Newt becomes "Nut"

This morning, as I was walking on the treadmill at the gym and reading the captions on the bank of muted TV screens, CNN's anchor was discussing Newt's announcement that he's actually running for president.

As usual, the voice-activated, automatic translator of spoken word into written captions made a lot of mistakes -- often using a phonetic spelling for something unrecognized.

I chuckled in deep satisfaction when, not once, but twice the caption read "Nut" instead of "Newt." (see, "ew" is a long "u" sound, so they wrote nut).

Thus, a new thread is born: "Newt = Nut." In which I will chronicle my deep antipathy toward this integrity-less, dangerous man who thinks he should be our next president.

Ralph

Any journalists still on the job?

John Boehner gave a speech to the Economic Club of New York last month and made three assertions that are basic to his economic philosophy and plan:

1. That government borrowing is crowding out private investment.

2. That the 2009 economic-stimulus package hurt job creation.

3. That the Republican plan to privatize Medicare will give future recipients the “same kinds of options” lawmakers have.

The truth is that none of those is true. The facts do not back up his claims.

John Boehner is spouting Republican talking points, which go along with the one they most often champion: that tax cuts are the answer to most problems.

Enough, already. It's time for the truth squad to stand up and challenge lies that are nothing but failed ideology.

Listen up, ye who still call yourselves journalists and pundits -- do your homework and get over the idea that, in journalism, every idea is equally valid and your only job is to see that both sides are equally represented for balance.

It's truth, not balance, that we're lacking.

Ralph

Bad news day for Repubs

It's not turning out to be a good day for Republicans:

1. The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute have determined that the Republican budget passed by the House would leave up to 44 million more people without health insurance due to cuts in funds to the states for Medicaid. Let's see how they spin that one.

2. John Boehner says there'll be no vote to raise the debt ceiling without $2 trillion in spending cuts. Harry Reid shot back: If you want $2 trillion in cuts, start with subsidies to oil companies and tax breaks on gasoline, not cutting funds for Medicaid.

3. There's a special election to fill the vacated seat of disgraced Republican House member Chris Lee from New York. John Boehner made a high-profile, fund-raising visit, and the GOP just plunked down $650,000 for tv ads for their candidate. Which pundits are interpreting as indication of GOP panic over the prospect that they might lose the seat. The new Dem push back message seems to be working.

4. Newt plans to announce his candidacy tomorrow. Or at least that is the plan as of today. Not sure if this is good news or bad for the GOP. It would definitely be bad news for the nation if he should win, but entering the primary doesn't mean he will win. So I call this one a draw.

5. This one is actually good news for the Repubs: Donald Trump has peaked and plummeted. From a month ago, when he led in the Public Policy Polling with 26%, he has dropped to 8%. "You're fired, Donald!!"

And good riddance !!

Ralph

Please explain . . .

Would someone please explain to me what the Republicans are talking about when they say "we are closer to Socialism than we have ever been before. 2012 is our last chance to stop it."

Yes, I know it's what they've figured out is going to be the rallying cry to try to defeat Obama, and all the GOP wannabes are outdoing each other trying to shout it the loudest: "The sky is falling, the sky is falling !!!"

But at some point, when they face the Democrats instead of other GOP henny-pennys, they've got to face the fact that there is no substance to what they're saying. (Well, no, they won't. They'll just keep saying it and hope enough people blindly believe them.)

In the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, the federal government bailed out some banks. But it was Bush's Treasury Secretary that started that. And Obama did NOT nationalize the banks, even temporarily, even when some economists were advising it. Instead, they have bounced back to huge profits and huge CEO compensations, even while job recovery is agonizingly slow. This is NOT socialism. "Corporate welfare" is faring much better than safety net assistance for workers.

Maybe they're talking about "ObamaCare." But a Socialist health care would be a single payer, government-run program. That's not what we have. Our health care reform is no more socialist than Bush's prescription drug benefit for seniors.

No one has a stronger strangle hold on our legislative process than Wall Street and the corporate lobbyists. That's why we can't enact decent regulatory processes and why Obama can't get a confirmation for the one person who stands a mile ahead of anyone else in qualifications to run the new consumer protection bureau. Because she is serious and fearless about protecting citizens instead of banks and credit card companies.

So let's hear something besides slogans and buzz words. They have nothing positive to offer. They can only win by hyping fear and anger. The old "social issues" buzz words aren't working so well anymore. So now it's "Socialism." It's just a slogan. But it's effective, and we have to expose the lie.

Ralph

A no-brainer

To me, it's a no-brainer. But to Repubs who revere Ronald Reagen (and all his devotees), it's a non-starter.

I'm talking about raising taxes.

A USA Today analysis reveals that today Americans are paying the lowest percent of their incomes in taxes since 1958.

If we simply paid at the rate we all did in the 1970s, there would be an increase in revenue of $500 billion per year -- far more than anyone's wild dreams of saving by cutting spending.

In fact, a different report a couple of weeks ago showed that the amount of revenue increase from letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire would exceed the spending cuts the Repubs are trying to push through.

So it seems that how much you hate the taxes you're asked to pay is pretty relative. People always want to pay less tax. The outcry against taxes was no worse in the 1970's than it is now; in fact, it was probably less, even though everyone paid more.

