Professional opposition researchers and national news media have now had over 6 years to do serious opposition research and skeleton digging with Romney, but they have met their match.  Recent smear attempts show that the worse they could do was:

#1. Romney, as a volunteer ecclesiastical leader, once counseled a single-parent to give her child up for adoption.  The woman alleges that Mitt threatened her with Church disciplinary action, but Mitt has denied that allegation.  Keeping a child conceived out of wedlock is not grounds for church discipline in the LDS Church anyways, so clearly there is a disconnect in the story.  It’s possible that Mitt informed her that continued sexual promiscuity on her part would lead to church discipline, as adultery and fornication are not especially encouraged (but are grounds for a church disciplinary council).

At any rate, take a step back – he is being attacked for — wait for it — encouraging an adoption.  Whoa.  The horror!  Imagine that, an ecclesiastical leader trying to encourage people to raise their kids in homes with both mothers and fathers.

If you think about it, this isn’t even a smart attack for the left.  President Obama himself has campaigned on and been outspoken about the need for both mothers and fathers in the home, and the importance of having both parents engaged.  He himself is a model of this, insisting to his scheduling staff that he be with his young family for dinner every night possible, only allowing missing up to two dinners a week.

#2. Romney, as leader of Bain Capital, laid people off.  Now Romney says over and over that he actually hired more people and saved more jobs than he laid off, but what baffles me is that his fellow republicans – the type of folks known for doing practically anything to make a buck (inside and outside the law, regardless of ethics or morality) – would be pounding him on that.  I doubt that many republican business owners struggled to lay a few people off in the name of saving their own business or increasing their profitability.  You can’t be the part that touts free-enterprise and unregulated economies on one hand and then punish your own for adhering to those principles.

So… that’s it.  That’s all they could find.  No mistresses.  No love children.  Just those two things and an odd religion.

Compare that to the recent competition between Herman Cain and Dr. Ron Paul (the obstetrician) to see who had more exposure in their lifetime to female genitalia…  If your decision for a presidential candidate is based largely on character or morals — not only spoken of but also lived by — I think you might have your man.

Here’s my analysis of this week’s candidates:

Still in the lead, still making all the right decisions, and still too good to be true for the party is Mitt Romney.  He had a very refreshing response when responding when religion was brought up, and handled it far better than he ever has to date, though in my opinion he went too far in patting Gov Perry on the shoulder telling him his lukewarm apology for Jefferds remarks was “OK”.  I’m not sure if it made him look incredibly magnanimous (almost to the point of push-over) or made him look like he was in too much of a hurry to let Perry off the hook and get back to the economy.  Other than that, solid performance by Romney, and I was particularly impressed that he won every shouting match with another candidate trying to horn in on his reponse time.  I didn’t think Mitt had it in him.

As this week’s insurgent, Herman Cain got much of the focus with everyone decimating his 9-9-9 plan.  I really don’t like it either for all of the reasons that Stallion Cornell outlined yesterday – but mostly because it would be a huge tax increase for me as a citizen, a consumer, and a micro-business owner.  I’m just not sure where he gets off by saying we should look at his people’s scoring and his data.  I went to his website and the data is SKETCHY!  The truth is that the “fair” tax is a huge tax break for the wealthy and a huge tax increase on the poor and middle class.  Period.  End of sentence.

Michelle Bachmann’s best moment was when she trumped everyone else’s fence proposal by pointing out that her fence would be a double fence with a security zone in between.  I thought she was going to go one step further and explain how the security zone would be constantly patrolled by the 82nd airborne.  Hallelujah border security gods!

Sadly, Rick Perry was the only one who made a lick of sense about the border, denying the absurd idea that we need a fence or that a fence would deter illegal immigration.  I say sadly, because he was a hot mess the rest of the night.  He even merited a boo from the audience when he repeatedly called Romney a hypocrite for employing a lawn care company who hired illegals.  He’s trying harder, but not really getting better results.  I’m not sure if it’s because he’s that stupid or because he is surrounded with people who are that stupid.  I’m thinking it’s a bit of both.

