Cartoon du Jour

Stuart Carlson/Universal Press Syndicate

Onward Thru The Fog: Settling For A Mediocrity & Other Tales From The Crypt

And so we come -- perhaps inevitably -- to the moment in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination when party elders begin to suggest that settling for less than the best isn't so bad if the guy can somehow beat President Obama.

This pearl of wisdom comes from Grover Norquist, one of the key players in the marginalization of the GOP as a national force. Speaking last weekend at the annual CPAC sitdown in Washington, D.C., the head of the Americans for Tax Reform advocacy group all but called Mitt Romney, the presumptive nominee even after on-again, off-again thrashings by Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, a weak and passive mediocrity.

"All we have to do is replace Obama," Norquist said. "We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. . . . We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate."

Wait, it gets worse.

"Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States.," Norquist continued. "This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared."

How sad. How very sad.

HAPPY DAYS ARE KIND OF HERE AGAIN

Meanwhile, approval ratings for the man who occupies the Oval Office -- no mediocrity he -- are back in positive territory while congressional Republicans double down on the dumb.

The Talking Points Memo Poll Average has Barack Obama at slightly over 50 percent while recent approval polls for Congress and Republicans in particular hover around 10 percent. Obama's bump is a result of two months of decent economic numbers as well as a completed Iraq troop withdrawal and accelerated Afghanistan troop withdrawal.

COULD MITT BLOW IT IN MICHIGAN?

Even with Mitt Romney's ill-advised remarks that Detroit automakers should be allowed to fail, he was once a prohibitive favorite to win the Michigan primary on February 28 because he is, after all, a native of the state and his father was an extremely popular governor, but one poll now shows Rick Santorum leading him by a 15 percentage point margin.

More amazingly, Santorum leads Romney by a 40-21 percentage point margin among Democrats and independents who say they plan to vote in the state's open primary.

Slate's Dave Weigel finds this jaw dropping:

"What a difference a Republican primary makes! Now, Santorum is the de facto blue collar candidate (please pay no attention to his policies) running against a guy who gets the vapors when he fires people, an entertainingly pretentious figure from the 1990s Republican era, and Ron Paul. So of course he's the guy who appeals to moderates."

AND HOW ABOUT NATIONALLY?

Nationally, a New York Times/CBS News poll released this morning shows Rick Santorum surging among Republican primary voters nationwide in large part because of support for him among conservatives, evangelical Christians and Tea Party supporters.

Some 30 percent of Republican primary voters say they support Santorum compared with 27 percent for Mitt Romney, and while Santorum’s lead is essentially a tie with Romney because it is within the margin of sampling error, it reflects a significant jump for him from earlier polls.

The two other major candidates are trailing badly with Ron Paul at 12 percent and Newt Gingrich at 10 percent.

Meanwhile, a Pew poll released Monday shows that those all-important independents are abandoning Romney and some are flocking to Barack Obama.

A month ago, 40 percent of independents said they would back Obama over Romney, while 51 percent now say they would support Obama with Romney slipping from 50 percent to 42 percent.

THE MOST VULNERABLE CONGRESSFOLK

Politico has identified the five most vulnerable House incumbents, and it should be no surprise that four of the five are Republicans. Yes, 15 months after the GOP recaptured the House, it is scrambling to retain these seats and others as well.

The four most vulnerable Republicans aare: Spencer Bachus of Alabama, Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, Fred Upton of Michigan, and Paul Gosar of Arizona. The most vulnerable Democrat is Edolphus Towns of New York.

THE DOG ATE MY MEMOIRS

Candidates have been distancing themselves from what they might have once said or written since forever, and Rick Santorum is no exception.

Santorum wrote in his 2005 book, It Takes a Family, that "radical feminists" are to be disparaged for giving women the idea that they might find greater fulfillment outside the home, but when confronted on that snippet on the ABC News show "This Week," he replied, "That's a new quote to me."

Which prompted New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Bruni to opine:

"To understand voters’ bottomless cynicism, look no farther than politicians’ boundless revisionism. Republicans have no monopoly on it, but they occupy center stage at the moment, shedding culpability for past deeds even as they ask us — as leaders do and should — to take responsibility for our own."

Photograph by Nicholas Kamm/Getty Images

Cartoon du Jour

Tony Auth/The Philadelphia Inquirer

Mitt Already Has Problems & If He Isn't Careful That Could Include His Religion

A person's faith should in no way be a disqualifier for the presidency or any other public office. That certainly was true of John F. Kennedy's Catholicism in 1960 and that is true of Mitt Romney's Mormonism in 2012, but there the similarities end because there are aspects of Romney's relationship with the Church of Latter Day Saints that do not necessarily disqualify him but do raise troubling questions -- questions that are likely to go unanswered.

The fact that some people -- predominantly evangelicals -- believe that Mormonism is a cult and not a religion is not a disqualifier. I happen to believe that it is a bit of both, while there are aspects of other faiths that are . . . uh, unusual compared to the religious mainstream.

The fact that the Mormon church does not respect separation of church and state is not a disqualifier. Highly aggravating, but not a disqualifier.

The fact that the Mormon church, which is referred to as the General Motors of religions is obscenely wealthy with an estimated tax-exempt wealth in excess of $40 billion, is not a disqualifier.

The fact that the Mormon church is anti-gay and spends buckets of money to try to block same sex marriage initiatives, sometimes through shadow groups that intentionally hide their ties to the church, is not a disqualifier.

