Well, that seems to be one of the conclusions of the research by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, as reported by FoxNews:

Of those sampled, almost 60 percent had sex and more than 50 percent had oral sex five years later, and more than 80 percent of those who had taken virginity pledges had forgotten they ever did so.

OK, that’s FoxNews, which leads the article with the encouraging, if misleading, headline “Study: Religious Teens More Likely to Abstain from Sex.” The real news can be found in several other articles on the web, but I’ll quote from Psych Central News:

The study found more than half of youths surveyed engaged in sexual activity, regardless of whether they had made a pledge to remain sexually abstinent.

Researchers also discovered something not entirely unexpected — virginity pledgers were 10 percent less likely to use a form of birth control.

. . .

The findings suggest that “virginity pledges” do little to deter teenage sexuality. It also suggests that people who take such pledges are at a slightly increased risk for pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases when they do have sex, due to their decreased use of condoms or other birth control.

I suppose that explains Bristol Palin, eh?

To be serious, the abstinence-only education the Bush Administration has squandered $200MM on is bound to fail, according to scientifically-based criteria, and the reason it will fail is that it depends on a pledge to take over for any notion of rational thought. The girl or boy who takes the pledge is as likely as any other teen to end up in a “romantic” situation, whether on Prom night or while playing pool in the local bar. When the situation gets out of control, the next morning that teen can just blame the moment, and need not blame the lack of responsible planning. That’s the effect of abstinence-only education — it is a program that results in the abnegation of responsibility.

Aw, teens today! They’re not responsible about sex, and thus don’t use condoms, at least if taught the Republican way. No, none of us are surprised that Republicans do not advocate responsibility.

I love this. Ken Blackwell, who is largely responsible as Secretary of State in Ohio in 2004 for George Bush’s win, thus responsible for the continuation of Bush’s disastrous Republican policies, is reaping his reward from the 24%ers who still support George Bush. More particularly, he’s getting the support for RNC Chair from the biggest of the Radical Right Wing Christian Clerics, according to a report by Ben Smith of Politico. Here’s a few of Blackwell’s extremist Christian supporters:

Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum (I once met her nephew by marriage. He was so ashamed of Phyllis he called her his “uncle’s wife” and would not refer to her as his aunt.)

James C. Dobson, Founder, Chairman and Grand Poobah, Focus on the Family (Didn’t his organization just lay off a whole bunch of workers? Why would anyone want the endorsement of such a failed enterprise?)

Dr. Ronald Godwin, Vice Chancellor, Liberty University, who was instrumental in popularizing Syun Mung Moon in the US — hey, that’s some claim to fame, working for two whack jobs, Moon AND Falwell!

Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council. (Did they ever get this guy for those serial murders?)

Tim LaHaye, Founder and President, Tim LaHaye Ministries, the man most responsible, probably, for promoting the notion of the “End Times,” and thus responsible, in part, for how that notion helped twist the Bush Administration policies.

Hey, this is a whole bunch of the extremist Christian right wing of the party supporting a black man, Ken Blackwell. Perhaps it is because Blackwell was such a good and obedient soldier in 2004? whatever, the real surprising this is that there are a couple folks one wouldn’t expect to see on this list. Sure, Pat Toomey of Club for Growth pretends to be a fiscal conservative, but he’s a religious whack job from way back. Steve Forbes is the one who seems out of place to me. Hey, the man had a bisexual father, didn’t he, and famously so. How comfortable could Forbes, who has never in the past cozied up to the Christian extremists, be?

Of course, the RNC Chair race isn’t over, but as a Democrat I am pleased to see the Christian whack job wing of the Republican Party coalesce behind Blackwell, who will be the divisive presence, and likely incompetent, too, that we wish on the Republicans.