Newt Gingrich continues to come out with reasonable ideas – like calling the super committee a stupid idea – but his time is sadly past.  He still subscribes to Reagan-style Republicanism that most of the candidates have abandoned for Tea Party style Republicanism.  (Clearly Reagan’s 11th commandment “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican” was thrown out the window last night)  Newt shows he has the even-keeled-ness to be a good party mover and shaker again, but I dont’ know anyone who really wants him to be their President.

When it comes to talking about things no one wants to talk about, I give the victory to Rick Santorum.  He has found a way to make himself the ‘values’ candidate for the approximately 1% of voters who care about social issues right now.  His most interesting allegation was against Ron Paul, asserting that the family was the center of our society rather than the individual, to which Paul replied something like, “I’ve given birth to thousands of babies and they call come one at a time.”  To which everyone rolled their eyes.   You can always count on Paul to say something completely sensible but that you completely disagree with the more you think about it.

Jon Huntsman did what no GOP candidate would, in their right mind, do at this point in their race: decline to be on TV.  I suppose he thought the high school cafeteria in New Hampshire would be more integral to his presidential bid; and he might be right.  If his strategy is to focus on New Hampshire, threaten to boycott any caucus that occurs before the NH primary, and try to come in 2nd or 3rd in New Hampshire, it’s the right strategy.  It’s really all he has left.  He’s gotta be running low on money and low on will to try and make himself look appealing as a moderate in this crowd of Tea Party panderers.  I know I would be.

After the debate, I watched NBC’s The Sing Off, which I had recorded from the day before.  and pictured all the candidates in an acapella group together…

As I suspected, the stories in this article represent both sides – both the joy and the difficulty –  of working as an ecclesiastical leader.  The young man’s story of wise counsel setting his life on a better path is just one of thousands that likely occured during Mitt’s tenure as Bishop and Stake President.  Those are the easy ones to talk about.  One the other hand, I would advise the world to reserve judgement about Mitt’s counsel to families making difficult decisions.  Sometimes an ecclesiastical leader will feel moved to counsel two different people about the same issue two different ways.  Though Bishops are instructed not to specifically counsel couples for or against divorce as a resolution to their marital difficulties, I’ve known instances where the leader was relieved by a divorce and instances where they were saddened by a divorce.  Context makes a world of difference, and no newspaper article could ever provide the full context for any such exchange between priest and congregant.

Also, my friend McKay Coppins posted an interesting (but unsurprising) article about leaked emails from the Perry campaign’s religious advisors have reacted and plotted in regards to Mitt’s religion, and their hopes of sinking his candidacy through its marginalization.

It appears that the inseparable siamese twins, religion and politics, are just heating up for the GOP primary.

Do you think it gets worse before it gets better?

Any of my non-LDS readers have a problem with Mitt’s religion or past as a lay leader of the religion?

If you want more information about the awesome Colbert SuperPAC, I suggest you watch a few clips of the Colbert Report.

Announcing his PAC, but Viacom says he can’t have one…

Stephen exploits a loophole created by the Supreme Court to create a SUPER PAC instead!

Files FEC papers…

What is it for? It’s for the children…

Stephen Colbert created the SuperPAC in response to SarahPAC’s abbreviated bus tour in which she spent fundraiser money to wrap a huge motorhome and take a family vacation to important historical sites (botching the founding story all along the way and being tailed by a coup of ravenous reporters).  Oh yeah, she contributed to political campaigns and candidates as well.

Basically, Stephen’s PAC is committed to raising huge sums of money from nameless donors to support an arbitrary cause.

The real cause, obviously, is to point out the absurdity of the PAC itself – that in America we can give unlimited amounts of money anonymously to engage in subversive and ethically questionable political activities in order to get people elected.  In this case, even though the Supreme Court ruled that money is speech, Stephen happens to think (as do I) that they are wrong.  (Case in point: we are all born with 1 mouth, but we are not all born with $100 in our pockets)

The PAC itself is tending to be super absurd in itself, including the introductory FORM email I got from them:

Ohh… I just love it.  Keep it up Colbert!!!

My wife asked me the other day – if you a Romney’s strategist, what would you tell him?  And here it is…

My opinion of Mitt was shaped more by his time as a Massachusetts governor than by his weird move-to-the-right-of-McCain social conservative campaign of ’08.  I thought his record as a Republican governor of a very Democratic state showed that he had the stuff it takes to compromise and build a coalition government.