The fact that the Mormon church was extremely slow to welcome men of African descent into its priesthood, failing to do so until 1978, and remains overwhelmingly white is not a disqualifier.

The fact that some vestiges of polygamy still exist on the fringes of the Mormon church is not a disqualifier. (Romney's great-great grandfather had 12 wives and his great grandparents moved to Mexico to avoid anti-polygamy laws.)

And the fact that Romney refuses to criticize less positive aspects of the church and reaffirms his faith in only the most general terms also is not a disqualifier, nor has he faced the kind of scrutiny that he did in 2008 when he was prompted to give a speech in Dallas reaffirming his faith.

What is at issue is:

* The incestuous relationship between the church, Romney and Bain Capital, the private equity house where he became filthy rich as CEO.

Bain has donated millions of dollars in stock to the church, and while there is nothing illegal about a firm making charitable contributions, the relationship is troubling because neither Bain nor the church are likely to make public any details. Same for Romney, who has released personal income tax information only because his refusal to do so became a drag on his campaign.

* Whether, in the event Romney is elected, he would be influenced by a church that makes meddling in politics a full-time preoccupation. Would he drag its beliefs into our lives?

In 1964, when his father George was in his second year as Michigan governor, he received a letter from a member of the top Mormon governing body reminding him of the teaching of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith that "the Lord had placed the curse upon the Negro" and urged him to drop his support for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill lest God strike him dead for his apostasy.

In response, George Romney redoubled his commitment and led a march the following year in downtown Detroit in solidarity with Martin Luther King for voting rights in Selma, Alabama. It seems less likely that Mitt Romney would have his father's backbone if the church beckoned.

As I noted, questions about Romney and his financial relationship with the church and its relationship with Bain will go unanswered. This is because his faith isn't creating ripples this election year -- a good thing in and of itself -- despite increased interest in Mormonism because of "Big Love," the recently ended HBO series on a fictional fundamentalist Mormon family that practices polygamy.

Finally, Romney fulminates about religious liberty, which he recently has been wont to do, at his own risk. Same for gay rights.

This will inconveniently remind voters of less mainstream aspects of Mormonism past and present, as well as the fact that the church by some estimates dropped $20 million bucks into the fight to pass Proposition 8 in California. The now overturned ballot initiative mandated that there be a provision in the state constitution that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized.

Further Down The Road With The Republican Presidential Clown Car

Is there any connection between Rick Santorum slipping into second place behind Mitt Romney in some Michigan pre-primary polls and the video of a speech he gave in 2008 saying that Satan is systematically destroying America that has now gone viral?

One can only hope so, but the more likely case is that as they have with other presidential candidates, Santorum becomes less appealing to voters when they look under his hook and kick his tires, especially because of his fondness for demagoguery and meddling in our private live

"If you were Satan who would you attack in this day and age? There is no one else to go after other than the United States. And that’s been the case now for almost 200 years," said Santorum in the speech. "The place where he was in my mind most successful, first successful, was in academia. He understood the pride of smart people."

And this:

"This is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country – the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age. There is no one else to go after other than the United States and that has been the case now for almost two hundred years, once America's preeminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers."

Rantings like this are, of course, just the tip of the Santorum iceberg. He is unapologetically misogynistic, anti-contraception and pro-rape, disparaging of public education, takes American exceptionalism to . . . er, extremes, and never saw a war he didn't like, the latter view very much at odds with his own Roman Catholic Church.

The likelihood of Santorum having the opportunity to nuke Iran is slim to none. The GOP would be committing ritual suicide on a grand scale even if he were the eventual nominee's running mate, let alone the main man.

MILLIONAIRE MITT IS GOING BROKE

In yet another indication that the wind continues to go out of Romney's sails (despite some ferocious gusts from Santorum and Gingrich), his campaign is running out of money.

In January, Romney spent more than he took in; his cash flow was negative $12.2 million for the month. He ended January with just $7.7 million in cash on hand.

Romney has relied almost exclusively on wealthy donors because he has been unable to attract the nickel-and-dime voter like President Obama has. In fact, Obama has raised more money from donors who contributed $250 or less than Romney has raised altogether.

RON PAUL: DOUBLE DIPPER

As scandals go, double billing for airline tickets is small potatoes, but it's kinda surprising that Ron Paul, that pillar of probity, has been caught out doing just that. Numerous times.

Roll Call reports that Paul was repeatedly paid twice for flights between Washington, D.C., and his Congressional district in Texas, receiving reimbursement from taxpayers and also from a network of political and nonprofit organizations that he controlled.

Paul spokesmouth Jesse Benton said then it was “possible that wholly inadvertent errors were made in a handful of instances” in which flights were reimbursed twice, but he maintained that “absolutely zero taxpayer funds were ever misused.”

I suppose that depends on how you look at it.

THIS JUST IN

There is no such thing as the Catholic vote.

Ed Kilgore notes that polls taking during the recent contraception mandate controversy did not show a significant difference between Catholics and other voters on this issue This should not come as a surprise since lay Catholics differ greatly from the church hierarchy on issues raning from birth control to same-sex marriage.

There is continuing disapproval of abortion on moral grounds among Catholics more than the population as a whole, mostly because of Latino Catholics.

