Jon Huntsman Enters the Presidential Race and Says Terrible Things (for a Republican), Greek Parliament Confident of Something, Indiana Stops Paying for Health Care for some Low Income Women. . .

And Other News That Needs Commenting on.

Former Utah Governor and former Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman today said

I respect the president of the United States,” said Huntsman, who served as Obama’s ambassador to China until late April. “He and I have a difference of opinion on how to help a country we both love.

Huntsman, trying to be a mainstream Republican candidate immediately placed himself outside of the Republican mainstream, as every other Republican in the nation does not respect the President of the United States and knows that he hates America.

The Greek Parliament passed a vote of confidence in Prime Minister George Papandreou.  Exactly what the Parliament was confident of was not revealed.

California has stopped paying it legislators because the budget they submitted to Gov. Brown was not balanced.  A spokesman for the legislators said that it was unfair to ask the legislators to live solely off of  padded expense accounts.

Low Income Health Care Patients in Indiana will no longer be able to access service at Planned Parenthood.  The report in the NY Times said

Medicaid patients are now paying for their own health services at Planned Parenthood clinics in Indiana or are looking for alternatives after the group ran out of private donations that had been paying those patients’ bills. A state law that took effect in May denied Planned Parenthood Medicaid money for general health services for low-income women, including breast exams, birth control and Pap smears.

You see, Indiana, if they could pay for their own health care services they would not be on Medicaid.  Why is that so difficult for you to understand?

MSNBC Morning Commentator and Host Joe Scarborough is joining people like Peggy Noonan in applauding the GOP movement towards a more reluctant role for the U. S. with respect to military intervention.   This continues to infuriate Senator John McCain, but does promise a potentially productive foreign policy debate in the next Presidential election. 

In an Op/Ed piece in the NY Times Bruce Bartlett reaches this conclusion on taxes

Nevertheless, it is clear that federal taxes have not been rising and are, at least in historical terms, lower for most taxpayers than they have been since the 1960s. Those who assert that taxes are rising or are at confiscatory levels simply do not know what they are talking about.

A spokesman for Conservative Republicans said “of course we don’t know what we are talking about, how could we, we don’t rely on facts and figures in arriving at out positions.”

The Dismal Political Economist often wonders if the fact that taxes are the lowest they have been since the 1960’s is a contributing factor to the record federal deficit but is having difficulty supporting that view unless he uses actual empirical data.

Speaking of Indiana, it seems like the state is doing relatively well economically, which Wall Street Journal editorial columnist William McGurn attributes 100% to its Republican Governor Mitch Daniels.  Except McGurn then looks at the city of South Bend, which apparently is not doing quite so good, and blames all of its problems on, you guessed it, on Democrats.  No Mr. McGurn, it doesn’t work that way.  Ok, it does work that way in the fantasy world of the Conservatives, but the rest of us know better.