End of days

I was just flipping through TV channels trying to find Mike Huckabee's announcement that he's not running for president. It's been obvious for a while that his heart just isn't in it, and that's what he said. No news there.

Why I'm writing this is to share what else caught my attention as I was channel surfing. On the "Church Channel" was a very earnest man explaining why Christians should oppose any form of national ID. Here's the gist of what he was saying:

We must resist it, because it is Satan at work, trying to gain control and rule the world. Everyone thinks a national ID card is a response to 9/11 as a security measure. But, no, the truth is that Ronald Reagen foresaw the truth in the early 1980's when they presented the idea of a national ID to him; and he said "No Way. This is the Mark of the Beast."

How fortunate we were to have a Biblical scholar as president, who knew the prediction in Revelations 13 that any sort of identifying "mark" is the work of Satan and is a sign of the End Times.

So that's what is happening now with the attempt by the federal goverment to establish a network. States are required to have digital photos on driver's licenses; and these will be networked so that any state can access other state's ID data banks. And then of course the federal government will also have access.

And then they will have control: if you don't have this ID, then you can't buy and sell, you can't get a loan or a driver's license; you can't fly on an airplane, and ultimately you can't get a job. And then they will have complete control of you. And that, my friends, is the work of Satan. It's his way to control the world and gain power over us all.

I kid you not. That's what was coming out of my tv set here on a Saturday night. Folks actually believe this stuff.

Ralph

Newt = Nut - #3

Huffington Post's screaming headline was, "Newt's Dirty Little Secret."

No, not the marital infidelities, nor even the fact that, since he married his high school teacher in his late teens, he has never been without a wife or fiancee -- not even for a day. Wife #1 and wife #2 were divorced after he had already proposed to the next one in line.

If I were a shrink, I would be wondering what it is that makes Newt so intolerant of being alone, even for a day, ever since he was in high school. But that's not my job here.

Not to mention the fact that he informed both wives of his intent to divorce them when they were recovering from devastating illness -- #1 in the hospital after cancer surgery, #2 soon after receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. My advice to #3: stay healthy.

No, it's not those dirty secrets.

It's the fact that, running in a GOP primary where "ObamaCare" is about as dirty a word as you can utter, Newt actually has a history -- well publicized, in his own published words, so he can't escape it -- of supporting mandatory health insurance coverage. In the mid-2000s, he and Hillary Clinton together sought to construct a centrist position on health care reform, which included individual mandated insurance purchase.

He wrote in an op-ed for the Des Moines Register in 2007:

"Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance, particularly when they can afford it, and expect others to pay for their care when they need it. . . . An "individual mandate" [should apply] when the larger health-care system has been fundamentally changed."

In his 2008 book, Real Change, he wrote:

"Finally, we should insist that everyone above a certain level buy coverage (or, if they are opposed to insurance, post a bond). Meanwhile, we should provide tax credits or subsidize private insurance for the poor."

So . . . how is he going to explain these prior positions and his recent joining the conservative rant against "ObamaCare," calling it "madness" and "indefensible," and calling for it to be repealed and defunded?

It's quite simple. Newt-Nut is now running for president. He's just saying what he thinks will get more votes from the crowd he is pandering to at the moment.

Integrity? He has none. Wife #1 said so, in an interview in Vanity Fair. Consistency? None. Morality? None. Ask him about all the non-profit foundations he has set up to collect money and how much of that money actually goes to charities?

Newt-Nut needs to be in a think tank, where people play with ideas, not in the war room or a cabinet room making decisions that affect other people's lives.

Ralph

Newt = Nut - #2

Rarely has a major newspaper run such a damaging editorial in response to the announcement of a serious candidate for the presidency as the New York Times wrote on Newt Gingrich on May 5th. Add to that Gail Collins' column in today's Times, which brims over with sarcasm and scorn, as well as other pundits -- and you get the impression that Newt/Nut's campaign is in big trouble from the start.

Here's what the Time's editorial board wrote on May 5th:

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and latest entrant in the Republican presidential field, has money, experience and name recognition. His introductory video is all serenity and hope, a deceptively calm way for many voters to meet a splenetic politician with a long history of slashing divisiveness and intolerance.

He refers to himself as a historian, but apparently his personal study of history has primarily taught him about the effectiveness of demagogy. Donald Trump, fiddling with birth certificates, is an amateur compared with Mr. Gingrich at sliming the Obama administration — as well as Democrats, Muslims, blacks and gay men and lesbians.

The Democrats who won in 2008, including President Obama, are “left-wing radicals” who lead a “secular socialist machine," he wrote in his 2010 book, “To Save America.” He accused them of producing “the greatest political corruption ever seen in modern America.” And then the inevitable historical coup de grâce: “The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.”

The slurs don’t stop there. He compared the Muslims who wanted to open an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan to the German Reich, saying it “would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum.” He is promoting the fringe idea that “jihadis” are intent on imposing Islamic law on every American village and farm.

Last year, he called for a federal law to stop the (nonexistent) onslaught of Sharia on American jurisprudence and accused the left of refusing to acknowledge its “mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” This nuanced grasp of world affairs was reinforced when he said that Mr. Obama displayed “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.”

In his world, advocates for gay rights are imposing a “gay and secular fascism” using violence and harassment, blacks have little entrepreneurial tradition, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court is a "Latina woman racist." (He kind of took back that last slur.)

Despite all this, not to mention the ethics violation when he was speaker, Mr. Gingrich’s real liability among the conservative and fundamentalist groups that dominate the Republican primaries is his personall history of infidelity that led to two sordid divorces. (Much of which took place while he was denouncing President Bill Clinton for moral transgressions.) That may explain his endless calls to restore Judeo-Christian values.

It is sometimes difficult to know what some Republican candidates stand for, as they pander to the far right without alienating the center. It is not difficult to know what Newt Gingrich stands for, and to find it repellent.

I rest my case.

Ralph

Glitch

My blog server has been down for a couple of days, and a couple of my posts just before the glitch got lost. So I'm going to try to reconstruct them. They were mostly about Newt/Nut Gingrich, his having just announced that, yes, he is actually running for president.

As must be obvious, I am passionately opposed to this man holding any public office. He's smart, to be sure, but it's more of a smarty-pants type smarts.

He is ethically corrupt and completely without integrity. If I weren't a shrink, and hence ethically forbidden from making diagnoses about people I haven't interviewed professionally, I would call him a pathological narcissist with sociopathic behavior. So take that as a layman's opinion, based only on public information about the man.

More later . . .

And for those who tire of my anti-Newt/Nut rants, this too shall pass.

Ralph

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