HOLD THE APPLAUSE

Dan Millbank beautifully captures the special something that Romney elicits in a Washington Post column:

"In terms of sizzle, Senator Rob Portman makes Mitt Romney look like Lady Gaga. So when the two men shared a stage in suburban Cincinnati on Monday afternoon, the result was pure and unadulterated ennui — exactly the sentiment greeting Romney’s presidential aspirations in the Republican electorate.

" 'If you think,' the Ohio Republican exhorted the crowd, 'we need fresh new direction and decisive leadership in the White House, then Mitt Romney is your man.'

"Silence in the audience.

" 'If you’re looking for work or you have friends who are looking for work,' Portman went on, in monotone, 'then Mitt Romney’s your man.' ”

"Crickets.

"'If you think government has grown too large,' the senator continued, 'then Mitt Romney’s your man.'

"Nothing.

"Five more times, Portman tried the refrain, and each time it produced no reaction. He hurried through his script, straightened out his pile of index cards and called forward Romney, who gave an equally lively speech that praised, among other things, ulcer medication."

Al Qaeda: Was Underestimated Before 9/11 & Was Overestimated Afterward

Hindsight is always 20-20, of course, but it turns out that the widespread fear -- bordering on panic -- that there would be a second wave of attacks in the months after 9/11 was misplaced because it turns out that Al Qaeda was a one-hit wonder.

This reality is revealed in an article in a leftist rag called the Air Force Times that says that the government underestimated the terrorist group before the attacks and overestimated it afterward. The Bush-Cheney cabal cannot be forgiven for the former while the latter is understandable considering the pitiful state of the U.S.'s intelligence capabilities and the lack of brain power in the White House.

"Al Qaeda wasn't as good as we thought they were on 9/11," says Michael A. Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict. (Do you suppose that his entire title is painted on his Pentagon office door?)

"Quite frankly, we, the American people, we asleep at the switch, the U.S. government prior to 9/11. So an organization that wasn't that good looked really great on 9/11. Everyone looked to the skies every day after 9/11 and said, 'When is the next attack?' And it didn't come, partly because Al Qaeda wasn't that capable. They didn't have other units in the U.S. . . . Really, they didn't have the capability for a second attack."

Sheehan said there is a second reason that America has not suffered a major terrorist attack is that the U.S. "crushed Al Qaeda immediately after 9/11, and continually for the last 10 years," an assertion that does not stand up to scrutiny since the Bush administration had little success against the group after the Taliban was ousted in Afghanistan only to re-emerge.

The further that we get away from those dark days the more the enormity -- even criminality, if you will -- of the administration's misdeeds grows.

One reason that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld beat the drum for invading Iraq is there was a belief because of that lack of brain power that the 9/11 attacks had to have been an inside job executed with the assistance of the Saddam Hussein regime.

That lead to eight and a half deeply tragic years highlighted by the deaths of nearly 4,800 U.S. and coalition forces, at least 100,000 Iraqis and millions of people displaced, the starving of boots and resources for the war in Afghanistan, which is only now just winding down after a series of botched strategies, and a body blow to America's standing in the world because of the Bush administration's embrace of torture and scuttling of civil liberties.

Cartoon du Jour

Ben Sargent/Universal Press Syndicate

Stuck On Stupid, The Republicans Still Want To Take Away Grandpa's Walker

Having run out of zingers like "what are they smoking?" and "it must be something in the water," I am left speechless if not wordless that the Republicans once again seem ready to embrace Representative Paul Ryan's Reverse Robin Hood plan.

Should you not recall, this was a deficit reduction plan that would given even more tax breaks to the rich while phasing out Medicare and replacing it with a subsidized private insurance system for newly eligible seniors, as well as rip a few more holes elsewhere in the safety net. The cherry atop this confection would be to remove all regulations on Wall Street.

The backlash was fugly, tipping the scales to an unknown Democrat in a special election in an historically Republican district in upstart New York as well as causing agita in a host of congressfolk who had to explain at town meetings why they wanted to take away Grandpa's walker.

"We’re not backing off any of our ideas, any of our solutions," Republican budget chairman told Fox News.

Ryan's plan died a quick death in its crib, which makes it all the more perplexing whe the House GOP would want to resuscitate it after a year of serial brinkmanship and dirty ball playing that is a major reason why the party is well on its way to squandering a chance to take back the White House and Senate.

There are two possible explanations:

* The party's overweaning hubris, which frequently blinds it to electoral realities.

* The party's ultra-conservative base, which demands reducing the taxes of the 1 percenters while rolling back popular federal social programs.

While the revised Ryan plan takes a baby step or two from the right to the left, Medicare benefit guarantees would be handed over to a fickle private market and that will not impress voters who think that Grandpa should keep his walker.

Cartoon du Jour

Tom Toles/The Washington Post

Mitt Romney's Most Awful Day Off

Consider this as an indicator of how awfully Mitt Romney performed in Tuesday's two primaries and caucus: In Minnesota, a state that he won handily in 2008, he failed to win a single county and got just 17 percent of the vote, a stunning 27 percentage points behind Rick Santorum, who made a clean sweep in Colorado and Missouri, as well.

Wait, it gets worse: Although the voting in Missouri was non-binding, Romney lost all 114 counties.

Wait, it gets even worse: Romney has now gone 1 for 4 in caucus states where turnout is dominated by highly conservative voters and is 0 for 3 in the Midwest, a region that he would have to win if he had a chance of knocking off President Obama.

Wait, it gets still even worse: Romney coasted to victory in Nevada on Saturday but stubbed his toe in Colorado, which has similar demographics and more wealthy voters if fewer Mormons, losing by five percentage points to the GOP Flavor of the Moment.

