As for the MBTA itself I would submit that INCREASING service might increase revenue. I know that there are times especially on weekends when I opt against using the commuter rail because the timing is not convenient, but if they ran more frequently I’d be more likely to use the service.

Since then, I’ve found that the weak dollar can send investors into the commodities market, increasing demand, and driving up the price. And because oil is traded in dollars, it’s cheaper for stronger currencies to buy more. This increased demand drives up prices. And when there are worries about supply due to Iran etc., it’s easier for those countries to buy more oil.

I finally found the info at Reuters:

A weaker greenback renders dollar-denominated assets such as crude cheaper for holders of other currencies. The dollar index was down 0.48 percent, after slipping to five-week lows in the session.

“An easy money policy should ultimately result in helping the U.S. economy to continue to recover and start a more accelerated growth pattern,” Dominick Chirichella of New York’s Energy Management Institute wrote in a note.

But other analysts warned that the last round of quantitative easing was matched by a surge in oil prices, which could impinge on demand as the euro zone continues to struggle.

Brent prices surged by around 30 percent between November 3 2010 and June 30 2011, during the second round of quantitative easing by the Fed, or QE2.

“On the one side, you can argue that QE can bring additional liquidity and support to the market, but (oil) at those price levels would result in demand destruction,” Petromatrix’s Olivier Jakob said.

I think the intent of making preventive care free to the consumer is an attempt to mitigate risk. Sure some folks may act irresponsibly and find themselves in a place they did not want to be, but making prevention readily available will decrease the number, and therefore the costs, of abortions. Mammograms, colonoscopies – dozens of preventive care procedures can prevent more dangerous illnesses and more costly treatment later.

By the way, there is no ban on abstinence.

We’ve got to get rid of employer provided health care, it is a huge burden on business and employees. McCain’s plan would have done that, giving everyone a stipend to purchase a basic health care plan, and if they wanted more coverage, they could pay out of their own pocket.

I never had to have a physical when I got health insurance through work, and I didn’t have to when I got an individual plan through the mass connector. There were no questions at all, as I recall.

Each of those covered employees must submit to an insurer-required medical exam with an examiner chosen by the insurer. Blood and urine samples are already taken in those exams, for the sole purpose of gathering information for the insurer. What do think those samples are for?

The women are peeing in a cup already, as are the men. Welcome to US health care.

“No kikes allowed”

“No injuns allowed”

Some folks find such signs humorous. Some don’t.

(State law requires privately owned utilities to acquire energy-efficiency resources that cost less than what these resources save consumers. Better than ‘free” because (like contraception) it saves money.)

So much indignant bluster used to mask a policy of favoring a particular religion in a non-religious sphere. Note the “oppressed:” You don’t like contraception? Don’t use it.

what about the precedent being set of the Executive being allowed to dictate to private industry that it must provide free product? Can/will that extend to other industries?

The FDA does what exactly?

For both browsers, I just click on the “download Firefox link“, download, and install it. If you are on a windows system, you may have to do the usual Keystone Cops routine with anti-virus, “security” provisions, and so on.

There are a number of sites that can provide guidance for specific questions.

You write (emphasis mine):

And except for individual life/health politices (sic), companies CANNOT charge more for a member of a health census that smokes, drives race cars, etc., and the carrier by law cannot disclose these behaviors.

But we are talking about health policies. When a health insurer underwrites a group plan for an employer, that employer most certainly does have to disclose such things, and the resulting premium is higher. This has been true for decades.

Regarding “The whole ‘half the electorate’ thing”, half the electorate is women. The pill is often prescribed for non-fertile women for non-reproductive reasons. Nothing in the mandate forces women to use contraceptives, whatever their reproductive status, gender preference, or age (although I did a raise a question in that regard). No matter how rapidly you wave your hands, the costs of unintended pregnancy fall overwhelmingly on women, and women are half the electorate.

The rest of your comment is a rant about arguments that I haven’t made.

The only divisive “red herring” that anybody has injected in this absurd debate is the lie that the government is attacking religion — at least you haven’t made that ridiculous claim … yet.

Oh, and please … try to find a working browser

How long can a person go without food?
How long can a person go without water?
How long can a diabetic go without insulin treatment?
How long can a person with a heart condition go without appropriate medication?
How long can a person go without sex?

