————————————-WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY

‘DERB’ TOO OPENLY RACIST EVEN FOR NATIONAL REVIEW: National Review Fires Derbyshire – National Review editor Rich Lowry does the right thing, announcing that John Derbyshire will no longer be writing for the influential conservative outlet: His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer. Lowry and the National Review deserve credit for finally cutting ties with Derbyshire’s long record of hateful rhetoric.

FLASHBACK: ONE EXAMPLE OF DERB’S LONG RECORD: ‘Women Voting Is Bad For Conservatism’ – In 2009, [John Derbyshire] authored a book that contained a chapter titled “The Case Against Women’s Suffrage.” In it, he argued the country would be better off if women didn’t have the right to vote. He discussed his views in a Sept. 2009 interview with Alan Colmes:
DERBYSHIRE: Among the hopes that I do not realistically nurse is the hope that female suffrage will be repealed. But I’ll say this – if it were to be, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep.
COLMES: We’d be a better country if women didn’t vote?
DERBYSHIRE: Probably. Don’t you think so?
COLMES: No, I do not think so whatsoever.
DERBYSHIRE: Come on Alan. Come clean here [laughing].
COLMES: We would be a better country? John Derbyshire making the statement, we would be a better country if women did not vote.
DERBYSHIRE: Yeah, probably.

Chuck Grassley calls Obama ‘stupid’ on Twitter – Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and his Twitter page made headlines again Saturday afternoon, as the senator called President Barack Obama “stupid” for his comments regarding the Supreme Court’s future ruling on the Affordable Care Act. Reacting to Obama’s comments this past week, in which the president labeled any overturn by the Supreme Court of the law as an “unprecedented, extraordinary step,” Grassley exhibited his colorful personality again on the social network. “Constituents askd why i am not outraged at PresO attack on supreme court independence. Bcause Am ppl r not stupid as this x prof of con law,” the informally written tweet said.

Bob Cesca point out Grassley’s own long history of stupidity – No, senator, the president is arguably one of the smartest, best-educated presidents in history. And yes, senator, the American people are bigtime stupid. Oh, and let’s rewind for an illustration of Chuck Grassley’s burning intelligence:

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Missouri GOP Rep: ‘I have doubts’ about Obama’s birth certificate – Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo) became the latest Republican to express uncertainty over President Barack Obama’s citizenship this week at a town hall event with her constituents. A group called Show Me Progress filmed Hartzler’s response to a question about the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate. “You know, I have a lot of doubts about all that,” Hartzler said. “But I don’t know, I haven’t seen it. I’m just at the same place you are on that. You read this, you read that. But I don’t understand why he didn’t show that right away. I mean, if someone asked for my birth certificate, I’d get my baby book and hand it out and say ‘Here it is,’ so I don’t know.”

———————————————————–——PRESIDENT OBAMA / DEMOCRATS

Ryan, Obama, and Deficits – CBO has done a full scoring (pdf) of the Obama proposals; they estimate a deficit in 2022 of 3 percent of GDP (Table 2). Their scoring of Ryan (pdf) does not include any actual scoring of his tax proposals; they simply accept, because they have no choice, his unsupported claim that he can make the thing revenue neutral. Under that assumption, they come up with a deficit in 2023 (Table 1) of 1 3/4 percent of GDP. But the Tax Policy Center (pdf) has scored the actual Ryan tax proposals, minus the mystery meat, and concludes that they would reduce revenue by more than 2 percent of GDP in 2023. Put these things together, and what they say is that the Ryan proposal would lead to bigger, repeat bigger, deficits than the Obama proposal.

Isn’t it marvelous? Obama seeks to define Romney for voters – After watching quietly while Republican candidates fought each other, Obama is now trying to define his likely opponent in November as an out-of-touch multi-millionaire who would cut social programs for the elderly and the middle class while promoting policies to help the rich. Obama’s riff on Romney’s use of the word “marvelous” to describe Representative Paul Ryan’s budget plans carried a subtle message. “It’s a word you kind of associate with the upper class, and I think that the intention was to tweak Romney for being wealthy and, you know, sort of brought up in the kinds of circles where they would say ‘marvelous,’” said Kenneth Sherrill, a political science expert at New York’s Hunter College. “That’s trying to get under his skin a little bit.”

TENNESSEE: “Why is my womb attached to a transportation bill?” – Meanwhile, Park Overall, an environmental advocate and actress from East Tennessee, filed a qualifying petition to run against U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Democratic Party said. [...] Overall, who spoke at the Tennessee Democratic Party’s Jackson Day dinner on Saturday, was “very well received” there and decided to take on Corker, who is nearing the end of his first Senate term, party spokesman Brandon Puttbrese said. Overall said she was driven to run by “an East Tennessee fire in my belly.” “It was the Blunt amendment that put me over the top,” she said. “That’s where they were going to decide if they would give me medical care or give me birth control depending on how they morally believed.” The Blunt amendment was proposed earlier this year to be added to a highway funding bill. In her speech at the Jackson Day dinner, Overall asked, “Why is my womb attached to a transportation bill?”

What Would Jesus Do at the Masters? | Maureen Dowd – THERE was a boys’ club, of course, a band of ardent, jockeying disciples. But as his fame grew, the messiah was also surrounded by women and talked about women with great respect. With his father far away, the golden boy was most influenced by his strong mother and the women in his inner circle. I’m talking about the real messiah, not Barack Obama, although it applies to both. [...] The message of Jesus, after all, is not about exclusion, but inclusion. Briggs said that most American Catholics will never go along with retrogressive dictates of the church, like the one against artificial contraception. “God,” he noted dryly, “only had one son.” [...] “They say women can’t be priests because Jesus only called men to be apostles,” he said. “But the women close to Jesus were the first witnesses of the resurrection. When the men were afraid and hidden, the women went to the tomb and said, ‘Jesus is risen!’ If Easter is the most important part of Christianity, the first to proclaim the message were women. Who could make more effective preachers?”