Mike Huckabee

he talks to God on his mobile!!!!!!!!!
need we say more???

Huck, the Constitution and 'God's standards'
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
by Domenico Montanaro

From NBC/NJ's Adam Aigner-Treworgy
WARREN, Mich. -- Huckabee's closing argument to voters here this evening featured a few new stories and two prolonged sections on illegal immigration and Christian values.

These two topics usually feature prominently in Huckabee's stump speech, but last night he got specific, promising to build a border fence within 18 months if elected and elaborating on his belief that the constitution needs to be amended.

"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards," Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Huckabee often refers to the need to amend the constitution on these grounds, but he has never so specifically called for the Constitution to be brought within "God's standards," which are themselves debated amongst religious scholars. As a closing statement he asked the room of nearly 500 supporters to "pray and then work hard, and in that order," to help him secure a victory in Tuesday's GOP primary.

Tomorrow Huckabee will visit two polling places in the morning before taking off for South Carolina where he will watch Michigan's returns come in.

Here is an interesting piece on tax cuts.


All Tax Cuts All The Time

Sam Boyd

January 14th, 2008 - 8:45am ET


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Conservatives have a problem with originality. When your solution to every problem is tax cuts, life can get a bit dull. Economy doing well? Tax cuts. Economy doing poorly? Tax cuts. Cat peed on the rug? Tax cuts. You can just imagine Dick Cheney and Mitch McConnell sitting around:

  McConnell: What are we going to do tonight, Dick?
  Cheney: Same thing we do every night Mitch, try and take over the w--, er, cut taxes.

On some level this isn't too surprising. Conservatives think government should be smaller, so they want to cut taxes. Sure, it would make more sense to cut spending as well, but at least there's some logic to an all-tax-cuts-all-the-time position.

Here's the thing though: Conservatives don't say, "We think government should be smaller, so we want to cut taxes." Instead, they shape their pitch based on the current economic conditions. Right now, the economy is doing poorly so tax cuts are "stimulus." In 2001 we had a surplus, so we cut taxes because the government was supposedly taking in too much money. For conservatives, tax cuts are like duct tape?-they can fix anything.

Before we get to deep in the weeds of tax policy, a quick word on the economy. Think Progress recently came up with seven economists who are predicting a recession and, as Dean Baker has pointed out, economists usually don't predict a recession until it's underway or even over. NPR's awesome On The Media did a great piece on the subject last weekend.

So, things aren't looking so good and it's not unreasonable for the government to look at ways to smooth the business cycle. However, given that tax revenues will tend to decline in bad economic times, a sensible policymaker would want to ensure that a stimulus plan produces the most possible stimulus for the least possible cost.

How do you do that? Like pretty much any other macroeconomic question it's debatable, but the deeply moderate people at the Brookings Institution recently took a shot at coming up with a consensus opinion. The report identifies three basic qualities a successful stimulus package should have.

First, it should be timely?-it should come when the economy is getting in to trouble, not when it's already there. Second, it should be targeted?-it should produce the most benefit and address the people who are hurt the most by an economic downturn. (Thankfully, the hardest hit people are most likely to spend new money. so these two goals dovetail). Third, it should be temporary?-I think you can figure that one out.

These criteria are imperfect and a bit vague, but they are a good way to consider whether a set of policies are genuinely being proposed with stimulus in mind. With that in mind, let's take a look at what stimulus plans are being proposed by conservatives.

The Wall Street Journal wants... wait for it... tax cuts. This could be defensible, but the actual policies it proposes have very little to do with stimulus. The authors suggest "bonus depreciation" which is essentially a tax break on new buildings for corporations. It's not targeted (it certainly doesn't benefit the people hardest hit by a recession), it's not very timely (it would arrive in April at the earliest), and the editorial explicitly argues against making it temporary.

The Journal is honest that it has "been saying for some time that the economy could use another tax cut" and if it was really honest it would admit that such a tax cut has nothing to do with stimulus. After all, the Journal argues for tax cuts the way Cheech and Chong argue for marijuana legalization?-pretty much all the time.

And it's not just the Journal. The National Review's Lawrence Kudlow points out approvingly that all of the Republican candidates are greedily guzzling down the supply-side Kool-Aid. Even John McCain, the dreaded deficit hawk, has signed on to the concept of corporate tax breaks as economic stimulus. Indeed, Kudlow makes the rather startling claim that the White House is insufficiently loyal to the supply-side orthodoxy. If the Bush administration isn't supply-side enough, I'd hate to see who is.

The White House hasn't released its stimulus proposal, but it seems certain to include tax cuts and most likely will also include an extension of earlier tax cuts that benefited the richest Americans. It goes without saying that such a move isn't temporary, and given that the tax cuts don't expire for three years anyway, it wouldn't be timely either. Furthermore, an extension of the tax cuts, which primarily benefited the wealthy, would hardly be targeted at those hardest hit or those most likely to spend the money they receive.

Some more honest Republicans resist this all-tax-cut-all-the-time mentality. David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, went so far as to call for the end of supply-side economics. As he says:

Supply-side economics had a good run, but continual tax cuts can no longer be the centerpiece of Republican economic policy. The demographics have changed. The U.S. is an aging society. We have made expensive promises to our seniors. We can't keep those promises at the current tax levels, let alone at reduced ones. As David Frum writes in "Comeback," his indispensable new book: "In the face of such a huge fiscal gap, the days of broad, across-the-board, middle-class tax cutting are over."

