Bigoted voters were represented well in North Carolina on the 8th of May as a bill banning same sex marriage, civil unions, and common law marriage was passed with overwhelming support.

On Tuesday May 8, the state of North Carolina joined an incredibly long list in an embarrassing part of American history as much as the human condition: by a 61 to 39 margin the rights of homosexuals to marry, have a legally recognized partnership, or just live together for a long time and receive “common law” recognition were struck down by the bigoted, backwards-thinking, homophobic voters of the tar heel state.

It’s okay though, North Carolina. You’re not going to be unfairly singled out here. In fact, you’ve joined a long line of states that have decided to dictate the terms of love and a lifelong relationship to others. You have friends in Alaska, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Depending on which way legal winds blow, you might have friends in other states too. Yes, North Carolina, welcome to the majority – the majority of 31 states that just outright ban homosexuals from marrying.

Also! Welcome to the majority of states that have seen a majority of voters dictate their beliefs to a minority of the population. The same number of votes, 31, have occurred in various American states and have in one way or another denied the same legal recognition to a loving couple of the same sex as those of the opposing. The tyranny of the majority is alive and well!

Unpopular statement time: on social issues, sometimes a population needs to be dragged into the future – kicking and screaming if need be – before they realize the minority was right. An absolutely loaded statement, that is, which can be twisted and turned in so many different directions – applied to so many different situations and issues. When it comes to discussing civil rights, though, it is absolutely the truth.

Religious roots help drive the bigotry and hatred toward homosexuals.

The vast majority of this country is religious, and as such they have certain beliefs and statements ground into their minds since the cradle. The religious texts almost universally condemn homosexuals as a living people – let alone their rights to form couples, marry, or adopt children. In the name of God’s everlasting love, these people cannot be allowed to exist. This sort of position instilled in the minds of many takes quite some time to evolve out of. In our modern and supposedly open society, treatment of homosexuals can include efforts to pray away the gay, psychological torture in the form of being cast out of society, self-inflicted psychological torture in staying in the closet out of fear of ruining one’s personal standing in life, hazing and more serious physical violence, and of course just out and out murder. Some of the qualities and characteristics that we use to look down upon more “backwards” and “third world” societies among our planet can be found in all too high of a quantity within our own borders.

For many people born from the 1970′s and onward, it is hard to imagine living in a country where state and national policy, where the law in many cases, forbade people of different races marrying. Love could only happen between two people of the same color, apparently.

At the founding of the United States in 1776, a country that fancied itself on being a land of the free, interracial marriage was banned in nine of the thirteen states – New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New Jersey allowing it. Pennsylvania was the first state in the union to strike down their anti-miscegenation laws in 1780. “Miscegenation” itself was a cooked up term that came from anti-abolitionists, as an attempt to frighten the undecided populace into thinking of what terrible, terrible things might happen if black slaves went free – they might start marrying you!

No other state struck down an anti-miscegenation law until 1843 when Massachusetts did so. Over the next 44 years, a whopping nine states or territories would join that club: Iowa (1851), Washington (1855), Kansas (1859), New Mexico (1866), Illinois (1874), Rhode Island (1881), Maine (1883), Michigan (1883), and Ohio (1887). Three states – Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Vermont – joined the union without any such laws on the books. After 1887 though, that was it. The momentary blip in equal rights for African Americans came to an end via Reconstruction’s end, Jim Crow laws, and a general turning of the tide against equality throughout the north. Anti-miscegenation laws would be reinstated in six states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. It wouldn’t be until a California Supreme Court decision in 1948, Perez v. Sharp, that striking down anti-miscegenation laws would finally get on the move again.

Fourteen more states repealed their local anti-miscegenation law between then and 1967. Finally, on the 12th of June, 1967, the Supreme Court of the United States ended anti-miscegenation across the country with its decision in the Loving v. Virginia case. As of that date in 1967 sixteen states still had such laws on the books, comprising an area that was basically the slave states plus Oklahoma, West Virginia, and minus Maryland.

From the first time an anti-miscegenation law existed in a colony or a state, Virginia in 1691, until the Loving v. Virginia decision, 276 years had passed. Even at the bitter end of those laws it wasn’t popular vote that overturned them it was a decision from the Supreme Court. Even after all that time, marriage discrimination was very much allowed. Had the Supreme Court never made that decision and it was indeed left up to the states, which a conservative talking point will tell you is a good thing, we may still have states with these laws on the books. Likely in the South, likely with little chance of being overturned by a vote of the people, still discrimination.

Richard and Mildred Loving, the couple who's marriage led to the landmark Supreme Court decision in 1967 which finally ended all remaining anti-miscegenation laws, legalizing interracial marriage.

Society needed to be dragged into the future, kicking and screaming, to realize that color does not matter. Even still, everyone probably has that one family member – perhaps even more than one – who if you were to bring home a significant other of a different race to Thanksgiving dinner would at best turn their nose at you and at worse, well, belittle you in the finest tradition that a bigot can bring to bare. The difference though is that their bigotry ends at the dinner table, or the walls of the house where that meal is being had. The bigotry does not progress to the state house, to the ballot box, and doesn’t follow you home with a government-mandated policy on just who you can fall in love with and marry.

Progressing at a faster speed than anti-miscegenation laws in the early years of the United States or the colonies, laws banning homosexuals from marrying have been erected in 31 states between 1998 and the 8th of May. At the federal level, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act says that the only legally recognized marriage in the United States is between a man and a woman. While the Obama Administration’s justice department is no longer actively defending the act in court, it remains on the books and it remains a very real law. Until its repeal or defeat by the Supreme Court, a conservative president in the future could very well start enforcing the act once again.

While the President recently made rather significant headlines on stating a personal belief that same sex couples should be able to marry, his personal belief has about as much legal weight as the bigot on the street who vehemently disagree. The path to marriage equality is going to need to run through state legislatures and federal courts – perhaps all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States, with a Loving v. Virginia decision for homosexuals finally bringing the equality that is deserved.

The arguments against same sex marriage are as flimsy, pointless, and backwards thinking as the arguments against interracial marriage. Any policy that involves forbidding a minority of people from enjoying the rights of the majority is going to see defense so flimsy. The only question that remains is for how much longer?

President Obama publicly stated his support for same-sex marriage in a television interview. Still, his personal belief does not translate into law and this "victory" was purely symbolic for the gay community. A legal war remains.

For how much longer will homosexuals be second class citizens? For how much longer will homosexuals be denied the same rights and privileges that straight couples enjoy? For how much longer the population at large continue to implicitly stand by and allow such bigotry to continue – being “brave” enough to stand for same sex marriage when a pollster is asking, but not following through with support at the ballot box.

If we truly leave it to the states, that answer will likely be decades at best, even longer being more likely. Again, just look back to how long it took anti-miscegenation to be struck from the books: centuries.

There will be a social ruckus when the Supreme Court eventually strikes down anti-marriage equality laws, or the Congress, or state houses, or lower federal courts. There’ll be hand wringing and guarantees that this’ll be the downfall of western civilization, and it too shall pass. The sooner the tyranny of the majority can be defeated, the sooner we can better represent the ideals of freedom and equality that we espouse.

For more on the timing of same-sex marriage legislation in the U.S. as well as the decline of anti-miscegenation laws, check these two links:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_legislation_in_the_United_States
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws_in_the_United_States

Greek voters took to the polls over the weekend to politically punish everyone who had anything to do with the austerity agreements that have devastated the country.

In addition to the end of the conservatives’ run at the top of French politics, in local and national elections across the continent the refrain was repatitive and loud: we don’t want austerity, we want growth. No where were these calls the loudest than in the country where the effects of austerity have been the sharpest and most severe: Greece.

So severe has austerity been there, and so turned off by the prospect of even more the population is, that in weekend elections the population basically threw out en-masse the entire apparatus that supported the austerity regime, and filled the void with quite literally anyone else.

The neo-Nazi party in Greece now holds 21 seats in the Hellenic Parliament. Financial crisis collateral damage.

In Greece, the negative effects of the 2008 crash have been doubled up by the negative effects of the resulting debt crisis & austerity measures.

To understand what path you have to take to clear the way for the Greek neo-Nazis, a party that polled 0.29% of the vote in 2009 and held no seats could suddenly transform from people usually known for their hate crimes, violence, and racism, into a political force in Greece, it is necessary to have a little back story.

It was 2009 the world was a much more simple place: the stock market crash of 2008 was just about winding up, feelings of doom and gloom were high, everybody was losing money. It was high time to start the next economic boom cycle. The story is supposed to begin, as it has time and time again in crisis past, with an injection of government monies into the economy in order to stimulate demand. The increased debt could be managed in future years because of increased tax receipts, and meanwhile countries keep on marching into the future – leaving this real estate crisis in the dust.

Someone had an idea, though. Rather, not one individual imposing his or her plans on a country, an entire gaggle of Really Smart People thought that the best way to rid governmental meddling in the affiars in the Free Market would be to shrink it; the best way to shrink it would be gutting through austerity; the best time for austerity is now.

Caught in an economic downward spiral, unemployment in Greece soared to 21% in the first quarter of this year. Compare that with the rest of the EU and France, who's voters just rejected their pro-austerity President.

The policy markers and the Really Smart People started applying pressure to politicians the western world over. In the United States they were beat back (for the time being) by the 2008 – 2010 full Democratic majority in government. In Europe, however, the audience was much more receptive.

As countries in the Euro currency zone began to slip into economic calamity, they found themselves without one key economic policy tool: the ability to issue more debt. A split quickly appeared between northern Euro countries who were in fairly good economic health and did not want to issue more debt, and southern Euro countries who were decidedly not. As the largest economic engine on the continent by far, Germany’s determination to not allow the Euro zone to issue new debt left the weaker countries with only two terrible options: leave the Euro and face an economic depression, or try austerity… and see what happens.

It’s almost as if a cruel science experiment has been run on Greece. The country has, since 2010, been subjected to five rounds of austerity in order to secure bailout funds to pay back on its debt. The effects of those five rounds are as follows:

Austerity package #1, February 2010:

• Loan amount needed: €80 billion
• Cuts made:
• Freeze public sector worker pay
• 10% cut in public sector bonus checks
• Cuts in public sector overtime, travel, and actual headcount reduction

If you know of an upside to austerity, the Athens Stock Market would love for you to tell them about it.

Austerity package #2, March 2010:

• Enacted over fears of a looming national bankruptcy
• Cuts made:
• 30% cut in bonuses for Christmas, Easter, and regular leave
• 12% cut in public sector bonuses
• 7% cut in public sector pay
• VAT tax hike from 4.5, 9, and 19% to 5, 10, and 21%
• Increase gas tax to 15%
• Increase tax on import vehicles by 10 – 30%

Austerity package #3, May 2010:

• Aimed to save €38 billion through 2012
• Cuts made:
• 8% public sector pay cut
• 3% public utilities pay cut
• Bonuses eliminated for all making more than €3,000/month
• Bonuses slashed to €1,000/6 months for anyone still left qualifying
• 13th & 14th month income reduced to €500/month for public sector employees making under €3,000/month, abolished entirely for above
• 13th & 14th month pensions reduced to €800/month for pensioners earning less than €2,500/month, abolished entirely for above
• New tax on high pension values
• High taxes on corporate profits
• Mandatory raising of property values in order to gain more property tax
• Increase tax on import vehicles by 10%
• Increase VAT to 5.5, 11, and 23%
• 10% rise in ‘luxury’ taxes
• ‘Sin’ taxes on cigarettes, fuel, and alcohol
• Retirement age raised to 65
• 60% reduction in number of municipalities
• Nationwide general strike, violent protests ensued

Massive increases in unemployment have sent Greeks to the streets to protest time and time again.

Austerity package #4, June 2011:

• Selling off government assets worth €50 billion
• Increased taxes on everyone earning more than €8,000/year
• Extra increased taxes on everyone earning more than €12,000/year
• Increased VAT for houses
• Lower pension payments by 6 – 14%

Austerity package #5, February 2012

• 22% cut in minimum wage
• 13th and 14th month income and pensions permanently cancelled
• 15,000 public sector job cuts in 2012 with 45,000/year for 2013, 14, and 15
• €300 million in pension cuts
• Relaxing of laws to make it easier to lay off workers

With Germany the loudest voice calling for Austerity, Berlin's popularity in Greece has plummeted.

Needless to say, the cuts have proven to be quite remarkably unpopular with the Greece public. Frustrated that the parties in power seemed to care about nothing else than rolling over to accept more more bailout money no matter what the negative effects on society would be, polls showed that incumbents were in for a savaging at the voting booth. As a part of the latest austerity package, early elections would be called – they were previously scheduled to occur in the later months of 2013.

The largest victor in the 2009 Greek elections saw the worst of the beatings. The Panhellenic Socialist Movement, or PASOK, went from nearly 44% of the vote and 160 of 300 seats to 13.18% of the vote and 41 seats. Never in post-dictatorship Greece (1974) has PASOK done so poorly at the polls. For decades they were one of the main political parties in Greece, being either the major or main opposition party almost uninterrupted from 1977 onward.

New Democracy, or ND, made up the center-right flank of main Greek politics since the end of the dictatorship. They, like PASOK, enjoyed either majority or official opposition status even longer – since the end of the dictatorship in 1974. From 33% of the vote they shrank to under 19, their worst showing since inception.

With the almost-two party system in Greece thoroughly dismantled due to public opposition over austerity, a large void was opened up in Greek politics, to which the extremes on both sides flocked.

Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left, will be the primary power broker in leading the anti-austerity fight in Greece.

The Coalition of the Radical Left, or SYRIZA, moved from 4% and 13 seats to almost 17% and 52 seats. Among the coalition you will find communists and anti-capitalists. Before merely a fringe party, SYRIZA is now one of the key power brokers in Greece and could be one of the primary forces for rejecting austerity.

Independent Greeks, or ANEL, is a new right-wing party that was birthed from outrage over austerity. Taking some of the positions of ND and moving further to the right, ANEL is anti-Europe integration, conservative, populist, and nationalistic. They managed to capture 33 seats and more than 10% of the vote.

ANEL would have been enough of a story on the right if it wasn’t for the sudden increase for one other party. Not newly formed, but always lurking in the backgrounds, usually the domain only of the craziest of the crazy, was the Greek neo-Nazi Party, or Golden Dawn. They don’t like it when you call them Nazi, of course, but then again I suppose it happens to be simple irony that their official flag contains a swastika and that they address each other with the salute we have come to know as the Nazi salute. Also disregard the item of their 1979 founding charter looking for a few good men of “Aryan blood and Greek origin”.

