Andrew Sullivan is shrill as he breaks down the difference between “guns and religion” and “the 47%”.

He did not say: “I’ll never convince them they should vote for me.” He accused 47 percent of Americans of choosing not to “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” He’s describing half the country as parasites, bleeding the productive half dry.Half the country. He includes me, an Obama supporter, who pays three times the tax on my income that Romney does, who immigrated at 21, whose parents never went to college, and whose blog now employs five people.

You know what, Mitt? Fuck you.

source: Dissent Of The Day – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast.

Mitt Romney is who we thought he was. I hope Sullivan really understands. Everyone I know who doesn’t like Romney’s politics didn’t resent him for his wealth or success. There are a lot of college educated liberals who pay income tax and are wealthy. We resented him for framing financial success as the thing most important about our country’s promise.

The American Dream is much simpler than that. Freedom is not being the richest. It’s dignity and autonomy that was earned by some people who would never see real dignity or autonomy for themselves. Our self government is key to that. It guarantees that. What we used to feel was that upward mobility was a characteristic of that. Work hard, things stay good and possibly get better. Romney doesn’t see us that way. Anyone that votes for Barack Obama is a lazy lifetime loser.

While finding that Pennsylvania legislators had acted in “good faith,” the Supreme Court ruled that their “ambitious effort” to provide a new identification procedure “has by no means been seamless in light of the serious operational constraints faced by the executive branch.”

source: Pennsylvania Supreme Court Sends Voter ID Law Back To Lower Court | TPM LiveWire.

Sh*t ain’t free people and Mother Jones did some solid reporting here. When you see Romney giving late night pressers, flop sweat flowing, you know the commie moocher looter Obama lemmings know that Romney screwed up. I’m giving 10 for each day they release new videos from this fundraiser.

Michelle Obama’s speech gets better with age:

Being President reveals who you are

Mind you: this is not like “cling to guns and religion” moment in any way except they were both “gaffes” or inartful. The context of that “guns and religion” statement is that Obama thought these people are worth reaching out to. Obama was clumsily telling wealthy donors to not neglect working class voter outreach:

“But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress, uh, when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in, in, Pennsylvania, a lot, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced ’em. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to their guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or … uh, anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

“Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background, um, there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. Uh, and you can go into places where you think that I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.

Mitt Romney’s context of “The 47%” is that the American people who voted for Obama are lazy lemmings waiting for government handouts and are blind idiots and should be ignored:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” he says. “All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them.” And they’re hopeless. “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

“hopeless”. That’s Mitt Romney’s vision for 47% of Americans.

I left off Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (Allegheny County). These two counties will have the ground game covered. These other counties, in the “T” so to speak are where I would guess the real anti-Obama ground game efforts will be rolled out.

Mitt Romney

“I think this is a land of opportunity for every single person, every single citizen of this great nation. And I want to make sure that we keep America a place of opportunity, where everyone has a fair shot. They get as much education as they can afford and with their time they’re able to get and if they have a willingness to work hard and the right values, they ought to be able to provide for their family and have a shot of realizing their dreams.”

source: Mitt Romney: Students Should Get ‘As Much Education As They Can Afford’.

With college cost being offset by raising prices for the average student to compensate for federal and state funding cuts the real explanation is that no one can “afford” college. It’s why kids get student loans: they can’t afford it. Not when they step on to campus and now increasingly even after they leave college (employed or not) as graduates: they cannot afford it.

For most Americans a higher education, an education you need to afford, is not attainable without undergoing significant financial risk. Period. It’s one of the things we buy that has gotten 100% or more expensive over the last few decades. Kinda like health care.

It used to be simple to work yourself through college. Literally you could pay for a bunch of it by flipping burgers. Then by flipping burgers and maybe getting help from your parents. It’s not possible now. Most families cannot “Afford” college. It’s why they borrow to pay for it.

Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy writes about Tennessee’s jump to creationism curriculum:

Well, that’s it then. Tennessee’s governor, William Haslam, allowed a clearly antiscience bill to pass into law. It is now legal to essentially teach creationism in Tennessee public school classrooms.

You can read about the background of all this in an earlier post. The TN House and Senate both passed this terrible, terrible bill, and Governor Haslam allowed it to beome law, saying,

I do not believe that this legislation changes the scientific standards that are taught in our schools or the curriculum that is used by our teachers. However, I also don’t believe that it accomplishes anything that isn’t already acceptable in our schools.

This is, to not to put too fine a point on it, a crock. The legislation is designed specifically to allow creationism to be taught in classes, something the courts have clearly stated is against the law, and which just as clearly is unacceptable in our schools.