You can't make this stuff up, but you can certainly find out about it by taking a poll, which is what the namesake of the blog DailyKos did. Lucky for you, me, and people who believe the President was born in the United States (as his birth certificate proves), the poll is published for our perusal.

So when we call the right "out of touch," we don't just mean out of touch with America. We mean - and the polls bear this out - out of touch with reality.

In case you need convincing:

Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?
Yes 21
No 24
Not Sure 55

A full 76 percent of self-identified Republicans believe it's at least possible that ACORN managed to steal the election from John McCain. That's mystifying, and begs the question: how do they afford the tinfoil for all those hats?

We also learn that 63 percent of those polled believe the President is a socialist. Of course, he must be a socialist. That's why we have…this great…single-payer health care system? Oh. No, no we don't.

Another 30 percent believe the President is a racist who hates white people, with an additional third joining the fold to note they don't know. For the record, I also don't know if Sarah Palin is shopping a coffee table book called "Cooking Caribou In The Buff," but that doesn't mean it isn't true.

Remember the old days, when there were facts? Not just the belief that birth control is abortion (it's not abortion any more than menstruation is) or the belief that the president wants the terrorists to win standing in for fact and driving an entire, whackadoodle movement.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop has a knack for doing nothing. In fact, he has presided over the Say No Senate for more than two years. A time period that is most notable for yearly budget debacles and a general resistance to progress.

Also, he seems to be an unabashed opportunist. A recent article from the Free Press says as much:

Measured by the same standard, the initiative Bishop announced last week is a non-event. It risks nothing politically. It is fraught with constitutional and practical hazards that make even Dillon's comprehensive overhaul look simple by comparison. And it signals only the GOP majority leader's willingness to vilify a weakened labor movement with whom his party has long been at odds.

In fact, the most notable thing about Bishop's initiative is how timid it is by comparison with bolder and more comprehensive proposals advanced by other conservative groups, including Business Leaders of Michigan, the statewide mouthpiece of corporate CEOs that succeeded Detroit Renaissance.

And here is the knife in the heart:

Bishop has demonstrated that he is more interested in placating traditional Republican constituencies and scapegoating public employees than in advancing the reform discussion.

Like most Michiganders, I have watched as your last round of "reforms" contributed to growing hardships and deficits in schools, more of our needy getting sick and dying for lack of health care services, and public safety being slashed, all so you can claim to have never raised taxes on Michigan's hard working families.

But my mom always said (well, she still says it), "Angela, even God gives us second chances," so I figured I'd give you the benefit of the doubt when I heard you unveiled a new "reform" plan.

So when I finally got my trembling little hands on your "reform" plan yesterday afternoon, the first words out of my mouth were curse words. In fact, Mr. Bishop, I was so upset that as I gestured wildly in a display of "WTF? Again?" to the person nearest me, your "2010 – Year of the Reform" cover page slashed my pinky finger wide open.

This bleeding heart liberal started bleeding on your handout before I made it to the stash of bandages in the office.

But back to your strangely sharp, thick-edged cover sheet. Your "reforms," as you have taken to calling your budget cuts (nice use of doublespeak, by the way) are disappointing, at best. At worst, they're exactly what I'd expect from you.

$1.2 billion from public employees, some of which can't be accomplished without a popular vote? Another half billion from Medicaid – which evidently you feel didn't shoulder enough of the burden last fiscal year, as you now plan to cut more "optional" services. Obviously, you learned nothing from the elderly woman in Alpena, who died for lack of dental coverage.

Then there's your "school reforms," which is Bishop-speak for "outsourcing jobs," meaning bus drivers and janitors will be asked to take a third or a fourth of their current wage for their same job with worse benefits. That's great for the economy.

You, Mikey Blue Eyes, already know the kicker, but I'm going to type on my still-smarting Spiderman Band-Aided pinky anyhow. You and yours will take a hit of…$5 million. In the form of pulling the lifetime benefits of only some lawmakers. And that "some," making a sacrifice so laughably small it just has to be your best joke yet, doesn't even include you.

Oh, Mike, I haven't the heart to finish this letter. But just so you'll have plenty of letters from people like me, who listened to their moms and gave you even the most ill-considered of second-chances to at least, for heaven's sake, say cuts when you are making cuts, I told all my friends to write to you, too.

If you're part of the far-right and even Glenn Beck doesn't trust you, then you have done something seriously wrong (or good?).

