Judson Phillips wrote one of his crazy posts for World Net Daily, that bastion of solid unbiased reporting, suggesting that electors should refuse to show up to the electoral college because without a quorum, the decision would move to the House of Representatives. Yes, Mr. Phillips is one of the malevolent voices of the right who just cannot deal with the fact that the nation re-elected President Obama by the highest popular vote margins any Democrat has received since Lyndon Johnson. It's out of his intellectual and emotional reach, evidently. Here's part of what he wrote:

According to the 12th Amendment, for the Electoral College to be able to select the president, it must have a quorum of two-thirds of the states voting. If enough states refuse to participate, the Electoral College will not have a quorum. If the Electoral College does not have a quorum or otherwise cannot vote or decide, then the responsibility for selecting the president and vice president devolves to the Congress.

The House of Representatives selects the president and the Senate selects the vice president.

Since the Republicans hold a majority in the House, presumably they would vote for Mitt Romney, and the Democrats in the Senate would vote for Joe Biden for vice president.

Can this work?

Sure it can.

One small problem. Phillips incorrectly reads the 12th amendment, as Jason Easley at Politicususa explains:

Actually, it can’t. Phillips misread the 12th Amendment. The quorum rule only applies to the House of Representatives, not the Electoral College. World Net Daily updated the Philips post with the correct information. People wrote it, and then everyone went about their Thanksgiving business under the assumption that this crazy, stupid, and incorrect reading of the 12 Amendment was over and done with.

This has not stopped the idea from finding a life in the viral right-wing email atmosphere, where visions of death panels and Kenyan births are regular inbox denizens. Now those email strands have inspired an Idaho lawmaker to cling to this as the solution to their devastating election loss. The Idaho Statesman reports:

A state senator from north-central Idaho is touting a scheme that’s been circulating on tea party blogs, calling for states that supported Mitt Romney to refuse to participate in the Electoral College in a move backers believe would change the election result.

Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll, R-Cottonwood, sent an article out on Twitter headed, “A ‘last chance’ to have Mitt Romney as President in January (it’s still not too late).”

She is debunked in a pretty blunt way by constitutional scholar David Adler, who explains that in the electoral college, one need only have 270 votes. No quorum is required. Just 270 electors voting for one candidate. You think Barack Obama is worried about this crazy challenge?

This has left Nuxoll bereft.

She said, “I think it is very, very sad that we elected our current president, because he is definitely not following (the) Constitution. He is depriving us of our freedoms by all the agencies, and so … what I’m thinking is the states are going to have to stand up for our individual rights and for our collective rights.”

Nuxoll won a second Senate term on Nov. 6 with 64 percent of the vote in Idaho’s new legislative District 7, defeating independent Jon Cantamessa.

Oh, tea party. We have to put up with your loony Congresscritters so just live with our elected President, ok?

Judson Phillips has evidently accepted reality on this, but he's been desperately casting about for someone to blame for the November 6th rejection of all he holds dear. Today, he decided to aim at young voters, which is awesome for ensuring the tea party's obsolescence. He wrote a rant and posted it on Tea Party Nation today blaming them for everything from student loans to Jimmy Carter. I'm sure he would have blamed them for climate change if he believed in climate change. Here's a taste:

If you are under thirty now, you could be in your seventies and still paying for us baby boomers.

This is what you got by reelecting Barack Obama.

There is an old saying, “you get the government you deserve.”

In this case, that saying has never been truer.

I loved the first comment.

Why don't we get into solutions instead of negativity.

Oh, brave commenter, you're so right. Of course, the problem is that the solutions are things you just cannot abide, like a government by, for, and of the people.

By the way, there's a reason Tea Party Nation is one of the few tea party groups to snag the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center. They're extreme and extremely hateful. They also seem to have a problem with reality-based living.

*edited to clarify remarks about vote margins

DOWNLOADS: (313)

PLAYS: (1509)

Embed

The big spin today is on how "shell-shocked" the Romney campaign was when the numbers started to turn on them, how incredibly amazed they were when voters started "crawling out of the woodwork" in places they never expected, and how it all just took them by utter surprise.

CBS News quoted one campaign spokesman as saying "There's nothing worse than when you think you're going to win, and you don't...It was like a sucker punch."

Sucker punches happen when people are stupid, when they listen to each other instead of the facts or their instincts. Still, I have to say honestly that I'm not buying into the theme as an overarching excuse for why the Romney campaign failed on such a huge scale. I'm not willing to buy excuses like this, via Huffington Post:

The GOP was blindsided Tuesday, but also revealed. The Democrats' ground organization was beyond anything they'd imagined, pulling in new voters with stunning effectiveness. It exposed a major weakness in the Republican approach to winning elections, practically and intellectually.