I suppose the bigwigs over at Focus on the Family, namely James Dobson and his cronies, didn’t have a handle on their constituency’s views. Based on the evidence today, the folks who support Focus on the Family apparently think Mormons are about as acceptable as gays, and we know what they think of gays. The right wing Christian Whack jobs who support Focus on the Family liked Glenn Beck a whole bunch when he was fighting on their side in the War on Christmas in the last couple years, but they’ve now found he’s a Mormon. In a sort of move that seems oddly like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” it appears the very publicity surroounding Beck’s LDS religious beliefs has made him persona non grata at the Focus web site. The article on Glenn Beck’s New York Times best-selling book, “The Christmas Sweater,” has been scrubbed by the Dobson Gang. Yes, there is some tumult among the extremists on the Christian right wing.

Who are the whiners here? It seems they are members of an “anti-Mormon” group called Underground Apologetics, at least according to an article by Joel Campbell of the Mormon Times. I could track the kind of religious bigotry represented by Steve McConkey of Underground Apologetics, and it isn’t hard, as he represents himself as a bit of a religious bigot in this WingNutDaily article on the subject of Beck. McConkey’s full rant about the Focus ont he Family article about Beck is here. But, really, this story is about irony, I think. It is about Focus on the Family falling all over itself to make excuses for deleting a known conservative voice from its web site due to pressure from whack jobs, and it is about Glenn Beck, not exactly the voice of reason in the past, coming out smelling like a rose.

Here’s the Focus on the Family statement, where they try to explain their scrubbing of the story on Beck and “The Christmas Sweater” as a mere editorial faux pas. From Mormon Times comes the Focus on the Family whiney explanation:

“You are correct to note that Mr. Beck is a member of the Mormon church, and that we did not make mention of this fact in our interview with him. We do recognize the deep theological difference between evangelical theology and Mormon theology, and it would have been prudent for us at least to have pointed out these differences. Because of the confusion, we have removed the interview from CitizenLink.”

Hey, the real thing that happened here is that Focus on the Family and James Dobson got bullied by a Christian group even more extremist than they are. I like the irony of that. Focus on the Family has a long record of trying to bully companies who promote policies benefiting gay and lesbian workers, and they’ve got a long record demonizing gay and lesbian citizens. They are one of the biggest “Christian” bullies around. This time the get bullied, and that leads them to bully Glenn Beck, a man who has done his own share of bullying in the past. Perhaps Glenn Beck is the one who comes out of this ironic situation looking like a rose. Here’s Beck’s statement on the issue from his web site:

The Christmas Sweater is a story about the idea of Christmas as a time for redemption and atonement. Whatever your beliefs about my religion, the concept of religious tolerance is too important to be sacrificed in response to pressure from special interest groups, especially when it means bowing to censorship. I’m humbled and grateful that hundreds of thousands of people from different faiths have read the book and have appreciated its uplifting message for themselves. At a time when the world is so full of fear, despair, and divisions, it is my hope that all of those who believe in a loving and peaceful God would stand together on the universal message of hope and forgiveness.
-glenn

Meanwhile, Glenn Beck is moving from CNN to FoxNews, and he’s gotten the publicity he needs. But, I wonder. FoxNews, after all, is the home of the “War on Christmas.” They’ve promoted a whole bunch of the agenda of extremist right wing Christian radicals like Focus on the Family in the past. Will they think twice about bring a — GASP — Mormon such as Glenn Beck on board? Will they be afraid that Beck has, with this publication of the very sweet book “The Christian Sweater,” has lost his vicious partisan bite? Heck, Beck looks so innocent and sweet next to Focus ont he Family and Underground Apologetics I wonder if he will appeal at all to the extremists Christians and assorted whack jobs who make up the FoxNews audience. Might there be ripple effects here of the rejection of Glenn Beck by extremist Christian groups like Focus on the Family? Stay tuned.

by Walter Brasch

The chairman of the Republican National Committee may have begun an irreversible descent into a future as a fear-bound paranoid victim of functional amnesia, possibly caused by a hysterical post-traumatic event such as the overwhelming victory of Democrats in the 2008 election and the nation’s repudiation of Republican policies.