Romney's handlers began lowballing expectations a couple of days before the Tuesday voting, which is never a good sign when the candidate is supposed to be Mister Inevitable. This certainly did not encourage undecided voters to swing Romney's way, but I suspect they saw the Santorum boomlet coming before the punditocracy did.

My gut, which is somewhat larger than it was when I covered my first of now 10 presidential election campaigns, still tells me that Romney will go into the nominating convention with an insurmountable lead in delegates, but my head in advising caution.

The core of Romney's problem, which will only get worse if he wins the nomination, has been his ceaseless vacillation on two issues that matter a great deal to conservative Republicans: Cutting back if not eliminating popular entitlement programs and immigration.

Romney, as is the case with the other GOP candidates, would slash Medicare and turn over coverage to private insurance companies for up and coming senior citizens. Romney, as is the case with the other GOP candidates, would veto the DREAM Act if elected. But in Florida, Romney vowed in speeches to seniors to not only save Medicare but to preserve it for future generations, while vowing in speeches to Latinos to support a DREAM Act predicated on the child of non-citizens doing military service.

The race has turned into a nightmare for Republican Party elders.

Having united behind Romney and hoping to focus attacks on Obama, Gingrich and now Santorum have stolen a march on him. Both candidates and Ron Paul, as well, are now attacking Romney when not attacking each other. Every time that Romney has to fend off attacks instead of going after the president, he can't act presidential, let alone do the essential work of uniting a splintered party that remains more interested in following its heart than its head.

Oh, and those jokes after each Republican debate, primary and caucus that the big winner was Obama no longer seem funny with the economy improving markedly, thus robbing Romney of his best talking point: That he has the expertise to return America to prosperity.

In a break with tradition, those part elders are going public with pleas for Romney to get with his A-game.

Trouble is, Mr. Inevitability has had five or so years to work on his A-game and has proven beyond a doubt that he is a second-rate candidate competing against a field of third-raters. He is a phony who vacillates between being so obsequious that Uriah Heep would endorse him to having the airs of a salesman who would really like to sell you a vacuum cleaner.

"There is not exactly Romney-mania right now," Senate GOP Whip Jon Kyl told Politico, adding that the former Massachusetts governor "absolutely" must shore up the weaknesses with the GOP base that were on such vivid display in Tuesday's voting.

"Playing it safe, which Romney tends to do, is not going to get it for him," said Senator Jim DeMint, a 2008 Romney supporter and a leading voice of his party’s conservative bloc, who called the results "a signal."

Romney is known as an even-keel candidate, but he is said to be dazed from the loses and his campaign has been thrown into disarray.

Meanwhile, the new Daily Kos national survey found that 58 percent of Democrats were "very excited" about voting this fall, compared to 54 percent of Republicans. Six months ago the figures were 48 percent for Democrats and 54 percent for Republicans although you generally you would expect voters to get more excited as the election gets nearer and trend that is not occurring on the Republican side.

In any event, Romney simply cannot afford another positively awful day off.

Earth To Karl Rove: 'Get Off My Lawn'

You have to hand it to the Republican Party: It not only seems incapable of turning the other cheek, but habitually makes matters worse when a little controversy crosses its path.

The latest little controversy is a Chrysler Corporation ad titled "It's Halftime in America" aired during Super Bowl on Sunday evening. The ad, rather drearily uninventive as were most this year, featured Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood extolling the success of the Bush and Obama administration-engineered bailout that saved the asses of Chrysler and General Motors although neither president was mentioned by name.

Rather than turning the other cheek, Republicans have asserted that the commercial with its unabashedly populist message could pass for an Obama re-election ad, besides which all four remaining presidential candidates opposed the bailouts.

The bloviater in chief this time around has been Kark Rove.

Rove, who has nibbled down all of his finger and toenails to nubs because his GOP has deftly turned a good shot at recapturing the White House and Senate into a long shot in part because the kind of bare-knuckle politics and right-wing ass kissing that he espoused, told Fox News that:

"This [ad] is a sign of what happens when you have the government getting in bed with big business like the bailout of the auto companies. They begin to, the leadership of the auto companies feel they need to do something to repay their political patrons. Remember, we lost $1.8 billion as taxpayers on the government bailout of Chrysler, and we’re going to lose $14 billion in the bailout of Chrysler and General Motors. And you got to bet in the boardrooms and management suites of these two big car companies, they are saying to themselves, 'Look, the president bailed us out rather than making us go through the normal bankruptcy, he bailed us out. We’re going to end up not having to pay back this money to the taxpayers.' ”

Rove, of course, is one of the most adept obfuscaters in contemporary politics, and Stanley Blow does a masterful job of taking him apart in a New York Times column:

* The overall bailouts saved an estimated 1.14 million jobs.

* It was George W. Bush who signed the first Chrysler bailout check.

* Of the total of $14.5 billion loaned to Chrysler, the company has returned $11.5 billion to taxpayers.

* The government has sold its Chrysler stock, further limiting taxpayer exposure.

* Trying to eschew Bush’s role in order to tarnish Obama’s results is fundamentally dishonest.

* Eastwood, of course, is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican whom Bush's father, George H.W., considered as a running mate in 1988.

One would think that with Michigan being a crucial swing state, Republicans would want to move the conversation as far away from the bailouts as possible, especially because Romney -- who has been accurately portrayed as a grim reaper when it comes to jobs -- has been especially vociferous in opposing them.

