As Obama buys into the deficit hysteria of the GOP, he is endangering not only the social safety net on which millions depend, but also his own particular job. One aspect of the 2012 election calculus that I don’t think Team Obama realizes is that a deal like this will throw away any hope he has of holding onto the Catholic voters that supported him in 2008.

In states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Missouri, Ohio, and Florida, Catholics are a sizable chunk of the electorate, and Obama cannot afford to alienate them. If he caves to the GOP on the debt ceiling negotiations and sacrifices Social Security and Medicare to protect the tax gimmicks so beloved by the MOTUs and banksters, these voters will not be happy.

Just let those states sink in: Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Missouri, Ohio, and Florida. Obama’s not going to win them without significant Catholic support, and cutting the social safety net is NOT going to help get those votes.

The flood of waters continues, but as usual during a natural disaster, the flood of rumors is rolling right along with it. Mythical levee breaches compete with imaginary government policy decisions, all of which combine to try to drive those who are dealing with the actual flooding bonkers.

And don’t even get me started about a Fukushima-style disaster in Nebraska . . . Get a link, people — and it ought to be from someone closer to Nebraska than Hawaii.

Rumors flow faster than the water during a disaster like this. The folks who are working on protecting homes, businesses, and communities have enough to do without having to beat back rumors — but this, too, is part of dealing with a disaster.

In 1804 and 1805, Lewis and Clark made history with their trip up the Missouri River, but it’s the waters coming down the Missouri that will make history in 2011. People along the Missouri are thinking less of Lewis and Clark and more about Noah these days. Water levels in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota are already at record levels, and all that water is pouring downriver. Dams can’t take any more water, and so the flow will only increase for cities and towns downstream.

It’s going to be a long, wet summer along the banks of the Missouri.

Eric Cantor is trending on Twitter right now, and it’s for a comment he made about the tornado that killed at least 116 people in Joplin, Missouri. Cantor, merely following established conservative ideology, made the statement that no emergency relief for Joplin would pass the House without corresponding cuts elsewhere.

42% of the millionaires in a recent Fidelity survey don’t feel wealthy. Seriously.

Maybe they should talk to the folks in Minnesota whom the GOP wants to prohibit from having more than $20 in cash in their pockets, or the family and friends of the Costa Mesa CA maintenance worker who committed suicide after getting a layoff notice.

As Paul Krugman noted, these are “the forgotten millions” — not to be confused with the poor, suffering millionaires. Poor babies. Poor, sad, miserable, suffering, pitiable babies.

In one of the local Kansas City area school districts, a proposed levy increase that would have put an end to three years of major budget cuts failed, and so the cuts continue even as enrollment rises. In Wisconsin and elsewhere, cuts are driven not so much by the economy but by union-busting politicians. Elsewhere in the US, teacher layoffs are being announced. ‘Tis the season . . .

And yet, despite all this, the teachers still teach.

I am so grateful for those who taught me, and even today I am still realizing just how much of a gift they gave me.

While the national press has been focused on counting Democrats and Republicans in the next Congress, they are missing what was a preview of the kind of political fighting we’re going to see in the next two years: anonymous donors funneling large sums of money through 501(c)4 organizations to hide their activities from view. In the battle over California’s Prop 23 — a proposal to repeal CA’s landmark 2006 global warming law — that’s exactly what happened.

For a preview of what we’re sure to see on a large scale in the next two years, I’d like to introduce you to a small little group called the Adam Smith Foundation . . .

Reid could win the race if only he could somehow get the Democratic-leaning voters to turn out. That is not going to be easy. With massively high unemployment, the electorate is unhappy with the job Reid has done. There is also the problem of the large, traditionally Democratic-leaning Hispanic community being upset about Democrats’ failure to deliver on their promise to deal with immigration reform. If Reid does end up winning this race, it will probably have a fair amount to do with a very well executed GOTV operation.

In the long and storied history of phony pretzel-logic right-wing arguments, this is surely one of the all-time greats.

I guess the idea of the government forcing you to buy a product from one of the most disliked industries in American just isn’t popular–who could have possibly guessed?