What made Santorum want to throw up?

Former Senator (and now Presidential candidate) Rick Santorum said that, when he read John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech on religion and politics, he wanted to "throw up." When asked about that comment by ABC's George Stephanopolous, Santorum said, "[T]o say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up."

Of course, you can read Kennedy's speech for yourself, and you'll see that he says nothing about denying people of faith any role in public affairs. He specifically says that people of all faiths should be able to participate in politics:

I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

That hardly seems like something that would cause someone to throw up.

So what so offended Santorum?

I think it was this later section:

Whatever issue may come before me as president — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject — I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

But if the time should ever come — and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible — when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.

That is what made Santorum want to throw up.

The goal of Kennedy's speech was to assure the public in general, and Protestants in particular, that as President he would not try to impose the teachings of the Catholic Church on Americans. And the paragraphs quoted above are the most forceful expression of that goal.

And that is what Santorum disagrees with. Santorum has very strong opinions on birth control and abortion and divorce, and Santorum believes that his views on birth control and abortion and just about everything else are superior to all other views. If elected President, it would be not just his right, but his duty to impose those views on all other Americans.

Which makes me want to throw up.

Gingrich's Appeal

Newt Gingrich appeals to many Republican voters because of Gingrich's obvious disdain for Democrats.

Unfortunately, voters soon realize that he as a great deal of disdain for Republicans also.

Which explains why his poll numbers keep going up down.

The Bain Identity

Mitt Romney has been criticized from both left and right as a "flip-flopper." Someone who will say whatever needs to be said in order to move ahead politically. He will say whatever he needs to say in order to get nominated, then say what he needs to say to get elected, and then say what he needs to say to govern. All without any real commitment or sincere belief.

When he ran for governor of Massachusetts, he ran as a moderate and he governed as a moderate, and now that he's running for president in a conservative Republican field he's running as a conservative. In the general election, running against Obama, he'll portray himself as a moderate, and who knows how he would govern?

What doesn't seem to have gotten much press is that Romney ran Bain Capital the same way.

According to this piece in the Washington Post, written by an investment banker who often dealt with Bain Capital while Romney was in charge, Bain Capital had a nasty habit of doing what might be called a "bait and switch." In a private offering, the firm that makes the highest initial bid gets favored position to negotiate the final deal. Bain would make the high bid, eliminate the competition, and then use its favored position to negotiate the price down below its original bid. Some renegotiation is normal when new conditions are discovered on "due diligence" (closer scrutiny), but Bain negotiated downward too often and too flagrantly.

In other words, Bain would say what it needed to say in order to get a favorable negotiating position, and then change its price once it had the position it wanted and the other side was at a disadvantage.

This is what some people would call "gaming the system," and what other people would call "dishonest."

If this description of Bain Capital is correct, then "flip-flopping" is not a fluke of Romney's political career. It is a fundamental character flaw of the man. He lacks integrity.

Romney v. Santorum

Following the results of the Iowa caucuses, the primary matchup for the Republican nomination seems to be between:

1. A candidate who strapped the family dog in a crate to the roof of the car in order to drive from Massachusetts to Canada.

And:

2. A candidate who took the body of a stillborn baby home from the hospital to show his other children.

So it goes.

What was Santorum Thinking?

In Thursday's Republican presidential debate, former Senator Rick Santorum was asked whether as President he would make any changes to the military that would undermine the recent repeal of Don't Ask-Don't Tell.

Santorum responded by saying "Yeah, I -- I would say, any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military."

What?

Did he think that, before the repeal of DADT, the military was chaste?

And then he went on to say: "And the fact that they're making a point to include it as a provision within the military that we are going to recognize a group of people and give them a special privilege to -- to -- and removing 'don't ask/don't tell' I think tries to inject social policy into the military."

Does he think that the repeal of DADT gives gay and lesbian soldiers a special privilege to engage in sex at times or in places not permitted to heterosexual soldiers?

So what was he thinking?

He seems to have a perspective that 180 degrees opposite from the majority of American people who believe that the repeal of DADT will remove social policy from the military.

Taxing the Wealthy

President Obama's proposal to impose higher taxes on those earning more than $1 million each year (which would certainly qualify as "wealthy" by anyone's definition) in order to insure that the wealthy pay at least the same rate of tax as middle income Americans, has produced the usual claims that higher taxes on the wealthy will hurt economic growth.

Claims which are absolute nonsense (to put it politely).

Economic growth generally comes from increasing demand for goods and services, and demand comes from four areas:

1. Domestic consumer spending (including housing);
2. Investments by businesses in plant and equipment;
3. Exports (i.e., sales to other countries); and
4. Government spending on goods and services.

Increasing taxes on the wealthy would have no effect on exports, and would allow more spending by the government (which is expansionary), so increasing taxes on high-income Americans would reduce only the first and second types of demand, if its going to reduce anything.

Almost by definition, wealthy people earn more than they spend on themselves. Someone who earns $1 million each year is not going to be spending that $1 million, but is going to be saving or reinvesting most of it. So increasing taxes on the wealthy is not going to reduce consumer spending.

Increasing taxes on the wealthy might affect business investments, because wealthy people who invest in stocks and corporate bonds help those businesses raise capital for investments in new plant and equipment. But that's not what's happening right now.

• Because demand is down, businesses currently have excess capacity, meaning that they have plants and equipment that they are not using to full capacity and have no need to invest in more.
• As a result, businesses are currently holding hundreds of billions of dollars of uninvested cash.
• Because businesses don't need cash to invest and aren't looking for capital or loans, investors are putting their money into federal securities, which is driving interest rates on federal securities down to record lows. (At the August 31 auction of inflation-protected bonds, four-year bonds actually sold at a negative yield, meaning that investors were willing to pay the United States to hold their money for them as long as they got back money with the same value.)
  

What that means is that, if you let a wealthy person keep more of their income, they are going to take that money and buy more government securities and not invest the money in the economy.

Right now, the best way to expand the economy is through increased government spending that will put more money in the hands of consumers, and that means tax breaks for middle-income taxpayer and more government spending on construction, which provides more employment.

Which is what President Obama is proposing.

God's Wrath

Every time a major storm hits a major city (e.g., Katrina and New Orleans or Irene and New York), someone, somewhere, says that God is punishing that city because of its acceptance (or tolerance) of homosexuality.

But isn't the opposite claim just as easy to make?

Isn't it possible that the extended and extreme drought in Texas is God punishing Texas being hostile to homosexuals?