Political Ruminations

Jeb Bush Bashes Republican Presidential Candidates

“I used to be a conservative and I watch these debates and I'm wondering, I don't think I've changed, but it's a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people's fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective and that's kind of where we are.”

- Jeb Bush made the quoted comment referring to the Republican presidential candidates during a Q & A session following a speech Bush gave in Dallas on Thursday.

A fairly ironic comment from Jeb Bush considering that during the years of his brother's administration, Republicans appealed only to fear and emotion. No need for Bush to be so surprised that Republicans have continued the practice.

Adding.......Goddard also notes that Bush said again that he would not run in 2012:

When asked if he might be convinced to run as a consensus candidate, Bush told CBS Dallas/Fort Worth, “Not going to happen.”.

Rick Santorum on LGBT Sex

In an interview with an AP reporter in 2003, Rick Santorum compared consensual and legal gay sex with the illegal acts of bigamy, polygamy, and incest, along with the  act of adultery:

“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”

Quote of the Day: Rep. John Lewis

“I think the scars and stains of racism are deeply embedded in American society. Some of the things that you hear people saying about this president… in religious terms, this president has been called everything but a child of God. And as, and I’ve been around a while -- I have never, ever seen the type of hostility that exists in America; we didn’t have this type of hostility during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.”

- The formidable civil rights icon, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), talks about President Obama and race in response to a question from David Gregory.

Watch:

Romney Attacks Obama on Contraception Issue–But Romneycare Included Similar Coverage of Contraception

Continuing the contraception brouhaha at the Mesa debate last night, Mitt Romney, attacked President Obama on that issue:

“I don't think we've seen in the history of this country the kind of attack on religious conscience, religious freedom, religious tolerance that we've seen under Barack Obama.”

Steve Benen responded this morning:

Think about that one for a moment. The Obama administration is including contraception coverage as part of preventive health care for Americans -- a decision a clear majority of the country heartily supports. The administration is exempting churches and other houses of worship, and has crafted a compromise so that religiously-affiliated employers will not have to pay for contraception coverage directly.

This is the biggest "attack" on religious freedom in the history of the United States? How is it, exactly, that a sane person could believe this?

Or more to the point, how is it that a Mormon, whose church faced actual attacks and discrimination, could see contraception access as a more serious assault on "religious tolerance"?

Of note, RomneyCare in Massachusetts vastly expanded contraception access, a fact which Romney defended last night. His characterization of the RomneyCare contraception coverage could apply just as easily to that provided by the Affordable Care Act which he had the gall to attack. Think Progress:

Under Romneycare, the state’s Commonwealth Care — which offers subsidized, low or no-cost insurance program for low-income residents without access to employer-sponsored health insurance — provides primary and preventive care that includes “family planning services” and prescription contraceptives. Massachusetts employers that are not “a church or qualified church-controlled organization” must also cover hormone replacement therapy and all FDA-approved contraceptive methods.

In 2005, Romney also “signed a bill that could expand the number of people who get family-planning services, including the morning-after pill.” Romney even pressured the state Department of Health and Human Services to issue regulations that required Catholic hospitals to issue the morning after pill to rape victims, despite initially vetoing the bill and claiming that the pill constituted an “abortifacient.” “My personal view in my heart of hearts is that people who are subject to rape should have the option of having emergency contraceptives or emergency contraceptive information,” he told the Boston Herald at the time.

Of one thing I have no doubt whatsoever. Mr. Romney is a most egregious liar.

Morning Quote: Mitt Romney

“While I was fighting to save the Olympics, you were fighting to save the ‘Bridge to Nowhere.”

- Mitt Romney attacks the record of Rick Santorum during the Mesa, Arizona debate last night.

Another Stupid Quote From Rick Santorum

“He's making the world a much more dangerous place as he continues to pull America back and allow those who seek to do harm to freedom, those who seek to oppress -- yes, evil forces around the world.”

- Rick Santorum bashed President Obama today, lamenting, apparently, the end of the two wars, and the drawing down of the American military presence in parts of the world.

Of note, Santorum the hawk has stridently defended the use of torture on our enemies.

Santorum Falsely Accuses the Dutch of Killing off Their Elderly

Santorum made this particular comment on February 5, at the Grace Bible Church in Columbia, Missouri. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family (the Christian organization which was the subject of Jeffrey Sharlet’s book “The Family”) and a Santorum supporter (Dobson endorsed Santorum), moderated the forum. 

Santorum claimed that in the Netherlands, the elderly are euthanized without their consent:

“In the Netherlands people wear a different bracelet if you're elderly and the bracelet is 'do not euthanize me.' Because they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, but half the people who are euthanized every year, and it's 10 percent of all deaths for the Netherlands, half of those people are euthanized involuntarily at hospitals because they are older and sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don't go to the hospital, they go to another country, because they are afraid, because of budget purposes, that they will not come out of that hospital if they go in with sickness.”

As you might imagine, his inaccurate and patently false comments regarding a law regulating end of life procedures in the Netherlands, caused quite an uproar in the Netherlands.

FactCheck.org on the actual facts:

First, let's review the law. The 2001 Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act allows Dutch citizens to end their lives if they are suffering from a medical condition that causes "unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement." There are two end-of-life procedures: euthanasia, where a doctor administers a fatal drug, or assisted suicide, where the doctor prescribes the fatal drug and the patient administers it. The law took effect on April 1, 2002.