In a two-page vitriol-loaded letter dated “Friday morning”—he apparently was unable to remember the exact date—Robert M. (Mike) Duncan, RNC chairman, told Americans that the Democrats plan to “impose their radical leftist agenda on America,” and that Republicans “must work vigilantly to guard our country’s freedoms from the inevitable assault [by Democrats] they will face.” He didn’t mention that not one of Barack Obama’s proposed cabinet members nor any of the members of the current Congress is a “radical leftist.”

It’s really sad that Mike forgot that fear-mongering, obstruction of justice, reduction of public information, distrust and resentment of the worker, and curtailment of civil liberties—with the complicity of millions of Americans and much of the Democratic leadership who willingly crumpled under unremitting Neocon assaults—have been the base of the Bush–Cheney Administration and a Republican-dominated Congress for most of the past eight years. Perhaps I can shock what little memory Mike may have left in the hope that some of his brain cells may once again function.

It was the Republicans, not the Democrats, who systematically violated the Constitution, while screaming “The terrorists are coming! The terrorists are coming!” There isn’t enough space in one column to enumerate all the constitutional abuses, but here’s a starter package:

● The Bush–Cheney Administration, and their Republican supporters, stands convicted in federal courts of suppressing constitutional rights of free expression (First Amendment), unreasonable searches and the right of privacy (Fourth Amendment), right against self-incrimination (Fifth Amendment), due process (Sixth Amendment), of invoking reasonable bail and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment (Eighth Amendment), and the equal protection guarantee for both citizens and non-citizens (Fourteenth Amendment.) The conservative-leaning Supreme Court has also ruled that the Administration violated the habeas corpus clause (Article I, Section 9, Clause 2) of the Constitution, which guarantees the right of prisoners to challenge why they are incarcerated. That clause guarantees against arbitrary and capricious imprisonment.

● The acronym-happy Bush–Cheney Administration and not the Democrats created several programs—including MATRIX, TIPS, TIAP, TTIC, TALON, and CAPPS II, among others—to spy upon Americans, and curtail their constitutionally-mandated rights of due process and protections against invasion of privacy.

●Under a massive plan prepared in the White House, Americans have been arrested for peacefully protesting. Non-violent organizations, including Greenpeace, the Quakers and Veterans for Peace, were the subject of governmental spying and labeled as terrorist organizations.

● The Republicans, not the Democrats, accepted and encouraged the use of torture and kidnapping in violation of numerous international treaties.

● The President willfully and deliberately violated the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits the military from enforcing civilian law.

But, wait, just as in a paid telemarketing pitch, there’s more from the RNC that we need to deconstruct:

“We will . . . continue to stand for . . . strong national security. . . .”

Perhaps it was too long ago for Mike to remember that the President and Attorney General early in 2001 refused to fund the FBI’s request for additional funds for counter-terrorism surveillance. A few months later, George W. Bush and his senior advisors didn’t pay much attention to a Presidential Daily Briefing report titled, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside U.S.” A month later, al-Qaeda attacked the United States.

During the next couple of years, the Bush–Cheney Administration launched a propaganda campaign to whip American frenzy into attacking Iraq, which not only had no ties to bin Laden and al-Qaeda but didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Bush, Dick Cheney, and six other top officials lied 935 times about national security issues in the two years following 9/11, according to an analysis by the impartial Center for Public Integrity. During the past seven years, the President and Vice-President obstructed legal and legitimate investigations into the attacks of 9/11.

During the war in Iraq, which left Afghanistan, home of al-Qaeda, almost a minor afterthought, the Bush–Cheney Administration and their legions of supporters preached a doctrine of supporting the troops as a back-door way to get Americans to pledge loyalty to the Administration. But, it was this Administration that opposed pay raises for combat troops, and failed to provide adequate body and vehicle armor or adequate medical and psychological care.

“Democrats are salivating over their opportunity to remake American government. From socialized medicine . . . .”

