Tea Revere: The Italians Are Coming! (Obamacare warnings missed)

Many Tea Party fans are proud of the organization for warning them against the alleged evils of Obamacare, protecting the USA from the "scary socialism" of required insurance (invented by the Heritage Foundation by the way).

However, they mostly missed the real problem: cancellation of existing plans. This was forecast by healthcare analysts years ago; it's not news. So then why didn't the Tea Party warn everybody of this problem earlier?

Instead, they chose to mostly focus on "death panels" and illegal aliens allegedly getting insurance. (Remember Rep. Joe Wilson's "You Lie!") Sure, the cancellation issue was mentioned from time to time, but it was treated as a second class citizen to the likes of death panels and illegal alien insurance.

The likely reason is because cancellations are more difficult to explain to voters. At the time, they were a future event that involved statistical estimations of insurance company behavior, and not directly part of the bill. While few would likely dispute the forecasts (Obama's own team already provided forecasts), the Tea Party had yet to find a way to squeeze the accusations into catchy sound-bites.

Thus, they cried out about the WRONG PROBLEMS because of political decisions, demonstrating that they play politics as usual; and are not the fresh, honest outsiders they want to project.

Boehner Looks a Bit Redder Than Normal

John Boehner looks a bit redder than normal for some reason lately.

Ransom Note Found

#Zimmernado

Zimmernado - Stand Your Sky

Conservatives Wrongly Blame Obama for Tax Increases

Conservatives have lately been claiming that Obama broke his 2009 promise to not raise taxes on the middle class and below.

The first claim is about the health care law, A.K.A. "Obamacare". Only ONE Supreme Court Justice, Roberts, called it a "tax". The others didn't really address that classification. Many don't consider required insurance a "tax".

Conservatives counter that since Roberts cast the "deciding vote", that it should be classified as a "tax". However, that's almost like making the player that made the final winning shot the MVP of a basketball team regardless of what the other players contributed. "Deciding vote" is not an official category, nor an objective one.

The second claim is about the expiring Social Security (SS) payroll tax cut. The SS tax cut was originally designed as a temporary tax CUT as part of the 2009 stimulus package. It was intended to expire, and that's exactly what happened. I've seen no evidence that the GOP has pushed to reinstate it, by the way, so to say that Obama "owns" the increase is disingenuous. All of DC owns it.

Further, Obama's no-new-middle-class-tax pledge stated "new taxes". The payroll tax that was cut was not new, only the temporary reprieve was new. Thus, it is outside of the pledge. That makes two problems with conservatives' SS tax claim.

And, by some interpretations, his promise was made in the scope and context of the 2009 budget, not "forever and ever".

Good Nutrition

Proof that good nutrition makes you smarter. This dud's for you!

FoxNews.com Menus are Odd

Bush's Paintings are Quite Revealing

Zero Dark Torture

The movie Zero Dark Thirty has reignited the torture debate. Some insiders say that torture such as waterboarding did lead to useful clues about Bin Laden's whereabouts. The jury is still out on that; but even if true, it distracts from a two key points.

First, as commander in chief George Washington forbid torture. We didn't need it during the revolutionary war and all the wars thereafter, so why would we need it now? Is Bin Laden worse than Hitler? Some argue that since our enemies are uncivilized, that we should use uncivilized counter-measures. Two wrongs don't make a right, and this drags us down into their hell hole, which is what they want. It's called "terrorism" for a reason. If they can turn us to be less civilized, they have scored points.

Second, torture is not the most effective way to get information. Interrogation experts have learned to use a combination of rewards and what one might call "mind games" to get information. Rewards may be something like a better cell, better food, or softer bed if useful information is given up. But even for those prisoners immune to the carrot, one finds that most prisoners kept in isolation are quite eager to talk. People are social animals and crave some contact. If the interrogator(s) is reasonably friendly, almost all will eventually carry on a conversation.

As expected, the captives often intentionally lie and give false information when they do talk. However, the nature of their lies and half-truths reveals patterns over time, and these patterns can be mined by careful analysis of both the prisoner's statements and that of other prisoners involved in a given skirmish or terror cell. Different interrogators may ask the same question different ways, and eventually the prisoner will lose track of what lie he or she told which interrogator because the prisoner has no pencil and paper.

There's more to the techniques that would take too long to describe here. But over all it's a matter of using patience and careful analysis. Further, once a captive is tortured, they are far more likely to clam up. Their anger and bitterness over the torture motivates them to keep their mouth shut such that further "friendly" interrogations are far less fruitful. Torture is a one-way street.

GOP's New Tea-Party-Inspired Logo