Ted Cruz, an actual senator who is actually running for president, says gay people are launching a “jihad” by “going after people of faith who respect the Biblical teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman.”

I try to keep an eye on what the conservative fringe is doing, and I’ve been noticing a certain troubling escalation in the Republican vocabulary lately. They are now openly and repeatedly using terms of war, of terrorism, to describe gay marriage. Right Wing Watch, who posted the above video, also posted audio from a radio show hosted by Family Research Council’s Craig James. In the recording, a caller asks James if it’s possible that the Pentagon fired a “gay bomb” on America to make us more gay. “Just a thought,” the caller said. I guess you can’t argue with that!

You  might want to dismiss this as laughing at a few stupid Teabaggers, but it’s not that simple. Language matters. Words leave impressions. And if a bunch of people who the media tells us to take seriously start saying that Adam and Steve are terrorists who want to blow up innocent Americans, it’s well within the realm of possibility that some heavily armed loner somewhere might decide to bring the fight to the “terrorists.” The drums of war are not a toy.

Cruz’s platform as senator legitimizes him, endowing upon him a certain responsibility. The fact that he’s shirking his responsibility in such a flagrant way ought to be an actionable offense. You can have your petty little arguments about what your God does and does not believe. That’s your right as an American. But when you’re a public figure and you start accusing innocent Americans of terrorist actions, I believe you’re shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. This video very could well come back to haunt Ted Cruz one day.

UPDATE 12:40 PM: And just a few minutes ago, Bobby Jindal called the backlash against Indiana and Arkansas an “attack on our Constitution.” Tell me this kind of language isn’t spinning out of control.

Tomorrow, as the Washington Post‘s Colby Itkowitz reports, Rand Paul fans will celebrate their dear leader’s presidential announcement by hosting karaoke fundraiser parties in almost every state in the union. You can find a list of every Stand with Rand #LibertyKaraoke event on this Eventbrite page. The Seattle Stand with Rand #LibertyKaraoke will take place at Capitol Hill’s wondrous Rock Box karaoke bar tomorrow night at 6 pm. As someone on the event’s Facebook page writes, “JUST OVER 24 HOURS UNTIL LIBERTY BOOMS!!!”

What should you sing at #LibertyKaraoke parties? Organizer Matt Hurtt explained to Itkowitz:

There’s no official liberty song list, though Hurtt’s personal favorite is Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” He often changes the lyrics in one stanza to: “The phone’s wiretapped anyway, Maggie says that many say/ They must bust in early May, orders from the NSA.”

The parties are intended to dispel the stereotype that political fundraisers are for “stuffy old people” at hundreds of dollars a pop, he said.

Uh. Okay. But what songs should organizers sing to identify Rand Paul’s anti-choice beliefs? Maybe “The Lady Is a Tramp?” Which song would best exemplify Paul’s anti-gay-marriage stance? Probably “Going to the Chapel,” only with the whole room joyfully shouting “NOT” before every line of the chorus. Obviously, someone should sing that old John McCain classic “Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran” to symbolize Paul’s belief that we need to increase military spending and go to war all over the Middle East. What a fun time #LibertyKaraoke will be for the handful of delusional white men who show up! I bet a stirring conversation about 9/11 Truth will break out at the Rock Box tomorrow night, too. They’ll for sure get to the bottom of the mysteries of Building 7 with all that brain power in one room!

See, the problem is that Rand Paul is trying to run his campaign as though he’s got a shot with the cool libertarian-leaning tech-minded youth vote, but that train left the station a long time ago. Paul has cozied up to the neocon right over the last few months, and in so doing, he’s distanced himself from the libertarian civil liberty platform that won him youthful attention in the first place. These karaoke parties are about as fanciful (and effectual) as the Ron Paul blimp.

So right now the Senate is in the middle of budget amendment voting, which is a super-strange marathon of stultifying C-SPAN boredom and wacko political theater. But the thing about these amendment votes that they help define the political aims of senators. They tell us who these politicians are.