Apparently, Mike doesn’t know that Medicare, health care for all active duty military, veterans, members of Congress, and even the executive branch is a socialistic system. He may be upset that the Democratic leaders also want to give adequate health care to more than 45.7 million Americans, most of whom can’t afford health insurance.

“ . . . and new entitlements to massive tax increases and out of control federal spending . . .”

Would that “out of control federal spending” include trying to recover from the $438 billion deficit and an $11 trillion debt, largest in American history, that the Republican president is leaving the nation, after inheriting a balanced budget and a $236 billion surplus at the end of President Clinton’s term?

Mike apparently has no memory of the massive financial fraud and overbilling in Iraq and Katrina recovery, and then the Bush–Cheney Administration extending immunity to those Republican-owned businesses. Anything the Obama Administration does won’t even come close to what the tax-and-spend Republicans burdened Americans with the past eight years.

And speaking of overspending—does anyone know anyone from the Democratic National Committee who authorized any of their candidates to spend more than $200,000 on clothes and makeup during the final two months of a presidential campaign, and then lie to the people that this was only “on loan” and would be “donated” after the election? Anyone want a used tube of lipstick?

“. . . they are reaching back for their old playlist of nanny-state interference and lessened personal freedom.”

Perhaps it was a Republican reaction to “nanny-state interference” that led the Bush–Cheney Administration to decimate the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and fail to adequately respond to the Katrina disaster.

Maybe it was the Republican reaction to be labeled as a “nanny-state” government that caused the Bush–Cheney Administration to cut funding for education, food stamps, Medicaid, and student loans, while not touching pork barrel funding.

Just whose political party was it that lessened personal freedoms of choice by executive orders that public schools must teach abstinence-only education in order to receive federal funding? And what kind of “personal freedom” is at stake when the President rushes through a late-term order that anyone who works in a hospital may refuse to assist any woman who requests an abortion? This sweeping rule apparently applies even to a janitor who can refuse to clean the room of a woman who has a medical or psychological reason for an abortion.

Because Mike is a banker and lawyer, he may not have had a chance to socialize with the underclass and America’s invisible minorities. Perhaps he is unaware (or just forgot) that 12.5 percent of all Americans, about 37.3 million according to the Census Bureau, are living in poverty. He probably doesn’t even notice, or maybe doesn’t care, about the 3.5 million Americans who were homeless this year. Perhaps he doesn’t think the “nanny-care” government he excoriates and the “support the troops” party he believes he is a part of should even deal with the half-million veterans who are homeless. He may not be aware that, primarily because of an economic meltdown caused by greed and ineffective federal regulation, 1.1 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2008, about 33 percent higher than 2007, or that about 9 percent of all home mortgages are in default. He may not care that 6.7 percent of the workforce, about 10.3 million Americans, are unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Maybe Mike and the RNC want to eliminate any federal program, including massive jobs creation programs proposed by President-Elect Barack Obama, which assists those Americans from having the “personal freedom” from sinking even further into poverty.

Of course, Mike and his RNC minions have been silent about corporate welfare, most of which goes to Republican-owned business. Although the federal government provides about $75 billion to individuals in various forms of assistance, during the 2006 fiscal year it gave private enterprise about $92 billion in direct and indirect subsidies, according to the independent Cato Institute; private enterprise received another $40–50 billion from state and local governments. Not included is the recent $700 billion bailout to corporate incompetence and greed.

“Just as the liberal mainstream media aided the Democrats . . .”

Would that be the liberal media that for years failed to question just about anything the Bush–Cheney Administration said? The media that stood silent as one constitutional amendment after another was stomped on by the Bush–Cheney Administration? Would that include the New York Times and Washington Post that finally admitted they failed to do their jobs by not challenging the President on his claims that America was invading Iraq in order to remove non-existent weapons of mass destruction? That liberal media?

[The media] will obscure the radical nature of the Democrats’ proposed legislation for benefiting unions. . . .”

