I sit here in amazement that the Catholic Church thinks it has the right to deny birth control to the rest of us. Who do these people think they are? Women have a fundamental intrinsic right to have access to birth control regardless of the religious bent of the provider who is publicly subsidized. Medical care is about the patient – not the health care provider. The very idea that Catholic views even matter for non-Catholic patients is something I consider religiously offensive.

I think Catholics should focus on stopping priests from raping children and quit trying to force women who have been raped to carry the baby of the rapist. Religious freedom is about the rights of the patient, not the rights of the doctor.

When Obama took office in January of 2009 America was losing 750,000 jobs a month. Now we’re adding 250,000 jobs a month. Although we have a long way to go, the number of jobs is almost 1 million jobs a month increase since the end of the Bush administration. It seems to me that we are heading in the right direction and I don’t see why we should consider going back to the party of Bush and have them ruin the economy like they did last decade.

A lot of columnists have been comparing the Romney vs. Gingrich primary battle to the 2008 primary battle between Obama and Clinton. I don’t think they are similar.

In 2008 the Democrats had two strong candidates that they liked. People who wanted Hillary to win liked Obama too. People who liked Obama also liked Hillary. Both candidates were very popular. In contrast Republicans dislike both leading candidates. It’s a battle between those who can’t stand Romney more vs. those who can’t stand Newt more. Republican have to choose between the guy who lost to the guy who lost to Obama vs. the guy who is going to make the third lady into the first lady. I don’t see the Republicans coming together behind any candidate this year.

Romney is known and voters don’t like him. That’s why McCain beat him last time. But the elites are behind Romney so he’s the man to beat.

Because voters don’t like Romney every other candidate surged one by one as the anti-Romney candidate and when the focus cam on them they were all flawed and fell back to the bottom (except Paul who has a small band of loyal followers)

Once Iowa and New Hampshire voted it seemed Romney was inevitable again and because of new missteps and renewed scrutiny a wave of yuk against Romney returned. Evangelical leaders met to endorse Santorum as the anti-Romney.

In a 4 person race with Ron Paul it’s down to Romney and 2 anti-Romney candidates. Santorum is weak and lacks gravitas and is only still in because he surged at the right time in Iowa. But soon it will be between Newt and Romney.

Newt has serious serious problems as well which are being brought out. But Newt is a fighter and Romney is sort of John Kerry like. Republicans like a fighter and see Newt as much more of a fighter than Obama, who the Democrats are also experiencing the yuk factor with. Obama is no Bill Clinton and Democrats are not thrilled with Hope and Change becoming Nope and Same.

So with 2 candidate that are too weak to even beat a weak president Republicans are trying to choose how they are going to lose. So the final paradigm is what I will call the “go down fighting” paradigm. With Newt they can at least lose with dignity and maybe the hope that if they put up a strong fighter they at least have some hope for a miracle.

They say that every cloud has a silver lining. As we all know Mitt Romney hasn’t wanted to release his tax returns and explain his bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. With Newt’s big win in South Carolina it looks like he may not have to.

The news is that the justice department is going after a “pirate” web site called Megaupload and they have shut them down in foreign countries and seized their assets also in a foreign country. And the Justice Department did it without laws like PIPA and SOPA. Looks to me like the music and movie industry already seems to have powers currently that borderline on scary. I’m glad to see Congress stepping back and taking a more serious look at laws that break the Internet. Thanks to Wikipedia and Craigslist for taking a bullet for the team.

It’s kind of interesting that so many Republicans see Mitt Romney as the inevitable candidate and the most likely to beat Obama. In 2008 Romney, who had a virtually unlimited amount of money, managed to lose to John McCain. McCain went on to lose to a previously unknown Democrat named Barack Obama. Now Obama is the incumbent president and is in a much stronger position to win. McCain lost in part due to the Bush depression, and we are still in the Bush depression. So I don’t understand why Republicans see Romney as their best hope. Losing to a loser doesn’t make you a winner.

It’s interesting to hear the Republican candidates decry the “war on religion” when it’s pretty clear that none of the Republican candidates actually believe in God. From my point of view as a Realist, who puts reality first, if there actually was a God and people had a personal connection to that God then their lives would reflect that. Every one of the candidates are highly dishonest. They lie all the time and they use God’s name to make cheap political points. If they actually believed they simply would not behave that way.

What I see isn’t a war on religion but rather a war on reality. They don’t want you to believe there is a reality out there and that actions have consequences and that in order for humanity to survive and flourish that you have to live in right relationship to reality. It’s not us who is at war with religion. It is those who claim to believe and are lying about it who at war with religion. Religion is more threatened by fake Christians than from those who admit they just aren’t believing the story.

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum today told a mostly white audience in Iowa that he didn’t want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” Really? I didn’t know that Wall Street investment firms had that many black people.

The state of Iowa does a disservice to America in both having a caucus election and insisting on being the first election every presidential election year. Why should this one state always be the one the pre-screens candidates for the rest of us? And if they are going to be the first state, why have an election system that is so dysfunctional that less that 4% of their registered voters participate in it?

I don’t know how this came to be but we can do better and Iowa’s selfishness harms America because it filters candidates the rest of us might like to vote for. Iowa should step aside out of a sense of basic fairness and let other states take turns at being first.