For me, Mitt’s greatest liabilty in 2012 is not going to be his Massachusetts health care (RomneyCare – ugh – I hate that name more than I hate the word ObamaCare) or even his religion.  It strikes me that his greatest liability in his ’12 campaign is going to be his ’08 campaign.  I think the GOP (and the American people) are far more ready to elect a fiscal conservative with a history of turning around failed corporations who has proven he can work with a hostile or defunct legislature than they are ready and willing to elect a social issues conservative who can’t seem to stop talking about (and getting others to talk about) his position on abortion or his religion.

Furthermore, presidential midterm campaigns are always a referendum on the incumbent’s performance.  So where is the chink in President Obama’s armor?

In foreign policy, I don’t think Mitt has much. Pres Obama has had success in reseting relations with foreign leaders, reviving public opinion on America abroad, withdrawing from Iraq, killing Osama, spreading democracy by getting NOT invading Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya… President Obama is going to have a solid foreign policy record to run on, and I don’t see anyone in the Republican field with foreign policy credentials to combat President Obama’s achievements – even a decorated vet like McCain.

So that really only leaves the economy – which, luckily for the Republicans, isn’t going very well.

With public opinion turning on Obama on the economic recovery (only 45%-50% approve of his economic policy) , Mitt’s best strategy is to come say that the recovery has been too slow for too long. He can start with his tired lines about “eliminating waste and duplication”, but he may also have an additional opportunity if he picks Huntsman as a VP to say – “and we’ll compete globally with China, cause my VP knows China like the back of his hand.”  I think there is a lot of American nervousness about China’s rising economy and they really could tap into that and exploit it. (Not that the GOP would EVER allow two Mormons to run on a ticket together!)

The general election will be ALL about the independent voters and the economy. Independents and new voters won it for Obama in ’08, and since new voters are less likely to show up in 2012, the independents will cast the decider. The Massachusetts Governor Romney of ’04 will have no problem with getting independents – but the frankenstein, yuk-yuk, one-of-the-guys, social conservative Romney of ’08 will scare them off.

The question is, can he get through the primary without too much base-pandering to where the moderate, independent Mitt can’t show up in the General election? I think he can if he focuses solely on his fiscal conservatism and completely avoids questions of social conservatism. He’s got to change the story every time the social conservatism comes up. This will be unsettling to social conservatives, but he needs to convince them that they need him for his managerial excellence and legislative bipartisanship (the Mitt of ’04) even more than for his religious persuasion or character (the Mitt of ’08).

Yesterday marked a first in American economics.  Standard and Poors has downgraded American foreign debt from “AAA” to “holy crap, this country’s debt is approaching more than 100% of its yearly GDP… I wonder if we’ll ever get paid back!”  If this isn’t a huge shoe dropping, I don’t know what is.  It should be a huge wakeup call to politicians and citizens everywhere that the world will not simply stand idly by while we consume all of its resources and, with a wink and a nod, promise to pay them back from our future economic growth.

I enjoy watching the Suze Orman show.  I like her advice and I like the way she draws links between the person’s interpersonal and sociological behavior to their financial information (even when that link is sometimes a little shaky).  But what is most entertaining is to see the people who call in with $10,000, $50,000, $100,000 of credit card debt and think nothing of it.  They spend thousands of dollars more per month than they bring in.  Who are these people and in what reality can they feel good about that?  How long can they think that this will not catch up with them, and aren’t they completely disheartened to see a monthly statement arriving that gets exponentially larger and larger?

After you watch this show for a while, you begin to understand why our politicians handle government expenses similarly – if we are a government by the people and for the people, then this is just another way our representatives are reflecting the population.  That we feel no shame in this is a sad, sad thing.  That we can’t seem to apply simple financial sense to the problem is even worse.

Suze tells people to stand in the truth of their financial situation.  Often she can show them a way out of their personal debt just by restructuring their expenses; by getting rid of the eating out, hair appointments, land lines, and nearly every ‘subscription’ and recurring expense they can do without.  Sometimes she also has to tell the individual that they need to find a new job, an additional job, or some other way to make more money since they simply do not make enough money to meet even their basic needs.