"I don't think anyone on our side understood or comprehended how good their turnout was going to be," said Henry Barbour, a Republican committee man from Mississippi. "The Democrats do voter registration like a factory, like a business, and Republicans tend to leave it to the blue hairs."

This, from a representative of the party that hired Nathan Sproul to register only Republicans in swing states.

The truth is more stark and revealing than anyone seems willing to admit.

Fact: This race should never have even been close. If Barack Obama were a white dude with a normal name who had just served a first term that was as effective as his first one was, it would have been a landslide with absolutely no prospect for any Republican candidate. No one seems to want to talk about racism and the role it played in this election even being "faux close", and I'm not sure why.

The only weapon in the Republicans' arsenal was race, and they played it on a near-daily basis for four years. The backup weapon was gender, and they played that one for the past two years in order to marshall the evangelical conservatives behind an otherwise unelectable candidate.

Think about it. They nominated the guy who actually represented the larger group that drove this economy into the gutter. Imagine Dupont running against FDR in 1936. How do you suppose that would have worked out? Would there have been any doubt about who would have been re-elected?

Would it have felt like a "sucker punch" when FDR won that second term? Not even close.

So now we come to 2012, and a bid by Barack Obama for re-election after four years of daily demonization and "othering" by conservatives in the mainstream and on the fringes. In the process of marginalizing him, conservatives have also taken aim at women, particularly younger single women, and Hispanics. For four years they have honked their horns about jobs and the economy while working to stall all growth whatsoever until they could get someone more favorable to the billionaire's tax goals, at the expense of working people everywhere.

They demonized unions and tried to take voting rights away from anyone they could. This is what they did for four years, and they thought people would simply sit idly by and watch them do it?

I don't think they're stupid. I think they're spinning, because they have a real problem. They cannot reconcile the purity trolls in their party with the pragmatic thinkers, for starters. They've let the John Birchers take over the party's core, which is a near-promise of irrelevance in the short-term.

They were 'surprised' because they relied on racial division to carry them over the finish line. This is why the despicable John Sununu and Donald Trump were permitted to carry the race card and play it at will. They thought they had the numbers because they believe there are enough racist haters in the world to actually win.

Shocking, isn't it?

And here you have Karl Rove spinning madly (see video above) because he's got to have something to tell his billionaires, and they're a little peeved about spending all that money only to lose ground rather than gain any.

In Rove's world, Barack Obama lost voters because people "couldn't stand the guy and couldn't stand voting for him" so he demonized the other guy. There's that personal thing again. Never mind that both parties lost voters and Romney lost more than Obama overall. What could that reason be for people not being able to "stand the guy" personally? Could it be.....scary race-baiting?

Seriously, Republicans. You're not stupid. Not all of you are racist. But racists are also Republicans. Time to step up and start dealing with it.

Susan Gardner of Daily Kos wrote a review of "Over The Cliff," on Sunday.

Her review covers a number of topics that we wrote about and she sums it up:

Readability/quality: Concise, persuasive and methodically documented, Over the Cliff is a smooth and sobering read. It feels much shorter than it actually is—there's a lot of information packed in, both historical and current, and a tremendous job has been done in picking through the right-wing landscape for pertinent, on-the-money examples. Lord knows you could spend a couple thousand pages just on documenting the day-to-day rhetoric (in fact, Media Matters does just that). So thanks, guys, for paring it down and honing it.

Who should read it: Everybody. Seriously. This is a wake-up call for those in denial, a refresher course for the painfully aware. Good reference to have on hand in your permanent home library for quick examples of extremism in Obama's first year.

For David, who has written a number of books already this is old hat in a way, but for me it's another new experience. An experience that I'm proud to bear witness to. We'll be going over to answer some questions with Susan next week I believe.

UPDATE: And we're appearing on 'Ring of Fire' with Michael Papantonio Wednesday at 11:30 am PST.

Don't forget to support Liberal authors and grab a copy at many online book stores including Amazon and there are eBook versions too.