Maybe the President will get the picture a little better.
"It's Jobs Stupid"

King Coal is needed.
It is apparent we have a long way to go before Wind Energy will be a viable, constant and reliable producer of electricity here in MI. Solar is too expensive per Watt vs ROI. It cannot produce enough and buy back is not enough to pay for my investment.
As for Wind, the cost for me, fighting local laws for height variances, profile, blade reflection is ridiculous.
Wind Farms along Lake Michigan and in Grand Rapids are finding stiff resistance as NIMB’s not in my backyard groups gather.
I do not see the ‘windfall’ of jobs in the manufacturing or installation of wind turbines. That leaves King Coal, to light the way until the dust’s settles on the green stuff. Better have more than less electric energy.
Expensive cost of electricity to manufacturing base hampers business development and increases cost to the consumer.

Remember that scene in "Jurassic Park" when the glass of water begins to ripple moments before the Tyrannosaurus Rex bursts through the park?

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's recent decision to grant Consumers Energy an air quality permit for a proposed coal-fired power plant is another ripple forecasting the imminent danger to clean energy jobs in Michigan, threatened by that terrifying dangerous dinosaur: dirty coal plants.

Consumers and the DEQ would have us believe that their dinosaur, set to stomp down on Bay City and raise ratepayers bills by 30%, is not really that scary, because in exchange, they're agreeing to phase out a few other dinosaurs they already need to phase out. Yay.

People, one dinosaur is one dinosaur too many.

Those are the four words used by Phil Angelides, chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, describing what facets of the financial industry he'll be investigating.

Angelides is charged by Congress with answering two big questions for American taxpayers outraged by the excesses of Wall Street bankers: what caused the meltdown of our financial sector on 9/15/2009, and how exactly did it come to be that the citizens of the United States ended up footing the bill for the banks' comeuppance?

The target of the terrorist attacks on 9/11 may have been symbolically financial, destroying the entire World Trade Center complex and damaging several nearby banking buildings. But the actual destruction of the American economy and financial markets took place 9/15, when, saddled by bad debt, bad bets and sketchy practices, the markets collapsed under their own weight, taking the American economy with them.

This weekend, venerable New York Times columnist Frank Rich argued that while the nation is focusing on stopping terrorism of the sort that brought down the buildings housing financial markets, we are wide open – still – to the financial weapons that brought our economy to its knees a little over a year ago.

"What we don't know will hurt us, and quite possibly on a more devastating scale than any Qaeda attack. Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin. Without that reckoning, there will be no public clamor for serious reform of a financial system that was as cunningly breached as airline security at the Amsterdam airport. And, without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed."

It gets worse. As Americans are asking themselves how long they can make it on unemployment checks, executives at Goldman Sachs are preparing for an average $585 K bonus payout, funded by tax dollars. Other banking big wigs are wondering whether there bonuses will be six, seven or eight figures.

But it's not going to end unless we demand it. The federal government is set to form an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency to put, at long last, the interests of consumers ahead of bankers. And that scares the "too big to fail" bankers to death. The revolving door between banks and government allowed banks to operate unchecked, creating the conditions that led to 9/15, and now allowing the same banks to profit at our expense, while raising our rates.

Those days are over – if we fight for it. Big Business is, predictably, fighting the agency's creation tooth and nail. Even in our own backyard, state legislation to protect consumers from greedddy banks and businesses has been stalled by Big Business ,funded lawmakers like Andy Dillon, making the fight for our rights, and for the economic future of our nation, even more pressing.

Take action today by signing our petition of support. We can't afford another bailout, and we shouldn't have to, either.

My Son in-law says we can’t sit around and wait for the social revolution because he doesn’t think it will ever happen. It was Christmas and we were talking about the economy and having children. My daughter just got her accounting degree; my son in-law is the creative director at a local company. They are both employed and have a nice home. They would like to have children but they would also like one of them to be home to raise them. For them as for most Americans they don’t believe that is possible.