Our government is definitely in camp #2.  They need to stand in the truth of the situation.  We spend too much, and we dont’ make enough money.  We’ve gone on a decade-long tear of tax cutting while also expanding government expenses like crazy.  The solution isn’t one thing, it’s every thing.  We aren’t going to cut a couple of military programs and reduce the number of reports the government issues annually and solve the problems.  We aren’t going to restructure Social Security and be done.  We aren’t going to solve it by only changing our expenses and not addressing the revenue side as well.  We can’t continue to give new tax breaks to gain popularity, ignoring the huge debt we have accrued and the deficit we perpetuate.

Taxes are going to have to go up, and expenses are going to have to come down.

Every financial advisor warns retirement savers of this reality – that some time in the future taxes in America will have to way higher – yet no politician is willing to entertain that eventuality.

It’s already happening.  In Texas, while the state continues to promise rock bottom income taxes to corporations and individuals, it is raising the state portion of every traffic ticket written in this state, even while the police sit around in 100 degree temperatures in their SUVs guzzling $4/gallon gas.  We are quickly moving to our police force being a tax collection force for those unfortunate enough to be caught in their crosshairs. The state also continues to jack around with silly fees like the “Welcome to Texas” fee you are assessed when you register any vehicle in Texas for the first time.  Gas tax or additional tolling will be next, mark my words.  Even though Good Hair Perry has promised property tax breaks, my property taxes have risen every year since I’ve lived here.

Sure, we don’t have an income tax here, but you pay… oh you pay.  So, look.  I want a government that’s fair, honest, and open.  If we need $ to pay for crap, then raise the money through the front door, not through pulling me over for going 5mph over the limit.

First, the piece on John Boehner turned him from a stoic, orange, minority leading, whiner, into a real human being. I have to say, I was really impressed with his story of truly coming up from nothing and becoming 3rd in line to being the President of the US. The blubbering got a little distracting – but I can empathize with a man who wears his emotions on his sleeve. It really is impressive to see someone who worked his way through college cleaning toilets become Speaker of the House. That is the story of America: anyone can become anything with enough work and luck.

I was a little turned off by his refusal to say the word “compromise.” Leslie Stahl really tried hard to get him to say the word, and finally he basically said that his new constituents have assigned the word a negative connotation. That is the definition of the sad state of politics in our nation, it’s not popular to compromise. You have to WIN. It has to be YOUR WAY or the HIGHWAY – or just stall long enough until you can pin enough negative things on the majority party and get back into power so they can then pull the same crappy tricks on you.

But — the most surprising tidbit of good advice for politicians everywhere actually came from a later interview in the same program with Presidente Lula of Brazil. He was first elected when I was in Brazil in 2000 on my mission, and he was a wildly successful politician and president. He said something that was most memorable in this broadcast:

It’s about 5:19.

“Success of an elected official is the art of doing the obvious. It is doing what everyone knows need to be done.”

I wish our politicians would subscribe to this statement a bit more. Rather than being power brokers, money grubbers, yarn spinners, and issue chameleons, why can’t we just get together and do the obvious stuff. We can solve fiscal problems by cutting spending and raising taxes. We can become more energy independent by drilling for oil here at home AND investing heavily in researching alternative fuels. Etc etc etc. Our solutions are in front of us, and we just need someone to be more comfortable with doing the obvious rather than who is up and who is down, who won last and what you can get for your vote.

To give you background, in Utah, an old lady is running a negative ad against Jim Matheson (the democrat incumbent) and for the challenger republican (Morgan Philpot).  One of my Facebook friends works actively for his campaign, so it was no surprise when she posted the ad.  The ad itself isn’t disturbing or anything; it’s your run-of-the-mill negative ad, casting Matheson as a Pelosi cronie.  No big deal.  Let me emphasize, this isn’t about one candidate over another, I could care less who wins the election.

Here’s my issue… the title/subtitle of the ad: “Personal Patriotism” and “Random Acts of Patriotism”

Here is the exchange I had…

Now, here’s my question… Am I way off base here?

Does having a personal political opinion and buying up scobs of air time to express it count as a real “act of patriotism”?  Especially when you’re only using your first name which isn’t the same first name you actually go by in real life?

I didn’t even learn a stinking thing from her ad, not about Morgan Philpot anyways. What a waste.  Negative campaigning is the norm in politics today, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still tasteless.  If these guys don’t have enough virtues to get elected on their own merits, then I don’t want them in office anyways.

