IT WOULD BE GREAT IF KANSAS WAS A REAL LESSON

But I fear trickle-down economics will always live in the hearts of most conservatives:

To Fill Budget Hole, Kansas G.O.P. Considers the Unthinkable: Raising Taxes

By JOHN ELIGONMAY 29, 2015
NY Times

TOPEKA, Kan. — With the state facing a $400 million budget hole for the coming fiscal year, the conservatives who dominate the Legislature here say they are agonizing over the likelihood of doing something that did not seem to be in their DNA: raising taxes.

“I have to talk to myself about it before I reach that step,” said Senator Les Donovan, a Republican who is chairman of the Senate’s tax committee. “I’m not in favor of raising taxes. I’d much rather be able to see growth take care of what we do.”

Mr. Donovan said the results of the tax law were “never as good as we hoped.”

“We hoped they would just be a magic lantern and everybody would react to it,” he said. “But, eh, it’s hard to get a company to uproot their business when they’re established and move to another place just because of this difference in tax policy.”

BECAUSE OF THE HASTERT SCANDAL, I JUST HAVE TO RE-POST THIS

If I understand the history correctly…

By Orin Kerr May 29 at 7:57 PM
WaPo

If I understand the history correctly, in the late 1990s, the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair, who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair, which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy.

FINES DON'T WORK AGAINST BANKSTERS

We need to put 300 to 400 behind bars, each for at least 20 years.  Of course, maybe a handful of beheadings would get the point across just as well.

From The Economist:

HASTERT == HOMOSEXUAL OR PEDOPHILE?

I can't tell which based on the new facts.

Dennis Hastert Allegedly Engaged in Sexual Misconduct With Male Individual During Time as Teacher, Sources Say
By JOHN PARKINSON, ARLETTE SAENZ, JOSH MARGOLIN and MIKE LEVINE
ABC News

The alleged "misconduct" referenced in the indictment of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert is of a sexual nature involving a male individual, dating back to Hastert's time as a high school wrestling coach and history teacher in Yorkville, Illinois, sources with knowledge of the case told ABC News.

UPDATE: As usual with closeted conservatives, Hasterr voted against gay rights (h/t The Raw Story) -

As a federal legislator, Hastert voted regularly against bills to empower gay people. In Congress from 1997 to 2007, Hastert voted for the so-called “Marriage Protection Act,” and in favor of a constitutional amendment to “establish that marriage shall consist of one man and one woman.” The year he stepped down, Hastert voted no on the “Employment Non-Discrimination Act,” a bill to prohibit companies from discriminating against employees “on the basis of sexual orientation.”

NEWS REPORTER ALERT!!!

Benghazi is NOT a scandal but the Hastert story is a real current scandal and was preceded by other bad behavior. Please try to learn the difference.

SANTORUM AS A POPULIST?

I recently heard a reporter state that Rick Santorum has a populist following among GOP primary voters and I thought that was exaggerated but I guess Ricky has been trying to portray himself as a sort of conservative version of Bernie Sanders:

--A SANTORUM AIDE TELLS THE NOTE: "The focus on the Senator's remarks tonight will be about the need to fight for the American worker that has been left behind by big government, big business, and both political parties. He will also be contrasting his record with that of Secretary Clinton throughout his remarks. He'll be giving his speech from a factory floor just 10 miles from where he grew up and at a company -- Penn United Technologies -- that he visited when he first ran for the Senate in 1994. At that time, they had just one building, today they have a 100 acre campus with 600 employees. They epitomize the type of manufacturing renaissance Sen. Santorum talks about."

This pivot by Santorum makes about as much sense as trying to square the circle.
UPDATE: Media Matters also notes this farce.

DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY

GOP presidential candidates like Mitten$ and Fiorina don't know much about Chinese history (see here & here) so they make false claims about the Chinese people.

HOW DO YOU FUCK THIS UP?

Despite the MASSIVE media coverage of Benghazi, Rand Paul and/or his ghost writer fucked it up:

Publisher To Correct Error In Rand Paul's Book On Number Of Deaths In Benghazi
By Daniel Strauss
Published May 26, 2015, 6:50 PM EDT
Talking Points Memo

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) erroneously wrote in his book, Taking a Stand: Moving Beyond Partisan Politics to United America, that six Americans died in the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attacks. The actual number of deaths was four, and his publisher now says it will correct the error in subsequent printings.

ANOTHER HARMFUL CLICHE

I've been coming across this phrase for over a decade - "The U.S. has the most powerful military in the history of the world" - and I think it's certainly false if we look at the results in Afghanistan and Iraq and worse than that, props up the hawks who always seems to be promoting using our military much more often.