As a Catholic, I'm getting a little tired of right-wingers like Newt Gingrich spewing nonsense like this.

Newt Gingrich sought to make inroads among religious voters Sunday, accusing President Obama of having “basically declared war on the Catholic Church.”

Gingrich, who converted to Catholicism himself in 2009 (his third wife, Callista, sings in a Catholic choir), was speaking about the Obama administration decision this week to require church-affiliated employers to cover birth control drugs in their health plans, regardless of religious beliefs.

Gingrich, in an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, said the decision represented “a radical Obama administration imposing secular rules on religion.”

Since Newt is a new convert, he might be surprised to learn that,

Some 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women have used contraceptive methods banned by the church, research published on Wednesday showed.

And,

A Le Moyne College/Zogby International national poll in 2007 found 67 percent of American Catholics disagree with the church teaching that artificial birth control is wrong.

And,

In particular, Catholic voters do not approve of schools teaching abstinence-only programs in schools. Six in ten (64 percent) oppose requiring high school sex education programs to only teach abstinence. They also believe insurance companies should be required to cover and pharmacists required to sell birth control pills. Three-quarters of Catholics support requiring health insurance plans to cover birth control pills (75 percent). Nearly eight in ten (78 percent) oppose allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions.

Let's get real, shall we? The U.S. government is actually on the same side of this "war" as most American Catholics. Those "secular rules" Gingrich whines about the Obama administration enforcing are already being embraced by church members, whether he knows it or not.

What really annoys me is that right-wing partisans like Gingrich side with the Vatican when it's convenient and ignore it when it's not. Want to discuss the Vatican's position on the death penalty, the Iraq War, global warming, torture or Social Security and Medicare, Newt?

Didn't think so.

One of the richest men in the country, ranking in the 0.006 percent of Americans, likes to accuse the President of creating an “entitlement society.” Mitt Romney, the heir apparent, next in line GOP nominee … is against entitlement.

When I hear “entitlement society” I think, “country club.” But When Mitt uses that phrase he doesn’t mean rich guys like him, given all the advantages of wealth, who are now enjoying its comforts – he means the rest of us. Yes, Mitt is against an “entitlement society” because that involves too many people and not just him and his ilk. It’s not the “entitlement” he contests – it’s the entire “society” part.

At the Monday Florida debate last week Mitt noted that under Gingrich’s tax plan Mitt would pay no taxes at all. Gingrich responded with, “Well, if that -- and if you created enough jobs doing that -- it was Alan Greenspan who first said the best rate, if you want to create jobs for capital gains, is zero.”

So rich people whose money makes their money (it’s literally capital gaining) are so fortunate they get to hire other people to pay taxes for them? Rich people with their alleged mythical power to create jobs even get to outsource their tax obligations to poor saps working for a living?

This is the prosperity gospel as a Super PAC-funded marketing blitz. Money is next to godliness and poverty is the fault of the poor for not being better people.

It’s as if Jesus were a CEO and the Romans job-killing communists.

“Contrary to the President's constant disparagement of people in business,” former George W. Bush budget director Gov. Mitch Daniels said in his State of the Union response last week, “It's one of the noblest of human pursuits.” This is one of those phrases you (usually) will only hear in business school (funnier if it was one of those rip-off for-profit colleges). Business is one of the noblest of human pursuits? Noble as in aristocratic? That phrase, “noble pursuits,” is usually applied to an avocation not paying much but rewarding in other ways: teachers; firefighters; nurses; foster parents; soldiers; community leaders; social workers; mentors; rescue workers; care givers; farmers. Or to anyone who’s honest, shows up every day and works hard. That’s a noble pursuit.

Are the wealthy really so sensitive they need Mitch Daniels to make them feel better about themselves in a spiritual sense? What they’re doing not only pays off with privilege and cash – it also has to be venerable from a moral perspective? How much reward does one group need? They own everything and they also need to be thanked?!

The rich are not just over-paid – they’re over valued. And generous welfare recipients.

As Senator Tom Coburn points out in his damning Nov. 2011 report, “Subsidies of the Rich and Famous,” we are a wealthfare state. It reads, “This reverse Robin Hood style of wealth redistribution is an intentional effort to get all Americans bought into a system where everyone appears to benefit.” In other words: We subsidize the rich by telling the poor to pay their fair share.

It’s been a strange three years under the Obama administration. First the GOP was against empathy. Yes, the party had to vehemently opposed seeing the plight of your fellow human beings because Obama was for it. Now their new hot button word? Fairness. Obama used the word fairness in his third State of the Union. And now the GOP has decided to be against fairness and celebrate inequality as being the thing that makes America great.

It’s as if Jesus were a CEO and the three wise men were shareholders.

The prosperity gospel is not America. It’s not democratic. It’s not even Christian. It’s greed warped into being a virtue by the greedy.