I don’t know the answers to the first four questions and I’m not expecting you to know either without looking them up. The point is the first four have answers; the last one does not. If insurers decide it’s better to offer it, great, but it’s not for the government to mandate this. If they want to mandate free coverage for something, it should be preventative such as vaccines, cancer screenings, or even annual physicals. If babies automatically generated in the womb just because the body decided it was time there would be a case, but that not being the case having a small copay like any other prescription is perfectly reasonable.

Sounds like the next logical step for you is to require that women pee in a cup to prove they are taking their pill, cause just offering it for free doesn’t mean they will take it. And, maybe the next step for you is requiring genetic screening, requiring genetic engineering, anything that you claim reduces costs (but which I’m rather dubious about, since costs have been going up and up even as more people take BC and do genetic screening).

That is all.

To preserve the analogy, GM benefits by providing the car or component.

Let’s stipulate that contraception is provided, free of charge, to every women under her employer-provided health insurance.

Can that insurance company penalize a woman for not using it? If a woman with this coverage fails to use contraception, and subsequently has an unintended pregnancy, can her insurance company charge her differently from her peer who did use the coverage? Can the insurance company refuse to cover the costs of an abortion, especially one that is not driven by medical necessity?

We have a relatively long history of allowing insurers to set rates based on risk factors like whether or not people smoke, drink, practice extreme sports, wear helmets, wear seatbelts, and so on. Having sex while not using a prescribed contraceptive strikes me as similarly high-risk behavior, especially when that prescribed contraceptive is available free of charge.

Is there some reason why this history should or should NOT apply to coverage for contraception and pregnancy?

I don’t know where I come down on the question, I just realize that I don’t think we’ve discussed this aspect of it.

Let me try and summarize.

You asked “Why contraception? Why not insulin? Viagara? What is the health care rationale? Or is it just a massive political give-away?”

Contraception is at the top of the list of affordable coverages that provide needed health care that benefit only women. Unintended pregnancy is an enormous part of the costs of providing health insurance for women. Health insurers make money by providing contraception. That’s the reason why insulin and viagra are different.

You wrote “My outrage stems over Obama decreeing that a private business (insurance company) should have to provide a product for free to the public because they say so. Will he also be mandating that GM give free cars to the ‘right’ people now that the government owns them?”

If GM were to be accepting substantial federal funds, and if giving away cars were to significantly advance a necessary mission of GM, then the “giveaway” probably WOULD be mandated. To preserve the analogy, we have to also have to postulate a major religion who insists that it is immoral for anybody to drive a car — let’s remember that in this scenario, GM makes money by giving away the car, and the mandate primarily serves to provide cover to GM and protect them from the attacks from the religious organization.

In short, health care is not automobiles. I know this is difficult for our other-winged friends to comprehend, but health care is not automobiles.

Finally you asked two more questions:

By what authority does the Executive dictate to private industry that it must provide products for free? Bonus question – if an insurance company decides it would rather not write the insurance of a faith-based business because it will have to provide free product to the clients, will it be penalized for civil rights based religious discrimination?

1. The government has long and well-established role in regulating the definition of what constitutes various products of private industry. The government is not telling private industry to “provide products for free”. It is instead defining what “health coverage for women” must include. Most of us agree that the government can require that a product labeled as “100% orange juice” contain mostly orange juice. There is nothing “free” about it — the health insurance industry continues to be immensely profitable, and this mandate raises rather than lowers health insurance profitability (because dollar-for-dollar, contraception is far less expensive then unintended pregnancy).

2. Again, the insurance company is not being forced to provide “free product”. In this case, the health insurance company would actually charge higher premiums for a faith-based company that wanted contraception to NOT be covered, just as it charges higher premiums for groups that include smokers, race-car drivers, extreme sports enthusiasts, and other individuals who practice “high risk” behavior. Refusing to allow the insurer to cover contraception is tantamount to forcing the insurer to cover high-risk behavior (sex without contraception is high-risk behavior for women) without compensation.

In this case, the economic arguments work to support rather than oppose the mandate from the perspective of the health insurance provider.

What other coverage is at or near the top of the list of for women?

