House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi laid out a bright line this weekend, echoing many other Democrats in saying that merely cutting loopholes to raise revenues would not be sufficient for a deal.

I don’t have a heck of a lot to say about this election. If you have enough historical confidence in polling and aggregation you know already that the popular vote will be close and the President will win re-election with something in the 294-332 electoral vote range (I’m taking 303, and I think he’ll actually [...]

During this year’s silly season aka the stretch drive to the November elections, I have been watching the self immolation of various Republican campaigns around the country with a bit of fascination. The topic of rape and incest as exceptions allowing a woman to have an abortion has caused great consternation amongst the chattering classes. From Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” to Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock’s “pregnancy from rape something God intended” (a variant on Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s rape is just another “method of conception“) to Washington US House candidate John Koster’s “the rape thing” to Wisconsin State Rep. Roger Rivard’s “some girls rape easy,” the topic of rape and abortion has been making headlines across the nation.

Never do I feel so powerless and deflated in my role as a citizen as I do toward the end of an election season, but 2012 is quickly reaching a new level of awfulness. I just can’t wait for this to be over. From the top of the ticket on down (except for a few bright spots I’ll get to later), the dispiriting sense that “winning” can only be called such because losing is flat-out unthinkable, given that almost half of the electorate is evidently willing and eager to elect into office a party that holds them in utter contempt.

Hurricane Sandy has everyone’s attention, especially along the east coast, which isn’t surprising given the satellite imagery and computer models that put it crashing into the Atlantic coast between Maryland and Massachusetts. But back while things were quiet on the hurricane front — last February — people were thinking about them, like NOAA director Jane Lubchenco and Paul “Austerity Rocks!” Ryan.

But that was last spring, when the seas were calm. Today, Paul Ryan probably doesn’t want anything to think about what he proposed for the NOAA budget.

One of the few benefits I’ve found associated with old age is that I remember more things than say, David Gregory, forgets each Sunday morning. For the first twenty years or so of my life, this mountain was covered in snow year-round; for the last ten, during which I have monitored it daily from my living room, the snow is gone sooner, and for longer periods, each year. This picture was taken yesterday, the latest Mt. Hood has been snowless in my whole, misspent life.

The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi has become a political football, in ways that the father of slain US Ambassador Chris Stevens wants to see stopped. That’s not likely, as both sides highlight the aspects of the story to their advantage, and suppress the aspects that present vulnerabilities.

As the rigorous embodiment of the intellectual high water mark of the conservative movement on Capitol Hill, Paul Ryan’s ascension to the national ticket will be good for him win or lose: so intones the conventional wisdom generator at the Washington Post. Paul Ryan cannot fail; it won’t be his extreme views or ignorant approach or hateful perspective or idiot budget or his pseudo-intellectual command of Arithmetic that takes down the GOP next month.

Just like the conservatism he embodies, Paul Ryan cannot fail: he can only be failed And every political religion needs its man on a white horse.

Religiously speaking, the answers given at the VP debate by Paul Ryan and Joe Biden to the question of how their personal faith relates to their work as politicians were striking. The difference between the two candidates — and the parties and platforms they stand for — could not have been starker. Ryan spoke with absolute certainty that he/his party/his church are absolutely correct when it comes to banning abortion, while Biden expressed both his own personal beliefs alongside respect for those who hold other views and the concomitant right to act on their religious views.

But while abortion was the specific example Martha Raddatz used to frame her question, it is hardly the only one. The editors of the Jesuit magazine “America” pose another very good question themselves, that deserves an answer from both Obama and Romney. If no one brings it up at the town hall-style debate next week, I’d love to see Bob Schieffer ask it at the foreign policy debate that follows.

This is who Romney, Ryan, and the rest of the GOP are. This is what they do. And now, with the bright spotlight of national and even world media attention focused on Paul Ryan, doing what much if not most of his hometown press wouldn’t do, many of Ryan’s own constituents are getting a better look at him than they’ve ever had before — which may be why he’s in trouble in his own reelection campaign.