Disregarding the fact that Mike is a banker/lawyer and expected to say nasty things against the working class, it certainly wasn’t the Democrats who spent eight years trying to destroy unions by emasculating the National Labor Relations Board, reducing the effectiveness of the Department of Labor, and launching a fusillade of attacks upon the American worker. Restraining worker abuse apparently isn’t part of any Republican program.

“. . . shaking down businesses. . . .”

It most certainly wasn’t the Democrats who removed regulatory protections for Americans and led the nation into the abyss of subprime lending and massive Wall Street greed that helped launch the nation’s worst recession in 70 years. Apparently, any regulation for the public good is, in Republican views, “shaking down businesses.”

“. . . limiting free speech . . . “

Not only does Mike have amnesia, he’s delusional if he believes it’ll be the Democrats who have plans to restrict free speech. As a reminder, it was the Republicans, not the Democrats, who created the unconstitutional free speech zones to restrict any dissent to as much as a mile away from the President and Vice-president. It was the Republicans, not the Democrats, who pushed for even greater restrictions upon freedom of speech, religion, the press, the right to assemble, and most important the right to petition government for a redress of grievances. It was the Republicans, not the Democrats, who willfully, maliciously, and illegally blocked innumerable Freedom of Information requests. In the arrogant and illogical world of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the Republican National Committee leadership, Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers are merely Old Codgers who don’t understand that the Constitution is now “quaint.”

“ . . . and imposing questionable environmental restrictions.”

It wasn’t those pesky liberals who thought global warming was a hoax, and who pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol, signed by 37 industrialized nations, that would lead to stabilization of greenhouse gases. It certainly wasn’t the Democrats who removed “questionable” anti-pollution restrictions from corporate America, weakened the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, cut funding for toxic waste cleanups, yielded to corporate influence to allow logging and mining in national forests, strip mining in the Appalachians and then left residue in formerly clean rivers.

Apparently, such regulations as the Endangered Species Act, approved by the Nixon Administration in 1973 and gutted by the Republicans during the past eight years, is among the “questionable governmental restrictions” that annoy Mike and the RNC. As a result of Bush–Cheney policies, dozens of species are now extinct; 20,000 polar bears are threatened by global warming because the Administration wants to encourage even further gas and oil exploration in the already diminished arctic sea ice. In the Northern Rockies, 1,500 gray wolves were taken off the list of endangered and threatened species, leading to indiscriminate and unregulated killing until federal courts reversed the orders; and just about anyone in Alaska has the “right” to kill wolves, even from the air.

The “imposition of questionable environmental restrictions” that scare the RNC might include protection of the nation’s wild horses and burros, symbols of America’s independence. Under the Republican leadership, influenced by the cattle industry, 4.1 million head of cattle graze upon public lands, but the Pinocchio Department of the Interior believes it has a divine mission to slaughter most of the 32,000 wild horses and burros because it claims there’s not enough room for them, and they could starve from lack of natural resources.

Perhaps Mike and the RNC are upset that the Obama Administration may establish “questionable environmental restrictions” to reverse newly-enacted policies that allow trophy hunters to kill and import into the U.S. endangered species from other countries.

Apparently, Mike and the RNC actually believe that a free enterprise system of environmental destruction with minimal oversight is the American Way.

“I’m proud of the honorable campaigns our candidates ran . . .”

While John McCain and most Republicans conducted honorable campaigns, did Mike even attend a Sarah Palin rally? Was he so concentrating upon strategy that he didn’t hear her say that Obama “pals around with terrorists” or her ultra-right followers at every rally bleating out racial, ethnic, and religious slurs.

“America remains a center-right country.”

Not only is Mike forgetful and delusional, he’s also mathematically-challenged. Barack Obama won in the Electoral College by a near landslide 365–173, and a popular vote of 52 percent to John McCain’s 46 percent, a higher winning percentage than George W. Bush had in 2004 when he haughtily claimed he had a “mandate” from the people. Maybe Mike doesn’t understand that 59 percent of the 2009–2011 House (257–178) are Democrats, 21 more Democrats than two years ago; or that at least 58 of 100 Senators (one race is still being determined) are Democrats, nine more than two years ago. Maybe if Mike closed his eyes tightly and wished upon the nearest oil rig America could still be a “center-right” country.