Contraception is an essential component of good modern health care for women. Reducing unintended pregnancies dramatically lowers health care costs for women — insurers make money by offering it. Free access to contraception is far and away the most effective way to reduce the number of abortions, which some segments of the electorate claim to be concerned about (although their objection to contraception totally destroys that claim). This mandate is good economics, good health care, good for health insurers, and good politics (women vote, and the right-wing assault on women’s rights is a serious concern for many male voters).

Half of the population and more than half of the electorate are women. Why, other than latent sexism (in those who ask this question, not just you), is it so hard to understand the appeal and very real value of this mandate?

The President said:

“As part of the health care reform law that I signed last year, all insurance plans are required to cover preventive care at no cost. That means free check-ups, free mammograms, immunizations and other basic services. We fought for this because it saves lives and it saves money –- for families, for businesses, for government, for everybody. That’s because it’s a lot cheaper to prevent an illness than to treat one.”

and,

“Under the rule, women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services -– no matter where they work. So that core principle remains. But if a woman’s employer is a charity or a hospital that has a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the insurance company -– not the hospital, not the charity -– will be required to reach out and offer the woman contraceptive care free of charge, without co-pays and without hassles.”

An unwanted pregnancy may not be considered an illness on religious and moral grounds, but prevention of unwanted pregnancy is certainly a decision women can make based on their individual right of conscience and the property of their own bodies.

So until someone can show me in the Constitution that ever-increasing co-pays are the law of the land and that health isurers must provide coverage without premiums – ever – I’m sticking with Hopey.

Let’s hope they keep the good work for Scott Brown.

Kravitz, Neer, Blandy and friends (the reactionary left of Mass. Democrats, a.k.a. Blue Mass Group)

That’s swiped from the southwest, the box labelled ” ‘Blogs’ of interest .”

Kinda interesting–maybe even ‘reactionary’–that in 2012 anybody would still want to shudder-quote the ‘B’ word . . . .

Happy days.

Mass. Democrats kept contraception illegal for unmarried women until the mid-70′s, and didn’t make employers cover contraception as a medication until 2002, so the whole conscience thing had been covered by having employees pay a 100% co-pay, making contraception available to them and still not paid for by those with religious objections. What blew the lid off this was Obama’s insistence on free contraception for all. Why is that, btw? Why contraception? Why not insulin? Viagara? What is the health care rationale? Or is it just a massive political give-away?

My outrage stems over Obama decreeing that a private business (insurance company) should have to provide a product for free to the public because they say so. Will he also be mandating that GM give free cars to the ‘right’ people now that the government owns them?

Seriously – David – you are a lawyer. By what authority does the Executive dictate to private industry that it must provide products for free? Bonus question – if an insurance company decides it would rather not write the insurance of a faith-based business because it will have to provide free product to the clients, will it be penalized for civil rights based religious discrimination?

if people didn’t insist on it covering all those controversial things like birth control and abortion and sex changes. It should only cover basic medicine that at least 90% want to be insured for, and if people want coverage for more modern radical stuff, they should purchase supplemental private insurance.

I think that birth control and abortion are entirely covered under the rubric of “basic medicine’. They are, to me, not controversial in the least; all the processes are well researched, tested and proven effective; Contraception and abortion are no less basic than ultra-sounds, fertility treatments, pre- neo- and post-natal care and any other procedure that can be filed under the category of obstetrics. I think that the entire field of professional medicine is in agreement with me. Who are you to say otherwise?

What’s up with that?

Jeb Bush would be their choice.

In the form of a poem – as interpreted by Samuel Butler

On those who are burdened by debt,
Who have lost their homes to foreclosure,
Who are already living on the streets,
Who have trouble making ends meet,
Who have to ask for help just to survive,
Who are driven to crime by desperation,
Whose voices are not heard for want of money and influence,
Who are stuck serving evil, but don’t know how to get out,
The weary and the afraid,
The lost and the forsaken,
Have mercy.

Oh God have mercy on us sinners,
For our participation in structures of evil,
For insatiable greed,
For lack of compassion in the face of great need,
For our faith in prosperity without cost,
For our service to the false God of Money instead of the God of life,
For the scandal of billions wasted in politics and war while children go hungry,
For our Caesars and Herods,
For the violence that is rooted in our hearts,
And for the times we turn others into enemies, even the banks and politicians,
Forgive us.

Deliver us, Oh God, guide our feet in the way of peace,
Hear our prayer,
And grant us peace.