The rich aren’t better, they’re just richer.

I hope the Obama administration stands firm on this one. It was only a matter of time until the church upped the political ante, and of course a low-life like Newt Gingrich is only too happy to jump on the bandwagon. The American church's hierarchy climbed under the covers with the right wing decades ago, and they're all too happy to tear down the Democratic candidates on command:

During church services on Sunday, Catholics around the country were read a blistering letter assailing the Obama administration for an "assault on religious liberty" in the form of a coming requirement that most church-linked organizations - among them hospitals, schools and universities - offer birth control coverage as part of their health care plans.

Despite strong lobbying from religious groups, the Health and Human Services Department announced earlier this month that most church-linked groups will not be exempt from the requirements - which also mandate that no co-pay be charged for contraceptive services - though they will have an extra year to comply beyond the August 1 deadline.

Churches themselves (along with any other employer that is explicitly focused on offering a religious message, and which primarily employs those who believe in that message) are exempt from the requirement.

Religious groups were outraged by the decision - saying it forced employers at church-linked organizations to violate their conscience - and on Sunday Catholic leaders took their complaints directly to parishioners. As Business Insider reported, similar letters were read in churches around the country complaining that "the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation's first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty."

In an appearance on "CBS This Morning" Monday, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich brought up the letters, using them as an opportunity to attack both the Obama administration and Republican rival Mitt Romney.

"The Obama administration has just launched an attack on Christianity so severe that every single church in Florida had a letter read from the bishops yesterday all across the country - Cardinal [Timothy] Dolan was leading an effort to explain that, literally, freedom of religion in America is now being attacked by Obama," he said. "The Romneycare does the same thing. Romneycare has tax-paid abortions. Romneycare put Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in America, in the bill. No right to life group's in the bill. Planned Parenthood is. Romney himself approved taking away a conscience clause from Catholic hospitals."

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In an interview with ABC News on Wednesday morning, Willard once again rewrote history on his position about the government's rescue of the auto industry. He's been playing this little game for months.

Let's be clear. Willard opposed the bailout, which began under George W. Bush and continued under President Obama. Period.

“My view with regards to the bailout was that, whether it was by President Bush or by President Obama, it was the wrong way to go,” he said, during the event at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, sponsored by CNBC.

The problem is, if there hadn't been a bailout, there would be no auto industry.

“Without the intervention of the Bush and Obama administrations, we would have seen the liquidation of both Chrysler and probably GM,” Cole said in August. “That would have taken the whole industry down. We would have seen a disaster in terms of the job impact.”

Something in the range of one million jobs would've been lost.

Willard wants to take credit for favoring a managed bankruptcy -- which is something the Obama administration proposed early on -- and simultaneously bash the bailout.

This is much like bragging about the fact you opposed using a defibrillator on a patient who's heart had stopped--but were right about the antibiotics he was put on later.

Amazing that he keeps getting away with it.

The Obama White House continues to push for a settlement that would let bankers avoid being punished - or even investigated - for a wave of mortgage-related crimes that includes perjury, tax evasion, and several types of fraud.[1]

Despite the President's new-found populism - rhetorically, anyway - officials in his Administration continue to push an unfair deal designed to conceal the financial Crime of the Century.

The Financial Times reported on new details of the proposed settlement, whose stated purpose is to punish banks and reduce the amount of money owed by underwater homeowners. But it's increasingly clear that the deal wouldn't help homeowners very much and wouldn't punish bankers at all.

Banks could lower those loan balances by reducing the amount owed on mortgages owned by investors and not by the bank itself. That's what Bank of America is accused of doing as part of an $8 billion settlement it reached in 2008. This deal would set the stage for a repeat performance.

This proposed deal is still unfair, unjust, and very unbalanced. And it has the Administration's fingerprints all over it.

Unfair

Banks deceived investors into buying bundled mortgages (mortgage-backed securities) that they knew were worth far less than they were paying. Now, as part of this settlement deal, they could shaft those investors again. Many of the investors are from the 99 percent, not the one percent. As the head of the Association of Mortgage Investors told the Financial Times, "It would be a pyrrhic victory to settle the mortgage crisis with the money of public institutions, pension funds and seniors."

The proposed deal would force banks to meet a certain dollar limit for reducing mortgage principal. But it's designed to let them use other people's money - mortgage investors' money - to reach that limit. They would have to reduce principals by a larger amount if they were using someone else's money.

Taking $1.00 off their own books might get them $1.00 closer to their goal, while using investors' money money only "earn" them fifty cents. Is that really supposed to encourage them to do the right thing?

Ask yourself: What if you were given a choice between spending a thousand dollars of your own money to pay a fine - or two thousand dollars of someone else's? (And remember: You're a banker, so don't let conscience influence your decision.) What would you do?