We arrived and all of the front desk people were women.  We went back and both nurses we saw were women.  The phlebotomist was a woman.  The sonographer was a woman.  The billing and insurance person was a woman.  Last but not least, the doctor was a woman.  There wasn’t a single man in the entire office, except the fathers-to-be.

There were women of all sizes, shapes, ethnicity, and background, but there was not a single man to be found.

I hesitate to believe that there just wasn’t a single qualified male doctor, nurse, phlebotomist, sonographer, or administrative assistant out there…

So why is it OK for this office to clearly discriminate against men in their hiring practices?

One of my favorite programs is NPR’s Planet Money.  They have a twice weekly podcast as well as a blog they keep up.  They regularly do stories for one of my other favorite programs, This American Life.  They have this incredible way of making economics relevant and interesting to people who aren’t economists.  It’s an incredible feat.

Here’s the deal though… just check out the names:

• Adam Davidson, Correspondent
• David Kestenbaum, Correspondent
• Chana Joffe-Walt. Correspondent
• Jacob Goldstein, Correspondent
• Alex Blumberg, Contributing Editor

This is a list of some of the most Jewish names I’ve ever encountered. Now, certainly they have scores of staffers and interns who don’t have Jewish heritage, but it appears you have to have a very pronounced Jewish heritage to be an on-air personality for this show.

Look, I don’t have anything against women or Jews. I’m just saying, can you really so blatantly get away with stacking the cards with one class of individual without incurring the wrath of the government? Or do those anti-discrimination laws only apply to workplaces that are white, upper-middle-class, and male-dominated?

Just wondering…

It was an awesome podcast.  Here is the link to listen (it’s about 15 min):

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/09/03/129630751/the-friday-podcast-our-listeners-vs-the-budget-deficit

Here were my take aways:

• Annual budget – 3 trillion dollars.
• Deficit for this year – 1 trillion dollars – gotta cut the budget by a third to balance it.
• Annual “discretionary” budget is 1/3 of total budget (roughly 1 trillion).  This is money we can choose to spend or not spend in a given year – it is the run rate of the government.
• Annual “entitlement” budget is 2/3 of budget (roughly 2 trillion).  This is money we are required by law to spend, whether we want to or not.  Changing this spend requires new legislation, and the breaking of ‘promises’ to someone.
• Defense spending makes up more than half of the discretionary budget, totally 600 billion.

I know that everyone has their take on what the government should be cutting.  I had mine as well.

I think, though, if you were the CEO of the government, you’d have to take in the following considerations:

• Since payroll makes up the lion’s share of any organization’s spending, any significant cuts will mean a loss of jobs, thus increasing the over 9% unemployment rate.  This is an economically untenable position right now.  Cuts in government jobs would be perceived as a weakness of faith in the government which would have ripple effects through the entire economy, and would surely drive another, possibly deeper, recession.
• Cutting benefit programs now seems like a poor solution, especially as a short term solution.  Long term cuts in benefit promises are needed to balance the budget (especially if we want to keep taxes low), but short term benefit cuts would hurt the unemployed, disabled, and elderly the worst – the most vulnerable of our population in this down economy.  In fact, congress keeps voting to extend unemployment benefits to help people get through this very difficult recession.
• I admit that raising taxes could slow the economic recovery, as people may invest less in the economy if they are nervous about taxes going up.

Given these three options, I think the only thing you can do right now is end the temporary tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.  I actually think this is our only opportunity for a more fiscally sound government right now.  Why?

First, the uber-wealthy do not use their personal money to create jobs.  They primarily use it to create more wealth, and not always in the most healthy ways.  This kind of speculation is what drove the bubbles we have experienced.  People using money, not as an investment, but as a club or a lever.

For example, there is an ‘activist’ investor who just did a hostile takeover of 20-something% of JCPenney’s stock.  His goal?  They’re not sure yet, but some supect it is to force the board to spin off the real estate of the company and make short-term changes that will drive the stock price up by only a few dollars, making him MILLIONS in the short term, but putting the company in a bad position long term.  This does not add to JCPenney’s long term financial soundness.  This does not add jobs to JCPenney.  This generates short-term profits for him.