Lies, hyperbole, and propaganda aside, Mike’s real purpose of the letter was to energize the Republican base to send money to Washington to “ensure that our Party has the funding it needs to hold the Democrats accountable to the American people.” Accountability is a real nice word. It’s something the Republicans didn’t have the past few years. Just about the only thing the Administration did say for most of its term—for any issue—was, “We’re at war, we know best, and if you question what we say and what we do you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”

By 2008, the American public no longer bought into a campaign of fear, intimidation, harassment, and lies. Loudly and clearly they said they wanted an end to the nightmare of the past eight years. They wanted hope; they demanded change.

[For a more complete look at the Bush–Cheney Administration and its effect upon Americans, read Dr. Brasch’s critically-acclaimed books America’s Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government’s Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights (2004); ‘Unacceptable’: The Federal Government’s Response to Hurricane Katrina (2006); and the 560-page Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush (2008). All books are available at amazon.com, and most bookstores. You may contact Dr. Brasch through his website, www.walterbrasch.com, or by e-mail at brasch@bloomu.edu]

Paul Weyrich, a founding member of the Heritage Foundation and president and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation, died early this morning.

Weyrich was a conservative’s conservative - actually, he personified the Reagan / Bush era definition of “conservative”: he courted the fundamentalist Christian GOP base of support, both philosophically and financially, while at the same time advocating for Norquestian government policies which directly led to the current global financial crisis. Those same policies have also been largely antithetical to a true Christian view of charity and social justice.

Here’s how I’ll remember Paul Weyrich:

Norris: The future of speaker Dennis Hastert has been on the mind of conservative activist Paul Weyrich. He’s head of the Free Congress Foundation. And yesterday, along with six other conservative leaders, he signed an open letter demanding the immeidate resignation of any member of congress who acted improperly in the Foley affair. Weyrich went one step further - he publicly called for speaker Hastert to resign over the matter. Today, Weyrich says he’s still upset about the whole scandal, but he’s changed his mind about Speaker Hastert after he received a phone call from the congressman this morning:

Weyrich: “He absolutely assured me that congressman Boehner, the Majority Leader, never called him on this, and as far as Reynolds is concerned he said, y’know, maybe he did talk to him, but if he did, has no recollection of it. Here’s the real problem. It has been known for many years that congressman foley was a homosexual - um - homosexuals tend to be preoccupied with sex. The idea that he should be continued or should have been continued as chairman of the committee of missing and exploited children is, y’know, given their knowledge of that, is just outrageous.

Norris: Now before we go, Mr. Weyrich, there are quite a few people who would take exception to the statement that homosexuals are preoccupied with sex.

Weyrich: Well, I don’t care whether they take exception to it, it happens to be true. I mean…

Norris: That is your opinion

Weyrich: Well, it’s not my opinion, it’s, uh, the opinion, uh, of many psychologists and psychiatrists who have to deal with…them…

The measure of a person’s life can be summed up by asking (and answering) if, during their time on the planet, they did anything, no matter how large or small, to leave the world a bit of a better place than when they arrived.

In Weyrich’s case, the answers he gave in the interview above clearly answer the question.

I know it’s a bit early, but I’ll be gone a few days, and I found an ad for this in my local paper. It may be one of the stupidest Christmas decorations the world has ever known. It is from www.st-jude.com, and it’s an absolute winner for the holidays.