The money should come out of the banks' balance sheets, not those of mortgage investors that in many cases they've already defrauded. Even that isn't entirely fair: Many pension funds and other institutional investors hold bank stock, too, as do unwary private investors. They've also been defrauded by bank executives. But someone has to pay the price for trusting these bankers and tolerating their continued presence in the executive suite.

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How can it be that a runaway teenager is deported to Colombia without even a cross-check of her identity? Here's how it happened, via WFAA.com:

News 8 learned that Jakadrien somehow ended up in Houston, where she was arrested by Houston police for theft. She gave Houston police a fake name. When police in Houston ran that name, it belonged to a 22-year-old illegal immigrant from Colombia, who had warrants for her arrest.

So ICE officials stepped in.

News 8 has learned ICE took the girl's fingerprints, but somehow didn't confirm her identity and deported her to Colombia, where the Colombian government gave her a work card and released her.

"She talked about how they had her working in this big house cleaning all day, and how tired she was," Turner said.

Through her granddaughter’s Facebook messages, Turner says she tracked Jakadrian down.

There's really no excuse for this. I don't care how much of a priority it is to enforce immigration laws. They should be enforced with accuracy, not expediency. And to require her to pay for the ticket home? Ridiculous.

Now she is pregnant, being held in a detention facility in Bogotá. God knows what has happened to that child after she was deported and now, but whatever it is, it shouldn't ever have happened. ICE likes to brag about their numbers and say they're deporting criminals and repeat offenders, but it seems that they're a bit sloppy about how they're doing it. They fingerprinted this child, for heavens' sake! How hard would it have been to compare her fingerprints to those of the person whose name she used before sending her out of the country? I wonder if they ever thought the absence of a Columbian accent would have been a clue? Evidently not.

Even if the Houston police screwed up, and I believe they did, the responsibility and ultimate screwup sits firmly with this administration's immigration authorities. An apology and restitution is the least they should do.

Step up, DHS. Get this girl home. Now.

Update: CNN just ran this report at 9 AM this morning. Note how the entire story is being twisted now to blame the victim. It's HER fault she's in Colombia. Somehow she plotted to use someone's name who was never in the ICE system? According to CNN, she jacked the whole system to get from Texas to Colombia. They can't imagine why, of course, but it's clearly this 14-year old (now 15) African-American teenager's fault that she is being held in the system in Colombia after being deported from this country.

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As Bernie Sanders says in that clip, we're picking winners and losers. Sure we are. And the Republicans are working hard to make solar energy a big loser. In the case of Solyndra, they're also hoping to smear the Obama administration with the "crony politician" label at the same time.

This Solyndra "story" is a non-story and just another smear, but as digby points out:

Progressives are very concerned that the right isn't out there misinforming the rest of the public and go to great lengths to "set the record straight." By contrast, during the Bush years, when liberals criticized the president, the other side would say "Yeah. So what? He did the right thing." They'd stage a symbolic hissy fit every once in a while to prove their moral/patriotic bonafides, usually over a perceived slight from a hippie somewhere, but they really didn't care if the left "understood" what they were doing or if they approved. In fact, they consciously try to offend them.

It's not limited to the Bush years. They still do it, every single day. Cheer the death of a hypothetical 30-year old? It's totally justified because "Obamacare is socialism." Climb into bed with Big Pharma? No problem, as long as you feign outrage that someone would dare suggest you can be bought for a mere $5,000.

Add to that the right-wing custom of ritual defamation, and the Solyndra smears begin to make more sense, particularly when it's clear what constituencies the right serves.

Still, as a lefty-type, it seems to me that facts do and should matter, so here is the Solyndra non-story/scandal in a nutshell, summarized from this Think Progress timeline.

The Solyndra loan guarantee process began in 2006, under the Bush administration, as part of a loan guarantee program under the newly-passed Energy Policy Act of 2006. It took three years for those loan guarantees to be approved, despite the efforts of the Bush administration to push the process in order to have something to show for their energy policy efforts. In that three-year period, the market changed for alternatives to silicon-based solar panels after China flooded the market with cheap silicon-based panels.

Free markets being what they are, Solyndra failed.

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You know, contrary to what you might believe from hearing the panicked commentary from the media, there are solutions to our economic problems.

Look at the report that came out this week from the New Bottom Line Campaign showing that at least 1,000,000 new jobs would quickly be created if we just forced the big banks to write down the mortgages of underwater homeowners to current market levels.

Look at Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s new jobs bill, which would immediately create more than two million new jobs and pay for it by just taking taxes on wealthier Americans up to the levels they were after the big Reagan tax cuts in 1981.

Look at the CPC's budget, which sensibly brings us to a balanced budget faster than anything else than has been proposed by Republicans while still making the desperately needed investments we need to make in our future.

