I can’t help but think of Mike Huckabee’s recent tour for his book God, Guns, Grits and Gravy, in which he explained that the coastal cities like New York, Los Angeles and Washington were “bubble-ville” while the real Americans lived elsewhere, in “Bubba-ville.”

But the Real World doesn’t sort itself into the neat enclaves that Huckabee imagines. And the reaction to Indiana’s “religious freedom restoration” law ought to be making the Right question just who lives in a bubble.

However, many of them — see Ben Domenech — are telling themselves that the opposition is all coming from “the left.” Note that this afternoon NASCAR issued a statement expressing disappointment with the law, although it won’t be boycotting Indiana.

“We will not embrace nor participate in exclusion or intolerance,” said NASCAR, which is based in Florida and North Carolina. “We are committed to diversity and inclusion within our sport and therefore will continue to welcome all competitors and fans at our events in the state of Indiana and anywhere else we race.”

NASCAR, Eli Lilly, Angie’s List, plus the NBA, WNBA, Indiana Pacers and Indiana Fever  — some “left.” Plus Starbucks and Apple and some other groups. Here’s a complete list.

Domenech whines,

… this goal is motivated not just by the political aims of the left, but by a broad rejection of tolerance as a virtue. It was all well and good when tolerance was about conservatives and religious types swallowing their objections and going along with things – but now that the left is being asked to do the same thing? Forget about it.

I’m not sure what “things” we were asked to go along with, other than homophobia, and that one had a long enough run, I think.

As I’ve been writing in recent years about the renewal of the culture wars, I’ve received some steady pushback from many readers on both sides of the marriage issue who believe that such talk is overblown. The lesson of Indiana’s RFRA controversy is that if anything, we have underestimated the commitment of the secular left to enforce fealty within a naked public square, where tolerance is no longer a virtue and the power of government must be used to stamp out dissent. For all their complaints over the years about social conservatives’ use of government to enforce morality, the secular left is more eager than ever to engineer the society they seek, no matter the cost.

To which I say – NASCAR, Eli Lilly, Angie’s List, plus the NBA, WNBA, Indiana Pacers and Indiana Fever … Sweetums, it ain’t the “secular left” that is lighting your fuse.

The other howler is that this controversy is about “religion” versus “secularism.” The Episcopal Diocese of Indiana believes the law, not the opposition to it, is anti-Christian.

That this is terrible for business is already being made exquisitely plain. That it is an embarrassment to ‘Hoosier Hospitality’ is undeniable. It is also an affront to faithful people across the religious landscape. Provision of a legal way for some among us to choose to treat others with disdain and contempt is the worst possible use of the rule of law.

For Episcopalians, whose lives are ordered in the Gospel of Christ and the promises of our Baptismal Covenant, it is unthinkable. We are enjoined to love God with heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love others as Christ loves us. We promise, every time we reaffirm our baptismal vows, to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.” We promise to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”

See also Julian Bond, ‘Religious Discrimination’ Laws Have Nothing to Do With Religion.

I believe all of the likely GOP presidential candidates have come out in support of the law, which may be a lovely example of a once-reliable wedge issue coming back to bite them. Jill Lawrence writes,

If there’s one takeaway from Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s “religious freedom restoration” debacle, it’s that Republicans ignore today’s cultural environment at their peril.

Conservatives can continue to live in a bubble if they want to, but they should expect blowback, because outside that bubble is a far different reality.

Right-wing reactionary movements can seem very compelling when their message resonates with popular culture, but when it doesn’t they just look ridiculous.

Indiana has been slammed with quite a backlash — much of it from the business community — because of the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” Apparently poor Mike Pence had to go on This Week with George Stephanopoulos and try to pretend the RFRA is not really about LGBT discrimination. Instead it’s about big government, or something. See also No More Mr. Nice Blog.

Booman sums it up:

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence seems sincerely surprised that so many people think he’s a terrible person for signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. At the same time, he appears to be kind of lost at sea because he thought acting like an intolerant anti-gay religious fundamentalist would be popular. This is probably partly because Governor Pence is a genuine jerk, but it’s also because he runs in almost exclusively right-wing circles and consumes almost exclusively right-wing media.

So, he’s kind of an asshole and he surrounds himself with assholes and he gets all his information and most of his feedback from assholes. It’s like he’s living in a giant colon.

That kind of describes the entire American Right. I’ve said many times that one of the fundamental attributes of righties is that no matter how radical and fringe-y their ideas get, they believe deep in their bones that they represent mainstream America and majority opinion. And in those rare moments when reality slaps them hard enough for them to notice that maybe that’s not so, it always comes as a shock.

Sorry I’ve been busy with Zen stuff and end-of-the-month deadlines to write much, but do also note Eric Foner’s Why Reconstruction Matters. Foner is the leading scholar of the Reconstruction era and argues that much of today’s turmoil can be traced back to the failure of Reconstruction to actually reconstruct. Instead, by a few years after the Civil War the white plantation class was back on top in the southern states, and the people freed from slavery still worked for them under oppressive conditions. Today in many schools Reconstruction is still being taught as a time when southern whites were “punished” for the Civil War, or the Lincoln Assassination, or some such, but the reality is that southern whites weren’t punished. After a very brief and failed attempt to enforce some measures of racial equality, southern whites were pretty much allowed to put the South back the way it was before, except that instead of slaves there were sharecroppers.

I’m ignoring Ted Cruz’s presidential bid announcement and instead will focus on something actually important. Jay Rosen analyzes how the press might cover candidates who are climate change denialists (like Cruz). Some news media (such as the New York Times) now have stated policies saying that climate change denial cannot be taken seriously and are brushing aside their usual position of not taking sides on an issue.

However, that’s not necessarily going to mean they will publicly declare that politicians like Cruz are being ridiculous. In real-world political reporting, much of the press is still falling back on treating climate change denial as a normal campaign position. Others, more cynically, treat it as a strategy — will it help or hurt them on election day? Never mind if it’s true or false.

The earth itself may have something to say here. California is drying up, you know. It’s groundwater supply is shrinking. To a large extent California feeds the rest of the nation; we depend on that one state for a whopping large percentage of our fruits and vegetables. If California becomes the next dust bowl, what will we eat? How will that affect the rest of the economy? And how quickly will Republicans blame Obama?

The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that public opinion of the Affordable Care Act is still divided, but nearly equally so. In other words, the numbers say that roughly equal numbers of people approve and disapprove of the ACA, and the numbers who report the ACA helped them personally is roughly equal to those who say it hurt them personally.

Kaiser also reported that a majority of Americans have no clue about the King v. Burwell case and are unaware that the Supreme Court could take away exchange subsidies in 34 states.  However, when the situation is explained to them, a “majority of the public, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents, says that if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, the result would have a negative impact on the country (62 percent) and the uninsured (57 percent).”

This suggests to me that a considerable slice of people who disapprove of the ACA think that ending the exchange subsidies would hurt the country.

When asked if Congress should pass a law “correcting” the ambiguous language in the ACA upon which King v. Burwell is based, so that all states could offer subsidies, 64 percent said yes. When it was explained to these same people that if Congress passed such a law it would be harder for Congress to make other major changes to the law, 54 percent still wanted Congress to pass a law to allow all states to get subsidies. And then when it was explained that without congressional action millions would lose insurance, plus the cost of private plans would go up for everybody, up to 77 percent said Congress should act to pass the law.

This tells me that much of the American public still hasn’t figured out exactly what “Obamacare” is and doesn’t know what it wants to do about it. This also tells me that if Republicans succeed in sabotaging the law the American public will be pissed, including a big chunk of those who say they want the law sabotaged. Because they have no freaking idea what’s going on.

Right now House Republicans are at war with each other over the budget. The defense hawks are on one side; the budget hawks are on the other side. But the budget — which calls for slashing Medicare and Medicaid spending, of course — is something of a fantasy.

Without relying on tax increases, budget writers were forced into contortions to bring the budget into balance while placating defense hawks clamoring for increased military spending. They added nearly $40 billion in “emergency” war funding to the defense budget for next year, raising military spending without technically breaking strict caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act.

The plan contains more than $1 trillion in savings from unspecified cuts to programs like food stamps and welfare. To make matters more complicated, the budget demands the full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, including the tax increases that finance the health care law. But the plan assumes the same level of federal revenue over the next 10 years that the Congressional Budget Office foresees with those tax increases in place — essentially counting $1 trillion of taxes that the same budget swears to forgo.

And still, it achieves balance only by counting $147 billion in “dynamic” economic growth spurred by the policies of the budget itself. In 2024, the budget would produce a $13 billion surplus, thanks in part to $53 billion in a projected “macroeconomic impact” generated by Republican policies. That surplus would grow to $33 billion in 2025, and so would the macroeconomic impact, to $83 billion.

Plus rainbows and ponies.

Meanwhile, House Republicans have unveiled another new plan for replacing Obamacare. This is something they do every 20 days or so in order to generate headlines that they have a plan for replacing Obamacare. But their replacement plans are the stuff of rainbows and ponies also, so much so Republicans don’t believe in them, either.

In fact, the Republicans do have a health-care plan: It is to repeal Obamacare and replace it with what we had before Obamacare. They don’t want to admit that’s their plan, but it is. It’s right there, in the new budget released by House Republicans this week. …

… It’s true — Representative Tom Price has a health-care plan. Of sorts. It’s a really sketchy plan that Price has not had scored by the Congressional Budget Office, which allows it to serve the purpose of letting Republicans cite it to refute the charge that they have no plan without being held accountable for its effects. …

… The House budget illustrates the second obstacle to the adoption of a Republican health-care alternative. If Republicans wanted to replace Obamacare with Tom price’s health-care “plan,” they would include it in their budget. Tom Price probably has the clout to get his health-care plan onto the desk of the person in charge of writing the House Republican budget, who also happens to be Tom Price.

But the Price-authored budget ignores the Price health-care plan for the same reason the old Ryan budget ignored the Ryan poverty plan. It’s a thing Republicans want to say they’re for, but don’t want to make the sacrifices necessary to do it. The place where a party reconciles its competing priorities is its budget.

See above about the budget. It doesn’t rise to the level of smoke and mirrors. Your average second-grade elementary school class could write a better budget.

If SCOTUS kills the subsidies in 34 states, the one tangible thing Republicans might do is vote to continue subsidies until after the November 2016 elections, before the bulk of the American public realizes what happened. Because they have no freaking idea what’s going on.

Just a quick note to observe that there was a mass shooting with one fatality in Arizona today. This is making barely a ripple among the blogs, however. Granted, there was a much worse mass shooting in Tunisia today. But we seem to be getting awfully blasé about shootings.

Elsewhere, I see Bibi got re-elected. Damn.

You know the #47Traitors are getting some serious blowback when they resort to this for an excuse:

Republican aides were taken aback by what they thought was a lighthearted attempt to signal to Iran and the public that Congress should have a role in the ongoing nuclear discussions. Two GOP aides separately described their letter as a “cheeky” reminder of the congressional branch’s prerogatives.

“The administration has no sense of humor when it comes to how weakly they have been handling these negotiations,” said a top GOP Senate aide.

Yes, the Senate is a joke, but not a funny one.

Added a Republican national security aide, “The Senate should have a role. It would make any agreement have some sort of consistency and perpetuity beyond the president. And it would also be buy-in for the American people. Right now it’s just an agreement between the President of the United States and whoever the final signatory to the agreement is.”

Last night Jon Stewart pointed out that “Ronald Reagan, peace be upon him, signed over 1,500 executive agreements, including a nuclear deal with China and a hostage deal with — oh, how do I pronounce this? — Iran.” It may be that the executive agreement thing is something a sober and less acrimonious Senate might review and clarify, along with war powers, someday in the future when we have a sober and less acrimonious Senate. Assuming that day comes.

In the meantime, perhaps it would help if we all regarded the Senate, and of course the House too, as a kind of legislative embodiment of The Onion.

Update: See Annie Lauri

Ta-Nahisi Coates has the best commentary I’ve seen on the Justice Department’s report on the Ferguson police department. Even though Officer Darren Wilson was not charged, the report itself focused on something much bigger and more important, which is the systemic exploitation of the black community to raise funds for the city. As Henry Farrell wrote, Ferguson was being run like a racket. And, of course, this isn’t an isolated thing. This is going on in communities around the country. See also Charles Pierce.

Update: