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Herman Cain really likes to bang (or try to bang) white women. The obvious thing here: wait, you mean a skeevy lobbyist and poisonous food hawker turned out to be a skeevy human being? How could we even think about not electing him president? Oh, and he's thinking of getting out of the campaign now. Just two days too late. Extra bonus humor points: Cain's lawyer saying that "No individual...should be questioned about his or her private sexual life." What country has he been living in?

A new study from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that voters across all political parties are uncomfortable with the idea of a president with an uncommon religious identity, such as Mormon, Muslim, or atheist. In particular, Republicans seem particularly averse to a Muslim or atheist president....

We've come a long ways, baby...or not. My life began with the Presidency of John F. Kennedy. Prior to JFK, the idea of a Catholic President scared the Hell (no pun intended) out of many Americans at the time. Would JFK's allegiance be to the American people? Or would he answer to the Pope? Would he preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution...or the interests of the Vatican? It seems silly now, because Catholicism has long since become mainstream, but in the first half of the 20th century, Catholicism was viewed with a very suspicious eye by most Americans. Catholics today are subjected to little, if any, overt discrimination, but in 1960 it was a very different world.

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WASHINGTON -- The wealth gap between younger and older Americans has stretched to the widest on record, worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing and college debt. The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35.... [P]eople typically accumulate assets as they age, this wealth gap is now more than double what it was in 2005 and nearly five times the 10-to-1 disparity a quarter-century ago, after adjusting for inflation.

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In a verdict that will please every American who goes into a convenience store, a judge ruled that the FDA can't make cigarette companies put graphic and disgusting anti-smoking warnings on their packaging. Thank god. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon uled today that the tobacco companies would likely win a lawsuit against the FDA so they don't have to start putting the ads on their packaging.

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Linda Wall, a conservative independent Virginia candidate for the House of Delegates, admitted on Wednesday that she had an affair with a female student as a junior high gym teacher in the early 1970s, but said she has changed.... "I've never tried to hide that I was in homosexuality," she said in an interview with the AP. "If anybody Googles me, they would find that out there," she said. "Forty years ago I was a different person. I was a heavy pot smoker with ... impaired judgment and made some bad choices," she added. The student was a minor at the time, meaning Wall could still be prosecuted if she comes forward.

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Don't speak to me about your religion; first show it to me in how you treat other people. Don't tell me how much you love your God; show me in how much you love all His children. Don't preach to me your passion for your faith; teach me through your compassion for your neighbors. In the end, I'm not as interested in what you have to tell or sell as I am in how you choose to live and give.

- Cory Booker

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviours. Keep your behaviours positive because your behaviours become your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Now that the media is finally covering the Occupy Wall Street movement, I've found it interesting to follow the tone of some of the coverage. Sure, there are those more left-leaning media outlets that provide coverage that can be described as perhaps a bit more balanced. Unfortunately, there are still those in the media who instinctively distrust the movement. Perhaps it's the young people (a group suffering disproportionately from this recession). Or the "unwashed hippies." Or the civil disobedience. Or the fact that the dress code and lack or organization make it look like a cross between Burning Man and a Rainbow Gathering. Get hung up on the stereotypes, though, and you'll whiz right past the point of the Occupy Wall Street movement. To me, the point revolves around what sort of future we see for this country- one where Americans accept a collective responsibility one for another, or one based on a dog-eat-dog Randian ethic- "I got mine; you can damned well get your own"? Do we sit idly by and quietly acquiesce as the richest among us grab ever more and greater wealth for themselves at the expense of the rest of us? Or do we stand up and employ our superior numbers and moral weight to scream "ENOUGH!"?

Arguing for a more equitable distribution of wealth is not "Socialism." Asking those who have been blessed with great wealth to recognize a responsibility to the country that made their success possible is not "Communism." We don't hate wealth, nor do we despise the wealthy. What we want is fairness. What we want is a system that isn't designed to cater to the 1%, to funnel ever greater amounts of wealth in their direction at the expense of the remaining 99% of Americans.