The most disturbing results from the Greek election came from Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party, which will now occupy seats in Parliament.

Golden Dawn, or CHA, polled at 0.29% in 2009 and didn’t so much as sniff a seat. Feasting on resentment of non-Greeks that has been building as a side effect of austerity that is seen by many nationwide as imposed by forces outside of Greece (which it is), CHA surged to almost 7% in the polls – enough to capture 21 seats. Prior to this, the most their party has been able to accomplish were shooting rampages (1999), attacks on Jewish places of worship and Holocaust memorials (2000), and repeated violent clashes with leftists over time. Now they are a party. Now they are a political player, an anti-austerity power broker, who could be tapped as an important bloc to shore up support against new austerity measures. Will this legitimize a neo-Nazi movement in Europe? How much, and to what end? What is Europe going to realistically do if Greek neo-Nazis become a bother? Threaten to withhold aid? The Greeks don’t want the aid that is being served at the spear tip of austerity in the first place. The neo-Nazis, along with other anti-austerity parties, could just claim that as a victory and justification of their stance.

If CHA becomes a power broker in an anti-austerity government, does that legitimize them in the eyes of other Greeks? How far and how fast can the tonic of “blame the foreigners” work in a country where one out of every five working people can’t find a job, with nothing but more pain on the way? Is this a blip, or is this long lasting damage? What sort of sociological damage has austerity truly wrought in Greece?

For all we know, Greece will be doing this show again in a matter of months:

GREECE faces the prospect of repeat elections after an anti-austerity protest vote at the weekend left little hope that any party could form a governing coalition.

Political leaders were due to meet for a second day overnight in a bid to form a government as the prospect of the nation leaving the eurozone loomed large.

New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras gave up his bid to forge an agreement after nearly six hours of talks in Athens on Monday. The attempt to form a government has now passed to Alexis Tsipras, the head of Syriza, the second-biggest party, which has vowed to cancel the bailout terms. Mr Tsipras was due to meet Greek President Karolos Papoulias last night.

Socialist François Hollande celebrates his 6 May victory in the French Presidential Election.

In the aftermath of The Great Recession’s initial shock years of 2008 and 2009, new political realities have slowly continued to dawn in the western world. Many in power at the time of the collapse sought to blunt the effects of an economic downward spiral by reducing spending instead of increasing borrowing – convinced that even in a rapidly cooling economy, stimulus as it had been seen in previous economic crisis, was no longer the solution.

Over the years to follow, the supposed nay-sayers were proven correct time and time again – cuts in government spending and the implementation of austerity-based policies led to weaker economic growth, higher unemployment, and a lack of optimism for the future. As terms of governments, prime ministers, and presidents have come up during these austerity years a number have found their selves voted out of office in favor of regimes who think cutting government to the bone isn’t the end all cure for a flailing economy.

Introduce to this new dynamic now the case of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He will become the former President on the 15th of May, having just been defeated by Socialist candidate François Hollande. The defeat of Mr. Sarkozy brings to an end seventeen years of Conservative rule in France – first from the right-wing “Rally for the Republic” party of former President Jacques Chirac, and more recently under the banner of Mr. Sarkozy’s right-centrist “Union for a Popular Movement”. This will be the first time that the French left will have control of the Presidency during the age of the European Union – which could have potentially far-reaching ramifications for that organization’s current role in implementing austerity on weaker members with no other choice for economic stability.

Unemployment in France is challenging the worst of the post-crash years – which helped put pressure on Mr. Sarkozy and contributed to his defeat.

All things considered, austerity has not hit France as hard as it has other European countries. Being in one of the drivers seats in Europe comes with the added benefit of not having a gun pointed to your head when it comes to outsiders lending you money – just ask Greece how that is going lately with their 25% unemployment rate. Still, after having a crash-peak unemployment rate of 10% (1st quarter 2010), the most recovery that has been done was just back down to the 9.5% level (3rd quarter 2011), and it has ticked back up since – now sitting near 9.8%. The economic hit to France is much more visible in their yearly GDP. The country has seen its 2009 2.8 trillion dollar economy shrink to just above a 2.5 trillion dollar economy in 2011.

The financial pain and stress in France may be more accurately described as acute, but it is still most assuredly there, is being felt, and definitely resonated with the voting population.

A sputtering economy post-crash is shown off better here in this comparative chart between the French market, the CAC 40, and the U.S. S&P500.

The platform of Mr. Hollande was rather straightforward and easy to understand – especially in the post-crash years: rescind tax cuts for the wealthiest of the French and closing corporate tax loopholes. He also campaigned on restoring the retirement age to 60 (raised to 62 by Mr. Sarkozy’s government), increasing the number of education jobs by 60,000 (the amount of cuts imposed under Mr. Sarkozy’s austerity), and bringing rising rent costs under control.

Mr. Sarkozy fought this economic message by, well, trying to avoid an economic message. The bigger points of his campaign included reducing legal immigration by half (read that again, reducing legal immigration), withdrawing from the open border territories agreement known as the Schengen Area, slashing of social welfare programs, denial of voting rights for people who have immigrated to France from other Euro-area countries, and also – a mainstay of any conservative movement – rejecting marriage equality.

When you can’t run on the economy, run on hating immigrants and homosexuals, I suppose.

The far-right, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant National Front party of Marine Le Pen bettered their 2007 vote total by 7%. Le Pen's insistence for her supports to cast a blank ballot instead of voting for Mr. Sarkozy could be a factor in deciding the election for the new President.

Sadly there is a market for extremist ideas in France – though not as well pronounced as in some other countries (in worse-off economic shape), parties on the far fringes saw massive gains in the first round of 2012 French voting compared with 2007. Most notably the far-right this-close-to-outwardly-racist National Front party jumped by nearly 7% and the further-to-the-left-than-the-communists Left Front jumped more than 10%.

The current shaky financial world – weighed down as much by lingering effects of The Great Recession as it has been by the current European debt crisis – wakes up to a new dawn with a new man at the helm of one of Europe’s most powerful voices. Potentially, this could mean much more resistance to Germany trying to impose strict austerity measures on any smaller European country seeking bailout funds to stabilize their local economy and be able to remain in the Euro currency. Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Italy have already swallowed these bitter pills, as has the most notable example – Greece.

Extraordinary measures were taken to “shore up” the Greek economy, however, and prevent outside influence from ruining the deal – even if that outside influence was the voting public. When the Prime Minister of Greece announced that the latest round of terms for a new austerity package would be put to a public vote in December 0f 2011, it was the voice of Mr. Sarkozy that joined German chancellor Angela Merkel in denouncing this attempt to interfere with the deal via pesky voting. The pressure provided by the two European leaders proved enough to make Greece’s prime minister withdraw that promise of a vote within days. Would Mr. Hollande have taken a similar position as Mr. Sarkozy? If not, and Greece would be allowed to play with – and potentially “ruin” – the terms of the deal, what then for the Euro currency, and all of its members?

French citizens celebrate the victory of Mr. Hollande in Paris on 6 May. There are high hopes that France will not follow other European countries into an austerity-driven downward economic spiral.

