For Once Rick Santorum Is Right–Smart People Will Not Be On His Side

For once Rick Santorum is right:

“We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country,” Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, told the audience at the Omni Shoreham hotel. “We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”

Rick Santrorum also attacked the libertarian wing of the Republican Party at the Values Voter Summit. If he was criticizing them for not really supporting freedom I would go along, Santorum had other objections:

“When it comes to conservatism libertarian types can say, oh, well you know, we don’t want to talk about social issues,” Santorum said. “Without the church and the family, there is no conservative movement, there is no basic values of America.”

The real issue isn’t necessarily one of values, but opposition to the authoritarian right’s desire to use government to impose their values upon others and make decisions which should be left to the individual in a free society. A large percentage of liberals have rather conservative, heterosexual, marriages and life styles. The difference is that we don’t condemn others and don’t desire to use use government to impose any one life style upon others.

Smart people will not be on their side. They have Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and more recently Mitt Romney. Smart people generally know better than to side with these people who oppose science, promote Voodoo economic ideas which are as faulty as their pseudo-science, and oppose the ideas which this nation was founded upon–including the formation of a secular government with separation of church and state.

ABC Debunks False Claim That Obama Skipping Intelligence Briefings

There are so many lies being disseminated by the right wing noise machine and being spread by email that it is not possible to comment on all of them. It is good to see the mainstream media sometimes debunking them as ABC News did last night. One of the false claims being spread by conservatives is that Obama has been skipping intelligence briefings. The truth is that prior to George Bush, presidients routinely would receive written intelligence briefs. George Bush didn’t like to read. For example, the famous written report that al Qaeda was planning to attack the United States using planes was too much for him to bother to respond to. Bush primarily received verbal briefings. Obama, like most previous presidents, has returned to reading written reports and therefore his schedule shows far fewer verbal briefings than George Bush received. This in no way suggests that Obama is skipping any briefings as the right wingers are claiming.

Considering what a failure the last Republican president was on national security, and how successful Obama has been, it is understandable that the dishonest people on the right would want to fabricate an attack agains Obama on national security. Ultimately raising national security only helps show how weak the Republicans have become on this issue (along with pretty much every other issue). Republican strengths these days are pretty much limited to expanding government intrusion in personal affairs of individuals, undermining national security,  increasing the deficit, crashing the economy, and replacing main street capitalism with a plutocracy. That is hardly a record which the Republicans can run on.