Mother Jones: In 2008, BP touted it's new tech to measure oil flow. This may be why it stopped working

the glttering eye: Making excuses

cab drollery: Balance

The Reaction: Belgium on the brink: Parliamentary elections could lead to a split

World-O-Crap: Physician, Heal Thyself

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Beck promotes book of Nazi sympathizer...Make it stop, please...The siege of Helen...Just shoot me...MoDo misunderstands irony, writing...LA Times employs a full-time wingnut...MSM ignores blogger's work...Cold water on their meme...Lie and Spin

Princess Sparkle Pony's Tea Party Roundup: Poll reveals they have a split personality. And their salt-of-the earth cheerleader is dedicated to luxury hotels, private jets, a team of consultants, and BIG FEES

sexgenderbody: Catholic church goes 'all in' on victim-blaming, denial and depravity

Booman Tribune: A history lesson for Sarah Palin

Calculated Risk: The SEC and other Banks

Wall St. Cheat Sheet: The Cost of Terror

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Monkey Muck (who is 4 years old!), Watergate Summer, Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues

Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli has been in the news a lot lately. You may have heard about the letter he wrote earlier this month to all of Virginia’s public colleges – UVA, VA Tech, William and Mary, etc. calling on them to drop policies banning discrimination against gays and lesbians. He claims they have no legal authority to adopt such policies.

Or maybe you heard Cuccinelli speculate about whether President Obama was born in the United States. In this recently unearthed recording from the campaign trail, Cuccinelli can be heard telling a birther that he might be able to challenge federal laws on the basis of Obama’s birth place:

Cuccinelli has since dashed off a denial, but the fun doesn’t stop there.

In another recently unearthed recording, Cuccinelli told a crowd that he’s worried about the government tracking his family. He said he might not register his newborn son for a Social Security number because "it is being used to track you." He also claimed that many other Americans aren’t registering for Social Security numbers for the same reason:

We're gonna have our 7th child on Monday, if he's not born before. And, for the very concerns you state, we're actually considering – as I'm sure many of you here didn't get a Social Security number when you were born, they do it now – we're considering not doing that. And a lot of people are considering that now, because it is being used to track you.

Cuccinelli’s hard line against gays, paranoia about the Social Security Administration, and openness to birther conspiracies prove that he is the real deal – a bona fide Teabagger of the highest order. And now he’s the chief legal officer of an entire state.

For anyone wondering what a Tea Party-controlled GOP might look like, keep your eyes on Virginia.

DOWNLOADS: (1663)

PLAYS: (2785)

Embed

Glenn Beck was trying real hard yesterday to convince people that his running theory -- that Barack Obama is secretly a Marxist who intends to radically transform America into a communist state -- just might be right.

He compared his theory to the early stages of the Monica-baiting of Clinton in 1998, when everyone was in denial -- because, you see, he thinks eventually he'll be proven right. OK, whatever.

Then he blurted this out:

Beck: I mean, at this point, you have to try to not pay attention. I mean, you have to be working to miss the pattern here. There's so much anti-free-market rhetoric from Obama and his top officials, you'd either have to either be living in a cave in Afghanistan next to Obama, and you can't hear anything that Ob -- uh, Osama is saying because of the goats going, ah-ah-ah, or you're so deeply in love with Obama that you can't detect a single flaw in him.

This is what we'll call a Beckean Slip: An apparent slip of the tongue that is most likely intentional, and at the bare minimum clearly exposes the desire to confuse the public.

It isn't the first time Beck has slipped and mixed up Osama bin Laden's name with President Obama's. And it certainly won't be the last.

However, it does tend to undermine Beck's subsequent claim to having this high-level, all-seeing mind that is "right" about a whole host of things (that he's actually been wrong about). Indeed, it reveals a confused mind incapable of clearly distinguishing between the president of the United States and a cave-dwelling terrorist.

Beck also adds that "I could be wrong" but "I haven't been before"? Um, yeah, except for the dozens of times he actually has been wrong. (Remember when he was predicting that Americans would eventually go for McCain at the polls? That prediction turned out well, didn't it?)

Clearly, his fans are hoping that he'll be proven right, because then they'll be justified in subsequently mounting a violent assault on the White House or something. But with a mind like Beck's concocting the theories, you might have better luck putting a bagful of cats in a roomful of word processors and hoping that Shakespeare's collected sonnets somehow emerge.

All of which raises a question that Glenn Beck should ask himself: What if you're wrong?

Because then, all you have done is smear a boatload of innocent and decent people, dragged their names through the mud, and ruined their careers.

But hey, that doesn't matter, because Glenn Beck is all about values, right? Like the value of his new mansion in Connecticut ... those are the values that matter to Glenn Beck.

Basic decency? Not so much.

Take a look at this ad from America's Health Insurance Plans, the insurance industry lobby.

See what's missing? The words "public option." Or really, any attack on the current plan in Congress at all. The spot associates AHIP with a reform banning denial of coverage for pre-existing condition in exchange for getting every American covered, gently asks for the final bill to be bipartisan, and... that's it.