Blow concludes by saying, "Oh, Karl. That thing slapping you in the face is called the truth. As Clint Eastwood might say, 'Get off my lawn.' "

But it was Ta-Nehisi Coates who had the best line: "When Republicans line up against Clint Eastwood and cars, one has to ask, 'What could they possibly be for?' Child labor? Charters for blah people? Midnight Basketball?"

Cartoon du Jour

Tom Toles/The Washington Post

So What If Bush's 'Axis Of Evil' Speech Has Held Up? The World Has Changed.

It was 10 years ago, give or take a few days, that President Bush delivered a State of the Union address with a passage alluding to an “axis of evil” and asserted that the world’s leading rogue state — Iran, Iraq and North Korea, by name — and terrorist groups like Al Qaeda threatened world peace. He not only did not include Pakistan as a rogue state, which it was and is, he praised it.

David Frum, who had a hand in crafting the speech, writes that it has withstood the criticism it received at the time as well as the scrutiny of 10 years. I happen to believe that Frum is correct, but that belief is tempered by the fact that times have changed, which goes a long way to undercutting his argument.

On a personal level, Frum has been banished from the Republican temple for refusing to hew to the hard right-wing political orthodoxy that has run roughshod through the party formerly known as the Big Tent, producing among other things a litter of presidential wannabes who almost to the last man want to start new wars or revisit old ones.

On a global level, the war in Iraq is over and the war in Afghanistan finally is winding down. Iran and North Korea are still schoolyard bullies, but the Obama administration is looking past their sand kicking while still keeping an eye on them, and has instituted a foreign policy where bellicosity is a last resort that is paying dividends. For this we also can thank Hillary Clinton, the best secretary of state since forever, and Vice President Biden, who unlike his predecessor long ago stopped fighting the Cold War.

Beyond Myanmar acting like it wants to come in from the cold, the ouster of Moammar el-Qaddafri and the nascent Arab Spring movement, all of which the Obama administration can take some credit for, the global playing field has changed substantially and not to the Republican Party’s benefit.

It is ironic (but then is there anything that the GOP does these days that isn’t ironic?) that the Republican Party, tone deaf to the concerns of ordinary Americans when it comes to their health and well-being, remains the War Party at a time when most of us are sick of war.

There is another trap for Republicans in this regard: Obama has made it clear that he supports a vigilant military ready to take up arms in faraway places when the need arises, but he also advocates a leaner Pentagon, which is anathema to the GOP despite its deficit-reduction frenzy.

And should the eventual Republican presidential candidate bring up the tired refrain that Obama is weak on terrorism and foreign policy, which John McCain continues to do when having one of his senior moments, the president can point to an admirable record that has included icing Osama bin Laden and most of his AQ cadre.

This mostly admirable record includes Iran but not Pakistan, where Obama continues to walk a tightrope between conciliation and retaliation for that country's historic and ongoing meddling in Afghan affairs while clandestinely supporting the Taliban

With Iran, the U.S. is leading an effort to restart nucular . . . er, nuclear negotiations by increasing economic sanctions. The E.U. has bucked up and agreed to forgo Iranian crude, which represents about a fifth of Iran's oil exports, by July, while the value of Iran's currency has dropped dramatically because of sanctions.

The knock against Obama here is that he was not a helpmate during the convulsive student-led “green revolution” of 2009 and had he been more forceful that Amahadinejad and the ayatollahs would have been sent packing. That’s bull bleep because the Iranian opposition didn’t want direct American support knowing that it would have given the regime the ability to wave the Great Satan cudgel.

When the regime recently made noises about shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, the Obama administration was quick to suggest that the consequences of doing so would be regrettable and not to Tehran’s liking. The regime heeded the warning and a crisis was adverted. For the time being.

And so where once advocating war with Iran made Republicans look tough, it now makes them look silly.

Cartoon du Jour

Romney's Gaffe About The Poor Masks Unpleasant Realities About America

Mitt Romney's gaffe about poor people has triggered an overdue if likely short-lived debate about America's underclass.

Speaking to CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien after his victory in the Florida Republican primary, Romney blurted out, "I’m not concerned about the very poor."

Taken in context, the remark wasn't quite what it seemed to be because the candidate, in another of his breathtaking flip-flops, said in the course of the interview that he was confident that the government safety net would take care of the poor and could be repaired if it doesn't, which was a sharp reversal from his previous position and one at odds with conservative Republicans who carp endlessly about how undeserving the poor are of any government help.

Predictably and correctly, the news media, Democrats and many Republicans are painting Romney as out of touch (he made a similar remark in October), but they miss a larger point: The real outrage is not that he doesn’t want to do more for the poor; it’s that he thinks they are well taken care of and worse yet, that the welfare state is working just fine, thank you.

The facts are these:

The nation's poverty rate rose to 15.1 percent (46.2 million) in 2010, up from 14.3 percent (43.6 million) in 2009 and to its highest level since 1993. A large percentage of those millions are children, and people with annual incomes under $25,000 -- some 28.7 percent — don’t have any kind of health insurance.

The government's definition of poverty is based on total income received. For example, the poverty level for 2011 was set at $22,350 (total yearly income) for a family of four. Most Americans (58.5 percent) will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75.