According to a publication distributed by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, doctors must be satisfied that the patient's request is "voluntary and well-considered," and that there is "unbearable suffering with no prospect for improvement." The patient's doctor must consult at least one other independent doctor, who is responsible for ensuring the "due care criteria" is met.

After the termination of a patient's life, the death must be reported to the government and reviewed by regional committees composed of, at a minimum, a doctor, ethicist and legal expert.

Now, let's look at Santorum's three claims. We'll begin with a stunning claim that the elderly are so afraid of being euthanized for "budget purposes" that they wear "do not euthanize me" bracelets. We were told by a government official and a representative of a Dutch physicians' association that this is simply not true.

When we contacted the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, public health spokeswoman Inge Freriksen told us that "a bracelet asking not to be euthanized doesn't exist." Patients would only be euthanized after they followed the set of guidelines as outlined above.

Recent GQ Interview of Russ Feingold on President Obama

The interview by GQ of former Wisconsin senator, Russ Feingold (D), is an interesting read, but I have to admit that I found his comments about President Obama to be of most interest:

GQ: Do you think that Obama has been the president he promised to be?
Russ Feingold: The expectations for him were absurd. And they were wrong. They expected him to be something he couldn't possibly be given his level of experience. It was impossible to ask him to be all the things that people poured into him.

GQ: He said he would try to reach across the aisle. "To those whose support I have yet to earn, I will be your president, too" and all that jazz.

Russ Feingold: Yes, he was not being cynical about that. He wanted to do that even more than maybe I would have wanted him to, but the truth is he tried.

GQ: And then he was essentially crucified for it. Too quick to make concessions, too weak—pick your insult.

Russ Feingold: Which is ridiculous. Look, I don't want to use the word 'patriotism' too much, but the right likes to use it all the time. It is not patriotic to decide to destroy a new president who was duly elected by an overwhelming margin. It is un-patriotic to resolve to destroy that presidency. If you care about this country, you help him. Before Obama, we had an opportunity after 9/11 to make a transition as a people to come together and try to figure this thing out and become a part of the world in a way that we never had. But for cynical reasons, both domestically and internationally, the situation was exploited by the Bush administration and others for political gain. And it's left us weaker. So I see these as a couple of chapters in modern history where America has been grossly disserved by people who wanted immediate political gain to the detriment of the country and it endangers our lives and it endangers our economy and if we're going to have this type of system, we're not just going to get downgraded by Moody, and Standard & Poors. We're going to be a dysfunctional country because some people care more about their immediate political and economic interests than they do about the betterment of our whole nation. The American people deserve better. And then you have the interests like the Koch brothers who see this as a golden opportunity to destroy not only this presidency but to destroy unions and to destroy the institutions that have created some balance between the haves and the have-nots in our country. They want to destroy any balance, to go back to the Gilded Age, or something worse.

GQ: Do you think it's that malicious?

Russ Feingold: Yes. Yes. There is something wrong. I don't like to say this but it is malicious, it is intentional, and it is unprecedented.

Morning Quote: Rick Santorum

“Satan has his sights on the United States of America! ”

“Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.”

- Rick Santorum in 2008 talking about how Satan is attacking America. Seriously.

Adding........a padded cell would really make a much more effective cage than the White House.

Via Bob Cesca

Rick Santorum: Contraception is Evil

“ One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country. Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s OK; contraception is OK. It’s not OK. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

- In an interview with a conservative blog in October 2011, Rick Santorum implies that contraception is “evil”.

Morning Quote: Rick Santorum

“ We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christan ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is a shambles, it s gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. ”

- Rick Santorum bashing Protestants in 2008.

Source: ‘Up With Chris Hayes’

Moronic Quote of the Day

“ Defeating Barack Obama becomes, in fact, a duty of national security. Because the fact is, he is incapable of defending the United States.”

- On President’s Day, Newt Gingrich told a crowd of 4,000 at Oral Roberts University that we must defeat President Obama because he won’t keep us safe. Or something like that.

I imagine that Osama Bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki,  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the underwear bomber) and Muammar Gaddafi would have something to say about that, Newt. Just sayin’....

Via Taegan Goddard

Morning Quote: Michele Bachmann

“The Republican Party is extremely pro-woman.”

- During an interview on CNN, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) dismissed the concerns of Democratic lawmakers regarding the all male ‘conversation’ House Republicans had over contraception.

Pathetic.

Morning Quote: Rick Santorum

“Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn’t have this baby, if she kills her child, that that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice. I understand that. As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn’t, it will always be her child. And she will always know that. And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time, I’ve always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can’t think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.”

- The GOP’s far right Evangelical dope, Rick Santorum, calls a pregnancy which occurs because of a rape, “a gift in a very broken way”.

Morning Quote: David Frum

“Whether it is the Ryan plan or the debt ceiling showdown or—now—contraception, Republicans have spent three years talking to themselves. It has been a narcissistic self-indulgence—and may soon prove a very costly one as well.”

- Former George W. Bush speechwriter, David Frum, commenting on the potential consequences of the “hard right turn” taken by Republicans since the 2008 election.