Similarly, Olympia Snowe, who signed on to the letter calling for a delay in the deadline for reporting a health care bill out of the Senate, positively called for a public option on day one in a speech this weekend in Maine.

What this shows me is that we have now moved beyond the public option as the fulcrum point for the health care debate. We don't know what form it will take or how accessible it will be to all Americans, but if there's a bill signed by the President, it will include a public option. The major players have given up on that score and moved on to other issues to try and derail health care, particularly costs. We've seen much more criticism about cost controls and surtaxes on the wealthy over the last week than any discussion of the public option.

That's because those other facets of the policy don't poll as well as a public option does. They're also harder to explain and quantify. And the forces defending the status quo have found a much easier path by arguing for more delay, questioning costs, lying about the impact on small businesses, claiming that Democrats are engaging in class warfare, raising specters about rationing, and generally using that fiscal scold pose, saying we cannot pay for health care reform while protecting federal health care funding for their districts and localities. On the far right fringe you have lies about how the bill "outlaws private insurance," but in general, the status quo forces think they can trap the bill with a discussion about its cost, not its function.

Of course, the larger effort here is to destroy the Democratic agenda and basically ensure a first term without substantive accomplishments. And Obama is right to use Jim DeMint's "Waterloo" line against him, make it famous, and condemn those who would turn an urgent need for tens of millions of Americans into a game of political hardball:

Just the other day, one Republican Senator said, and I’m quoting him now, “if we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Think about that. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses and breaking America’s economy. And we can’t afford the politics of delay and defeat when it comes to health care. Not this time, not now. There are too many lives and livelihoods at stake.

What we may see is a brief scaling back on the deadline, which should still leave enough time to report a bill out of both houses in September and reconcile them by October. But the fights ahead for health care appear to be playing out over cost and who pays. The public option is in the bill, as long as it gets dragged over the line.

Obsidian Wings: Farewell, Hilzoy

skippy the bush kangaroo: The same Republicans who scoffed at the CBO during the Bush administration's crazed spending and tax cutting, now revere the office's prognostications

AverageBro: Mr. "I Been Had" is back

A Tiny Revolution: Interview with Wendell Potter, a former head of corporate communications for CIGNA who finally listened to his conscience, left behind the blood money, and started talking about the evil he was doing as a shill for the health care denial industry.

Bitch Ph.D.: PUMAS are all about the white ladies

Danger Room: Company denies its Robots feed on the dead

(image courtesy of bjkeefe)

The right is collectively imploding over Sarah Palin's resignation, and as with any sort of passing there comes a period of grieving. Two major stages in that process are denial and anger, and the always-classy Erick Erickson of RedState is already showing signs of both:

1. Sarah Palin resigned, I think, to spare her family from more attacks. I don’t think it is a coincidence that Sarah Palin is doing this just days after a very nasty Vanity Fair article where folks like Nicolle Wallace and, according to Bill Kristol, McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt (though I’m told Schmidt is not involved), savaged her.

2. Unfortunately, by resigning, I think the left and national media will be emboldened to ritualistically engage in the metaphorical gang raping of conservative politicians, particularly those who are female and have children. They’ll decide savaging Palin’s family drove her from office, so the sky’s the limit on the next conservative with kids.

Finally, Erickson goes flat out delusional, comparing Palin's resignation to Obi Wan Kenobi taking one for the team and sacrificing it all to fight the dark side:

4. I’ve had this running thought all day, perhaps because I was watching it on TV in HD for the first time, that this is kind of like Ben Kenobi letting Darth Vader strike him down. Palin is not going to run in 2012, but by doing this she can now become Barack Obama’s worst nightmare, and help rebuild the opposition to Obama. How? Because were she to remain a 2012 contender, she’d keep having stories by anonymous McCain campaign staffers and other 2012 contenders going after her and her family. Take that ambition off the table and it neutralizes a lot of that. So she can focus on candidates and ideas without an ulterior motive focused on 2012.

Read on...

Really? Erick, you know this wasn't about her children. She used them as political props all through the '08 campaign and continued to do it till the bitter end. And in the end, it was her ineptitude and ethical shortcomings that did her in. Perhaps the enduring lesson from this tragic political tale with be that going forward, politicians of all stripes should think twice about exploiting their children for political gain.

Is there an indictment coming for Palin? That remains to be seen, but one thing seems certain -- Sarah Palin is now toxic. She walked away from the people of her state when the going got tough and has shed any remaining crumbs of credibility she may have had left.