The good news is that our own Senator Patty Murray proposed a paid family leave amendment. David Weigel at Bloomberg says:

Titled the Deficit-Neutral Reserve Fund for Legislation to Allow Americans to Earn Paid Sick Time, Murray’s amendment would devote funds “relating to efforts to improve workplace benefits and reduce health care costs, which may include measures to allow Americans to earn paid sick time to address their own health needs and the health needs of their families, and to promote equal employment opportunities.”

Sounds totally reasonable, doesn’t it? And in fact, the amendment enjoyed a solid base of support, from every Democrat and a kinda-astonishing 16 Republicans. The only people to vote against it were hardline Republicans from red states and every Republican in the Senate who’s considering a run for president: Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul.

I guess the vote from Senator Paul kind of makes sense, because he’s known for his hardline libertarian values: cut government spending, promote small government, that sort of thing. Except according to Alexander Bolton at The Hill, Paul proposed an amendment that would add $76 billion to the already-staggering proposed military budget of $620 billion. In fact, Bolton says, “Paul wants to increase defense spending over the next two years by $190 billion.”

Rand Paul: World’s Worst Libertarian™? Or just a craven politician desperate for those blood-thirsty Republican primary votes? Are any of Ron Paul’s ReLOVEutionaries still fooled by Rand Paul? Do they think he’s playing at being a hawk?

I guess Paul believes he can claim he’s still for small government because his amendment guts a bunch of small government programs to pay for the biggest government program of them all. As Bolton writes, “Paul would offset the cost of the funding increase by cutting foreign aid, science and technology funding, natural resources and environment funding and education, training, employment and social services funding.”

Science and technology are frequent Republican targets, but that foreign aid cut is the most baffling of them all. Paul believes that cutting aid to our allies and increasing money for defense demonstrates a meaningful understanding of foreign policy. The sad thing is, he’s probably won some new fans and allies with his irresponsible voting today.

At my new job, I’ve been reading a lot about economics. Along with a bunch of articles and white papers, I’m working my way through Beinhocker’s (very readable) The Origin of Wealth, and after that I’ll finally tackle Piketty’s Capital, which I have only up ’til now experienced through the lens that is Charles Mudede’s genius.

Learning about economics, it turns out, is great fun. Most of the modern texts are entertaining as hell, the concepts are fairly easy to grasp, and economics influences and is influenced by everything on the planet, so it gives you a new framework with which to perceive the world.

Maybe the most surprising fact about this deep dive is that the stuff I’m learning delivers a positive message. Unlike the vicious world presented by Ayn Rand and her legions of acolytes, the economics I’ve been reading about is inclusive: if businesses pay their workers more money, for example, the workers will spend more money, thus growing the economy for everyone. If you don’t just focus your growth on a tiny portion of the economy—like, oh, the 1 percent, for example—the money circulates outward and upward and downward. If everyone does better, it’s better for everyone. See? Positive!

Today, the New York Times published a piece by Adam Davidson titled “Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant.” It looks at immigration from an economic perspective, and it’s packed with good news: Davidson writes, “the economic benefits of immigration may be the most ­settled fact in economics.” But what about the conservative notion that immigrants are taking our jobs?

The chief logical mistake we make is something called the Lump of Labor Fallacy: the erroneous notion that there is only so much work to be done and that no one can get a job without taking one from someone else.

What’s the problem with this fallacy? Well, it’s, uh, false:

Immigrants don’t just increase the supply of labor, though; they simultaneously increase demand for it, using the wages they earn to rent apartments, eat food, get haircuts, buy cellphones. That means there are more jobs building apartments, selling food, giving haircuts and dispatching the trucks that move those phones.

The more people in the workforce, the bigger the workforce needs to be. So not only is the Republican fear-mongering against immigrants racist and hateful—it’s economically unsound, too. Go read the whole story.

