Last Call For Last Man Out, Turn Off The Lights

President Obama's end-of-year press conference for 2014 was one for the ages.

President Obama did something remarkable on Friday. He held his last press conference of the year, and the only people in the entire press corps who were called on to ask questions were women. Yes, this was on purpose; it had to be.

It was amazing.

The first woman ever to cover a president was the late Helen Thomas and she had been a fixture in the first row of the briefing room and at presidential news conferences for decades beginning with John F. Kennedy's presidency. 

And, for the record, here are the eight reporters -- all of them print reporters, it should be noted -- who got called on. 

• Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico
• Cheryl Bolen, Bloomberg
• Julie Pace, Associated Press
• Lesley Clark, McClatchy
• Roberta Rampton, Reuters
• Colleen M. Nelson, Wall Street Journal
• Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
• April Ryan, American Urban Radio 

The eighth was a bonus question. As is custom, when reporters thought Obama was heading for the exits, they shouted one last question at him. A male reporter asked Obama about his New Year's resolution. 

Obama ignored it and called on Ryan instead.

I'm still chuckling over this.  Obama Trolling level: Pallas Athena.

Credit Where Credit Is Blatantly Appropriated

Over at Bloomberg News, Josh Rogin has apparently gotten into the special egg nog a little early.

Although President Barack Obama is taking the credit for Wednesday’s historic deal to reverse decades of U.S. policy toward Cuba, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, she was the main architect of the new policy and pushed far harder for a deal than the Obama White House. 

From 2009 until her departure in early 2013, Clinton and her top aides took the lead on the sometimes public, often private interactions with the Cuban government. According to current and former White House and State Department officials and several Cuba policy experts who were involved in the discussions, Clinton was also the top advocate inside the government for ending travel and trade restrictions on Cuba and reversing 50 years of U.S. policy to isolate the Communist island nation. Repeatedly, she pressed the White House to move faster and faced opposition from cautious high-ranking White House officials. 

After Obama announced the deal Wednesday, which included the release of aid contractor Alan Gross, Clinton issued a supportive statement distributed by the National Security Council press team. “As Secretary of State, I pushed for his release, stayed in touch with Alan’s wife Judy and their daughters, and called for a new direction in Cuba," she said. "Despite good intentions, our decades-long policy of isolation has only strengthened the Castro regime's grip on power.” 

Yet Clinton played down her own role in the issue, which will surely become important if she decides to run for president. Top prospective Republican candidates, including Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have all come out against the president’s policy shift. 

Clinton’s advocacy on behalf of opening a new relationship with Cuba began almost as soon as she came into office. Obama had campaigned on a promise to engage enemies, but the White House initially was slow to make good on that pledge, and on the Cuba front enacted only a modest relaxation of travel rules. From the start, Clinton pushed to hold Obama to his promise with regard to Cuba. 

“Hillary Clinton played a very large role,” said Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who advocated for changes to U.S.-Cuba policy. “The president, when he ran for office and when he came in, thought that doing something on Cuba front would be smart. But as soon as he got into office, though, every other priority hit him.”

If there was any doubt that President Obama's move on Cuba is a massive foreign policy legacy point for the history books that will stand the test of time, please note the blinding speed at which the credit for the deal is being given to someone else.

Also, if there was ever any doubt that Hillary Clinton was not going to have trouble earning the trust of Obama 2008 primary voters, well, please note the same goddamn thing. The false modesty angle actually made me laugh aloud while reading it, as if this wasn't the perfect example of That Awesome Co-Worker Taking Credit.

It's one thing to say "Secretary Clinton had a role in this" and another thing completely to say she was the "main architect" of a diplomatic coup that happened 2 years after she left Foggy Bottom. Maybe I'd be a little less angry if this was the first time people were trying to "Aww shucks" their way into giving her credit for something President Obama accomplished, and again I'm sure she did play a part.

But in the end, a Secretary of State is implementing the foreign policy of a President. Period. Deal with it.