The answer is very simple. Let the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy expire. Close loopholes. And we'll be just fine.

Ralph

Given the choice . . . Repubs prefer lies

Maybe it's just human nature, or maybe the human nature of Republicans is just different from the rest of us.

Given the choice between believing misinformation that echoes their failed political ideology and information that is objectively demonstrated to be true -- there's no contest. Republicans, at least the variety that seem to control the GOP today, will choose the former. Prime example: trickle down economics: believing against evidence that cutting taxes for the wealthy is the answer to every economic problem.

And Condi Rice will believe until her dying day that Sadaam Hussein was a threat to the U.S. She said, through gritted teeth in a recent interview, anyone who denies it is just not facing reality. Yeah? You mean like the missing WMD? That reality, Condi? Or do you really mean that they had some oil we could use?

The latest case in point: Osama bin Laden's body had hardly reached the bottom of the sea when the Bushies revived the old argument about whether torture works. Someone said that some small bit of information was maybe obtained from one detainee under "harsh" interrogation eight years ago. Now, it turns out that he did maybe sort of hint at the identity of one of bin Laden's curriers. Voila !! Rumsfeld claims vindication for torture. See !! We got info that led us directly to Osama.

Not so, is the counter claim, discussed on HuffPost by Dan Froomkin. In fact, torture may actually have prolonged the hunt. Citing what an Air Force interrogator said in 2006:

"I think that without a doubt, torture and enhanced interrogation techniques slowed down the hunt for bin Laden." . . .

It now appears likely that several detainees had information about a key al Qaeda courier -- information that might have led authorities directly to bin Laden years ago. But subjected to physical and psychological brutality,

"they gave us the bare minimum amount of information they could get away with to get the pain to stop, or to mislead us."

It seems that one detainee gave a nickname for a courier, and it's not clear that he gave it up during torture; while two others who were most harshly tortured -- one was waterboarded 183 times -- continued to deny knowing him. So it was 2 against 1, and it was the ones who got the worst treatment who kept denying any knowledge of the courier.

Froomkin then quotes from a 2006 study by the National Defense Intelligence College, where

"trained interrogators found that traditional, rapport-based interviewing approaches are extremely effective with even the most hardened detainees, whereas coercion consistently builds resistance and resentment."

Another military intelligence officer with extensive experience has studied interrogation techniques. He said:

"By making a detainee less likely to provide information, and making the information he does provide harder to evaluate, they hindered what we needed to accomplish."

Liz Cheney, John Yoo, and Donald Rumsfeld all claimed vindication for the Bush team's methods. But answer me this, folks: If you guys got the info through torture, how come you didn't catch bin Laden? You had six years with this information.

Bush could have had bin Laden's beard to add to Sadaam's gun in his trophy room.

Obama's press secretary Jay Carney pushed back:

"It simply strains credulity to suggest that a piece of information that may or may not have been gathered eight years ago somehow directly led to a successful mission on Sunday. That's just not the case."

In 2012 the choice will be up to the American people as to which team they want to run the show. I vote for the more honest one -- which happens to be the one that actually did capture bin Laden -- and the one that respects experience and evidence-based policy over blind allegiance to ideology and fixed ideas.

Ralph

Inner curmudgeon #6

My curmudgeon cup runneth over. This one is especially galling.

Last year, after a lengthy, well-conducted appeals trial, Federal District Judge Vaughan Walker ruled that California's Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. His order was stayed pending appeal.

Proponents of Prop8, who have appealed the decision, have now filed two court challenges:

1. To have the decision thrown out, based on their claim that Judge Vaughan should have recused himself because he is gay.

Actually, they claim it's not that he's gay but that he's in a long-term relationship with a man. In view of the possibility that he might then want to get married, he was biased on the case.

Come on, we didn't just fall off the turnip truck. If you're straight, you wouldn't be biased about a marriage issue; but if you're gay, you necessarily are? In that case, no man should rule on a gender-discrimination case -- nor a woman either. We'd have to breed a genus of asexual beings to be judges.

2. They also demand to have the video-recording of the trial proceedings sealed and off limits to the public.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled out the live broadcast of the trial as it was in progress, but it was video-recorded and stored in the court archives. Judge Walker, now retired, recently played a small segment of the testimony in connection with a talk he gave that was broadcast on CSPAN. Now the other side wants to prevent any further release of the recording. Presumably the written transcript is available as a public record, as all are all trial records unless ordered sealed by the court.

You know why they don't want it shown? Because people would watch what was actually introduced as evidence in this public trial on an issue that was voted on by the people; and, if people watch it, they will get educated about the real evidence and the real issues.

And mostly (obviously) they want to suppress it, because the case against Prop8 was so brilliant and thorough, while the case for it was so pathetic that it would be a humiliating embarrassment, as it was in court.

Given their day in court to make the case for denying an equal right to marriage to same-sex couples, the only argument they had was "it's tradition and overturning it will harm the institution of marriage." That was it, essentially. No facts, nothing to back it up but religious beliefs and tradition.

Never mind. The tide has already turned. If this case is not the final death knell, it will come soon.

Ralph