As you’ve undoubtedly heard, Ted Cruz has announced his bid to become the Rick Santorum of the 2016 Republican presidential campaign. As 538’s Harry Enten wrote this morning, Cruz is not a serious presidential candidate. He doesn’t have access to money, his platform is way too conservative for the American public, and he has a serious lying problem.

Just watch the speech he gave to announce his candidacy at the top of this post. Cruz framed his announcement like a Bizarro World version of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” in which he proposed his vision for America: no gay marriage, no Affordable Care Act, a foreign policy so aggressive that it would leave the entire Middle East a charred cinder within two weeks of his inauguration. He’s a Teabagger Homunculus, a staggering wad of conservative rage. Only two groups of people take Cruz seriously: the shrinking elderly army of right-wing ragebabies who made up the Tea Party, and the media.

So we’ll see a lot of Cruz for the next year or so, because he and his followers say crazy stuff and the media loves to report crazy stuff, but he’ll be gone by spring of 2016. He’ll probably beat Santorum. He might even do well in the small pockets of the country that reward apocalyptic rhetoric, like Iowa and South Carolina. But he’ll soon disappear from the stage, leaving an uncountable array of think pieces in his wake.

On some level, Cruz has to understand he’s unelectable. So why is he running? It’s not as though Santorum or Gingrich managed to parlay their once-a-frontrunner statuses into positions of leadership in the party. Perhaps Cruz plans on running for governor of Texas someday? Does he think his position as King of the Teabaggers is at risk, somehow? The scariest option is that Cruz is a True Believer, someone who entertains the frightening prospect that the majority of America is just as xenophobic and hateful as him. It isn’t, of course, but what does it say about us that this man is an actual United States Senator? Maybe Ted Cruz’ nightmare fantasy world isn’t as far from reality as we’d like to believe.

Spring has sprung, birds are singing, and Republican presidential candidates are slinging bullshit all over Iowa and New Hampshire. Here’s an incomplete list of some of the dumbest things that have been said over the last three days or so:

Mike Huckabee: The perennial presidential candidate does not use the diabetes snake oil  “miracle cure” that he’s paid to shill, reports the New York Times. This man is about as unserious as they come, but for some reason he’s treated like a real live human being wherever he goes. How is that?

Scott Walker: The Little Governor That Could got caught spinning a King Arthur-like fable about himself. Walker told a story in which Reagan’s family bible basically flew into his hands, as though he was the chosen successor to Reagan. The curator of the Reagan Library politely begged to differ with Walker’s fabulist take.

Ted Cruz: Speaking in New Hampshire this weekend, Ted Cruz’s toddler-like grasp of politics managed to terrify an actual toddler (starting at 0:34 in the below video):

Cruz’s response to the child makes absolutely no sense. He tells her that her world specifically is on fire, but then he says Republicans will make it “even better.” Even better than totally on fire? Does that mean burned to a cinder or not on fire anymore?

Rand Paul: The youngest living Ron Paul clone did some brand maintenance this weekend . He’s supposed to be the hippest presidential candidate in the game, so he made multiple appearances at Austin’s insufferably hip South By Southwest festival. And, in case you’re not already in awe of Paul’s hipness, he also held a live Twitter Q&A with his adoring public, using the hashtag #RANDSXSW. Here’s one exchange:

#RANDSXSW what is your opinion on the FCC’s new net neutrality regulations? @SenRandPaul

— breunden (@breunden) March 14, 2015

.@breunden do we want “postal neutrality?” Where you can’t get overnight mail? #sxsw #randsxsw — Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) March 15, 2015

Okay, this analogy makes even less sense than Ted Cruz’s attempt to soothe a child by invoking the apocalypse. Using Paul’s own logic, wealthy people would be able to ensure that their packages arrive sooner than yours. Delivery companies would be able to hold your packages ransom until you agreed to pay a last-second delivery fee. The internet is and has always been a utility. If Paul could make an analogy using electricity, I might be willing to listen to him. But he can’t, so he’s going to tie the internet to that classic Republican target, the United States Postal Service. A whole lot of people will buy this dumb analogy on its surface, which is precisely why it’s so dangerous.