Alison's Split Decision

As you may have heard, my hairpiece of a junior senator Rand Paul may be playing for the White House in 2016. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Oval Office for ol’ Rand. Kentucky law says that a candidate’s name can’t appear twice on the same ballot for different races, so Rand either has to run for Senator or for President, but not both. Rand and the KY GOP want to change that law or even go around it. But any election law business has to go through Kentucky’s current Secretary of State.

You know, Alison Lundergan Grimes.

Six weeks after she lost her own bid for the U-S Senate, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (R-Kentucky) tells WHAS11 if U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) tries to appear on the same ballot for both Senate and President in 2016, she will challenge him in court. 

“The law is clear,” Grimes said. “You can’t be on the ballot twice for two offices.” 

Kentucky Democrats are not cooperating as Paul considers mounting simultaneous campaigns for Senate and President. Democrats maintained control of the Kentucky House in last month’s election, a roadblock to legislation favored by the Republican Senate to remove the prohibition. House Speaker Greg Stumbo (D-Prestonsburg) declined to consider a Senate bill to that effect earlier this year. 

Paul may challenge the law in court as the Republican Party of Kentucky also discusses whether to hold a presidential caucus rather than a primary, which would allow Paul to follow the letter of the law by not appearing on the primary ballot, twice. 

“We haven’t made a final decision one way or another,” Paul told WHAS11 last month, “other than I have decided I am going to run for reelection for the US Senate.” 

Grimes was asked about the potential battle after a meeting at Kentucky’s Board of Elections on Tuesday. 

“I will not be bullied,” Grimes said. “I think hopefully the people of Kentucky understand that over the course of this past year, and I will not hesitate to seek help and assistance in the opinion of a court.” 

Pressed whether she would also seek an opinion from Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway (D), who lost to Paul in the 2010 Senate race, Grimes reiterated that she would rely on the courts. 

“We’ll look to the court for any guidance that is needed,” Grimes said. “And at the end of the day, we’re not going to be bullied. I’ve done my job as Secretary of State for the people of Kentucky and I’ll continue to do that.”

Some background on politics here:

Republicans control Kentucky’s state Senate, Democrats control Kentucky’s state House. Odds are good there’s going to be a Senate bill reversing the law, but it will have to get past the House and Kentucky’s ambitious House Speaker, Greg Stumbo. If it does, Kentucky’s gubernatorial election becomes key in 2015, when Democrat “Dinosaur” Steve Beshear (he of the tax credits for the Ark Encounter park, recently reversed) hangs it up after his second term. (Kentucky’s off-off year election for Governor is how state officials get around the election law locally when running for that office, the other state offices are during presidential election years.) Beshear’s running mate Jerry Abramson recently left the Lt. Governor’s office to be the Obama administration’s point man on local governments. Beshear called informer State Auditor Crit Luallen to finish up Abramson’s term, but she’s not going to run for Governor. Republican and current Ag Commissioner James Comer is already in for the GOP, versus Democrat and current Attorney General Jack Conway and it’s possible that if Comer wins, he can push to overturn the law in time for Rand to run in 2016. If Conway wins, he can veto it if needed.

Whew.

So, having said all that, I’m thinking that all this theater may be Alison’s opening act, but not for a run at Frankfort. Sticking it to Rand is a good way to get noticed by the Village, after all. And if Rand jumps in the clown carpool and the law still stands, suddenly his Senate seat is a open race in 2016. Conway, Grimes, maybe even Luallen might take a shot at it. On the GOP side, if Comer loses in 2015 I’m betting he’d be in, and lurking around the corner is Libertarian spoiler David Patterson, who got 3% in November’s race.

Either way, next year should be pretty exciting around the Bluegrass State.

Um, we apologize in advance for how this will probably find a way to mess up America in the process. Sorry.

StupidiNews!