There certainly are welfare queens and others among these many millions who are too lazy to work, as well as people who receive government aid and spend assistance money not on food but drugs and other vices. But the vast majority are poor not by choice, and the government safety net is full of holes despite a welter of programs, including Medicaid, LIHEAP, Food Stamps, unemployment payments and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, all programs that many Republicans want to cut back or eliminate altogether.

On January 22, which is light years in the past considering Romney's serial vacillations, he asserted that safety-net programs have "massive overhead," and that because of the cost of a huge bureaucracy "very little of the money that's actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them."

Romney's own tax plan probably would have a devastating impact on the safety net.

Under the plan, the Bush tax cuts and taxes on corporations, the wealthy, and upper-middle class investors would be sharply cut while tax breaks that help the poor would expire. The result, according to the Tax Policy Center, would be a $69 tax cut for the average individual in the bottom 20 percent and a $164,000 tax cut for the average individual in the top one percent to be paid for through unspecified cuts to domestic programs which mostly go to the poor and the elderly.

So we'll take it on faith that Romney is not concerned about the poor but seems to be awfully concerned about the rich, no?

Cartoon du Jour

Pat Oliphant/Universal Press Syndicate

GOP House Leadership Finally Gets The Joke, But Will The Faithful Go Along?

The damage that House Republicans have done to their party brand and their chances to take back the White House and Senate is incalculable, but like the last person in the room to get a joke, they finally appear to be wising up.

I have spent a good deal of time -- usually while sitting on the porcelain throne or chasing the lawn mower around the back yard -- trying to fathom why the likes of House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor believed that success laid on the other side of a rainbow of blacks and grays built on opposing President Obama on everything as he struggled to revive a moribund economy and through rewarding the rich while screwing the middle class, poor, elderly and infirm. I finally gave up.

This strategy has worked resoundingly well -- for Obama and the Democrats.

A mere 18 percent of voters approve of the job the House is doing while Obama's numbers have ticked slowly but steadily upward, joblessness has now fallen to a three-year low, and Boehner's leadership is being questioned by more moderate congressfolk on the one hand and by renegade freshmen on the other who want to continue the Give 'Em Hell brand of politics that thrice brought the federal government thisclose to shutdowns.

A result of the leadership finally getting the joke is that there is no talk, as there was this time last year, of repealing health-care reform and overhauling the tax code or any other kind of heavy lifting. Eric Cantor's agenda is embarrassingly painfully modest by comparison with stuff like modest tax cuts for small businesses.

Insiders tell The New York Times that . . . are you ready for this? House leaders want to reestablish the GOP as the party of jobs creation. This of course will mean doing a One Eighty that would snap weaker necks because . . . are you ready for this, as well? it will require bi-forking-partisan compromise.

The strained relationship between Boehner and Cantor is an open secret and harkens back to the days when Newt Gingrich ran the House Republican caucus like a dungeon master. Their tensions are so well known that the president riffed on them at a black-tie banquet Saturday night, joking that “Speaker Boehner, it is good to see you at the head table. I know how badly Eric Cantor wanted your seat.”

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Cartoon du Jour

Jeff Danziger/New York Times News Syndicate

Breast Cancer Imbroglio: I'll Never Look At A Pink Ribbon The Same Way Again

 The reversal of field today by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation on its decision to terminate funding to Planned Parenthood clinics is doubly heartening.

This is because a grave injustice has been corrected and it was corrected to a substantial degree by the pushback by many thousands of people who vented their displeasure with Komen on Facebook and Twitter, the first such instance in the U.S. of social media playing such an important role as it has in Arab Spring protests. 

Breast cancer is a very real and too often fatal disease, which made Komen's decision as the leading breast cancer advocacy group all the more disturbing. 

The more we learn about breast cancer the more links to lifestyle, diet and such become apparent. And who doesn't know women who have survived breast cancer, as well as succumbed to it. I can count four of the former and one of the latter among my friends alone. 

But beyond all of this is a puzzling conundrum: Why are more women dying for breast cancer-related reasons despite the increasingly sophisticated screenings that they undergo? And why has the disease become a right-wing Republican cudgel? 

A big part of the answer to the first question is that the benefits of breast cancer screenings have been overstated and come with the risk of overtreating small cancers while missing cancers that are deadly. Same for prostate and some other cancers. 

The Dear Friend & Conscience has been a health-care professional all her working life. She has toiled for many thousands of hours in intensive care units and is certified every which way. She regularly self examines her breasts but refuses to have mammograms because she has long believed their benefits to be wildly exaggerated. And the American Cancer Society, of all organizations, acknowledges that she is correct.  

"We don’t want people to panic,” says Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the cancer society. "But I'm admitting that American medicine has overpromised when it comes to screening. The advantages to screening have been exaggerated." 

The American Cancer Society bombshell came on the heels of a recent study that recommended most women should start regular screenings at age 50, not 40, women age 50 to 74 should have mammograms every two years, rather than every year, and self-breast examinations are not what they're cracked up to be. 

Left unsaid in Brawley's candid and perhaps even courageous comment is that breast-cancer screenings and the invasive radiation treatments, painful needle biopsies and surgeries that often result are a multi-billion dollar industry that gets filthy rich on overdiagnoses. Then there's this: Too many women who have been treated for breast cancer-related reasons cannot get health insurance or are dropped by their insurers. 

Being a woman can be pre-existing condition in and of itself, of course, and it will not be until 2014 that the Affordable Care Act will fully prohibit insurers from using pre-existing conditions as a pretext for denying or dropping coverage. 