Bonus Rand Paul Round: Paul also claimed that he signed the traitorous letter to Iran because he wanted President Obama “to negotiate from a position of strength.” Uh-huh. Meanwhile, Deroy Murdock at National Review‘s Corner blog says nobody should be upset about that Iran letter because it wasn’t actually sent anywhere. It was just published on the internet where anyone can read and re-post it. Or does Iran already suffer from the socialist plague of postal neutrality? No wonder Senator Paul signed the letter!

Jeb Bush: The presumptive next Republican presidential candidate made his first royal tour of New Hampshire over the weekend, and the media loves him, presumably because Bush is granting them access. The press is swooning over Bush, calling him an “anti-Romney” and a “centrist.” Never mind the fact that Bush, who supposedly really cares about income inequality at the moment, claims that he sees “no need for a national increase in the minimum wage,” which should be the first step of any real plan to combat income inequality. Bush is totally a centrist man of the people, because he acts all chummy with the reporters who are assigned to his campaign. He’s the anti-Romney, okay? He just is. Shut up.

If you are at all superstitious, this New York Times story by Nicholas Confessore, Jonathan Martin, and Maggie Haberman about the inevitability of Hillary Clinton ought to be triggering serious alarm bells for you. Get a load of this paragraph:

“Anytime you have all your eggs in one basket, it is a concern,” said Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware, acknowledging the risk Democrats were running by deferring to Mrs. Clinton. “Although if you’re going to have them all in one, this basket is a good place to be.”

Talk about tempting fate! I’m an atheist, but just reading this quote makes me want to throw salt over my left shoulder while making the sign of the cross and bellowing the word “JINX” 137 times, because everyone knows that if you say “jinx” an even number of times it doesn’t work due to the law of double negatives. My mind is reeling with other things Governor Markell could have said:

“Anytime you try to kill the golden goose in hopes of figuring out how it makes the golden eggs, it is a concern,” said Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware, acknowledging the risk Democrats were running by relying on Democratic voting demographics to turn out in 2016 for a candidate who will go through essentially no serious primary challenge. “Although if you’re going to murder your golden goose, this one certainly seems to be asking for it!”

“Anytime you try to count your chickens before they hatch, it is a concern,” said Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware, acknowledging the risk Democrats were running by deferring to Mrs. Clinton. “Although if you’re going to count them before they hatch, these eggs sure do look awfully healthy, don’t they?”

“Anytime you ask what could possibly go wrong, it is a concern,” said Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware, acknowledging the risk Democrats were running by deferring to Mrs. Clinton. “Although, to be frank, what could possibly go wrong with a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign?”

Look. I think Hillary Clinton could be a very strong candidate. I don’t believe this e-mail imbroglio is really going to amount to much in the eyes of the general public, the same way Benghazi and Whitewater only matter to the conservative fringe. And as much as Republicans love to hate her, I believe Clinton would enjoy a tremendous groundswell of support among independents and even centrist Republicans in comparison to the unfettered (racist) vitriol that Obama has had to deal with.

But if we’re seriously looking at a race between Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, I think this is a sign that the Democratic Party could be in for some lean years ahead. Where are our options? Why aren’t any young up-and-comers willing to give this a shot? Are they afraid of retribution from the Clintons? Is everybody just willing to sit this cycle out and politely wait their turn? This isn’t elementary school. It’s real life, and in real life, the unexpected happens. This is the reason why we have cliches about eggs in baskets and counting eggs and golden geese. For the sake of the party, will no young Democrat heed these very important pieces of bird-related advice?

 

Hello! My name is Paul Constant and I am currently the lowest possible form of life in the 21st century: a “content creator” without a “platform.” My old/new coworker Goldy was kind enough to loan me the keys to this blog (Horse Sass? Fun name! Is this blog about bronies?) until Nicktopia launches its own internet clubhouse. Thank you in advance for putting up with me.

