By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

In a heated campaign, political scandals can make or break a candidacy. They often cast a shade of suspicion upon a candidate’s activities, with the connotation of wrongdoing or the unethical. Often implicit is the assumption that if only said candidate had done things slightly differently, all this need not happened.

Take Kirsten Gillibrand, the current hard-working Senator from New York.

It’s a beginning. In San Marcos, TX, a school district that was experiencing increased teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases has turned away from abstinence only education programs.

One of the quirks of my personality (yes, I know you thought my whole personality was the quirks) is that I tend to think that nothing I do well is particularly unique. I am under the impression that everyone can write, that baking is a merely a matter of reading and that if people took the time everyone could analyze stacks of data and come to a rational understanding of how inputs and process interact to determine output quality. These are all skills that I have spent a little time and effort to develop, so I figure anyone could duplicate what I have done.

Where I don’t expect people to be like me is in what they think. I assume that people are going to be of a different mind on some issues than me, we are all different in experience and temperament, so how in the world could we be similar in our views, even in large numbers? Yet the Republican base and many of its elected officials can’t seem to get their heads around the idea that most of the nation does not agree with them and their agenda.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

Take Sen. Cornyn’s assertion that the public’s view of the criminal former President Bush is rising. It is not even close to empirically true. Take a look at this chart from Brendan Nyhan of the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) of the approval rating of President Bush from the various news organizations.

There is this idea in physics called the Planck length. It is thought that if you take something this infinitesimally small and fold it over it describes the event horizon of a black hole. This is a singularity that when something passes it never returns. Anything going over the event horizon has effectively been cut off from the universe that we know. This is where Rep. Michele Bachmann and other Republicans have gone.

Over the weekend she was heard telling a rally in Duluth MN the following:

"Democrats said that they were called the ‘N word,’ which of course would be wrong and inappropriate. But no one has any record of it. No witness saw it, it’s not on camera, it’s not on audio," she said. "They said that they were spat upon. No one saw it."

She went on, "There’s a $10,000 reward right now for anyone who can produce a video or an audio. Don’t you think we would have seen a video or an audio by now if there was something out there?"

This is not the first Republican to say this kind of thing. I could not find the clip but sometime last week on Hardball with Chris Mathews one of his regular, Republican strategist Ron Christie (the only person who my wife would shout "You Tool!" at on TV) made the same point. It is pretty galling to see an African American who has probably felt first hand racism being willing to doubt that it was expressed against African American politicians.

This is going to be th

Why not aim for disaster?

It’s the most “realistic” possibility, after all.

Or, more specifically:

How minimal are your aspirations?

How static is your picture of the future?

(DISCLAIMER: Obviously this is not directed at anyone here. this is a Daily Kos cross post I am getting FDL’s back from some of the trolling over at kos towards the fine activists over here making a difference. I felt compelled to set the record straight and I wanted to post this here, because I worked hard on it and I never posted a diary here before.)

The Bush Administration got us in a world of hurt by trying to make their own reality. And now Obama’s economic team is in that same business, and needs to be stopped.

Thought provoking quotation from *The Kite Runner* about the perception of reality.

Defense Business Board says current Pentagon procurements are not sustainable.