You stay classy, Republican party...

The videos speak for themselves...Shameful

Society is crumbling from within! Save yourself!

Today marked the first day that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was officially repealed. A Clinton-era compromise (Republicans and centrist Democrats didn't want gay men and women serving in the military at ALL) that allowed gay people to serve in the military starting in the early 90s, DADT has utterly failed to make the military more stable, us safer, and cost the U.S. government millions of dollars in lost investment in trained personnel and more importantly the loss of tens of thousands of brave men and women who were willing to fight and die on behalf of our country.

This is indeed an historic moment; one that gets close to Truman's achievement of desegregating the Army in the 1950s. So here comes the mass moral decay of our country and the dissolve of unit cohesion, right? Watch the video below of a current U.S. soldier being unburdened by just telling the truth about who he is.

My favorite moment -

Soldier: "Do you want to tell Mom for me?
Dad: Laughter..."I don't believe so..."

Republican logic - new stimulus to cost close to $0

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the small-ball initiatives that President Obama will propose tonight in his "Jobs Address" will cost roughly $300-$400B. However, due to the fact that President Obama is choosing to lay out a distinctly bipartisan plan instead of a dramatic liberal jobs agenda, much of the proposed legislation is comprised of - you guessed it - tax cuts!


And we know from our favorite congressional Republicans, that tax cuts that they propose, don't qualify as government spending! Tax cuts merely allow you to keep more of your freedom money, that you earned. And luckily, none of that money that you consented to spending by voting for representatives who spent it on political priorities you agreed with is currently allocated to funding two and a half (Libya) wars, social security payments, medicare payments, an unpaid prescription drug bill, aging infrastructure, increased veterans healthcare benefits due to said wars anything at the moment.

So forget that big fairly modest amount considering the high unemployment figure number! When all is said and done Republicans will not agree to the $130B in infrastructure spending which will actually do more to create jobs than any other stimulative policy, as today's CNN article on the stimulus stated,

"The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the parts of the program that got the most criticism -- actual spending on projects and aid packages -- was the most effective in creating jobs." (emphasis mine)

So of the roughly leftover $170B in tax cuts, by the Republicans own logic will cost the government $0, because it won't be spending any money.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy your $0 stimulus. It's not costing you anything.

My 2012 Map So Far

After getting Pawlenty wrong, I thought I might just go ahead and predict the whole shebang!

Predictions so far: Definite Republican flips - New Hampshire, Indiana and Iowa
New Repulican lean: North Carolina
Possible curveball Republican win - New Jersey
Possible curveball Democratic win - Georgia

2012 Presidential Election: Electoral Map: This map displays the projections of the sender and does not reflect the opinions of 270toWin.

Well I was wrong about THAT one...

I'm not going to lie. 2008 was a very good politically predictive year for me. I bet that Mike Huckabee, the more religiously conservative, yet less well known, former Governor of Arkansas would win the Republican Iowa caucus.

And when every pundit in the land declared that it would be a "New York" election race between Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton (see here, here and here), I successfully predicted in early March that the final Presidential contest would be a race between moderates with John McCain and a young pragmatic upstart Barack Obama. And although many had doubts about whether a black man with Hussein as his middle name could win the presidency, I bet that Obama would eventually be the final winner of the whole shebang. Because let's face it, after eight long years of the Bush administration, you could poop in a bag, write the letter D on it and you'd have a better than 50% shot at winning the Presidency in 2008.

So at the end of 2008, shortly after Obama's election, I proclaimed to my Republican colleagues at the RLO in the Massachusetts State House, that 2012 would continue to be a centrist election and not a base election and that the Republican nominee would be the promising moderate Governor from Minnesota, and almost Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Tim Pawlenty; because a former governor of a desired purple state could be much more easily sold to the more socially conservative base than former Massachusetts Governor, Willard "Mitt" Romney, who behind the scenes in the Republican party, most people dislike for his inability to take stand on anything that matters to them (this political shrewdness is one of the qualities I admire most in Mr. Romney - but I digress).

Anywho, lo and behold I look at today's news after the (inconsequential) Ames Iowa Straw Poll, that Tim Pawlenty is dropping out of the GOP race. So not counting Donald Trump, who wasn't really running anyway, my final Republican nominee was the first to drop out! Sarah Scalese, I probably owe you $5 bucks! (When I brought up T-Paw as my 2012 nominee, Sarah said something to the effect of, "snooze-fest"), and it appears that her reading of the Republican electorate was right.

However, this momentum shift probably bodes well for President Obama. Most political parties have two basic choices when battling an incumbent President: crazy heart (see Howard Dean), or safe bet (see John Kerry). And the early indicators show that the Republican Party is leaning crazy heart with Michele Bachmann's win and T-Paw's exit. For the sake of the country, I hope the GOP nominates either Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman, men who I disagree with but who I know at least have good noggins on top of their shoulders. But the early rumblings of Bachmann and Texas Governor Rick Perry show a party reaching for its heart and not its mind.

It's Gonna be Fine

I thought about posting a negative, sad and angry post about how the drop in the Dow is a complete reflection of the utter dysfunction of the House of Representatives, but instead I thought I'd post a piece of music performed by my absolute favorite ensemble while studying music at school. Here's a piece by jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, performed by the amazing Northwestern Brass Ensemble. Enjoy.

A Crappy Deal

I'm too bummed to go into it now...but we got our five-year-old back (the economy). He may have been molested and possibly raped (drastic cuts as he's very sick), but he wasn't murdered which he would have been if the hostage takers didn't get everything they wanted, so unfortunately Obama paid the full ransom (the same thing with the bankers & TARP 1 [Bush] and 2 [Obama]).

Yet at least, the crazy liberal, George W. Bush's chief speechwriter, David Frum agrees with me.

Sigh.