• US officials believe those responsible for the hack of Sony Pictures systems stole an administrator-level ID giving them broad access to systems rather that it being an inside job.
• A BBC investigation into the conditions of Chinese contract workers at Foxconn working for Apple have found 12 hour shifts, exhausted employees, and child labor violations.
• Russian lawmakers are moving quickly on a 1 trillion ruble bank bailout bill designed to boost the country's rapidly flagging financial sector.
• Hong Kong real estate billionaire Thomas Kwok has been convicted of conspiracy and bribery of a former Hong Kong city official and could get up to 45 years in prison.
• New analysis shows up to 12 million home wireless routers could be vulnerable to attack by a bug called "Misfortune Cookie".

Last Call For Vermont's Single Payer Plan

Looks like Vermont won't be implementing single payer healthcare anytime soon, as Dem Gov. Peter Shumlin, who barely survived re-election in November, is quietly dropping the attempt as unworkable.

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin on Wednesday dropped his plan to enact a single-payer health care system in his state — a plan that had won praise from liberals but never really got much past the framework stage. 

“This is not the right time” for enacting single payer, Shumlin said in a statement, citing the big tax increases that would be required to pay for it.

Shumlin faced deep skepticism that lawmakers could agree on a way to pay for his ambitious goal and that the feds would agree to everything he needed to create the first state-based single-payer system in 2017. 

And that was all before Shumlin, a Democrat, almost lost reelection last month in one of the country’s most liberal states. And it was before MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, the now notorious Obamacare consultant who also advised Vermont until his $400,000 contract was killed amid the controversy, became political poison.

Gruber nonsense aside, the real problem was the money.

Shumlin had missed two earlier financing deadlines but finally released his proposal. But he immediately cast it as “detrimental to Vermonters.” The model called for businesses to take on a double-digit payroll tax, while individuals would face up to a 9.5 percent premium assessment. Big businesses, in particular, didn’t want to pay for Shumlin’s plan while maintaining their own employee health plans. 

“These are simply not tax rates that I can responsibly support or urge the Legislature to pass,” the governor said. “In my judgment, the potential economic disruption and risks would be too great to small businesses, working families and the state’s economy.” 

And that was for a plan that would not be truly single payer. Large companies with self-insured plans regulated by ERISA would have been exempt. And Medicare also would have operated separately, unless the state got a waiver, which was a long shot. 

Shumlin added that federal funds available for the transition were $150 million less than expected.

So, big business payroll tax hikes, a 9.5% tax on individual plans, and large businesses wanted exemptions, and that's all before Medicare and the fact the federal bucks weren't there.  The plan was a non-starter, and I don't know why our side made single-payer such a huge deal, when it would have meant serious tax hikes on people and businesses and the rich would have walked away with "exemptions" anyway.

As much as I'd like to see single payer, it has to be everybody at once.  One state doing it without federal support (and let's face it, a GOP Congress will kill any federal money for this because they're perfectly fine letting poor blue state voters die) isn't going to work.

And Cue-ba The GOP Outrage

Republicans (and even a couple of Democrats like NJ Sen. Bob Menendez) are not taking this whole "normalization with Cuba" thing well at all.  Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio spent hours screaming on the cable news shows that Obama had appeased yet another terrorist regime, and Republicans are vowing to permanently block any funding for a new embassy or appointment of an ambassador to Havana.

“It’s part of a long record of coddling dictators and tyrants that this administration has established,” Rubio said on Fox News, one of multiple media appearances he made Wednesday. He insisted that the White House’s plans, which include opening an embassy in Havana, won’t result in more economic freedom or democracy in Cuba, a country that survived decades under a U.S. embargo.

“This notion that somehow being able to travel more to Cuba, to sell more consumer products, the idea that’s going to lead to some democratic opening is absurd,” Rubio said. “But it’s par for the course with this administration constantly giving away unilateral concessions … in exchange for nothing.”

Never mind that this is exactly what Reagan's playbook on the Soviet Union was, and our current playbook with China is now.  And Rubio doesn't seem too concerned about either Moscow or Beijing.  But where there's foreign policy histrionics, there's Huckleberry Graham.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is expected to chair a powerful Senate panel next year that oversees funding for the State Department and other foreign operations, tweeted that the development is “an incredibly bad idea.” The Republican added later: “I will do all in my power to block the use of funds to open an embassy in Cuba. Normalizing relations with Cuba is bad idea at a bad time.”