So. Jeb Bush. A compassionate conservative. Or rather, I mean, a man who’s passionate about transforming America into a kinder, gentler nation. No, wait. What’s his schtick? I’m a little rusty at this…oh, yeah! He’s all about the Right to Rise. And what does that mean, again? It means Jeb Bush really wants us to know that he cares about income inequality. Because he’s supposedly the smart Bush, you see, and he knows that income inequality will be a defining factor in the 2016 presidential elections. Of course, all of the ideas Bush has floated as the solution to income inequality so far have been the same old Republican tropes wrapped up in a shiny new package. Could anyone seriously believe that cutting corporate regulations will somehow provide poor people with higher wages? Does even Jeb Bush believe this bullshit? It’s doubtful.

But this is pretty standard Republican boilerplate. Since Ronald Reagan first bestowed trickle down economics upon an unwitting nation, Republicans have been contorting the same three ideas—fuck you, pay me, and fuck those other guys, too—into an endless variation of gimmicks that always result in “less government, more business.” The vexing thing about trickle down economics as an idea is that it’s proven to be very flexible. Consider the fact that “job creators” became a major issue in the 2012 election. That’s just trickle down economics, repackaged into a Romney-friendly phrase. “You didn’t build that” as a Republican National Convention theme? That’s trickle down. So Bush’s goal this time around is to somehow repackage trickle down into a theory that supposedly fixes income inequality. It’s going to be tough going.

So yesterday, Politico‘s Jennifer Haberkorn published a piece recounting Jeb Bush’s thoughts on the Affordable Care Act. Unsurprisingly, Bush calls Obamacare a “monstrosity.” This is not a surprise; Republicans have been beating their thesauri into coughing up synonyms for “Nazism” ever since the Affordable Care Act was first proposed. But the next thing Jeb Bush says–remember, he’s supposedly the smart one in his family–is un-fucking-believable. Get a load of this:

“The effort by the state, by the government, ought to be to try to create catastrophic coverage, where there is relief for families in our country, where if you have a hardship that goes way beyond your means of paying for it, the government is there or an entity is there to help you deal with that,” Bush said in Iowa last weekend. “The rest of it ought to be shifted back where individuals are empowered to make more decisions themselves.”

Whu-huh? Excuse me? There’s so much to unpack in this statement that I’m not even sure where to begin. First of all, I guess, let’s be clear that catastrophic coverage for the poor is exactly the health care system we had before Obamacare passed. Health care for poor people meant that they only went to the emergency room when they absolutely had to, when their health became a matter of life and death, and then they had to skip out on the bills because they couldn’t afford them. This made everyone’s bills higher. So to formalize catastrophic care into the standard health care for America’s poorest citizens would mean we’d be denying a huge percentage of the population access to preventative care, to basic check-ups, to screenings and vaccinations and all the medical care that every single American should be allowed to enjoy.

Secondly, it sounds to me that in the above quote, Bush is suggesting that we ought to adopt some sort of single-payer catastrophic health care plan, which is in some ways an even more liberal concept than Obamacare. If we establish a safety net of catastrophic coverage for every American citizen—albeit a safety net that hangs about two feet above an unforgiving concrete floor—does that mean we’ll have catastrophic death panels to determine when to cut coverage off? Will there be a catastrophic tax to pay for the catastrophic coverage? What’s to stop some future Democratic president from upgrading catastrophic single-payer coverage into Canadian-style single-payer coverage? Did Bush think this idea through at all?

The questions keep hurtling into my head faster than I can process them. Does Bush think he’ll actually be able to sell this idea—and it’s frankly charitable to even call it an “idea”—to the American voting public? Can trickle down survive this adaptation into the medical arena? Is America ready for a health care system as horrifically imbalanced in favor of the wealthy as our economic system is? Does Bush really expect poor people to swallow this? Is his message of hope for the poor people of America really going to be “you’re only allowed to visit a doctor on the single worst day of your life?”