As the Euro crisis is a live and ongoing event, Mr. Hollande will certainly have his hands full on the international front as much as he will have domestically with trying to get his new legislation measures passed. Note that France, like Greece, is a Euro currency member and bound by the same rules and traps when it comes to treating the effects of a recession. As yet, the Eurozone has refused to print its way out of the recession – by issuing more debt. Strict controls in Euro member countries prevent any one member from issuing a ton of debt under the Euro banner and calling the crisis a day. Freedom to print your own currency and manage your own economy was one of the things surrendered to the European Union – though not surrendered enough to have a strong centralized European government that would be required to deal with such a crisis as this. Instead, the Euro members get all the benefits of increased trade and free flow of money that a single currency provides without any of the icky details like having a place the buck stops during times of trouble.

If the French people truly get what they voted for – an end to austerity – for better or worse the monetary union we all know as the Euro could be in serious trouble in the years to come.

Quickly now, grab your split-panel Obama/Romney pictures. It's general election time!

Like a band-aid you have to rip off but don’t want to, the time has come for the most modern of American traditions – the knock-out sports-for-non-sports-fan over-budgeted escapade that is an American Presidential Election. Two men enter (others pretend they do but never really count for anything) and one man wins the honor of being erected on a pillar as all that is wrong with the planet by the opposition for the next four years.

Some optional governance is possible.

Our returning champion, President Barack Obama, was last electorally seen cruising to a 365 – 173 Electoral College pasting of Senator John McCain – taking the national vote by 7.2%. It was the largest margin of victory since independent Ross Perot siphoned off enough Republican votes to help President Bill Clinton top Senator Bob Dole 379 – 159 on an 8.5% margin.

Since the 2008 election the Great Recession has ended. An anemic recovery has ensued, facing strong headwinds from a shattered real estate market that may take a generation to recover, relentless cuts to the public sector that have methodically chipped away at job growth, European trading partners held back by a widespread debt and currency crisis, and the continuing crippling debt brought on by two unfunded wars started in the dawning years of the last decade. Unfortunately for Mr. Obama it is exceedingly hard to prove a negative, so while it is within all fair assessment to assume that a President McCain administration continuing previous policies would have exasperated the bleak economic times in 2009, without a way to visit alternate realities one cannot confirm this.

It will always be the economy, stupid: It has been two years since the worst of the Great Recession's unemployment peak, but there's still a long, long way to go before full recovery.

Opposing the President is former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Mr. Romney has had his eye on the Presidency from the time his one-term stint as governor ended in 2007 through a failed 2008 primary campaign, and right on up through this year – where he finally managed to overcome one of the weakest and most religiously extreme fields of competition in modern times. What should have, in a logical world, been a fight over economic policy including but not limited to debt, tax, and post-Great Recession business regulation instead devolved into the Culture Wars on steroids.

Through twenty televised debates in 2011 and this year, those who watched were exposed to some of the uglier sides of conservatism as it exists in America today: there was the applauding of 234 death row inmates being killed under the watch of Texas Governor Rick Perry (2011 September 7), the Darwinian encouragement of letting uninsured people die (2011 September 12), the booing of an active duty service member who had the gall to be homosexual (2011 September 22), repeated drumbeats to get the United States involved in a war with Iran (take your debate pick), the offering of a $10,000 bet to settle an argument (2011 December 10), and a proposal for the re-invasion of Iraq (2012 January 7).

This was a 21st century tax proposal.

Off-stage the ignorance continued to rain down on the countryside. Whether it was former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Hermin Cain offering a “9-9-9″ tax plan that is usually only a good starting point when playing a game of SimCity, Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachman suggesting that – based on what one person told her at a campaign event – the HPV vaccine causes autism, and what was probably a well-intentioned proposal that came off with a lunatic twinge: former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich suggesting the United States found a lunar mining colony by 2020.

A wise political thinker working for an unknown who’d become President in 1993 once said “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The 2012 GOP primary contest jumped the shark after mentions of an Etch-a-Sketch sent shares of toy maker The Ohio Art Company rising by 200%

Still, that rather messy and at many times unmentionable primary season is finally behind us, and it is time to pivot toward the general election for Mr. Romney. Such a movement was succinctly telegraphed by Romney’s communications director:

Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.

The comment drew salvos of desperate fire from Mr. Romney’s remaining political opponents and, for some inexplicable reason, caused the company that makes the toy to rise by over 200% in a single day. That has since crashed back to earth, but if you for some reason bought shares in The Ohio Art Company before the Etch-A-Sketch moment, you’re still sitting with a nearly 50% profit. So there’s that.

For all the gaffes and mistruths that have gushed forward from this year’s primary season, the Etch-A-Sketch remark may actually be one of the least false. Usually one has to play to the party’s base in a primary campaign. Take the current President – he had to pivot from “let’s close GitMo” to “let’s try most of the people at GitMo, but not all of them, because it’s hard work, and let’s not bother with checking into any previous administration legal loopholes that allowed this to exist in the first place”. Such pivots, done for political expediency and to appeal to a wider audience, tend to leave the base feeling a bit sore – but it’s okay because they’ll turn out to vote for you anyway. For Mr. Romney, he’ll need the help of both an Etch-A-Sketch and one of those mind-erasing devices from the Men In Black series if he hopes to make meaningful gains among that vaunted category of “independents” in November.

Rick Santorum dragged the GOP primary field so far to the left that the eventual winner, Mitt Romney, was forced to take positions on social issues that are far out of the ordinary when compared to the general public's opinion.

On Mr. Romney’s list of things he hopes the general voting public forgets about of never even noticed are the far, far right and religious positions that he got pulled into trying to stay one step ahead of his main rival, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. Probably one of the last things Mr. Romney ever expected to be talking about during an election campaign he was involved in would be women’s access to contraception. He and his party have been driven so far to the right by the primary base that long blown past is the road marker of being anti-choice for women. Now the front has been pushed all the way back to “should women be able to get contraception”, “should women be paid the same as men”, and “do women have the right to resist medical procedures mandated by the state”.

Had the primary season continued with much more meaningful momentum, we might have gotten back to a national debate on the right of women to vote.

While these positions poll disturbingly high among the “engaged” members of the far-right, primary voters, they poll poorly among the rest of admitted republicans, worse still among independents, and disastrously among the opposition. As the idea is to make up 111 electoral votes to get back to 270, and presumably half of the vote by which Mr. McCain was defeated with in 2008, it would be a good idea to bury such terrible ideas as deeply and quickly as possible – hoping everyone else just happens to forget.

Here comes that cleaned landscape for the general election now…

For Mr. Romney there is hope of achieving this and more. For Mr. Romney there is hope of winning the presidency outright. For all the gaffes and controversy of the primary season there is, on the horizon, a dump truck of unlimited size carrying an unlimited amount of dirt that will help to bury this and everything else that is working against Mr. Romney right now. Driving that dump truck are the five Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of companies having the ability to donate unlimited amounts of cash to political advertisements in the landmark 2010 case: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Lampooned and publicly exposed by Stephen Colbert on his weeknight show, Citizens United grants first amendment rights to corporations and unions – without any of the accountability a real person might incur if they were lying. Applied to the political realm, this means corporations and unions will be absolutely uncapped to donate inordinate sums of money to groups that will shrill on behalf of their candidate of choice. They won’t be allowed to directly donate to any given campaign, just the outside groups that will try to peddle influence. Any collateral damage or benefit done by these advertisements will now just be a part of the game.