I find it difficult to know what might happen next. Will the movement fizzle with the onset of winter? Will our national attention span lapse and be directed elsewhere? Will the oligarchy simply wait out those protesting their greed and avarice? All of those things are possible, I suppose...but can we dare hope that something positive might come out of Occupy Wall Street? Can we use the groundswell of anger, dissatisfaction, and disillusionment to create a better, more equitable, and more just system? Can we create an economic system not based on trickle-up economics, where the wealthiest among us continue to siphon up ever greater shares of wealth?

Occupy Wall Street is not the modern version of 1932's Bonus Army…but it may just be the beginning of the end of our collective silence and willingness to sit quietly on the sidelines as the rich re-write the rules to their benefit.

Enough is enough. We- all of us- deserve better.

I've always believed in capitalism. America has achieved greatness largely through those who dreamed, sacrificed, and worked their tails off to create something out of nothing, something that they believed in. That passion and commitment has created vast sums of wealth for some, smaller sums for others, but the point is the same: the American Dream remains a possibility. It's just that the playing field is no longer level. Those who have prosper, in far too many cases, at the expense of those who don't. It's time for Americans to decide what they can and cannot continue to tolerate.

Listen to the Right wing, and you'll no doubt understand that they define "Socialism" as an unmitigated evil designed to suck the life out of this country. Unfortunately, not only do most of these folks not have a clue as to the definition of "Socialism", they use it as a club to thwart any sort of rational discussion of the state of our social order. So, in the interest of fairness and intellectual balance, here's a handy, if somewhat brief, definition:

so·cial·ism   [soh-shuh-liz-uhm]

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A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie.

- Robert Green Ingersoll

A tiger can smile. A snake will say it loves you. Lies make us evil.

- Chuck Palahniuk

Of all the lies and propaganda directed by the Far Right at the American Sheeple, perhaps the most egregious and long-lasting disinformation has to do with health care. By conflating health care reform with "Socialism", those with financial ties to the health care industry and those who reflexively hate all things Obama have succeeded in convincing the American Sheeple that health care reform equals increased government tyranny. They've managed to convince Americans that we have the best health care system in the world, one that government can only screw up by requiring Americans to purchase health insurance. In so doing, they've ensured the continuation of an inefficient and inequitable system that makes access to quality health care proportional to the size of one's bank account. It's as reprehensible as it is immoral, and yet Americans have eagerly bought into the propaganda. In so doing, Americans have willingly settled for so much less than what might be possible if America instituted the one system that would ensure quality, affordable health care for EVERY American: a single-payer system.

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Here’s your problem: if you start adding up unions and progressives and liberals and people too poor to pay income tax and people who wanna tax millionaires — wow, it’s gotta be tough to love America so much, but hate almost three-quarters of the people living in it.

- Jon Stewart

If you look at what Republicans profess to value, and how little of that they ascribe to anyone but the top 1-2% of income earners in this country, you really have to wonder how they’ve managed to attain (and retain) so much power and influence. After all, it’s not as if their policies make them the party of the majority…and yet they’ve managed to convince/propagandize millions of Americans that voting against their best interests is the way to keep America strong.

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You should probably come to grips with the reality that you're WAY too paranoid when you're foaming at the mouth over...wait for it...fluoridated drinking water. Yes, that's right, kids...of all the things that Tea Party could reasonably and understandably soil their shorts over, they've chosen fluoridated water.

Cue the black helicopters....

It's not a stretch to put forward the notion that this country faces some serious, intractable problems that can, should, and must be addressed and resolved by serious people doing serious work. Instead, what we get are Tea Party zealots exercised over the government putting fluoride in drinking water. Never mind that fluoride has been put in our drinking water for many, many years. Never mind that it's generally accepted that fluoridated drinking water helps to reduce cavities, particularly in children. Somehow, the Tea Party has come to see fluoride as another example of government overreach, the nanny state run amok.