But here's the thing: some Republicans are seeing dollar signs in a new Cuban market and want to make the jump.

But incoming Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, was more measured, saying in a statement that he heard the news Wednesday morning and that “as of now there is no real understanding as to what changes the Cuban government is prepared to make.”

And Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona who flew to Cuba to help bring Gross back, warned against rushing to stop the White House’s moves.

“I think that would be really counterproductive to block funding for an embassy,” Flake told reporters at the Capitol, adding: “For those who say this is a concession somehow to the Cuban regime … I think that that is a wrong way to look at it. That is simply wrong. The policy that we’ve had in place for the past 50 years has done more in my view …. to keep the Castro regimes in power than anything we could’ve done.”

The Chamber’s support of the Obama administration’s actions also was evidence of fissures within the GOP over Cuba.

“The U.S. business community welcomes today’s announcement, and has long supported many of the economic provisions the president touched on in his remarks,” Chamber President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue said in a statement.

“We deeply believe that an open dialogue and commercial exchange between the U.S. and Cuban private sectors will bring shared benefits, and the steps announced today will go a long way in allowing opportunities for free enterprise to flourish.”

Somehow I'm thinking there are enough votes to lift the embargo on on Cuba for good, and Rubio is still stuck in 1958.  There's also zero doubt in my mind that if any Republican president had done this, Rubio would be on board 100%.

Barack And Michelle Obama In "The Help"

The Obamas talked to People Magazine about their experiences with everyday racism and prejudice in America, and it's some pretty frank and eye-opening stuff.

"I think people forget that we've lived in the White House for six years," the first lady told PEOPLE, laughing wryly, along with her husband, at the assumption that the first family has been largely insulated from coming face-to-face with racism.

"Before that, Barack Obama was a black man that lived on the South Side of Chicago, who had his share of troubles catching cabs," Mrs. Obama said in the Dec. 10 interview appearing in the new issue of PEOPLE.

"I tell this story – I mean, even as the first lady – during that wonderfully publicized trip I took to Target, not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf. Because she didn't see me as the first lady, she saw me as someone who could help her. Those kinds of things happen in life. So it isn't anything new."

In a 30-minute conversation, the president and Mrs. Obama candidly added their stories to the national discussion of race and racial profiling that was sparked by the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York.

"There's no black male my age, who's a professional, who hasn't come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn't hand them their car keys," said the president, adding that, yes, it had happened to him.

Mrs. Obama recalled another incident: "He was wearing a tuxedo at a black-tie dinner, and somebody asked him to get coffee."

Things have gotten better, both Obamas agreed, but there's still more progress to be made.

And yes, I've been mistaken as The Help and not an IT professional before on several occasions, once at an office holiday party.  You can be any kind of professional, even the President of the United States of America, apparently, and as a black person there are still people who will assume you're the wait staff.

No amount of professional accomplishment will protect you from that, folks.  No amount.

StupidiNews!

• With Sony Pictures pulling "The Interview" from a Christmas Day release, the US believes that North Korea's leadership is indeed behind the hack of Sony's emails and data.
• President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro have agreed to start normalizing relations between the two countries after 18 months of backchannel talks mediated by Canada and the Vatican.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin says that the country's economy will recover from the massive drop in value of the ruble, but has shown no new immediate plans for halting the ruble's slide.
• Fed President Janet Yellen says that the Fed will raise interest rates, just not right now, in a statement that boosted stocks by nearly 2% on Wednesday.
• New statistics show that nearly 60% of the US has the option of 100 Mbps speed broadband internet, but 2% of Americans can't get broadband speed at all.

Last Call For YayTeam Torture!

So, how did America react to the Senate torture report?   Well, I certainly got a chuckle out of Fox News host Andrea Tantaros proclaiming that torture made America "awesome" and all, but the problem is that's exactly what America thinks.