The important word there is “game”, because that is what this election is shaping up to be. The comedy of errors that was the GOP primary notwithstanding, with one side timidly fighting with “we saved you from a second Great Depression” and the other divorced from reality and relying on hyperbolic social issues to whip supporters into a frenzy… well… let the slog begin.

Showing no remorse for the lives he took, Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik started his court appearance on Monday with a defiant salute. (photo: Reuters)

The trial for Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist who killed 77 people and wounded an additional 242 in a matter of hours via a car bomb in downtown Oslo and a youth camp shooting rampage, kicked off on Monday with Mr. Breivik taking the stand to plead not guilty of all charges – that furthermore he was operating in self defense.

Giving a close-fisted salute that bore just enough similarities of the Nazi salute, was allowed to enter his not guilty plea after a psychiatric evaluation declared him sane on 10 April. Without that clean bill of mental health, it is likely that Mr. Breivik would simply go straight to a mental institution and would never have to answer for his crimes. His rationale for why he carried out this atrocity has remained the same: he “acknowledges” the acts he committed, but maintains that they were in response to the oncoming threat of a multicultural (Muslim integration) Europe which would erase the influence of Christendom. Mr. Breivik released a digital manifesto to this end on the same day as his attacks, stating that the death toll and violence was merely a marketing tool for getting his message out.

The courts can still find Mr. Breivik criminally insane – in which case he will not be jailed but placed under psychiatric care. If the court does not rule that way and instead finds him guilty and sane, he will get the maximum jail sentence allowable by Norwegian law: 21 years. It should be noted that a review process at the end of the jail term can still declare him a threat to society, and extend his sentence further if need be. Norway does not have capital punishment.

While on the one hand pleading not guilty, Mr. Breivik has also denounced the legitimacy of the very Norwegian court system that is trying him:

He later told the lead judge, Wenche Elisabeth Arntzen: “I do not recognise the Norwegian courts. You have received your mandate from political parties which support multiculturalism.”

He also said he did not recognise the authority of Judge Arntzen, claiming she was friends with the sister of former Prime Minister and Labour party leader Gro Harlem Brundtland.

The judge noted the objections, which Breivik’s lawyer said were not official, and said the defence could follow up on them in their opening arguments.

Mr. Breivik showed no emotion as the charges were read before him, nor during descriptions of the deaths he caused, nor from viewing previously unreleased surveillance footage showing his car bomb exploding in Oslo and the chaos that followed. He did tear up during a showing of his ten minute anti-multiculturalism screed explaining why what he did needed to happen.

According to Mr. Breivik’s lawyer, Geir Lippestad, his only regret from the entire violent spree is that he “did not go further” in inflicting more death on the Norwegian people. In a news conference following the day’s proceedings, Mr. Lippestad said that Mr. Breivik considered himself a soldier and wanted to be tried in a military tribunal instead of a civilian court.

Starting tomorrow and continuing for upwards of a week, Mr. Breivik’s defense will make its case. This will include testimony from Mr. Breivik and witnesses supporting his case. While most of the trial’s proceedings will be shown on national television in Norway, the testimony of Mr. Breivik himself and his witnesses will not be allowed for broadcast.

Albert Florence & his attorney Susan Chana Lask. Mr. Florence lost an appeal to the supreme court arguing his 4th Amendment rights were being violated over two forced strip searches relating to a traffic stop for an unpaid ticket.

In another controversial 5 – 4 ruling by perhaps one of the most conservative Supreme Courts in modern history, it was decided that anyone picked up by the police and taken to jail for a booking could undergo an invasive strip search for any reason deemed necessary by the local authorities – regardless if the original offence was of a violent nature or not.

The case was brought forth by New Jersey resident Albert Florence, who is the unfortunate victim of some bad paperwork. At the beginning of the last decade, Mr. Florence was charged a fine for fleeing a traffic stop. He paid the fine in full, but that was never quite documented correctly by the state of New Jersey. Having his plates ran and being subjected to multiple traffic stops since, Mr. Florence carried documentation on his person indicating that the fine was paid in full. This did not help him in a March 2005 traffic stop. Mr. Florence was pulled over again and whisked away to jail, leaving his pregnant wife and four-year-old daughter behind with the vehicle. The official documentation meant nothing to the state trooper.

Mr. Florence was taken to the county jail in Burlington County, where he was strip searched. He was held without charge for the next six days before being transferred to another jail in the city of Newark, where he was strip searched again. After another day without charge, a judge released him.

Strip searches are a matter of course in prisons – meant to house already convicted individuals, but were not as common in jails, where presumably (according to our legal system) some innocent people may be sent. They are usually not resorted to unless the crime in question is of a violent or drug-related nature.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the ever-popular “swing vote” between the court’s four-member conservative and four-member liberal wings, wrote the majority opinion. Justice Kennedy pulled at a number of cards in the deck to support the invasive strip searches including but not limited to lice & terrorism:

Kennedy gave three reasons to justify routine searches – detecting lice and contagious infections, looking for tattoos and other evidence of gang membership and preventing smuggling of drugs and weapons.

Kennedy also said people arrested for minor offenses can turn out to be “the most devious and dangerous criminals.” Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh initially was stopped by a state trooper who noticed McVeigh was driving without a license plate, Kennedy said.

Justice Kennedy also went on to note that two of the 9/11 hijackers were pulled over for speeding two days prior to the attack.

The number of people this ruling could impact is as high as 14 million – the number of individuals who spend time in jail and/or prison annually, which includes up to 700,000 who find their way to jail for minor offenses. Writing in the minor opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer noted that subjecting this many people to violations of their physical privacy was very overblown:

Dissenting Justice Stephen Breyer said the majority’s fears were overblown. One five-year study, he said, found that out of 75,000 jailhouse strip searches, only 16 uncovered contraband, and all of those would have been detected with a more limited search policy.

“A strip search that involves a stranger peering without consent at a naked individual, and in particular at the most private portions of that person’s body, is a serious invasion of privacy,” Breyer said. He said the ruling would apply to menstruating women and to someone jailed for violating a dog-leash law or driving with a broken headlight.

One must also consider if the minor offenses now covered in the ability to strip search will include individuals who are arrested in acts of nonviolence such as protesting. Upcoming rumblings from the Occupy Wall Street movement will surely test out this new reality in the spring and summer months to come.

With the blessing of the Supreme Court though, the right to your personal privacy ends the second – whether or not you are guilty of anything – a police officer takes you into custody. Another creeping erosion on privacy has now been codified by the courts.

Departure from average land temperatures for 8 – 15 of March. The deepest reds indicate readings 15°C (27°F) above normal.

March 2012 has produced one of the most remarkable heat waves in North American history. Records fell by the thousand as large swaths of the continent saw winter abruptly end and summer-like conditions arriving well before the first day of spring. Plant life responded accordingly with seasonal blooms being recorded some 5 – 8 weeks ahead of time in areas. It is likely that the March 2012 heat wave was the warmest for this time of year in North America seen in hundreds of years.