From the arrogance of power,
Tyranny of greed,
The ugliness of racism,
The cancer of hatred,
The seduction of wealth,
The addiction of control,
The paralysis of cynicism,
The violence of apathy,
The ghettos of poverty,
The ghettos of wealth,
And from a lack of imagination,
Deliver us.

Deliver us, Oh God,
Guide our feet into the way of peace
For we will not conform to the patterns of this world,
Let us be transformed by the renewing of our minds,
With the help of God’s grace let us resist evil wherever we find it.

With the destruction of community,
The idea that happiness must be purchased,
The ravaging of the Earth,
The Principalities and Powers that oppress,
With the theology of Empire,
With a so-called meritous society,
With the hoarding of riches,
The dissemination of fear,
Corporations, accountable to no one but the bottom line,
Banks who are above the law, and too big to fail,
With a government bought and paid by lobbyists,
We will not comply.

Today we pledge allegiance
To the Kingdom of God
We pledge allegiance to a peace that is not like Rome’s, or Wall Streets’,
We pledge to the gospel of enemy love,
The Kingdom of the Poor and Broken,
The King that love’s his enemies so much he died for them.
We pledge to the least of these, with whom Christ dwells,
The refugee of Nazareth,
The homeless Rabbi who had no place to lay his head,
The Cross rather than the sword,
The banner of love above any flag,
The sign of the Cross above any logo,
The Word of God above any slogan,
The One who rules with a servant’s towel rather than an iron fist,
The One who rides a donkey rather than a war horse,
The revolution that sets both oppressed and oppressors free,
The Way that leads to Life,
To the slaughtered Lamb,
We pledge our allegiance.

Together we proclaim his praises,
From the margins of the Empire to the centers of wealth and power,

Mic check
Long live the slaughtered Lamb!

I do think the use of religion to allow or prohibit is OK in some circumstances. For example, if you are a Quaker you should be allowed to refuse combat draft, IMO.

Any law that says something is allowed or prohibited “on religious grounds” would appear to be unconstitutional.

It’s the use of religion to allow or prohibit.

The question I asked was whether the bill had the word religion in it, not whether the email did. The email isn’t going to be voted on or signed into law.

I was trying to argue with you honestly, but I guess you’re done with that?

He bases it on this phrase: “I believe in a conscience protection for Catholics in the health field…”

The complete sentence: “I believe in a conscience protection for Catholics in the health field and I’ll continue to advocate for it as my colleagues in the Senate and I work to develop an overall national health policy that guarantees health care for everyone.”

This is where Kennedy and Brown part ways. Let’s not forget that Brown was elected on the threat that he would cast the deciding vote to kill the Affordable Health Care Act.”

No wonder he chooses to ignore the opening passage of Kennedy’s letter to the Pope:

“I asked President Obama to personally hand deliver this letter to you. As a man of deep faith himself, he understands how important my Roman Catholic faith is to me and I am so deeply grateful to him.”

Senator Brown is no Ted Kennedy.

The Wild Men of Wall Street say, “Oil is traded in dollars, and its price therefore rises when the value of the dollar falls, all else being equal.” Is all else equal? Prices are not decided by suppliers; they are decided by the oil futures market. And the market is worried. The Financial Times is reporting on its front page:

A spike in geopolitical tensions after an International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s nuclear ambitions propelled Brent crude to fresh nine-month highs of $124.62 a barrel in late European trading, a gain of 1 per cent.

The WSJ wants to tie oil prices fluctuations to the value of the dollar. There may be a correlation, but that’s not causation. Furthermore, the dollar has been where it is for a long time now and we’re now experiencing a dramatic spike in prices. And as Investopedia says, “During the first five months of 2008, the price of crude oil was up 20%, the commodity index was up 18%, the metals index was up 24% and the food price index was up 18%, while the dollar depreciated 6%.” The WSJ is cherry-picking its data. I lost my source that said oil prices have increased far out of proportion to the fall in the dollar, but you can probably figure that out if you find graphs of the two. If the WSJ’s premise was right, one would expect the two to track more closely and for the market to increase the price of oil by 85% when the value of the dollar fell by 10%.

The WSJ doesn’t like Obama and the investment sector, which doesn’t export, does not like a weak dollar. A serious editorial would balance the costs and benefits of a weak dollar, but again we’re talking about the WSJ editors.

Mitch Daniels: As a student in Princeton, the Indiana governor was arrested in a police sting that netted two size-12 shoeboxes worth of marijuana, along with LSD and drug paraphernalia. Daniels was cited for pot possession but got off with a $350 fine for “maintaining a common nuisance.” He told the Daily Princetonian in 1988 that because of the arrest “any goal I might have had for competing for public office were shot,” and later called the incident an “unfortunate confluence of my wild oats period and America’s libertine apogee” (far out!).

Jan Brewer is a special kind of crazy. Allowing us to evoke the image of Brewer when speaking of Brown is REALLY not good for his reelection chances…

…that they’re gay.

Cute as in, totally naive.

He did not say that it was unreasonable for women to have a family and a career. He was noting the nasty comments toward women who do not choose to have a career and instead raise a family while their husband works. That’s more accurately misogynistic, because it is literally antagonism toward what makes women women, insisting that there is nothing to it, no value in itself.

I think he can win half of the independent women, and 90% of men.

Elias

Conversely, increased global supply of oil would be economic good news. But it’s simply not true that Obama’s policies are curtailing oil production. On the contrary, U.S. oil production tumbled during the Bush administration and has skyrocketed under Obama. Obama really has hurt the oil industry by declining to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, but as the point of this pipeline is to facilitate the export of fossil fuels its construction would, if anything, make gasoline more expensive.

…

The real problem is not that gas gets expensive sometimes, but that the United States, with its extremely high levels of per capita oil consumption, is much more vulnerable to supply disruptions than are rich countries in Asia and Europe.

Also further reading (or listening) here:
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/22/147261788/whats-behind-the-recent-hike-in-gas-prices

Where? “In the mouth of Mammon”, 100 Federal Street, in front of the Bank of America Headquarters.

I will not be able to attend every Friday in Lent due to the court appearances on my docket. I truly felt in the presence of the numinous, and a recipient of Grace today participating in, and making a record and witness of the Occupy Lent liturgy with the Protest Chaplains and Occupy Boston.bearing recoredc.

Did he think he was co-sponsoring something else?

Instead of taking his lumps and distancing himself from the bill, rekindling thoughts of “good looking, but stupid” remarks a la Osama’s death photos. He instead continues to defend “his” meaning of the bill, which is at odds with anyone who can read a sentence. After a while that brings us back to “good looking, but stupid”.

Or more significantly, slowly creeping towards a complete train wreck. Remember Jan Brewer’s remarks about headless bodies? That’s the closest thing I can think of, the charge was completely false, confirmed by police and anyone involved but Brewer continued sounding like an idiot, reporters finally had enough and finally peppered her with questions.

This is not Arizona, picture this video and it’s impact in Massachusetts with reporters questioning Brown about something that is so obviously false.

For that matter, neither do a lot of people. As far as I can tell only those who are religiously conservative or are part of the 1% have any logical reason to vote GOP. Wish it were that easy for us; we’d win in a landslide.

While I don’t mean to suggest that women will *only* vote on issues directly effecting themselves, I have to believe that women who aren’t morally opposed to abortion and birth control in all/most cases will find Santorum’s positions on these issues to be deal breakers, not to mention his other assorted misogynistic statements as well as his nasty comments toward various forms of feminism, including the idea that it’s perfectly reasonable for women to have family and career.

Having written that, Santorum ain’t getting very many of the 41% of women who identify as Democrats. My question is: how many of the 26% of women who identify as independents do you think he will get? My hunch: not very many. In fact, very few.

If you’re only winning 30% of the women, then you need to be winning 70% of the men to be competitive, loosely speaking. You think Santorum can win 70% of men? I sure as heck don’t.

Mr. Obama yesterday blamed rising demand from the likes of Brazil and China, and there is something to that as well. But this energy demand is also not new, and if anything Chinese and Brazilian economic growth has been slowing in recent months.

Another suspect—one Mr. Obama doesn’t like to mention—is U.S. monetary policy. Oil is traded in dollars, and its price therefore rises when the value of the dollar falls, all else being equal. The Federal Reserve throughout Mr. Obama’s term has pursued the easiest monetary policy in modern times, expressly to revive the housing market. It has done so with the private support and urging of the White House and through Mr. Obama’s appointees who are now a majority on the Fed’s Board of Governors.

Oil staged its last price surge along with other commodity prices when the Fed revved up its second burst of “quantitative easing” in 2010-2011. Prices stabilized when QE2 ended. But in recent months the Fed has again signaled its commitment to near-zero interest rates first through 2013, and recently through 2014. Commodity prices, including oil, have since begun another surge, and hedge funds have begun to bet on commodity plays again. John Paulson says he’s betting on gold, the ultimate hedge against a falling dollar.

Fed officials and Mr. Obama want to take credit for easy money if stock-market and housing prices rise, but then deny any responsibility if commodity prices rise too, causing food and energy prices to soar for consumers. They can’t have it both ways, as not-so-stupid Americans intuitively understand when they buy groceries or gas. This is the double-edged sword of an economic recovery “built to last” on easy money rather than on sound fiscal and regulatory policies.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203918304577241623995642182.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

For example,

It turns out Rick Santorum’s uber-conservative stance on abortion issues and birth control hasn’t alienated Republican women. In fact, his support among the GOP’s fairer sex has only strengthened in recent weeks as those issues have taken center stage in the national debate.

A new _Washington Post_-ABC poll reveals a 13-point increase in his favorability rating among Republican women since January. At 57 percent, the former Pennsylvania senator is now only 4 points behind Mitt Romney among that potentially key demographic. Romney, meanwhile, has a higher negative rating among GOP women than his rival—28 percent to 18 percent—and Romney’s negative ratings are currently trending upward.

Happy days.

I think our oil price will keep trying to move up as the economy improves and demand comes back. But higher energy prices are the worst thing that could happen to the middle class and without accompanying moves up in salary and wages will lead to falling living standards as people have to pay more for gas.

It will be a ratchety and unpredictable effect but at the end of it, prices will have gone up without any real advance in productivity (certainly the gas will be no better than it was before.)

Similar to the anti-immigration talk, this just destroys their ability to speak to the problems facing large swaths of the American electorate (in this case, women).

Never MIND looking severely out of touch with the real concerns of the day, like, where’s the next paycheck going to come from?

So in order to think of the sky as blue, that requires belief? Well, then, there’s not much I can do for you, if you have no ability to see empirical evidence as a baseline for humanity’s shared experience.

There’s subjectivity, certainly, but everything needs belief? That’s crazy. You might as well, then, say there is no such thing as knowledge.

The medium is about manufacturing desire, and is extraordinarily effective when managed by those who know what they are doing. There is a reason why corporate America spends so much money on television advertising — it works. Does anybody really drink Budweiser or Miller because they like the taste more than their other choices?

The product being sold by the GOP is bigotry, prejudice and — in this case — superstitious religious extremism as a solution to all our ills. The desire being fueled by this campaign is ugly, dangerous, and explosive blood lust. Lust for scapegoats, almost always directed at segments that are less powerful and more vulnerable (because such mobs are inevitably cowardly). Lust that inevitably brings violence, bloodshed, and chaos — followed by harsh dictatorial constraints (imposed by governments, warlords, or both).

Spreading sunshine is a great metaphor. It is highly ineffective against vast quantities of volatile gasoline being sprayed all over the floor, scented with manure to disguise its explosive nature. The slightest spark will ignite an enormous explosion, and the house is already smoldering.

Rick Santorum envisions an American Taliban. A campaign of religiously-motivated terror accompanies that as night follows day. This is a hallmark of religious extremism, and has little do with whether the religion of choice is Islam or Christianity.

I think there would be nothing better for progressive-thinking people than to have a bigot on TV representing the Republican party every day espousing dark-age ideas like contraception being immoral and that gay people are the enemy. This gives Obama and the rest of us the opportunity to systematically dismantle and destroy these idiotic arguments and educate Americans about how a modern society should function.

That isn’t going to happen. We and Obama may completely dismantle those ideas, but the net effect is not going to be destroying them. The fact that all the major “news” sources will report them as legitimate ideas is going to give them legitimacy in the minds of many people. Having many people think they are legitimate is going to craze the entire political atmosphere. Previous crazy ideas undergoing this process is exactly what allows these crazy ideas to be allowed out in public without effective ridicule. If Republican voters reject the candidates espousing these ideas, it may serve to prevent further legitimization of them. Otherwise, we can expect more of them.