Six in 10 Americans say the CIA’s treatment of suspected terrorists was justified, more than half think it produced important, unique intelligence – and 52 percent say it was wrong for the Senate Intelligence Committee to issue a report suggesting otherwise. 

Those results in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll underscore the public’s sense of risk from the threat of terrorism, and specifically the extent to which majorities support controversial measures to combat it. Indeed just two in 10 flatly rule out torture in future cases. 

A plurality, 49 percent, believes the CIA did in fact torture suspected terrorists; 38 percent think its actions did not amount to torture, with the rest unsure. Regardless, the public by a broad 59-31 percent also says the agency’s interrogation actions were justified. 

One reason is that 53 percent think these interrogations produced important information that could not have been obtained any other way. Just 31 percent reject this claim, a focus of the recent debate.

So yeah, solid majorities in favor of "enhanced interrogation techniques" because they work, and got us intelligence we could not have otherwise gotten, and that the Senate Democrats should never have released the report at all.

47% found the report unfair to the CIA, and 57% think there should be no charges against those responsible (only 1 in 3 want to see prosecution.)  Hell, even 46% of self-identified liberals and 46% of registered Democrats believe the CIA actions were justified.

The majority of the country is no different from Dick Cheney in this respect.  Some 13 years after 9/11, we're still a nation of bloodthirsty monsters. Politically this issue is a loser for team D and they know it, and you'd better believe we'll hear over the next two years how those weak, Neville Chamberlain liberals should never be allowed to be in charge of foreign policy anymore.

Yay Team Torture!  America is firmly a charter member, and it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon.

It Was A Library Berate, The Kind You Find In A Second-Hand State

The Tea Party of Kentucky will not be satisfied until the Bluegrass State is a smoking wreck of stupidity, and their next target is to destroy county library systems across the state with a massive lawsuit that, if successful, would force libraries to refund millions in tax dollars to taxpayers and shut their doors thanks to a 50-year old law.

Most of the state's public library systems could be forced to roll back their tax rates and collectively refund millions of dollars to local taxpayers under a pair of lawsuits heard Monday by the Kentucky Court of Appeals. 

The suits, filed by taxpayers in Kenton and Campbell counties, argue that many library districts have improperly raised taxes for decades without the 51 percent voter approval required by a previously obscure 1964 state law. 

"We the people own the library. Every dollar spent in that library comes from us. So we should have a voice," said Charlie Coleman, a Tea Party activist elected last month as a Campbell County commissioner. 

Circuit judges in Northern Kentucky sided with the plaintiffs in April 2013. The Kenton and Campbell county libraries appealed, warning of calamitous budget cuts if the suits succeeded. 

Making their case Monday, the libraries' attorneys said a separate law, House Bill 44, enacted in 1979, was meant to include most libraries among the special taxing districts that are allowed to raise taxes by an amount that increases revenue up to 4 percent each year without voter approval. Libraries were advised to follow HB 44 by state revenue officials in Frankfort. 

"No one objected to this for 30 years. Not one member of the General Assembly said to a library district, 'Hey, you're doing this the wrong way!'" Jeffrey Mando, attorney for the Campbell County library, told the three-judge appellate panel. 

"To now say to the libraries, 'You've gotta go back ...' That would be devastating," Mando said. "More than a 50 percent funding loss for the Campbell County library system. An equal or greater funding loss for other libraries around the state. And these library districts did nothing but operate in good faith."

It doesn't matter.  Government that works has to be government that is destroyed.  Forget the fact that libraries are links to continuing education and internet access for the poor in the state, that's exactly why they have to be shut down.  And yes, these people are looking to destroy Kentucky's libraries over a technicality, and they'll get the judges to sign off on it.

So when libraries across the state are shut down, it'll be a victory for the people, right?

Stupid poor people, get your own access to information and stop being poor!

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/12/15/3594962_kentucky-appeals-court-considers.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

It Was My Clever Plan All Along

Tennessee's GOP governor, Bill Haslam, says he will call a special state legislative session in order to come up with a plan to expand Medicaid.

In a major policy move, Gov. Bill Haslam has announced the new Insure Tennessee plan, a two-year pilot program to provide health care coverage to tens of thousands of Tennesseans who currently don't have access to health insurance or have limited options. 

The plan would be leveraged with federal dollars, said Haslam, who has been working on a Medicaid expansion plan that could gain approval from both federal officials and the Republican-dominated General Assembly. 

"We made the decision in Tennessee nearly two years ago not to expand traditional Medicaid," Haslam said. "This is an alternative approach that forges a different path and is a unique Tennessee solution. This plan leverages federal dollars to provide health care coverage to more Tennesseans, to give people a choice in their coverage, and to address the cost of health care, better health outcomes and personal responsibility. 

"Our approach is responsible and reasonable, and I truly believe that it can be a catalyst to fundamentally changing health care in Tennessee," Haslam said.

If this sounds like Haslam's having his "It's better than Obamacare because we fixed it!" cake and eating it too, it's because he is.  But he still has to convince Tennessee's heavily GOP legislature to sign off on the plan.

Many federal Republicans who oppose the Affordable Care Act say expansion is an unfunded mandate from the federal government. For weeks Haslam has said it will be challenging to find a plan that both federal health officials and state lawmakers both support. As recently as Thursday, Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey said he thinks Haslam could "sell" the General Assembly on expansion, but he doubted whether the "Obama administration" would approve any plan that could make it through the legislature.

So it'll be Obama's fault if the plan doesn't pass muster, and Tennessee can say "Well, we tried to expand Medicaid, but mean ol' Obama wouldn't let us."

Very clever, and it's why I think this plan is going nowhere fast.

StupidiNews!

• The suspect wanted in Tuesday's manhunt for killing six in Pennsylvania has ended with police finding the body of Bradley William Stone dead from self-inflicted wounds.
• President Obama has signed the $1.1 trillion "Cromnibus" spending package into law, but another battle over immigration funding is assured in just two months.
• Russia continues to fight in order to keep the value of the ruble from crashing as Moscow is selling foreign currency reserves in order to prop up the value of the currency.
• Sony Pictures has canceled the New York premiere of "The Interview" after hackers promised the threat of "Sept. 11 attacks" against anyone who sees the film.
• After a new round of deals with banks, Apple now says its Apple Pay service accepts credit cards from about 90% of US card issuers.

Last Call For What Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism Problem?

Hey look, it's yet another right-wing white guy calling for armed revolution and overthrow of the US government, but of course nobody cares.

On Saturday the president of a Texas open-carry group called for like-minded followers to join him in marching on Washington to “arrest the bankers, crooked politicians and restore liberty here in our country” at gunpoint. 

Saying that voting “is not working,” Kory Watkins, president of the Open Carry Tarrant County, wrote on his Facebook page: “Have you ever thought we might just need to organize a very large group of our own people. Like 200 from each state so we can march armed to DC take over the city, arrest the bankers, crooked politicians and restore liberty here in our country? I’m not scared. I mean really…..voting and waiting is not working!” 

Watkins recently made the news when he posted on Facebook that he was involved in a car crash with a drunk driver as he returned from protesting at a DUI safety checkpoint set up by Arlington police. 

Watkins had reportedly been warning motorists about the checkpoint while shouting “You criminals!” at officers as they stopped drivers.

Would your reaction dismissing this jackass as a harmless crank be the same if he were black, and demanding armed marchers on Washington DC to arrest politicians for failing on police killings of unarmed black men and women because "voting and waiting is not working"?  Somehow I think it would be national news.  Or at least, constantly news on FOX.

The New Conversion Rate

Alternet's Adam Lee has a theory about why Republicans want to destroy the safety net for America's poor and let church charities deal with them instead: putting millions of Americans under a new theocratic state is exactly what they want.

