Santorum also had a tense moment when a student asked him about health care and the Christian responsibility of caring for the poor.

The student said he didn’t “think God appreciates the fact that we have 50 to 100,000 uninsured Americans dying due to a lack of healthcare every year,” citing a 2009 study out of Harvard University.

“Dying?” Santorum answered before going back and forth about the validity of the study.

“The answer is not what can we do to prevent deaths because of a lack of health insurance. There’s — I reject that number completely, that people die in America because of lack of health insurance,” Santorum said to a crowd of 100.

So he thinks it’s a good idea to campaign on the willingness to bomb Iran when the head of the Mossad thinks that’s a bad idea, he thinks contraception is immoral, and now he says people don’t die from not having health insurance.

Honestly, republicans, you should be seriously ashamed of what you’ve put forth as candidates this cycle. It’s ridiculous. This will be looked at in the future as nothing less than comedy.

It’s perfectly rational and reasonable for progressives to decide that the evils of their candidate are outweighed by the evils of the GOP candidate, whether Ron Paul or anyone else. An honest line of reasoning in this regard would go as follows:

Yes, I’m willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America’s minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) in exchange for less severe cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, the preservation of the Education and Energy Departments, more stringent environmental regulations, broader health care coverage, defense of reproductive rights for women, stronger enforcement of civil rights for America’s minorities, a President with no associations with racist views in a newsletter, and a more progressive Supreme Court.

Without my adopting it, that is at least an honest, candid, and rational way to defend one’s choice. It is the classic lesser-of-two-evils rationale, the key being that it explicitly recognizes that both sides are “evil”: meaning it is not a Good v. Evil contest but a More Evil v. Less Evil contest. But that is not the discussion that takes place because few progressives want to acknowledge that the candidate they are supporting — again — is someone who will continue to do these evil things with their blessing. Instead, we hear only a dishonest one-sided argument that emphasizes Paul’s evils while ignoring Obama’s (progressives frequently ask: how can any progressive consider an anti-choice candidate but don’t ask themselves: how can any progressive support a child-killing, secrecy-obsessed, whistleblower-persecuting Drug Warrior?).

Paul’s candidacy forces those truths about the Democratic Party to be confronted. More important — way more important — is that, as vanden Heuvel pointed out, he forces into the mainstream political discourse vital ideas that are otherwise completely excluded given that they are at odds with the bipartisan consensus.

This is brilliant. If you’re progressive, I beg you to look at the big picture. Look at what Obama is utterly failing at (without apology) compared to how much Ron Paul is completely right about.

Then compare that to what Obama is right about (philosophy) vs. where Ron Paul is absolutely wrong about (Philosophy).

More and more I think it may be time to support Paul again, as a progressive, simply because more net good may result. I honestly don’t know at this point.

The one thing I do know is that we as progressives need to read and re-read this piece and maintain active thought on this issue. Don’t stop thinking and adopt the easy position of, “He’s x or y so I won’t support him.”

We pride ourselves on being open-minded yet we’re not giving Paul enough credit. Want an example? Here’s Paul talking about war:

If you came away from this not knowing where I stand on this, I’m glad, because I don’t either. And we should be ok with that. Complex issues require complex thought, and we should be more comfortable with being unsure of ourselves when considering such things.

The first result when googling ‘Santorum’ is the hilarious outcome of angering a gay person with tech skills.

— Daniel Miessler (@DanielMiessler) January 3, 2012

Comical. Like Santorum.

It’s perfectly rational and reasonable for progressives to decide that the evils of their candidate are outweighed by the evils of the GOP candidate, whether Ron Paul or anyone else. An honest line of reasoning in this regard would go as follows:

Yes, I’m willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America’s minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) in exchange for less severe cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, the preservation of the Education and Energy Departments, more stringent environmental regulations, broader health care coverage, defense of reproductive rights for women, stronger enforcement of civil rights for America’s minorities, a President with no associations with racist views in a newsletter, and a more progressive Supreme Court.

Without my adopting it, that is at least an honest, candid, and rational way to defend one’s choice. It is the classic lesser-of-two-evils rationale, the key being that it explicitly recognizes that both sides are “evil”: meaning it is not a Good v. Evil contest but a More Evil v. Less Evil contest. But that is not the discussion that takes place because few progressives want to acknowledge that the candidate they are supporting — again — is someone who will continue to do these evil things with their blessing. Instead, we hear only a dishonest one-sided argument that emphasizes Paul’s evils while ignoring Obama’s (progressives frequently ask: how can any progressive consider an anti-choice candidate but don’t ask themselves: how can any progressive support a child-killing, secrecy-obsessed, whistleblower-persecuting Drug Warrior?).

If you care AT ALL about election 2012, stop what you’re doing and read this essay. It is utterly brilliant.

First, under section 1021(d), the bill does not “limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.” Second, under section 1021(e), the bill may not be construed to affect any “existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.” My Administration strongly supported the inclusion of these limitations in order to make clear beyond doubt that the legislation does nothing more than confirm authorities that the Federal courts have recognized as lawful under the 2001 AUMF. Moreover, I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation. My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law.

Many have heard that Obama has signed the NDAA law. Not many have read his attached comments to the signature. My research on the matter has led me to believe that he was once again outplayed by Republicans and forced to sign something that had a ton of good stuff in it that he basically couldn’t veto.

Here’s a good explanation: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/nxu96/obama_signs_ndaa_with_signing…

And here’s more research: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/nybmn/ive_been_reading_ndaa_hr_1540_and_here_are_the/

Libertarianism, in other words, is infallible. Wherever it fails, it does so because the people weren’t ready for it, or there was too much violence to allow it to work, or because the government wasn’t powerful enough to protect people from harm.

Libertarians fail to realize that there has never been–and never will be–a government that functions according to their principles because it runs entirely contrary to human nature.

As any libertarian understands when it comes to statist authoritarians, power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. When you decentralize and remove the modern welfare state, leaving only essentially a glorified police force in charge to protect private property and personal safety, one of two things happens:

1) The central police force turns into a right-wing military dictatorship invested in stamping out all leftist thinking, then appropriating the country’s wealth for themselves and their friends (e.g., Chile under Pinochet);

or

2) All central authority and protection break down completely as power localizes into the hands of local criminals and feudal/tribal warlords with little compunction about abusing and terrorizing the local population (e.g., feudal France, Afghanistan, Somalia, western Pakistan, etc.) As I said before:

Feudalism is the inevitable historical consequence of the decline of a centralized cosmopolitan state. That’s because the exercise of power by those in a position to wield it does not end with the elimination of federal authority: rather, it simply shifts to those of a more localized, more tyrannical, and less democratically accountable bent.

This is a phenomenal piece on Libertarianism from Daily Kos. I urge my friends who still find Ayn Rand Libertarianism to be appealing to read this in its entirety.

German auto manufacturers like BMW and Volkswagen have, in other words, shown that they can be profitable while their workers make extremely good wages and benefits and have a voice in decisions that affect them. But they’ve also shown that they won’t do it if someone doesn’t make them. That’s why we need laws that level the playing field for American workers—and how we know, despite what Republicans tell us, that those laws won’t tank our economy.

Worth studying.

…in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.