Though breast cancer researchers and advocates perpetually plead for more money, the disease is awash in it. 

Last year, the National Institutes of Health, the nation's top agency for health-related research, allocated $763 million to the study of breast cancer, more than double what it committed to any other cancer. The Department of Defense also funds breast cancer research ($150 million this year), as do several states. All that is in addition to the money raised by the roughly 1,400 IRS-recognized, tax-exempt charities devoted to breast cancer. Komen grossed $420 million last year alone. 

Some breast cancer organizations, including Komen, have been highly critical of the screening study, asserting that more lives will be lost because of later and fewer screenings, and it is a fact that American women have the highest incidence rates of breast cancer in the world, 144 per 1,000 among white woman and 122 per 1,000 among African American women. 

Komen, of course, is in the news because it had joined forces with the right-wing Republicans who wield that cudgel. And irony of ironies, it made a choice -- now reversed -- where many women cannot without Planned Parenthood. 

The foundation had said it cut off funding to the group because it is under investigation, as in guilty until proven innocent. It is under investigation because of a right-wing Republican witch hunt against Planned Parenthood, which does 750,000 breast cancer screenings a year. Abortions make up only about 3 percent of its work, but the witch hunters also object to its leading role in providing access to contraceptives, many of which go to women who could not otherwise afford them. 

Komen's demonization of Planned Parenthood came at a time in which the Republican Party is doubling down on denying women many rights, when rape is viewed by one of its president candidates as “a gift from God,” and workplace gender discrimination is tacitly approve of by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Foundation CEO Nancy Brinker Komen, who was a protocol chief and ambassador during the Bush administration, tried to cover her tracks yesterday in claiming that the decision had nothing to do with Planned Parenthood specifically. 

In a statement released today, the foundation asked everyone "who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics – anyone’s politics." 

It was the perception that Komen was inserting politics into providing health care services, especially to underserved women, that helped prompt the firestorm of debate. 

Koman's president is Karen Handel, a conservative Republican who ran for governor in Georgia in 2010 and is believed to have pressured Koman, while the foundation's board includes the general chairman of the virulently anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List and the wife of right-wing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. 

The backlash against Komen was been severe with all seven California affiliates of the foundation saying that they opposed the decision. Several board members resigned in protest, and in the end the foundation, perhaps realizing that its public image had been sullied and this might result in a drop in donations, reconsidered its decision. 

Twenty-six senators had urged the foundation to reconsider, while pledges to Planned Parenthood of $250,000 each from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Lee Fikes, a Texas oil baron, as well as small donations, have more than make up the $700,000 it lost, which was a tiny part of Komen's $93 million budget. 

To Planned Parenthood, the decision amounted to a betrayal of the organizations' shared goal of saving lives through breast cancer screening programs. Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood's president, said her organization was gratified by the support the controversy has brought and later praised Komen's decision to resume funding. 

"We provide care to one in five women in America, and over the last two days it seems we’ve heard from every one of them, through Facebook, Twitter, e-mail and all sorts of ways," Ms. Richards said. "It's a true show of women standing for women." 

Perhaps.   

They say that the sisterhood is powerful, but in the case of breast cancer the sisterhood is caught between an industry that gets rich off of it and a political party that uses it as a punching bag.

§  

In addition to pulling funds from Planned Parenthood, Komen also decided to stop funding embryonic stem cell research centers, which makes it clear that the organization has morphed from non-political non-profit to a partisan advocacy organization. 

That means the loss of $3.75 million to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, $4.5 million to the University of Kansas Medical Center, $1 million to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, $1 million to the Society for Women’s Health Research, and $600,000 to Yale University. That’s a loss of nearly $12 million dollars in research money to eradicate breast cancer this year alone.

§  

Click here to make a tax deductible online contribution to Planned Parenthood.

Get Yer Pretty Pink Handgun Here

The Susan B. Komen for the Cure foundation has numerous corporate and other sponsors, but you have to question the wisdom of partnering with a handgun retailer.

A blurb at Discount Gun Sales' website:

Discount Gun Sales is proud to team up with the Susan B. Koman Foundation to offer the Walther P-22 Hope Edition in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. A portion of each P-22 Hope Edition will be donated to the Seattle Branch of the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

The P-22 Hope Edition has an exclusive DuraCoat Pink slide in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness month. Utilizing the same reliable controls and firing mechanism that has made the Walther P-22 America’s top selling handgun, the Hope Edition will be a limited production pistol offered exclusively through Discount Gun Sales.

Cartoon du Jour

Pat Oliphant/Universal Press Syndicate

The Nancy Komen-Planned Parenthood Debacle: Don't Just Get Mad, Get Even

NANCY BRINKER KOMEN

The Susan Komen-Planned Parenthood debacle is a defining moment for women's rights in America.

As Taylor Marsh writes, it is an egregious example of liberals being asleep at the wheel, but it is much, much more: It is a watershed event in the politicization of women's reproductive rights in an era in which the Republican Party is doubling down on denying women virtually all rights, when rape is viewed by a president candidate as "a gift from God," and workplace gender discrimination is tacitly approve of by the U.S. Supreme Court.

My initial reaction to the debacle was to go online and double my annual donation to Planned Parenthood. My second reaction was to become angry that in 2012 in the land of the free and home of the brave people are trying to dictate -- and succeeding to an alarming extent -- what my beloved, my daughter and my woman friends can and cannot do with their uteruses. My third reaction was to write this post, but I guess that is obvious.