My feeling is that if this guy has millions of dollars sitting around to mess with a company, he can certainly afford to pay a 20% tax rate, as opposed to the 10-15% he is paying now.

Now, your definition of “wealthy” may vary.  I personally know some who make $250,000 a year don’t feel like they’re that wealthy… I hope to one day be among them.  But if I had to choose between the long-term solvency of our government and whether I could afford the $500,000 house or the $750,000 house, I’d choose to support our government.  After all, it’s the economic environment of our country that enabled all the commerce and wealth generation.  After all, America is still the place to come if you have an idea and want to market it and sell it.

This article just reinforces my wife’s feelings about Beck – Beck is a brand, and he does whatever he can to build his brand.  Love him or hate him, he’s a genius at self-marketing.  It’ll be interesting to see how ‘apolitical’ this rally (errr fundraiser) is…

I saw some other articles, though, from folks wanting to make hay out of the fact that he’s co-opting the National Mall on the anniversary of the MLK rally.  I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, other than the fact that those who might make a pilgrimage to the national park (yes, the Mall is a national park) will find hoards of people, giant screens, and a lot of loud conservative propaganda – not exactly the reflective environment that one would want to honor King and the legacy of the civil rights movement.

But hey – it’s a new day – and it’s as good a day as any other for a little free speech in Washington.

Have fun out there , MIL and FIL.  If nothing else, you should have plenty of good ‘people watching’ to do.

Rand Paul is arguing that the government shouldn’t have imposed the civil rights act on businesses.  Uhh… so let me ask: if the government shouldn’t have the power to force businesses and individuals to do what they judge is in the common good of our society, then how was it going to get done?  By making p0lite suggestions and pass non-binding resolutions, hoping that everyone complies?

Most of the libertarian solutions to our national problems start and end with: not my problem.  Somehow, in my opinion, making it someone else’s problem doesn’t help anything.  If African-Americans are being discriminated against in parts of our country… nah – it’s a local problem.

I just don’t buy that position.

I love the Constitution of our nation.  I believe it is one of the most innovative and excellent document crafted on government.  I even believe that is was divinely inspired.  However, I do not believe the Founders intended to form a set-it-and-forget-it republic.  I do not believe the Constitution should be the beginning and end of every discussion on government.

See, we started with a smallish national government.  It was that way for a long time.  Then we had this little thing called The Civil War.  When a Abraham Lincoln (a republican) indefatigably insisted that this country would stand united, even if it took shedding hundreds of thousands of our own American lives, our government changed in a way that we can only look back now and fully understand and appreciate.  The idea that the Federal government could (and did) forcibly prevent secession changed the Federal government forever and started at least a hundred year period of expansion of the powers and promises of our Federal government.  Two World Wars and a Cold War further fueled that federal expansion.

That is why I don’t believe the Constitution can be the end of all political discussion.  We simply don’t live in the country (or world) that the Founders left us.  Things have changed significantly, and our society has learned and evolved over time.

We should still have discussions over small government/large government.  Jefferson/Madison and Adams/Hamilton were the first to have these long, drawn out disputes over the role of federal vs state governments.  Both philosophies made significant contributions to the character of the early Republic.  It’s healthy to ask whether we are doing the right thing almost every time we embark to do something, however, putting people in office who want to categorically reject the past 200 years of governmental evolution to strictly adhere to a document that ignored women and counted some human beings as 3/5 of a person based on their race and social standing is a bad idea.  We need thoughtful, courageous people in our chambers of government who can live in the present reality of government and can work with each other to craft moderate, innovative solutions to our national problems, while maintaining the balance of powers and individual rights embedded in our constitution and its amendments.

Sometimes those solutions might be to do nothing.  And that’s OK with me, too.

But for systemic, national problems, we can’t allow our federal government to hide behind libertarian dogma.  If a problem is being faced by our nation as a whole, it is best to use our national government to solve it.

We can clearly see what happens when a state takes on a national issue with Arizona’s new immigration law.  While I encourage and appreciate their commitment to the rule of law (and the enforcement of that law) they should realize that they are only creating problems for other border states.  Keeping illegal immigrants out of their state only exacerbates the problem for California, New Mexico and Texas, while driving existing illegal immigrants northward to other states which were previously much less affected by illegal immigration (and likely ill equipped to handle it).