Instead of focusing on all that is wrong with our country and our world, I think we need to focus on the world we would like to live in, the one we are hoping to replace our existing world with, an alternative world if you will. We see that already happening in alternative media and also in communities. Some communities have created their own currency designed to bolster the local economy. We see it in the local food movement that supports local organic farmers by eating only locally grown, in season, food. And the beat goes on as ordinary people across the globe all begin working for the same goals such as peace, social justice, demanding responsibility i.e. big polluting countries paying their climate debt, democracy – true social democracy, universal health care as a human right, equality, justice, fair trade, living wages, end to occupations……as in the upcoming Gaza Freedom March. Isn’t this the world we all want? If the majority of people in our world want to live in a socially just peaceful world, why is it we don’t live in such a world?   Read More »

Ladies and gentlemen, climate change is shaping up to be the battle of the century, the millennium, and probably the history of the planet. This fight is bigger than the aching, brokenhearted Rocky Balboa taking down 'roid-ridden boxing-bot Ivan Drago and, ultimately, Communism.

Drago, in a lot of ways, is eerily representative of the Climate Change deniers. That cold, glassy stare when Apollo Creed dies in the ring? Shade of Sarah Palin rehashing blatant falsehoods like a Denial-Bot, chief among them that there is no proof that human activity has contributed significantly to global warming.

If Palin is the android-like Ivan Drago, that makes RNC head Michael Steele the even more dogmatic spouse of Ivan (played by a pre-plastic surgery Brigitte Nielsen.) To wit, Steele embodies the Mrs. perfectly by pulling the old Cold War word twisting game when opining about global warming:

We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process.

Fair enough, Mrs. Drago, some places are getting colder. Over time, as the science has borne out that greenhouse gases are changing our climate in many different ways, we have taken to calling this economic and environmental threat climate change. (Note the absence of air quotes.)

But wait! There's more! Mrs. Drago continues:

Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? Not very long.

Fact: Greenland was named as such because, as Mrs. Drago understands, sometimes you have to give something ugly, like a pig, something pretty, like lipstick, to entice people to look at it. In the case of Greenland, calling a vast, largely ice covered hunk of land something more inviting helped attract settlers. Kind of like calling a simpleton "the former Governor of Alaska," you know?

Or like calling ideologues who don't believe science, um, leaders.

One hundred thousand people from across the globe came together in the streets of Copenhagen this past weekend calling for world leaders to take swift action to reduce carbon and stop climate change. Stating that they know that capitalism ruled by corporate interests will never do “the right thing” which is why the people are calling for “system change” not climate change. The people are not taken in by corporate lies and rhetoric it is simply that, especially in the US, the media silences the people’s voices. Independent media has stepped up to the plate. Independent media outlets like Democracy Now are broadcasting the news, the truth and the information the people both need and want to hear. Please support Democracy Now at http://www.democracynow.org

The smaller nations and the people are calling on large polluting nations to take responsibility to causing global warming. The small nations are in serious peril, in many cases their very existence is in jeopardy. The small nations did not cause global warming but they are the ones suffering from it. They are demanding that those responsible pay for the damage they have done to the earth. They are calling for climate justice.
In the streets the people say:
We are watching you
You know what to do
The number has been set
Pay your climate debt.

All I wanted for Christmas, besides for Nebraska defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh to win the Heisman (#defensewinschampionships #offensewinstrophies), was to be able to enter a bar without coughing (#smokingbanforthewin). While Mark Ingram went home with the trophy, I did get my smoking ban.

Since I'm batting .500, I'll go ahead and revise my list and add on another early gift: for the companies I do business with to not retain the explicit, legally-gifted (#CliffTaylorFail) right to screw me out of my money.

Well, thank goodness: Senator Gretchen Whitmer has just thrown her name and her support behind the House of Representatives' plan to give the Michigan Consumer Protections Act some teeth again. The House will pass the plan this week.

That's fabulous news, especially (#clichealert) in this economy. In all seriousness, the problem is real. Nearly 75% of the over 13,000 consumer complaints received by the Attorney General in 2008 weren't covered by the Michigan Consumer Protection Act due to the gutting of the legislation by the Supreme Court. Oh, the irony!

The plan the House is set to pass this week would restore the Consumer Protection Act and apply it to all the businesses and industries it originally covered, giving folks like us the tools we need to hold companies and businesses accountable. It also levies stiff fines on businesses engaging in fraudulent practices (#punishment).

I may have gotten robbed this past Saturday, when the dominant Suh was passed over for college football's biggest award, but as long as the Senate does the right thing and passes these bills, I'll have some recourse next time a business tries to pull the reverse on me (#can'tfoolmetwice).

Let's hope the Senate continues the trend it started with the smoking legislation and continues to pass laws that benefit all Michiganders.