Now I thought the only thing that could beat that would be a Rudolph figurine kneeling before the Baby Jesus. Surely that would be more historically accurate. Heck, I didn’t find one, and I didn’t want to post those other stupid pictures of a mature Jesus playing basketball with kids, and whatnot. But it seems there are other figurines with Santa and Jesus. Like this, from Kaboodle. There’s even a book about Santa kneeling beside the baby Jesus! Who knew they had magic sleighs back in Jesus’ day? OK, we knew about the dinosaurs, like Sarah Palin believes, but flying reindeer and magic sleighs?

Which brings us to the question — if Jesus didn’t have a chimney, then how did Santa visit him? We know Jesus was good enough to deserve a visit, after all. And there’s documentary proof here that Jesus did get visited by Santa — there are figurines and ornaments and books to prove it. So, do you think Joseph and Mary put up a fake chimney for Santa to fool him into visiting? Or did they call in a special favor or something.

Oh, by the way, Baby Jesus is safe, thanks to Lojack and GPS. This public service announcement has been brought to you by the Department of Homeland Security.

No, I’m not anti-Christian, but I am anti-stupid. And the holiday season seems to bring out the stupid in a lot of Christians.

When he lost the nomination for President from his Party, Mitt Romney focused on his PAC, the Free and Strong America PAC. The goal of the PAC was to support Republican candidates, but the Boston Globe reports that only 12% of the funds actually went to support those candidates. Here’s the scoop from the Boston Globe:

Republican Mitt Romney is laying the groundwork for a possible White House campaign in 2012, hiring a team of staff members and consultants with money from a fund-raising committee he established with the ostensible purpose of supporting other GOP candidates.

The former Massachusetts governor has raised $2.1 million for his Free and Strong America political action committee. But only 12 percent of the money has been spent distributing checks to Romney’s fellow Republicans around the country.

Instead, the largest chunk of the money has gone to support Romney’s political ambitions, paying for salaries and consulting fees to over a half-dozen of Romney’s longtime political aides, according to a Globe review of expenditures.

Romney founded the Free and Strong America Committee shortly after dropping out of the 2008 presidential primary. He filled its coffers by telling conservative contributors around the country that their money would be used to support Republican candidates and causes.

According to the Globe analysis, he spent $244,000 on contributions to congressional and other candidates between April and the November elections. He has spent more than twice as much on staff salaries and contracts to hire professional fund-raisers, who are compiling contributor lists that will serve Romney well in a future presidential campaign.

In essence, Romney is financing a political enterprise that he can use to remain a national GOP leader and use as a springboard should he decide to launch another presidential bid for 2012.

What the Romney funds from the Free and Strong America PAC went for was for Romney to stump around the country for Republican candidates, and I suppose that would have been fine, but as a strategy for his future political aspirations, Romney spent money far better keeping his face in front of voters than he did for the Republican candidates. In a follow-up article from UPI, Romney’s people are a bit honest about that purpose:

“The main purpose of Mitt Romney’s PAC is to enable him to travel around the country on virtually a full-time basis to campaign and raise funds for candidates and to promote policies that will strengthen America,” Fehrnstrom said.

Still, that statement conflicts from the Boston Globe report. It’s an attempt to put out the fire. But let’s say Romney WAS working for those candidates. His web site has a list of the candidates he supported. How did they do?

Well, Romney’s money was spent on some sure winners, like Thad Cochran, Lamar Alexander, James Inhofe, Jeff Sessions and Dana Rohrabacher, for instance. did those candidates really need a boost from Mitt romney? No, they needed neither the money nor Romney’s appearances. But Romney needs these heavy hitters if he has a chance in 2012, that’s for sure. There’s the real reason he made an effort on their behalf.

Romney also spent some money on some losers. Gordon Smith, John McCain, Sarah Palin, etc. I’m thinking Romney’s efforts did zero good in helping these candidates. But some of these candidates are very popular on the extremist right wing of the GOP, so Romney standing next to, say, a Sarah Palin, probably helps his stock among the whack job religious conservatives who are still suspicious of Romney’s funny underwear. Hey, the Mormon Church is taking a beating what with its supoort of Proposition 8, and I’m thinking that probably helps Romeny in the extremist Christian wing of his party. Still, he’s got to go a long way to heal that rift.