Look at this report from The American Prospect on how the Obama administration could help rebuild the middle class through executive action, things they could do without waiting for Congress to act. CAF is doing a great new series of articles on how to create jobs. A task force I served on came up with a whole series of great ideas on how to rebuild America's manufacturing sector.

We have solutions to our economic problems, things that both help create millions of desperately needed jobs in the short run and lay the foundation for us, as President Obama likes to put it, to win the future. What we need is political leadership that stands up to the massive multinational conglomerates that are strangling our economy, and stops acting in panic and caving into the hostage takers willing to kill the economy in order to get what they want. Sometimes the hostage takers are politicians, and sometimes they are bankers, but either way, they need to be told no.

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In the wake of John Boehner's pullout from the budget talks, Bill Daley came on Christiane Amanpour's show this morning to address the state of negotiations, where the Democrats stand, and what the president believes needs to be done to restore confidence in the economy.

It is the first time I've heard a clear message coming from the White House in ages. Whatever Daley's leanings are, he succeeded in getting these key points across:

1. Democrats are not using Social Security as a deficit reduction tool
2. Social Security and Medicare do need shoring up, but not at the expense of beneficiaries.
3. Jobs are tied to uncertainty about the economy, which is why it's important to do something more than apply a bandaid.
4. If corporate America wants certainty, they can step up and put some pressure on the DC lunatics to get this done.

Daley sent the whistle out loud and clear to Wall Street and the rest of the business community: If you want certainty and a deal, step on the people who are holding it up. (That would be the Republicans, in case you doubted that)

AMANPOUR: Your long-standing relations and your history of professionalism here is with the business community to a large extent. What are you saying to them? You were meant to be able to sort of convince them to start investing and hiring people. Instead, they're racking up profits, doing sort of cost-cutting and not hiring. And this is a problem for the employment rate.

DALEY: There's no question that there's a tremendous amount of profit on the company's books. But they are looking to see the signs of confidence for them to invest. Every major company does that. I talk to business leaders every day. They don't have as negative an attitude about the economic situation, that they know it's difficult, that Washington seems to have. On the other hand, they want to see leadership. What I say to the business community is, you complain and whine about the political system all the time. Get involved. Get involved and make the statement about the fact that you need a balanced approach to solve our fiscal problems. It is not going to be solved -- it should not be solved on the backs of those who have given and are having a difficult time right now.

AMANPOUR: So given what you say, their legitimate concerns, what is your prediction for employment next month and the month after?

DALEY: Well, I'm not a predictor, nor would I be stupid enough to try to guess what the numbers are going to be. I think there's plenty of signs. But whatever the numbers are, positive, we have come -- we are coming through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. When President Obama came in, there were almost 800,000 jobs a month were being lost. That's the size of Charlotte, North Carolina. Four million jobs have been lost the previous, 13 months before he came into office. This country was in a crisis like very few people had ever seen. And we are slowly coming out of that. Albeit, it is frustrating to this president that it's not coming fast enough. But a lot of that is based upon this dysfunction that seems to be going on in this town, and that gets felt throughout the country, and there's a lack of confidence in whether these political leaders in this town will have the guts to stand up and do the tough things.

I'm not sure I buy this notion of confidence being the barrier to economic growth, but I do like having someone actually stand up and put some pressure on these companies to quit sitting on their assets and start growing again. It was a pretty clear signal to business that they need to support a plan that involves taxing the rich as well as cutting budgets. Will they listen?

I try not to post when I'm upset about something because I prefer to write semi-reasoned analysis instead of crazed emotional heaving. But there comes a time when crazed emotional heaving is a perfectly rational thing to do. We are now in one of those times.

Why am I so freaked out, you ask? Because I think the GOP is really, really, really going to let the United States default. They've figured out that holding the debt ceiling hostage is the perfect way to achieve all of their ideological goals. This is their big shot to drown government in a bathtub and they are not going to miss it. And the only reason they can get away with this is because our supposed Democratic "leadership" does not have the guts to come right out and say that the Republicans are threatening to destroy the economy unless they get everything they want. You know that things have gotten bad when David Frum actually wishes Obama would be a more forceful in standing up to the GOP:

“Call me naive,” President Obama invited viewers of today’s press conference.

Mr. President, invitation accepted: Unless that performance today conceals some unimagined occult plan, yes, you are naive.

Congressional Republicans have refused to raise the debt limit unless the Obama Administration agrees to large and immediate spending cuts. They have their finger on the nuclear button and are threatening to detonate unless they get their way. It seems crazy that they would actually do it, but congressional Republicans have done a pretty good job of convincing the Administration (if not yet the financial markets) that they just might do it.

Obama has responded by entering into negotiations with the congressional Republicans. These negotiations have not gone well, largely because Republicans are united upon an all-spending-cuts, no-tax-increases approach to deficit reduction.