The heatwave was marked by its extreme as well as its longevity. In Chicago, for instance, a record high was either set or tied for nine days in a row from 14 – 22 of March. With the exception of the 19th, the temperature broke 80 degrees each day, and averaged 82.2 degrees. The average high during that same period is 47.5 degrees – a difference of +34.7 degrees above normal, on average. The chart below shows just how absurd the difference from normal was compared not just to March, but to the entire rest of the year:

2012 March Heat Wave vs. Yearly Averages

The only month of the year with a hotter average than what was seen in the March heatwave: July. Records weren’t just broken, they were smashed – 81 degrees on 15 March beat the old record by 8 degrees. An 85 degree reading on the 20th beat the old record by 14 degrees. Such occurrences were by no means limited to the Chicago area by a long shot, either.

The following chart is a running daily of record highs, lows, and what are called high-minimums (record warm low temperature) and low-maximums (record cold high temperature) for the United States in March through the 26th:

Daily records in March, 2012 for United States

Excluding the heatwave, the number of warm records were already far outpacing the number of cold ones, but the sheer volume of warm records that streamed in during the height of the heatwave are both a testimony to the geographical size of the heat wave, as well as its intensity, as site after site adjacent to each other in the Midwest, Great Lakes, Great Plains, and Northeastern United States experienced record shattering heat. The absolute peak was seen on 20 March, where 1,432 records for warmth were set.

The warmth was so pronounced that some places took shots at running down their warmest April high temperatures in March – especially across Michigan on the 21st. In Canada this actually came to pass in St. John, New Brunswick, tantalizingly close by other cities all across eastern Canada. Even the Great Lakes themselves responded to the record warmth by themselves spiking rather significantly in temperatures. Take this plot of average Lake Michigan water temperatures for the year vs. 2012:

2012 Lake Michigan water temperatures vs. average

The heat wave was able to raise the average Lake Michigan water temperature to nearly 45 degrees – levels not typically seen until the last days of June – and temperatures that are 10 degrees above normal.

What was the cause of all this wildly warm weather? As has been mentioned previously, a jet stream pattern that has favored fast moving west-to-east storms across the eastern 2/3 of the continent kept conditions much warmer than average for this winter. Over the western 1/3 of the continent, a much more amplified jet stream allowed for winter storms to rake across Alaska over and over again, keeping much of the world’s coldest weather bottled up over the interior of that state as well as northwestern Canada, and allowing for the occasional big storm to slam the northwestern United States. That trough became even more amplified in the second week of this month, sending winter-like conditions plunging southward into British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. So much instability was sent southward that thunderstorms in the Hawaiian Islands produced tornadoes and 3″ hail – both rarities for that part of the world. The energy behind that storm continued to plow eastward and became stronger still, until the jet stream to the east began to respond in kind, which led to the general pattern which allowed the heat wave to happen:

General jet stream setup for March heat wave

Only toward the end of the heat wave did the jet stream configuration finally become unstable enough that a so-called “cut-off” low formed – a slow, meandering storm system that put a gradual end to the heatwave from west to east along with dumping torrential amounts of rain across Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Most of the country was left still at or above normal by this point, but compared to the heatwave that just passed, it seemed rather cold.

Just how rare was this event? I’ll leave that to a Doctor:

In comparing deviations from normal across wide regions, it helps to normalize the deviations. A temperature deviation of 3 degrees C may be not that unusual in one region, but may be very significant in another. The solution is to use climatological anomalies (which we often refer to by the Greek letter, sigma.) Calculating the climatological anomaly is a two step process. First, we calculate the difference between a quantity (i.e., temperature) and it’s 30-year average value. Then we normalize the difference by dividing it with the 30-year standard deviation. From statistical theory, we know how unusual climatological anomalies are by value:

Odds of a deviation > 1 climatological anomaly=31.7%
Odds of a deviation > 2 climatological anomalies=4.5%
Odds of a deviation > 3 climatological anomalies=0.27%
Odds of a deviation > 4 climatological anomalies=6.34/1000%
Odds of a deviation > 5 climatological anomalies=5.7/100000%
Odds of a deviation > 6 climatological anomalies=1.9/1000000%

So, if we have a 30-year history of high temperatures for a particular date, we’d expect 20 of those years to be 1-sigma years, when the temperature is plus or minus 34% of average (ten colder years, and ten warmer years.) Rare 2-sigma events occur 4.5% of the time, so we should have about 16 of these per year. Even rarer 3-sigma events occur just 0.27% of the time, or just one day per year, on average. Truly extreme 4-sigma events should only occur once every 43 years. Much of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Northeast Iowa, and the eastern Dakota have experienced multiple 4-sigma days over the past week.

…

Yesterday, the analysis showed that Michigan experienced temperatures that were 4 – 5 climatological anomalies warmer than average (4-sigma to 5-sigma), the type of extreme that occurs between once every 43 years and once every 4779 years. Of course, using 30 years of data to estimate extreme events with a return period of centuries is a sketchy proposition. However, keep in mind that had we used a century-long climatology instead of using the past 30 years, yesterday’s warmth would have been classified as much more extreme, since the climate has warmed considerably in the past 30 years. It is highly unlikely the warmth of the current “Summer in March” heat wave could have occurred unless the climate was warming.

In an anecdotal way, this can be backed up further by considering the northern hemisphere at least, and the planet at most has just emerged from the Little Ice Age (1550 – 1850AD) is right now the warmest it has been since the Medieval Warm Period from 950 – 1250AD. Shattering 141 years of record history point to this being the warmest spell since at least the end of the Little Ice Age – and given the globe was colder on average then, the path back to the Medieval Warm Period becomes that much more clear. Anecdotal or mathematical, this heat wave was truly an astounding and rare event.

Or so we hope.

This weather pattern, set up in March and moving temperatures by some 40 degrees, still happened merely in March. Instead of snow showers and temperatures barely above freezing, there were beach days – comfortable beach days, relatively speaking. What could have become an extremely deadly and dangerous weather pattern was thwarted by the fact it happened in March instead of July. A similar weather pattern causing temperatures to only rise by half as much above normal as what was just experienced would still push the thermometer past 100 degrees in much of the northern United States, and over 110 in many places within the larger region. Rolling blackouts due to astronomical electrical demand and deaths from heat exhaustion and dehydration would merely be some of the effects of a similarly intense summer heat wave. A smaller regional heat wave in 1995 killed more than 700 people in Chicago alone in five days.

Since a warm spring is not necessarily an indication of a hot summer, and since the odds of having two 43 – 4,779 year heat wave events in one year in the same place have to be quite, quite low. In terms of scope, duration, and strength – hopefully this is the worst heat wave the continent experiences for the remainder of 2012.

Additional sources:

- Daily averages for Chicago: http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/daily/USIL0225?climoMonth=3
- March 2012 highs for Chicago: http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KORD/2012/3/27/MonthlyHistory.html?MR=1
- Great Lakes water temperature data: http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/statistic/statistic.html
- Record temperature data for most of March: http://mapcenter.hamweather.com/records/custom/us.html?c=maxtemp,highmin&s=20120309
- Record temperature data for 16 March: http://www.wunderground.com/climate/extremes.asp

The Supreme Court of the United States will hear arguments for and against the 2010 health care reform bill, rendering a decision on parts or the entire law by the end of June.

The final test for the Obama Administration’s bid for healthcare reform is finally upon us. After passing the House by a narrow 219 – 212 margin, the Senate by a filibuster-proof 60 – 39, and signed into law by President Obama on 23 March 2010, a legal challenge is the last thing standing in the way of the law being fully implemented over the remainder of this decade.