And then Romney supported certifiable whack jobs like Michelle Bachman and Saxby Chambliss. If Romney has any hope of reaching across the aisle and drawing independents to his side, he needs to ditch these folks, but it appears his aim with the Free and Strong America PAC was to elect Republicans, not to elect people who are for a free America. Bachman is on record wanting to rid the Congress of members who are not ideologically pure, and Chambliss is known for some of the slimiest campaigning in decades. I say we make sure to note in the future that these two dimmest of bulbs in our legislature are bosom buddies of Mitt Romney.

Bottom line here is that Romney used the money from his PAC far more to promote his future interests than as he said he would, to promote Republican candidates. And from the list of candidates he supported, it appears he was incompetent at spending the money.

Third Rate singer, has been television star, the man who put the white bread in R & B. . . Pat Boone is many things. At 74 years old he still performs, and even headlined a couple John McCain events. No word on whether he wore his trademark white bucks. Lately Pat Boone has been trying to make his way as an opinion writer of the conservative school, when he is not giving concerts to former teenyboppers now in walkers rather than poodle skirts. Alas, he has been showing some signs of severe mental illness in his political columns, and it can now be reported that Pat Boone has suffered from advanced dementia for a while, culminating yesterday in his head exploding.

*moment of silence*

Oh, that’s better. Now where was I? Pat Boone has written a few columns for WingNutDaily over the years. (Evidently WingNutDaily will accept anyone to write for them.) Pat Boone’s is a case of severely arrested development (Boone’s web site), complicated by some extreme right wing Christianity. The man is the embodiment of the stunted and ugly political landscape of the 50’s, a time that pretended to be warm and infused with good family values, only to disguise an ugly racial record. Some say Boone himself is part of that ugly racial record, but I’ll leave that for music historians. This is about Pat Boone’s desperate longing for those 50’s, how it infects his writing at WingNutDaily, and how it has made of Pat Boone a walking drool machine, at least until his head exploded.

Women used to drool over Pat Boone, but if you read his columns in WingNutDaily, you can imagine the man mumbling and drooling, shuffling down the hall in white bucks. But, hey, maybe he was crazy all along — there are stories out there of him claiming to witness a prophesy about Ronald Reagan winning the Presidency, and while, sure, Reagan did become President, that doesn’t make thinking you’ve witnessed divine prophesy an example of sanity. He shows his extreme politics and flirts with insanity in his WingNutDaily columns, such as the one in 2006 where he claimed liberals were not patriots, or the one later in that year where he defended Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-semitic rants. But that’s run of the mill whackjobbiness you can find every day on WingNutDaily. Yesterday topped himself in whackjobbery. He claimed that the protesters who are upset about Proposition 8 are the same as the terrorists who killed over 170 people in Mumbai. Then his head exploded.

There are theories as to why Boone’s head exploded. some on the liberal side, such as myself, think it was just so full of crap that it spontaneously combusted. (There’s an idea for a new energy source somewhere in there.) Others, of the whack job conspiracy theorist persuasion, and they are probably also angling to take over Boone’s WingNutDaily column, are proposing linkages between the CIA, and the Islamic terroists responsible for the Mumbai bombings — the theory being that the Mumbai bombers, and their handlers, the CIA, are upset at Boone stealing their thunder.

WingNuts everywhere are likely to mourn Pat Boone and his exploding head today, and well they should. But they should be warned that WingNutDaily is hiding the fact that Pat Boone’s head has exploded. Go check out their web site and you will see zero stories ont eh subject. Doesn’t that prove they’re hiding it? I’ve got it on reliable authority that WingNutDaily has pulled a coup and has hired Ed Anger away from the towering journalistic icon Weekly World News. Anger will be ghostwriting Boone’s columns in the future, if he has not already.

For the record, I have instructed my wife to put the following on my tombstone, when that time eventually comes: “He never listened to Pat Boone.”