Still unsure how anyone can take this guy seriously…

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorumexplained his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape during an interview Friday, saying that women who face such circumstances should “make the best out of a bad situation.”

Asked by CNN’s Piers Morgan what he would do if his own daughter approached him, begging for an abortion after having been raped, Santorum explained that he would counsel her to “accept this horribly created” baby, because it was still a gift from God, even if given in a “broken” way.

 

I’ll come right out and say it:  President Obama gave one of the best speeches of his career and the Congress heard one of the best State of the Union addresses in recent memory.  Financial pragmatism and responsibility were main themes.

A tax code that allows for millionaires to pay less of a percentage of their income in taxes than the lower and middle class is a broken tax code.  The middle class needs a tax cut while the wealthy need to pay their fair share.

Republicans want badly to return to the regulatory code that helped cause the 2008 financial crisis.  We cannot allow a return to the way things were before, because otherwise we risk another financial crisis and recession.

The bankers who caused the crisis are going to be held responsible for their actions.  The success of the Attorney General is imperative in creating a strong future – not a single banking executive went to jail for his role in the financial crisis, yet we’re prosecuting people like Martha Stewart and Roger Clemens.

President Obama effectively laid out a third way of American politics last night.  He’s gone beyond liberal or conservative and managed to start a national conversation toward the real goal:  solving problems.

Will you go beyond ideology to solve our country’s problems?

Mitch Daniels stated last night that President Obama was trying to form a middle class using government jobs, but he fails to mention that President Obama has cut government jobs while creating more net private sector jobs in his first three years in office than President Bush did during his entire eight years.

Tell me again why George W Bush’s budget director, the man directly responsible for taking a surplus budget and turning it into a deficit budget, is lecturing us on austerity?

Never mind that the unemployment rate in Indiana has risen above the national average on his watch recently.  Never mind the fact that his support for right to work legislation threatens to kill even more jobs by forcing companies like BP out of the state.

Save it for people who aren’t paying attention, Mitch.

Tonight, President Obama delivered a strong, assertive State of the Union address that had specific policy proposals and solutions for how to solve problems in our country moving forward.

If anyone can claim that they disagree with the President moving forward, feel free to let me know why.  I’d love to understand your delusion.

Mitt Romney said a few years ago, “The older I get, the smarter Ronald Reagan gets.”

It doesn’t take a political nerd to understand that Romney is speaking directly about ideology — namely rigid anti-government ideology.  We all know what that means:  sticking to rules of ideology will guide policy, not viewing problems and deciding upon solutions that work based on history of what has worked and what hasn’t.  At it’s core, Romney is specifically opposing pragmatism.

Pragmatism is the opposite of ideology.  With ideology, you create a rule — for example, ‘government is bad.’  Then, when deciding policy, you look to your ideology and would oppose any measure by the government, because ‘government is bad.”  It’s not relevant whether the policy has been successful in the past.  Whether it could be successful is irrelevant also.  Unless it fits the ideological rule, it will be opposed.  This is the way modern conservatives think.

Pragmatism, then, is the belief that when deciding policy, we should look at history.  We should study what has worked in the past and what has been unsuccessful in the past and keep doing the things that work and stop doing the things that don’t.    That is not to say we shouldn’t have core beliefs and standards — but that we need to pragmatically view solutions for the betterment of the American people.

Pragmatism is that middle ground between ideology and being wishy-washy, which is just as dangerous.

We need to demand that our public servants view data and history as factors of whether a policy is a good idea, not whether it would jive with a generic quote by Ronald Reagan.

South Carolina is a well known haven of conservative, evangelical Christians.  Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary yesterday.

The three men who lost, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, have all been faithfully married to their wives for decades.

Newt Gingrich, who won among the evangelicals, is a serial adulterer who has made a career out of cheating on his wives.   He has been married three times, and each time has married his mistress after divorcing his wives.  He criticizes Obama for being “secular” yet has lived his life the complete opposite of the way the Bible tells you should live.

What do these results say about the evangelical Christian vote?

Newt Gingrich has won the South Carolina primary.  However, it doesn’t necessarily change anything.

Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee.

Barack Obama will win in November.

End of discussion.

The Keystone XL pipeline extension has become one of the more divisive issues in Washington recently.  Republicans say it will create jobs in the midwest and allow for easier oil transportation while Democrats want more study of the environmental impacts and whether the plan for the construction is feasible.

We need to move forward with infrastructure projects in the midwest.  They create jobs and update our aging infrastructure.  The bridge collapse in Minnesota a few year ago and dilapidated transportation system make it undeniable that we need a twenty first century Internal Improvements System to make sure our infrastructure is modern and functional.