Still, don't hold your breath. The Grover Norquists of the world still dream of strangling government in a bathtub and the Bush Republicans will continue to push for further tax cuts, as a quick search of the Times archives reveals they have done every single year of the Bush presidency.


Conservatives have become as good at hiding unpopular policies as teenage boys are at hiding porn, but they're running out of creativity and we're starting to learn to look under the mattress. If they want tax cuts for a smaller government let them make that argument. But if they claim a need for them as stimulus, don't be fooled. It's a lie.

--Thinkprogress

WASHINGTON ?- Dealing with global warming will be painful, says one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. To back up his claim he is proposing a recipe many people won't like ?- a 50-cent gasoline tax, a carbon tax and scaling back tax breaks for some home owners

Dingell says he hasn't rule out such a so-called "cap-and-trade" system, either, but that at least for now he wants to float what he believes is a better idea. He will propose for discussion:

?-A 50-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline and jet fuel, phased in over five years, on top of existing taxes.

?-A tax on carbon, at $50 a ton, released from burning coal, petroleum or natural gas.

?-Phaseout of the interest tax deduction on home mortgages for homes over 3,000 square feet. Owners would keep most of the deduction for homes at the lower end of the scale, but it would be eliminated entirely for homes of 4,200 feet or more.

So thats the dems idea, raise taxes on gas, even though taxes already are a major contributor to the price of gas.

In South Carolina, Pro-Confederate Flag Group Airs Ads Praising Huckabee's Flag Stance -- And Hitting McCain

January 17, 2008

A pro-Confederate Flag third-party group is running new radio ads in South Carolina praising Mike Huckabee's pro-state's-rights stance on the flag issue -- and slamming John McCain over his repeated criticism of the controversial symbol.

"Mike Huckabee's stand is a breath of fresh air," say the ads, which are paid for by the Americans for the Preservation of American Culture. "Gov. Huckabee understands that all the average guy with a Confederate Flag on his pickup truck is saying is: He's proud to be a Southerner."

McCain has been dogged by the flag issue in South Carolina since his 2000 Presidential run; he's repeatedly denounced it, calling it a "racist symbol."

There are two versions of the ad, one attacking McCain, the other attacking Romney, who's also condemned the flag. [..]

Huckabee has not distanced himself from the ads. Huckabee's position on the issue is that the Federal government should stay out of states' disputes over the flag.

Ron Wilson, an official with the group airing the ads, declined to say how big the buy was. But he confirmed that it was running on all South Carolina radio stations that carry Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly.

LISTEN TO BOTH ADS (the second starts roughly at the one-minute mark)

"We hope to call 546,000 households in Nevada on behalf of Huckabee," said Patrick Davis, the executive director of Common Sense Issues, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Want to hear one of the calls? Here, via Ambinder, is audio (and video) of one of their calls as captured by a recipient.

Is this a so-called "push poll," an attempt to communicate an negative message under the false guise of a survey? Of course it is. But that's not the way Davis sees it, according to the Washington Post:

[Davis] questioned why McCain is characterizing the phone drive as an attempt to engage in push polling...Davis said the 45-second calls use a special technology that provides a different automated message, depending on how the recipient answers questions. Moreover, Davis said, "A strict push poll is delivering not-truthful information. Everything we say is factual and backed up.

The Review-Journal adds:

Davis said the calls made by his group should not be called push polls because questions are asked of those called. "A human voice is recorded asking the questions," he said. "You respond with your voice. How you respond dictates the next question. We are gathering information.

What a crock. The recipients that receive these calls are told they are participating in a survey, not a promotional message. Davis may have the high tech cover of asking questions, but the clear intent is to communicate negative messages. Check their web site's About Page. The expressed purpose of Common Sense Values is "educating and informing citizens in an in-depth manner about public policy issues." They say nothing about gathering data or measuring public opinion. They dress up their calls as "surveys" to add false credibility. Would the recipients stay on the phone if told they were about to be "educated and informed?" "Common sense" tells you they would not. The guise of a survey is a sham.

If you don't believe me, ask my colleague Nancy Mathiowetz, president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR):

Asking questions does not make it a survey. These calls are clearly a fraud that harm the survey research profession.

HUCKABEE COMPARES AMERICA TO NAZI GERMANY

In a speech to the Florida Renewal Project Monday night, which in an unprecedented move was live streamed on the American Family Association's Web site, Mike Huckabee [..] implored the audience to renew their "commitment to Christ" and "to our nation, to its heritage, as well as to its future," adding "do we expect the seculars [sic] to do it? Do we expect the unbelievers to lead us, and if so, how will they lead us and where?" He then engaged in an extended description of his visit to the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem with his 11- year-old daughter, who asked, "why didn't somebody do something?" Huckabee, who has called abortion a "holocaust," then issued a dire warning:

... I pray that no father ever stands over the shoulder of his own daughter and after her witnessing the decline and the fall of a great nation, writes, and sees her write these words, "why didn't somebody do something?" You see, I believe the reason we're here is because we are the somebodies. And we're to do the something and if we don't, who will? And if we don't act now, when will it happen, and will it be too late? You leave this conference with this haunting question, and pray that no one would ever ask of you or of me, why didn't somebody do something.