The fog in the media surrounding this case is extremely thick, with hang-wringing opponents of the bill making this out to be an apocalyptic showdown between the forces of free market capitalism and a Stalinist dictatorship, “death panels” and all. If you can get past that, you’ll find that over the next three days the Supreme Court of the United States will spend the most time deliberating on a case that they have for decades, and are expected to reach a decision in June that could have far reaching impacts on the implementation of the law, the continued existence of the law, future budget deficits over the decade to come, the political capital of the Obama Administration heading into the full campaign swing, and potentially the outcome of the 2012 elections. With all of this in mind, it is surely one of the most important decisions that the Supreme Court will have handed down in our lifetimes.

For a much more detailed look at what SCOTUS will be delving into, check out this excellent summary from The Economist. Below is a summary of what will be looked at over the next three days.

Monday

• Is it even possible for SCOTUS to rule on the case now?

When the health insurance mandate takes effect on the first day of 2014, Americans with no coverage will be compelled to purchase insurance, or face a penalty. That penalty will not be due until 2015. If the Supreme Court rules that the penalty amounts to a “tax”, then the Anti-Injunction Act of 1867 requires the decision on this law to be withheld until after that tax is levied. This would shelve the challenge until some time in 2015 at the earliest.

The Obama Administration and health care reform opponents both agree that the case should be heard now – the opponents for obvious reasons and the Obama Administration because they do not believe the penalty should be counted as a tax, and therefore is not under the jurisdiction of the Anti-Injunction Act.

Tuesday

• Can Congress mandate people to purchase health insurance at all?

This gets to the crux of why health care reform was needed in the first place. In 2009, 50 million people got health care they couldn’t afford due to a lack of insurance. This puts a burden on those with insurance in the form of higher costs. The mandate would balance this, insure more people, and as a result bring costs down across the board.

In this the Obama Administration believes this falls under the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. A lack of buying insurance is a commitment to paying for your own health care, and is not “economic inactivity”.

Opponents believe that this bill does in fact regulate economic inactivity by compelling people to purchase something they “don’t want”. It would be a slippery slope that could lead to federally-mandated purchases of other goods at the discretion of Congress.

Wednesday

• If struck down, how much of the law is effected, if not the law in its entirety?

This will be the big one. Assuming that the Supreme Court finds that Congress cannot mandate people to purchase insurance, just how much of the law will be able to stand, if any of it at all. The worst case scenario is that the mandate is struck down, with the entire rest of the law left alone. This would still produce the benefit of people being able to get insurance when needed, but would completely eliminate the cost benefits realized by having more people on the insurance roles to spread the risk out further. Likely, this scenario would mean even more rapidly increasing health care costs and an outright gutting of the law as it is, calling into question its vitality going forward. This would be seen as a significant defeat for the Obama administration and would have very negative effects on the health care industry.

On the other hand, the entire 2,700 page law itself could be struck down. This would return the situation to the status-quo from before the law’s passage. Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office among others indicate that this would further negatively impact the country’s debt going forward, would do nothing to slow down rising health care costs, but would instead be a boon to the health care industry, as in the law’s absence they can go back to denying health care to individuals on the basis of discriminatory practices such as “pre-existing conditions”.

If it gets to the point where the individual mandate is struck down, the Obama Administration still wants to fight to save the rest of the law in hopes of amending in the future, while opponents want to see the whole thing go away. In this case, the insurance industry would side with the opponents, since the mandate is what garnered their support for the law in the first place.

• Is the expansion of Medicaid coercive to the states?

If every other part of the bill is left in-tact by the Supreme Court there is one more funding concern remaining.

Starting in 2014, Medicaid coverage will be expanded to include childless adults making up to 138% of the poverty line ($15,028.20/yr using 2011 poverty levels). 100% of this increase is to be paid for by the federal government in 2014, but this will be gradually wound down to 90% by 2020 – shifting that burden to the states. The states, already cash strapped as it is, do have the opportunity to reject Medicaid funding – but only in one lump sum, not the increase.

Opponents of the bill say this is unduly coercive to the states, since their only options would be a slightly deeper funding hole (the 10% by 2020), or a massive hole by rejecting all Medicaid funding outright. Of all the challenges to the bill, this is the only one where no lower court has sided with the states and as a result, it is the least likely to succeed.

The Supreme Court’s decision is expected by late June.

A rational observer might cut through the b.s. and say that the “subset” of the population are better described as “white, religious, and conservative” and that the “ill-defined” nature can be easily described as overt racism and sexism, but to bring that amount of candor to the table is to be labeled an elitist.

Consider the following political cartoon that almost made its way into the News-Tribune of Rome, Georgia:

This cartoon is what one might consider "racist" and "sexist."

2012 discourse in a nutshell: Georgetown student Sandra Fluke was barred from testifying in front of a House of Representatives committee about the health benefits of contraception. When this was pointed out, suddenly she was a "slut".

Closeted racist? Misogynist? This little single panel cartoon has it all! First we have Sandra Fluke – the woman who attempted to give testimony during a boys-only House panel on contraception, only to be targeted by noted conservative political commentator and part-time sideshow Rush Limbaugh with the following helpful words:

“If we’re going to have to pay for this — then we want something in return, Ms. Fluke,” Limbaugh said. “And that would be the videos of all this sex posted online so we can see what we’re getting for our money.”

Limbaugh attempted to clarify his comments and explain the rationale for his derisive labeling of Fluke.

“Now what did I say?” Limbaugh asked. “I said if we’re paying for this, it makes these women sluts, prostitutes. What else could it be? We are buying it.”

So Ms. Fluke entered wanting to talk about the health benefits of contraception, and left with being called a slut who should make some porn to cover her health care costs. That gives us the caption about wanting to have recreational sex, being paid for it, and the implication that she’s a prostitute.

Then there’s the matter of the character delivering that line. It may be hard to discern beneath the clothing of a pimp – cane, puffy coat, dollar-sign chain and all, but the big ears and political symbol on the belt buckle should help one realize the character – it’s supposed to be the President. Actually, here’s a bit more succinct summary:

You’ve got the African-American President is a 70′s pimp angle, the Sandra Fluke is a whore angle, the “evil light-skinned brother” angle, the white girl subservient to the black man angle, a complete misrepresentation of Ms. Fluke’s statements to boot and it’s all rolled up into one big insulting awful package of pure hatred for black people, women, and human beings with working souls. It’s actually impressive, in the same way ebola-tipped bullets fired into crowds of baby sloths is impressive: just overwhelmingly, unremittingly awful on multiple levels.

Sadly, even though a long-form birth certificate has been shown off, there is an uncomfortably large percentage of the population who believes the President isn't an American citizen. This will be a target ad demographic in the 2012 general.

This is a level of vitriol that most incumbents - hell, most politicians period – don’t have to deal with. With the potential to be fueled by unlimited corporate contributions to political organizations that don’t have to be accountable to a single person, there’s no telling just what might stereotypes might wind up being played on. The seething and the bad taste are right there, though – just below the surface.

Add to this, on the eve of primaries in the states of Alabama and Mississippi, we find out that after being thoroughly debunked there is still a statistically significant portion of the population out there who thinks the President is either a Muslim, or not born in the United States:

In the midst of tight GOP primaries in both states, Public Policy Polling (PPP) has released information showing that a majority of likely GOP primary voters in the Deep South do not see Obama as a Christian. PPP’s Alabama survey of 600 likely GOP primary voters found that only 14 percent consider Obama a Christian, while 45 percent said he is a Muslim and 41 percent answered that they were not sure.