I have never blogged before but have been told that I am opinionated and always think I’m right so I must have something to say that bugs people. I just think it is time for the voices of ordinary people to be heard and that’s me just an ordinary person. I raised my daughter as a single mom. I have been employed in social services, I have waited tables and worked as an administrative assistant. I have attended college but never got my degree. I am self educated and can pretty much do anything I have to do, as most single mothers can.

There is something terribly wrong in our country and our world and we have to change this. Corporations have taken control and as a result the climate is changing and threatening to destroy us all. People are starving even though we have the capacity to feed the entire world. Unemployment is on the rise while these supposed “to big to fail” corporations make record profits with our money and give the very people responsible for this economic crisis huge bonuses. For at least the past 8 years the US has been torturing people, kidnapping people, hiring mercenary soldiers and paying them to kill innocent civilians. Where is the outrage? And when we collectively try to solve these problems by electing a seemingly progressive president, Mr. Obama we see almost no difference from the Bush administration. Why is that? Could it be that the corporations are really in change? I don’t know, I’m just an ordinary person but something is terribly wrong here and we need to fix it. Together we can change the world and make it better. Together everything is possible.

The smoking ban went to the Governor less than an hour ago and the press statements are already pouring in. Rep. Joan Bauer (D-Lansing) hit the send button on this statement around 3:30 today:

"This is truly a historic day for the state of Michigan. I am pleased that the House and Senate have worked together to pass a comprehensive smoking ban that will protect Michigan workers from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke in the workplace. The message from the public on this issue has been very clear and the Legislature heard that message and responded. I am proud that Michigan will become the 38th state to pass smoke free legislation."

Coupla things: first, I am elated that we've finally got a workplace smoking ban in place. Even as a pack-a-day smoker when this legislation was first introduced, I agreed with the plan. Why? Well, I smoked because I wanted to. But I hated others' cigarette smoke hanging in the air around me like big clouds of doom, I hated not being able to take my child to certain "family style" local restaurants because the smoke was so dense, and I hated the idea that other people had to breathe my smoke. Hell, I didn't even like breathing my smoke, I just liked the nicotine. Second, I'm not sure I feel good that Michigan is the 38th state to get around to the ban. Entire countries have managed to enact bans before us (in all fairness, Greece probably didn't have a "Say NO" Senate). 38th out of 50 is the kind of finish that leads to a fire sale in sports (unless you're our beloved Tigers, then a fire sale is a "just because" kind of event). Third, and I hate to be a jerk on this (ok, I am fine being a jerk on this), this ban is not comprehensive. Gaming floors for Detroit's casinos, cigar bars, tobacco shops, and a few other places are exempt. So it's good for everyone – unless you're a blackjack dealer. Then, well, you have to find work at a non-smoking casino. Sorry.

I'm hopeful that we'll have smoke-free casinos soon, too. Once our lawmakers see the world does not collapse around them when bars and restaurants go smoke-free, they'll see that casinos can bite the bullet, too.

It never ceases to amaze me. The health insurance industry has hit a new low in their battle against healthcare reform.

Actually, it's just what you'd expect from the health insurance industry, who care for nothing other than their bottom line. Yes sir, tried and true practices meet social media, virtual astro-turfing:

Health insurance industry trade groups opposed to President Obama's health care reform bill are paying Facebook users fake money -- called "virtual currency" -- to send letters to Congress protesting the bill.

Can't get enough people at the rally? Rent buses and pay people from all over to come! Need letters sent to lawmakers not already in your pocket? Pay Farmville addicts in virtual dollars!

Another day, another virtual dollar.

If you haven't had a chance to read Nolan Finley's latest hatchet job on established science, please, take a moment and read his column in last week's Detroit News.

Not that anyone should be shocked by Finley's shilling for the status quo. A quick survey of his blog and columns reads like a right-winger's hit-list: federal health care reform is "snake oil" and foreshadows a government takeover; state revenue increases are bad, and he claims Gov. Granholm has long "coveted" a sales tax increase; so, shock and awe, he doesn't believe in climate change.

Here's Finley's beef:

The president promises next month's international palaver on climate change will be marked by aggressive action to combat global warming and a firm commitment by the United States to shoulder its share of the responsibility.

Translation: Obama will pledge the United States to curbing its appetite for energy, and thus its economic growth, will make reducing emissions a higher priority than creating new jobs and will agree to transfer $1.6 trillion of our wealth to China, India and the other booming developing economies.