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I was surprised to learn that there are still wide swaths of rural America that don’t have broadband Internet access. Living in a large metropolitan area (Portland, OR) as I do, it’s easy to take broadband for granted (and evidently I do). I have it at home, it’s available at the airport, it’s available at every Starbucks and most coffee shops (that plan on staying in business), and many restaurants and other places of business. You have to work pretty hard in Portland to find a place where you can can’t access the Internet via wireless broadband, so, yeah, I do take it for granted. Imagine my shock to find out that there are still millions of Americans whose only access to da Interwebs is via a dialup connection.

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As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves.

-Mohandas Gandhi

When I was a child, I listened to people from my grandparents’ generation tell stories about their experiences during the Great Depression. It all seemed so distant, so theoretical, so fantastically horrific that I could never imagine a circumstance where I would see such a time in my own life. Today, as I look around me, I realize that not only is that time here (albeit in a different form), it’s becoming the way of the world for this generation. I never thought I would ever have my own “How I survived the Great Recession” story, but here I am, and there are millions of Americans in far worse circumstances and with far more horrific stories.

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It's no wonder people in this country aren't willing to find real solutions to real problems...according to a recent poll conducted by Fox News (yeah, I know...) a full 77% of the American public actually believes in the power of prayer to heal people. Even self-identified liberals, who are usually a more skeptical and reality-based group, came in at 65%. Every time I think we have finally bottomed out, there's evidence that there's still room to drop.

Rick Perry, translated for the masses....

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The heat wave now battering much of the nation is centered on Oklahoma, where record heat and drought have crippled the state for the entire summer. With August on the way, there is no end in sight. The prolonged heat -- Oklahoma City has been above 100°F for 30 days this summer -- has probably killed over a dozen Oklahoma residents.... The oil-rich state is also the epicenter of global warming denial, led by its senior U.S. Senator, Jim Inhofe (R-OK). The oil-funded senator has a long history of finding humor in the misery caused by extreme weather disturbed by greenhouse pollution, including the record snowstorms of this winter. This deadly heat wave is no exception. In a tweet, Inhofe's press office mocked the killer heat, arguing that Al Gore could cool it off.... The tweet links to the Wikipedia page on "The Gore Effect," which is the climate-denier claim that weather and appearances by Al Gore are linked. The claim, of course, lacks any basis in reality, but an absence of facts and truth have never proved a burden for Inhofe.

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Republicans claim to be deeply worried by budget deficits. Indeed, Mr. Ryan has called the deficit an "existential threat" to America. Yet they are insisting that the wealthy -- who presumably have as much of a stake as everyone else in the nation's future -- should not be called upon to play any role in warding off that existential threat. Well, that amounts to a demand that a small number of very lucky people be exempted from the social contract that applies to everyone else. And that, in case you're wondering, is what real class warfare looks like.

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Queer-loving ice cream hippies Ben & Jerry have created a limited-edition ice cream blend based on the popular Saturday Night Live skit which has Alec Baldwin, playing a man named Schweddy, talking about his dessert balls. Thus, Schweddy Balls.... For the American Family Association spin-off group One Million Moms, at least. They've sent an angry letter to Ben & Jerry's requesting that no more Schweddy Balls are put in America's grocers' freezers. "The vulgar new flavor has turned something as innocent as ice cream into something repulsive," the morally upstanding letter cried. "Not exactly what you want a child asking for at the supermarket."

So Ann Coulter told Floriduh CPAC that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is a “hideous beast who has a voice like a hyena getting an abortion”? That Coulter somehow thinks this passes for reasoned political discourse is about all we can reasonably expect from her. Then again, when you can't beat them on the merits of your argument, personal attacks and character assassination are ALWAYS good options, eh?

It almost goes without saying that Coulter's remarks elicited whoops and cheers from her audience.