When a single state acts alone in response to a national issue, all they do is start a game of whack-a-mole.  Similar cases can be drawn around abortion, civil rights, economic and business issues, and more.  But I’ll spare you the incitement.

With the right moving righter and the left moving lefter, all we are doing is increasing the part of Washington we all hate – the bickering, fighting, and partisanship, dooming Congress to constant gridlock and inevitable inaction on every issue that comes to them.  Sending the moderates home who have relationships in Congress and who aren’t afraid to work across the aisle will only worsen the party politics we are all so tired of.

It will be interesting to see how the rest of this year works out.

I can see the possibility where Rand Paul and others who are taking hostages at Republican primaries around the country are setting the conservatives of America up for a big disappointment in the fall.  Sure, they can win a few well-stocked primaries, but can they win a statewide election?  With their mouths running like Paul, the simple answer is no.  No self-respecting state could possibly elect a person with such a head-in-the-sand approach to looking at the current state of our society.

Well, at least maybe a student of all history (not just 18th century history) wouldn’t…

This is how the Tea Party movement began in this country; a group of people got together as way to protest what they felt like was wasteful government spending on bail outs and special deals.  Fun.  Some people even dressed up in little colonial costumes and read from scrolls.  Nice.

The “Tea Party” designation is a throwback to the famous Boston Tea Party where colonists illegally boarded a vessel, tastelessly ‘disguised’ as Native Americans (I don’t know who would ever mistake a bunch of milky white europeans for Native Americans – but whatever…), and dispensed with the British tea that was aboard in protest of the excise taxes that were being charged to goods imported into the colonies.  Not exactly a 1:1 mapping, but I can see the poetically American notion of taking a pleasant thing like an afternoon “Tea Party” and turning it into something violent, loud, crazy, and weird.  What is more American than that?

This makes great theater and a fun story for the nightly news.

But then Fox News had to jump on board.  And Glenn Beck.  And then other people wanted a Tea Party.  Then there were more of them.  Then Fox News manufactured an entire day of Tea Party coverage (made for a real snoozer of a day on a cable news station).

Not surprisingly, serious politicians, the ones in office and the ones running for office, took notice and decided this might be at least a short-term ‘wave’ they can ride in the seriously identity deficient Republican party and the seriously under-heard Libertarian party.  Largely conservative places (like Texas) started a horse race to be the most conservative, most pro-Tea-Party candidate, which led to many gaffes like Governor Perry’s secessionist talk.

But where does the Tea Party go from here?  Even Karl Rove has weighed in on the issue with an op-ed in the WSJ.  He strangely recommended that the Tea Party stay unaffiliated with any of the existing parties.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703444804575071291097797862.html

Why?  Why would Karl write an op-ed asking the Tea Partiers to butt out of his party?  Couldn’t the GOP use some new energy in their base?  Couldn’t they rally around the banner of “stop the wasteful government spending” as a 2010 or 2012 theme, as resonant as “Change” was for 2008?

Well, whatever Rove is thinking, I have my own theory on the Tea Parties.  They annoy me because they are as useless as the Republican minority in Congress.  All they can say is “No.”  The Tea Party has no solutions.  They aren’t proposing a better way that we could recover from the recession.  They aren’t proposing a better way to unwind the mess caused by the financial collapse.  They aren’t supporting new financial reform or regulation.  They aren’t paving a way forward.  They are just sitting on the corner, whining and complaining.

Recently, in our marriage, I’ve been teasing A2 that she is becoming the “Party of No.”  This began sometime around our anniversary when we saw Alice in Wonderland and cracked up over the Red Queen’s oft-repeated slogan “Off with his head.”

Now, whenever I make a disagreeable suggestion to my wife, it’s met with a quick, sharp “No” followed with a resounding “Off with your head!”

It’s hard living with such a lady… but someone patient and loving has to do it.

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power utility regulated by the US Department of Energy (DOE).  I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility.  After that, I turned on the TV to one of the federal communications commission (FCC) regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) .  I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation (DOT), possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and of a quantity regulated and certified by the State Bureau of Weights and Measures, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve.  On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service (USPS) and drop the kids off at the public school .

After work I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to a house which has not burned down in my absence because of state and local building codes and fire marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet, which was developed by the defense advanced research projects administration and post on freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.