Ok. As my friend Dan says, "I see what you're saying, but no." Curbing our appetite for energy means bringing it to a level we can provide for, ourselves. Mr. Finley, imagine the only food you have to eat is the food you grow in your own garden. Problem: you're not a gardener, and it takes a little time to learn. Solution: adjust your appetite.

Here's my favorite part, though. Climate change deniers, their heads stuck firmly in the sand and bums up in the mercury-laced air their favored power sources, coal plants, produce, will often revert to two blatantly incorrect criticisms of clean energy policy: 1. it will cost jobs and, 2. climate change isn’t real anyway.

On jobs, Mr. Finley, enacting the federal Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act alone will create at least 1.9 million jobs nationally. Here in Michigan, where you and I both live, we're already seeing jobs – and an entire new industry – being created by making a commitment to clean energy technology. We have wind turbine manufacturers; we have the upcoming production of the hybrid-electric Chevy Volt, and the advanced battery technology production plant in Brownstown, Twp. Here, Mr. Finley, not China.

Something else to consider: when our expendable income (that's play money, sir) isn't impacted by wildly volatile heating, electric and gasoline costs, we can spend more money right here in Michigan, giving a desperately-needed shot in the arm to our economy. All good things, Mr. Finley, despite your stubborn refusal to see the benefits in any kind of change.

Maybe you would have been one of the folks who thought that the advent of the Model T was bad because it meant the death of the horse-and-buggy industry, and therefore America's wealth. That's pure speculation, because I don't know you, sire, but I think I know your kind.

Your kind are like the Swiftboaters, who torpedo good ideas and good people because both challenge your motto: "The Status Quo is Good Enough For Me, And You Too." Your kind do things like hack into a research centers email servers, release said emails as "damning" evidence of the fraud of climate change when, in reality, climate change is proven science. Like gravity, the scientific force that makes your kind want to put their heads into the sand.

When you come up for air, Mr. Finley, take a look around: glaciers have been melting for 18 consecutive years, temperatures have been rising for 50. The American Physical Society, American Geophysical Union and U.S. Global Change Research Program, to name just a bare minimum, have all found that climate change is real, and needs to be addressed.

But hey, why look at the facts when you have all those grains of sand to stare at, right?

TODAY is the PHONE-IN DAY TO STOP STUPAK!!! Call toll-free at 888-423-5983 and tell your Senators you support health care reform that protects women's existing access to reproductive health care. Make this message viral! Repost it on Facebook as YOUR status message.

Many people of faith believe that we are stewards of our bodies and the people they love. We have a responsibility to teach our young people how to be stewards of their bodies and to care for the people they love. We must provide age appropriate, culturally competent, medically accurate comprehensive sexuality education. We must improve access to health care and methods to protect against HIV and AIDS so that everyone has the knowledge and tools for the stewardship of what God has entrusted to us.

Check out this headline in today's Free Press, which seemed to be lifted straight from The Onion:

Parents hopeful that statewide bake sale will boost school funds

That's right. A bake sale to raise money for education, which is supposed to be funded by the State. A bake sale to fill the $300+ per student cuts coming down after the "Say NO" Senate has obstinately refused to consider any form of revenue increase to guarantee our kids' education meets the same requirements the Legislature laid out a few years back. A bake sale to raise funds, something the Senate could easily do by looking past its own narrow-minded agenda and into the future.

When Majority Leader Mike Bishop looks ten years down the road, what does he see? Parents wish it were a class of talented students challenged by their teachers to invent the new Michigan. More than likely, he sees, with a smug grin, a future where there are no public schools.

If his mission is to dismantle government and public schools from the inside out, he's doing a bang-up job. Only, if he succeeds, there will be no one left in Michigan to thank him for it ten years from now.

Come on people, quit the complaining and take action. Every little bit helps. When concerned about an issue, contact your elected official responsible for this activity. Bitching to your neighbor, your barber or other friends and acquaintances may be fun and a stress reliever, but they are like you: perhaps sympathetic, but powerless to do anything about the situation, unless they also happen to be in a position to affect change.

I would advise you to literally raise hell! Find out who is in charge and then CALL or better yet, WRITE. I can assure from my many years of doing just this, that they DO pay attention, especially if you threaten to expose their misfeasance or malfeasance to the BRIGHT LIGHT OF DAY. Writing is the most effective tool, since you have left evidence of the contact.

If you want change YOU must be willing to take action NOW, not tomorrow or next week or never!