If you haven't heard yet, there was a rather embarrassing moment at the DNC where Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called for a public vote on last minute changes to the party platform to reinsert God and pro-Israel language. It took three tries to get the required two-thirds majority. From the Huffington Post:

Even though the no's were again as loud if not louder than the aye's on the third vote, Villaraigosa said he had determined that two thirds of those present had voted in favor. Boos filled the arena in response.
Within minutes, Republican National Committee staffers had uploaded the video to YouTube and were circulating it on Twitter.

First, this would never happen at the RNC. They would never air their dirty laundry in this manner. This shows how much less disciplined the Democrats are. If there's one thing you can say about Republicans, it's that they are loyal and fraternal. They know how to stick to a message, even if they personally disagree with it.

A co-chairman of the committee charged with drafting the Democrats' official party platform called it an "unfortunate omission." To me, what's a lot more "unfortunate" is that here, in 21st century America, to be successful, a major political party has to acquiesce to religious bullies.

Of course those on the right are running with this, which I can understand since it would play well with their base. But even those on the Democratic side state the "problem" as being that the "God" language was taken out in the first place. That is sad.

Conservatives go so far as to say the media are "covering it up." I love that. What's to "cover up?" How bad is it that here in 2012, excluding references to God equates to being immoral, anti-American, and downright evil. It didn't hurt the Founding Fathers to leave references to god or gods out of the Declaration of Independence, but 200 years later...

They refer to the Democratic Party as "The Party of Atheists, Homosexuals, Abortionists, and Muslims" like it's a bad thing. Really? So now, in 21st century America, a party defined as "good" has to exclude the non-religious (34.2 million, or 15% of Americans), the gay, the pro-choice (about half of all Americans), and non-Christians.

Face palm.

Everyone knows that only Republicans are fiscally conservative. There's only one thing: It's not true.

I do not understand how this meme prevails. It's a study in PR and propaganda to rival any other. There may have been a time when Republicans believed in fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets, but that time has long passed.

The reality is that the debt explosion that Republicans today rail about began in 1981 with their, now mythically reinvented hero, Ronald Reagan. Here are the facts: Deficits remained relatively flat with Gerald Ford (R) and Jimmy Carter (D). But they ballooned with Reagan (R), $85 billion to $255 billion, and H.W. Bush (R), $255 billion to a peak of $432 billion. With Clinton (D), it decreased all they way back to $18 billion at the end of his term, when under another Republican president, G.W. Bush, with the full support of a Republican congress, it skyrocketed from Clinton's $18 billion to $1.017 trillion in 2008. As David Stockman, Reagan’s first budget director, recently wrote in The New York Times, the “debt explosion resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace … of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.”

As Republicans on the one hand decry our nation’s enormous deficit, successfully blaming Democrats I might add, they also forced Obama to cave on extending the Bush tax cuts, even though the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report that the revenue loss from the Bush tax cuts accounts for about a quarter of the current federal deficit, and if extended, those cuts will be responsible for 54 percent of the yearly deficit. According to the Pew Economic Policy Group, the extension of the Bush tax cuts will cost $3.1 trillion over ten years, with nearly all of the benefits going to the richest 1 percent, those with incomes of more than $500,000 a year.

Yet, somehow, Republicans still manage to own the debate, successfully making fiscal responsibility part of their party platform, campaign slogan and self-professed philosophy - And people buy it - Polls suggest voters are angry about the deficits and are blaming the Democrats. Go figure.