Eric B. Posts

Popping on computers across Michigan last week were campaign advertisements for the state's Supreme Court justice that supported James Robert Redford. They showed the GOP candidate in his military uniform, looking very proud. The problem? The Department of Defense has a few rules about that.

Michigan becomes the latest in an increasingly bizarre, ugly and dangerous GOP flight from the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan group that conservatives are convinced is a liberal conspiracy.

Republicans could have given up the Michigan Senate race gracefully, admitting that their candidate wasn't anyone's choice in the first place, or they could have gone out digracefully. Guess which path they chose?

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder promised everyone in his state lowering taxes on business (and conversely, raising them on the poor) would help the economy. The evidence is in: the economy is stagnant, and the poor hurting like never before.

The Mackinac Center is the country's "largest state-based free market think tank," and thus peddles plenty of influence. So it's certainly disconcerting when one of its sponsored speakers says women who have abortions should be hanged...as should their doctors.

The GOP pundit class is starting to get a bit nervous as Democratic candidate Mark Shauer closes in on incumbent Rick "Right-to-Work" Snyder in Michigan's gubernatorial election.

Terri Lynn Land's column wrote a column today on how to fix roads. She wants to fund road repairs ... by cutting taxes.

Anyone remember that wretched column George Will wrote in which he said that because of the federal government and "progressivism" that today on college campuses, calling yourself a victim of a sexual assault is now something of a badge of honor? Yesterday in the News, one of their columnists — a woman, I might add — said that the uproar over it was overheated.

The Freep has a story about how the state of Michigan opened up the floodgates for charter schools, refused to properly oversee them, and instead created an environment in which money flows from tax coffers into private pockets with very little accountability. Unfortunately, Michigan is not an anomaly.

Governor Snyder and Michigan's Republican-led Congress have gone all in on the evil villain theme. Considering it too expensive, they've hacked off funding for fighting infant mortality at one of Detroit's overburdened hospitals. It's almost as if they find joy in killing kids.

Who was is that said that the United States doesn't negotiate with terrorists? It was Ronald Reagan, and he said it while he was in the middle of selling Hawk missile parts to Iran as part of negotiations with terrorists to return our hostages in Lebanon. It's unsurprising then, that the return of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is being wrestled into the latest "scandal" for President Barack Obama.

Michigan GOP Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land utterly whiffed a softball when responding to a reporters simple question on net neutrality. Is she for or against? Her answer – baffling in the extreme – shows just how little policy Land has actually mastered.

As we all know, the dystopian hellhole brought on by Obamacare — worse than the black plague, slavery and a bad case of rabies put together — is built on a pack of insidious lies, the most pernicious of which was that no one signed up for it by the end of the enrollment period. The second of which came courtesy a report a week or so from the House energy committee, the one chaired by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Michigan), that said that no one had paid their premiums. Now, that truth has also come to light.

Michigan State Rep. Greg MacMaster, R-Kewadin, is leading the GOP echo chamber pushing to let Detroit drown in its debt, rather than help out at the statewide level. "It wasn't the taxpayers of Michigan that put Detroit in this position," MacMaster said, "it was Detroit's inability to administer their funds properly."

For years, if you didn't believe in climate change, the Detroit News was probably your paper of choice. Through countless editorials and political cartoons, the newspaper routinely ripped climate science and the economic impact at moving towards energy less reliant on fossil fuels. However, with yesterday's editorial, that stance may be changing. Finally.

Americans for Prosperity, a right-wing lobbying group, aired an attack ad in Michigan against Democrat Gary Peters and Obamacare. Once the premise of the ad was found factually inaccurate, that group and others have been claiming any left-wing parsing of the ad is actually an attack on the ad's star, cancer victim Julie Boonstra.

Michigan's Delta County Republican Party believes that many of their party colleagues have "blatantly surrendered to the homosexual and stealth jihad agenda." A list of these so-called RINOs was posted by Doug Sedenquist, a Republican party member whose other accomplishments include stalking his ex-wife and pulling a gun on police.

A "reform" bill that would have redistricted Michigan in a way favorable for the GOP minority — e.g., Romney would have won the state's electoral votes despite losing the popular vote were it in play for 2012 — has resurfaced in the state house. Many term-limited Republicans are backing the bill without fear of reprisal from upcoming elections.

The Senior Legislative Analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy — a conservative think tank — thinks that the problem with American politics isn't that it is too awash in secret money, but that it needs lots more. The Mackinac Center, by the way, is an organization that relies on non-disclosure of donations. Also problematic.

One possible takeaway from a bill moving through Michigan's legislature is that when it comes to adoptions, the religious beliefs of people who run adoption agencies are more important than the well being of the children to be adopted. And it's not just same-sex (potential) parents who could lose adoption protections, it's everyone.