The Keystone Pipeline still has a number of unanswered questions and questionable facts, however.  We do not know how many jobs will actually be created — the number of 20,000 is a complete guess.  We have not fully understood what a possible pipeline leak would do to local midwestern drinking water or would actually cost to fix.  Also, it is imperative in this county that we move away from fossil fuels and oil.  How does this help develop alternative energy?

Until these questions are answered, more analysis needs to be done on the Keystone XL Pipeline before it should be green lighted.

The release of individual tax returns by Presidential candidates has become fairly standard in the last 40 years, with nearly all major Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates releasing their individual tax returns.  However, Mitt Romney is unsure of whether to do so.  Why?

First, let’s look at why it’s important.  Releasing tax returns illustrate how a person’s income is earned, and how that income is earned often will help the electorate paint a picture of possible conflicts of interest.  It’s healthy for the people to see how our public servants earn their income, which is why almost every President has done so for the last 40 years. Even candidates for lesser office call for returns to be released, such as when Mitt Romney demanded that Ted Kennedy release his tax returns during their 1994 U.S. Senate contest.  Another flip flop from Mitt, I suppose.

Secondly, there is most likely some damning tax sheltering going on.  Romney basically admitted so in the last primary debate when he said that he would wait to release his tax returns because the Obama campaign would use the information against him.  If there is any information that could be used negatively, the American people need to see it before Mitt is nominated.

 

We’ve arrived at the South Carolina Primary.  It’s very possible that Newt Gingrich could win this primary today, but make no mistake:  this race is over, and Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for President.

A lot has been said about Newt Gingrich’s personal life.  Story after story.  Most of them we all know.  Marrying his high school geometry teacher, and later serving her with divorce papers while she was being treated for cancel.  Rampant infidelity.  Cheating on his second wife with the woman who is now his third wife.   That only scratches the surface.

The real debate is not about his moral failures.  If you’re human, you’ve committed moral failures from time to time.  No one is perfect.  The real debate is whether his personal problems make him unqualified to be President.  It would take something awfully bad to fit that criteria.

It’s more than that.  John Richardson, who wrote a famous article a few years ago in Esquire, said it best yesterday.  He writes:

The real story isn’t that Gingrich committed adultery — an act every bit as offensive as sodomy to the actual Bible, if not to modern Christians — over and over and over again. The real story is that Newt Gingrich is so deeply conflicted and strange, so erratic and unreliable, so scheming and secretive, that he’s way too much like a character out of Dostoevsky than a politician should ever be.

That’s the key – decision making processes.  Judgment.  Integrity.  Someone who tells his wife he wants to see other women, then gives a speech on family values has none of those things.

Wow, that CNN Republican Presidential debate was a bloodbath.  Some initial thoughts:

Is Mitt Romney trying to blow the nomination?  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a bad performance.  He said he was a self success story without mentioning that his father was a corporate CEO and the Governor of Michigan.  He did not make it on his own.  He admitted that there may be things in his tax records to criticize, so he said he wants to wait on releasing them.  He criticized Newt Gingrich for only being mentioned once in the Reagan diaries while failing to admit that he wasn’t mentioned a single time.  He acts like a political outsider yet has been running for office almost non stop for 18 years.  This guy is a fraud, and a joke.  Supporters of Mitt Romney should be embarrassed.

Ron Paul made two glaring historical errors tonight.  First he tried to imply that before Medicare and Medicade, no one went without health care.  Then he claimed that the prosperity of the post WWII generation was because of government cutting budget rather than the reality, the government fueled G.I. Bill.  Ron Paul showed a severe lack of knowledge about American history tonight.

Leading the debate with a question to Newt Gingrich about his extramarital affairs was tacky at best.  Let’s talk about the real issues, because that is where these candidate’s shortcomings are.

The debate didn’t change anything, however.  Mitt Romney is going to win the nomination.  There is no way Obama should be scared.

More and more members of Congress, from both houses, are announcing opposition to SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate.

There should be no question that the combination of a huge internet strike (which I participated in!), 4 and a half million people signing a petition opposing SOPA/PIPA, and swarms of people contacting their representatives expressing opposition must have done something.  As the clock ticks, more and more members of Congress, including former sponsors of the bill, are now opposed.

Good work today, people.

Following the lead of many major websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit, among many others, JeffWartman.com will join the blackout and strike in opposition to the wrongly named ‘Stop Online Privacy Act’, which is nothing more than a way for the government to easily take over internet sites and destroys the autonomy and freedom of the internet.

Wikipedia’s announcement is a good primer on why the SOPA bill is wrong.

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate — that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet…