need healthcare.

Of course, our GOP legislators don't care much about jobs unless they flow from wealthy "job creators," whom they're willing to feed generously from the public trough. And they sure as hell don't care about the uninsured poor.

The mind boggles. It seems that Romney's folks are prepping the stage in the U.K. for his foreign policy "tour" by playing on the same petit bougeois, white resentment they've attempted to exploit in the U.S. Seventeen percent of the British population, after all, are ethnic minorities - many from former British colonies like Kenya, home of Obama's daddy. Actually, if anybody in the Romney camp were capable of honest analysis, they'd have to acknowledge Obama might have more in common with diverse Brits than the American, "Anglo-Saxons" think. The son of a post-colonial Kenyan, he grew up in homes managed by white, Kansan Anglo-Saxons (presumably - the family name was Dunham?).

Remember when Cynthia Davis chided an African-American witness at a House Health Care Committee hearing about what she believed to be the bad dietary habits of "your people"? Of course, poor, dumb Cynthia really thinks like that. But don't you think it's pretty bad when a presidential candidate tries to appeal to that mind-set - and embarrasses us all by doing it in an international setting?