What also is obvious is that there had been a time bombing ticking away at the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation for some time and the explosion in the form of Komen terminating funding to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings -- no not abortions or even birth control but for a disease that afflicts one in eight women -- is a result of CEO Nancy Brinker Komen coming out of the closet and revealing herself as just another heartless conservative who puts political considerations ahead of a woman's well being.

Koman was President Bush's chief protocol office and ambassador to Hungary, while Koman's board includes the general chairman of the virulently anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List and the wife of right-wing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

The good news is that the backlash against Komen has been severe and I can only hope that it will be sustained.

Folks like myself have already more than covered Komen's annual Planned Parenthood funding with a Texas oil baron donating $250,000, at least one Komen affiliate has withdrawn its affiliation with mother ship, and Senator Barbara Boxer, among other politicians, were harshly critical of the move.

Dawn Laguens, an executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said that Komen’s money had over the years underwritten breast cancer screenings for 170,000 women, some of whose lives were saved as a result. She said she had no sympathy for Komen’s attempt to mollify donors by ending its relationship with a provider of women’s health services for whom abortion services are only a small part.

Komen denies that it pulled funding in response for right-wing reactionary politics. A spokeswoman explained tha the main factor in the decision was a new rule adopted by Komen that prohibits grants to organizations being investigated by local, state or federal authorities. Planned Parenthood, of course, has been repeatedly investigated at the behest of right wingers, which makes the excuse disingenuous and the decision even more deplorable.

Cartoon du Jour

Tom Toles/Universal Press Syndicate

Don Cornelius (1934-2012)

MORE HERE.

Photograph from Mad Vision Entertainment

Should We Believe Mitt Romney's Claim That He Created 100,000 Jobs?

While Mitt Romney may be misunderestimating, as a certain former president would say, the damage that his get-filthy-rich tenure at Bain Capital is causing, opposition researchers are having a devil of a time disproving his claim that he created 100,000 or 120,000 jobs (he has cited both numbers) as CEO of the private-equity company, while supporters are having an equally hard time proving that he is right.

In any event, the majority of the jobs Romney takes credit for creating come from a single source: Staples Inc., and a closer look shows that he is kind of right and kind of wrong.

Romney is kind of right in saying that he helped create 89,000 jobs at Staples, which is the number of employees that the office supply giant currently has. But Bain's investment in Staples was a mere 10 percent of the start-up cash it raised and when Romney left Bain the fledgling retailer only had a single store with fewer than 200 employees.

The larger picture is muddled.

Steve Kaplan, writing for The American, the online magazine of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, attempts to unmuddle the numbers by looking at jobs created and lost in Bain companies at the time Romney left the firm in 1999 and then looking at jobs created and lost in those same companies today.

Kaplan notes that among Bain's investments under Romney, the large job creators were Staples and Sports Authority. At the end of 1998, Staples had more than 42,000 employees and Sports Authority had almost 14,000 for a total of 64,000, while today Staples has 89,000 and Sports Authority, which is now a private company, had 14,300 employees in 2006, the last time it revealed job numbers.

Citing four companies that the Wall Street Journal looked into -- American Pad & Paper (Ampad), Dade Behring, DDI, and Stage Stores—that Bain made very profitable investments in and took money out of that later went bankrupt, Kaplan arrives at these numbers:

Stage has about 3,900 more employes today than in 1996 when Bain invested in it, Dade Behring in its present incarnation has about 1,000 fewer jobs and DDI about 1,500 fewer jobs, while the numbers for Ampad are impossible to ascertain.

"What the article does not tell you is what happened before and after those bankruptcies," Kaplan writes. "When you add it all up today, even in these investments, it looks likely that Bain Capital created jobs overall."

He concludes that "While we will probably never be able to measure the true numbers, it seems pretty clear that 'looting' is an inaccurate description of what happened with these companies."

Tim Murphy, writing for the left-leaning Mother Jones, isn't buying.

This, he says, is because Romney himself has failed to produce credible numbers. He and his surrogates have cited Staples and Sports Authority as success stories but have said zilch about the Bain investments that have lost jobs.

Meanwhile, the Obama re-election team, using the 100,000 jobs-created number as a benchmark, taunts Romney by saying "his claim is ever changing" in this chart:

The bottom line, Murphy says, is that the 100,000 figure was not actually calculated; it was "just a composite of a couple of data points, and there's no evidence that it's actually a 'net' figure," according to Romney's own campaign.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Last of the right-leaning Weekly Standard enters the fray with the cogent observation that people don't credit the jobs created by McDonald's, Home Depot, and Apple to the money men. The credit goes to the idea men -- Ray Kroc, Bernard Marcus, Arthur Blank, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak.

"This doesn’t make Romney a bad guy," writes Last. "It makes him a wise investor -- and investors are incredibly important. But the skills of an investor aren’t those we think of first when contemplating the presidency. If they were, Warren Buffett would be squaring off against George Soros every four years."

"More importantly, Romney's real skills differ in important ways from the ones he's been advertising. Voters may sense this. And it's one more reason why Romney hasn't been able to close the deal with skeptical Republicans."

When challenged on the accuracy of his job creation figures during a Republican debate by George Stephanopolous of ABC News, Romney told the audience they should just trust him.

"I'm a good enough numbers guy to make sure I got both sides of that," he said.

Okay, Mitt, we trust you.

Cartoon du Jour

Ted Rall