A similar picture surfaced in Mississippi. Of 656 likely GOP primary voters surveyed, 12 percent said Obama was a Christian, 52 percent classified him as a Muslim, and 36 percent fell in the “not sure” category.

The survey emerges on the heels of a recent stream of public questioning regarding Obama’s religion. Back on Feb. 18, Rick Santorum took aim at the president’s beliefs, charging that his White House decisions are driven by a “different theology.”

“It’s not about your quality of life,” Santorum told supporters at a Tea Party rally in Columbus, Ohio. “It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible.”

Not just a portion of the voting public, but one of the top contenders for the Republican nomination tends to agree – or at least is blowing on that dog whistle rather hard in hopes of securing enough of the “hopelessly misinformed” vote. It’s not enough that the President is of a different party, nor is it enough that he has different views. His policy goals aren’t enough, and his record isn’t enough either. All of that isn’t quite enough to base a campaign off of, the “he’s different” card has to be brought out. Again, cutting through the layers of b.s. this directly translates into “he doesn’t have white skin” – and sadly, even in the 21st century, that makes far too many people squeamish and uncomfortable.

The downside to this overt racism by a subset of the opposition party is that it tends to paint with a broad brush in the eyes of many a negative connotation that all the members of the opposition think that way – that everyone who is against the President and would like to vote Republican must also be racist, sexist, and bigoted. Moderate and liberal Republicans still do exist – they’re just not voted into office anymore. They want less government influence over the economy and prefer a stronger defense industry. There’s nothing out and out wrong with that – it’s a position that can be debated in the public square. There isn’t a politician at the national level who is carrying that banner, though. In order to rile up the base, in order to grab the headlines and power the news cycle – in order to get online rage echo chambers firing on your side, you have to go deeper, you have to be dirtier, and you have to play to the lowest common denominator possible. He with the least amount of a soul at the end of the primary season wins.

What that leaves us with is this ugly, race-bated, sexist, embarrassment of a campaign season so far – and looking to continue unabated for the rest of this year. The nature of political contributions being what they could be this year, and their levels-of-separation between the entity and the candidate supported, it will be extremely easy to wage vicious wars of words over the airwaves while the actual politicians stand by, awestruck by the callousness of it all – if not tacitly approving of it in order to secure a November victory.

In Iraq, wearing this might as well be a death sentence in the eyes of religious militias.

Sadr City is a conservative district of Baghdad, Iraq, known during the Iraq War for being a focal point of anti-American resistance. Multiple sieges, lock downs, and arrests of criminals top kidnapping ring leaders led to a steep decline in the number of murders emanating from there – whether it was attacks on troops or civilians. The very conservative worldviews that led to violence were not eradicated however, and in recent weeks it appears there is a new group for the violent to center their hatred on – young people who dare to dress Western.

Latching on to the “emo” label but really, in general, just dressing more like one would expect a Western teen than traditional Iraqi dress, these young people wanting a different world than the one they have grown up in appear to be on hit lists of local armed gangs and militias. Reports as to how many have been killed vary widely – from as low as 14 to well over 100. The reasons for and methods of killing remain the same – brutal stoning and crushing to death with cement blocks for the crime of having different hair and dress than what is considered “acceptable” by the local violent conservatives:

Militants in Shi’ite neighborhoods where the stonings have taken place circulated lists on Saturday naming more youths targeted to be killed if they do not change the way they dress.

The killings have taken place since Iraq’s interior ministry drew attention to the “emo” subculture last month, labeling it “Satanism” and ordering a community police force to stamp it out.

“Emo” is a form of punk music developed in the United States. Fans are known for their distinctive dress, often including tight jeans, T-shirts with logos and distinctive long or spiky haircuts.

At least 14 bodies of youths have been brought to three hospitals in eastern Baghdad bearing signs of having been beaten to death with rocks or bricks, security and hospital sources told Reuters under condition they not be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Sadr City is an expansive section of Iraq's capital, Baghdad, that has for a long time been home to ultra-conservative religious minded groups. Those same groups are spearheading the campaign to kill teens dressing like Westerners.

Locals have found out about the killings from posted lists of names bragging about the deaths after the fact, or postings to Facebook – sometimes including the chilling images of the deceased. All methods used to disseminate the information come with the promise of more killings and a warning to anyone “different” to revert back and submit their selves to the will of the conservative religious or else face a similar fate at their hands:

A recent list distributed by militants in Baghdad’s Shiite Sadr City neighborhood gives the names or nicknames of 33 people and their home addresses. At the top of the paper are a drawing of two handguns flanking a Quranic greeting that extolls God as merciful and compassionate.

Then follows a chilling warning.

“We warn in the strongest terms to every male and female debauchee,” the Shiite militia hit list says. “If you do not stop this dirty act within four days, then the punishment of God will fall on you at the hands of Mujahideen.”

All but one of the targets are men.

In the hyper religious culture of Iraq, the influence of Western sources is tantalizing to some of the young, but the old are violently committed to maintaining their way of life at any cost. While in Western slang “emo” doesn’t translate to “gay” in Iraq it does. In Iraq, homosexuals are considred fair game and in the vast majority of cases those carrying out any killing for that reason is usually excused, no questions asked.

An Interior Ministry official said 58 young people have been killed across Iraq in recent weeks by unidentified gangs who accused them of being, as he described it, Emo. Sixteen were killed in Sadr City alone, security and political officials there said. Nine of the men were killed by bludgeoning, and seven were shot. No arrests have been made.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity, as did many of the people interviewed for this article, in fear of violent reprisals.

One of the warning lists distributed in Baghdad, alerting teens that dress like Westerners that they will be killed.

Human rights organizations are concerned as the methods and rationale being used to target those dressing Western or those who are suspected of being homosexual can easily be pivoted toward any other group of people that the militias need to blame in order to maintain their support. In that respect, it is an extremely dangerous time to be an Iraqi who wants a different life than what the country has to offer. With central government control over the state tenuous at best and so many other larger political issues on the plate, it would appear highly likely that the Iraqi government would not want to risk a return to civil war over a few dozen people being killed for being “different”. Not only that but in the case of the interior ministry, the government is actually supporting and endorsing such behavior.

The education ministry has not been helping matters by encouraging schools to ban mobile technology and ban students from leaving class for any reason whatsoever in the event they use their minutes of freedom to engage in “dirty” activities:

An August 2011 letter from the Education Ministry urges schools to crack down on what it considered abhorrent behavior, including allowing camera phones in school “because students would use it for dirty movies,” says the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.

Similarly, it prohibited students from leaving their classes during school hours “for any reason, because they might gather in the nearby cafes or coffee shops to practice dirty activities.”

The letter attributed the social atrocities to “Emo, which is an infiltrated phenomenon in our society began to appear in some of our schools.”

In a society where those who are supposed to defend the innocent (police officers) refer to the victims as “the Emo or the vampires or Satan worshippers” there is a long, long way to go before acceptance much less a reprieve from violence directed against them by the highly religious and misinformed. It is a disgusting function of the religious seizing policy in places like this and being able to rule over the public via fear – fear of their own death and fear of groups that are “different” and threaten to “change” their society.

Iraq may be an emerging democracy but it has a long, long way to go until its people are free.