Cutting government charity on the scale that Republican Congresses propose would be Armageddon," according to local charities and food banks. But I think there's an explanation that runs deeper than indifference. I suspect many religious conservatives are well aware that what they propose would mean throwing millions of people into destitution. In fact, they may be counting on it. 

Under the law, churches have wide latitude to discriminate and to put conditions on whom they'll hire and whom they'll serve, far more than any private business. In exchange for ladling out soup, they can make people sit through a sermon; they can impose an ideological loyalty test; they can refuse to serve people they think might be gay; they can discriminate for any reason or for no reason at all. (The one thing that churches can't legally do is tell their members how to vote - at least, they can't do this if they want to retain their tax exemption - but they're fighting hard to repeal even that trivial restriction, with right-wing pastors all around the country repeatedly flouting the law and daring the IRS to punish them.) 

While most evangelical churches proclaim that they want people to convert voluntarily, their actions show otherwise. When given the chance to coerce their audience, they'll do so gleefully, as we've seen in prison ministries all over the country where inmates are given special rewards and privileges in exchange for their cooperation with religious indoctrination. 

What they want, in short, is a captive audience. If government charity were to be cut off, the churches wouldn't be able to come close to supplying the wants of everyone, and so they'd have strong incentive to impose stringent conditions on the people they did help. Only the most faithful, the most compliant, the most submissive would be able to get through the door. 

And that's precisely the state of affairs that the religious right yearns for. What they want is to build a theocracy from the ground up, where the poor and the needy are abjectly dependent on a church that can yank away the necessities of life if it judges them insufficiently compliant, and so the masses will have no choice but to be corralled and steered. Even today, we can see this conservative vision put into practice, and witness the terrible consequences that result when it blocks the government from helping the needy. Consider Mississippi, which is both the most religious and has the most churches per capita of any U.S. state. If rosy visions like Ernst's were true, Mississippi would be the best place in the country to live. But in reality, it's the poorest and (by life expectancy) sickest state.

If you thought right wing Christians were furious with poor people getting tax money and having to jump through hoops to show they're really needy, wait until they have to go through the church to get basic needs met.  Millions of ready souls to be cared for, and the church can set whatever rules they want in exchange for help, including listening to whom they should vote for.

Which is exactly what the GOP wants.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Over at National Journal, Sam Baker and Sophie Novak ask:

If the Supreme Court Breaks Obamacare, Will Republicans Fix It?

Republicans want the Supreme Court to blow a major hole in Obamacare next year, but they are still debating whether they would help repair it—and what they should ask for in return. 

There's a very real chance the high court will invalidate Obamacare's insurance subsidies in most of the country, which would be devastating for the health care law. It would become almost entirely unworkable in most states, and the cost of coverage would skyrocket. 

That loss for the Affordable Care Act might seem like a clear-cut political win for the GOP, but the reality would be far messier. The law would still require people to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, leaving people on the hook for a product that—sans subsidies—they could not afford. And as many of those people live in Republican-run states or 2016 battlegrounds, they'll be asking for a solution. 

That would leave Republicans with a difficult choice: Do they continue to push for an all-out repeal of the law—creating a standoff with Democrats who will dig in in the hopes of legislation undoing the Supreme Court's decision—or do they seek a deal that alleviates the law's burden on those who've lost their subsidies? Such a deal would likely include pullbacks of major parts of the law, but it would also require Republicans to give up on a full "root-and-branch" repeal.

Let's be honest here. A SCOTUS decision that wrecks Obamacare here will absolutely, positively be a 100% clear-cut political win for the GOP.

After SCOTUS destroys federal exchange subsidies, Republicans will then demand Obamacare be fully repealed and doing so will become the major campaign issue of 2016, because Democrats are pathetic, whining losers.

States with federal-run exchanges include Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, the states that will pretty much decide 2016's White House winner.  And Republicans in those states know damn well they can run ads saying OBAMACARE WILL COST YOU THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A MONTH NOW and they won't have to lift a finger to fix a damn thing, and most likely they'll win easily.

Since when do voters punish Republicans for wrecking the country when they can blame Obama and win?

What's the downside?