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HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- White supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed Wednesday evening for the infamous dragging death slaying of James Byrd Jr., a black man from East Texas. Byrd, 49, was chained to the back of a pickup truck and pulled whip-like to his death along a bumpy asphalt road in one of the most grisly hate crime murders in recent Texas history.... Brewer, 44...glanced at his parents watching through a nearby window, took several deep breaths and closed his eyes. A single tear hung on the edge of his right eye as he was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m., 10 minutes after the lethal drugs began flowing into his arms, both covered with intricate black tattoos. Byrd's sisters also were among the witnesses in an adjacent room.

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Yesterday marked the official end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” GLBT Americans can now serve in this country’s military without having to live a lie. While the end of DADT is certainly a wonderful thing worth celebrating, it’s sad that we’ve had to travel the long and winding road it took to get to this point. That hatred and discrimination is as American as baseball, apple pie, and Ann Coulter naked, trussed up, and wearing a ball gag is sad enough. That it took so many years to undo the Clinton-era sop to haters says far too much about our collective inability to respect and honor our differences and celebrate our mutual humanity.

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Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) appeared on MSNBC with Chris Jansing...to attack President Obama's new deficit reduction plan.... Taking up the typical GOP talking point, Fleming said raising taxes on wealthy "job creators is a terrible idea that kills jobs because many of these people are small business owners who pay taxes through personal income rates. Fleming is himself a businesses owner, so Jansing asked, "If you have to pay more in taxes, you would get rid of some of those employees?" Fleming responded by saying that while his businesses made $6.3 million last year, after you "pay 500 employees, you pay rent, you pay equipment, and food," his profits "a mere fraction of that" -- "by the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over."

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Time was when Republicans simply believed differently. They were Conservative, we were Liberal, and that (usually healthy) tension tended to keep thing in something resembling balance. After all, politics is (and should be), at least in the words of the late Tip O'Neill, "the art of the possible." Compromise was what kept the system running. No one got exactly or all of what they wanted, but when things worked, most got enough of what they wanted to at least feel as if they'd achieved something positive.

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The last time Republicans were roundly condemned as anti-science, it was for their resistance to destroying human embryos for stem cells. Their crude religiosity supposedly blocked imminent leaps ahead in medical progress. Then-vice-presidential candidate John Edwards went so far as to predict in 2004 that because of "the work we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair, and walk again.".... In other words, as a major figure in the self-styled party of science, Edwards made an outlandish assurance worthy of a faith healer. For the Left, science is as much a branding device and political bludgeon as a serious commitment. Edwards didn't know the first thing about spinal-injury research and didn't care -- so long as he could sell demagogic flimflammery under the banner of glorious science.

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Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.

- Frederick Buechner

Imagine for a moment that you're outside of a lovely glass house. You can look in and see that they people inside the house are enjoying themselves. There's food and drink aplenty, and the people on the inside seem quite happy and relaxed. It's as if they don't have a worry or care in the world.

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‎When you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call to question evolution, all I'm saying is that in order for the Republican Party to win, we can't run from science.

- Jon Huntsman

Jon Huntsman is fluent in Chinese. In a short period of time the Republicans have come quite a long way. The last Republican president wasn't even fluent in English.

- David Letterman

If you're a moderate Republican these days (and you're a dying breed, to be sure), you have to be alarmed that Jon Huntsman is the voice of reason within the GOP. At a time when the party's 2012 Presidential candidates are pandering furiously to the science-ignoring, faith-based, and ignorance-propelled Far Right base, the GOP looks like something straight out of A Confederacy of Dunces>, or- my favorite- Idiocracy. I can almost understand the party's collective denial of global climate change, although even that flies in the face of currently available scientific knowledge. Their insistence that deficit reduction is Job One ignores the reality that the biggest problem facing this country is that people don't have actual jobs. And the GOP's tendency to view the world in black-and-white terms too often leads to simplistic proposals designed to solve complex problems.

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Conservative commentators quickly seized on Krugman's post. Blogger Michelle Malkin called him a "smug coward." Writer Glenn Reynolds called the post "an admission of impotence from a sad and irrelevant little man." A writer at the Big Journalism site called Krugman "vile." And former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that he was cancelling his subscription to the Times.