But not many of us remember or learned that Ronald Reagan, the real father of what we know as the Tea Party (even though he’d have a hard time getting a tea bag to wear on his cap today) gave a similarly empowering speech in 1964—a speech that helped make him first governor of California and then president.

Many people refer to this televised address in support of Barry Goldwater simply as “The Speech,” but I call it the “Thousand Years of Darkness” speech because of the warning Reagan presented regarding the 1964 presidential election:

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

Message: Elect Lyndon Johnson and expect ten centuries of pitch-black socialism. Yes, he really suggested that. Sort of makes Newt Gingrich sound reasonable, doesn’t it?

Here is another famous passage from that speech, which demonstrates how seriously the extremists in the Republican Party in those days took poverty in America:

Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet.

Now you know where Rush Limbaugh gets it.

In any case, Reagan’s reference, of course, was to Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” which was introduced that year and which helped reduce American abjection, but was attacked by right-wingers in those days the same way the welfare state is attacked by right-wingers these days.

But the passage in Reagan’s speech I want to focus on is this one:

Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young woman who’d come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning 250 dollars a month. She wanted a divorce to get an 80 dollar raise. She’s eligible for 330 dollars a month in the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women in her neighborhood who’d already done that very thing.

It wasn’t until the 1976 presidential campaign, when Reagan was a GOP primary candidate, that the term “welfare queen” became a code word on the fanatical right. He said of this strange being, as reported by The New York Times (quoted on Wikipedia):

She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000.

Anyone, Democrat or Republican, would obviously get outraged over that example, which may have been based on a real case in Chicago. But other than pointing out that some folks are criminals, what does it really mean? For the right-wing, it was intended to convince the voting public that a goodly number of folks on welfare were and still are undeserving of help, and are abusing the system because the system itself breeds such abuse.

Well, a health care company once paid a $1.7 billion fine for committing Medicare and Medicaid fraud—and the guy who ran the company while the fraud was going on was fired and received millions of dollars in severance and over $300 million worth of stock. And to put political icing on his cake, the guy, teapartier and Republican Rick Scott, is now the governor of Florida. That $1.7 billion worth of fraud could purchase over 11,333 of Reagan’s welfare queens, but Republicans have yet to invent a code word for corporations that defraud the government.

In thinking about all this, a parable came into my mind:

A boat capsized near a small town and most of the people swam to shore, saving themselves. But several people remained in the water, huddled together, holding on to whatever they could find to stay afloat, a short and swimmable distance from shore. Presumably, these folks either couldn’t swim or could not swim well enough to let go and give it a try.

Now, in the community nearby where the boat capsized, it happened that a raging debate had been going on involving the town’s rescue budget. For years the town had funded rescue crews and purchased equipment due to the large number of boating accidents just off its shore. Many people had been saved because of the town’s diligence.

But new folks had moved into the community, rugged individualists who were responsible for themselves and expected everyone else to take care of themselves, too.  These folks stirred up anger at the high tax rates used to fund the rescue efforts and began running for and winning political office. They advocated for slashing the rescue budget, insisting that a lot of the folks rescued in the past were careless boaters, many of them merely out on the water partying and having a good time.

“Why should we encourage their recklessness,” these good Americans would say. “Many of the people we have saved were on party boats!” some would shout at town hall meetings, “And if they know we will always be here to save them they will just take advantage of us.”

Some of the people at the meetings reminded the townsfolk that surely not all the people needing help were reckless or were taking advantage of the town’s unselfishness, and they argued that it is not easy to discern during a rescue mission just how deserving the folks in the water are.  And besides that, they would argue, “Are we just going to stand on shore and watch these people drown? Is that what kind of community we want to be?“

Whether this election year will be “a rendezvous with destiny,” as Ronald Reagan said so long ago, is, I suppose, up to each voter. But certainly either way we choose to go will not be “to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.” That silly rhetoric represents a rather diminished view of America’s ongoing potential.

But this election will be a snapshot of what kind of national community we are and what kind of obligations we believe we have to those folks clinging to their capsized boat or what is left of it.  Is there a majority among us who will walk away and leave them to sink or swim?

Tagged: a thousand years of darkness, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, The Speech, welfare queen, welfare state ]]> http://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/a-parable/feed/ 6 duanegraham reagan the speech http://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/government-matters-and-dont-forget-it/ http://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/government-matters-and-dont-forget-it/#comments Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:40:10 +0000 R. Duane Graham http://duanegraham.wordpress.com/?p=15398 ]]> The recent report that the economy grew at an annualized rate last quarter of 2.8%—a growth rate we have not seen since early in 2010—brought some election-year relief to Democrats defending their policies—particularly the silver lining of past stimulus efforts—and caused Republicans to look for, as always, the dark cloud.

Most talking-head defenders of the GOP wanted everyone to know that the actual GDP growth rate for all of 2011 was 1.7% (I heard George Will make that point just this morning on ABC’s This Week). It is vital to Repubicans’ reelection efforts to not let folks think things are on the mend.

Now, before we move on and discuss a real problem with the economic growth rate, we need to review what has happened since the assault of the Great Recession. Here is an excerpt from a piece on Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog written by Brad Plumer discussing the revised numbers by the Bureau of Economic Analysis vis-à-vis the depths of the Great Recession:

As Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi told me this morning, the revisions suggest that the recession following the financial crisis was much, much more severe than we’d thought—the economy actually shrank at a 8.9 percent annual rate the fourth quarter of 2008 and 6.7 percent in the first quarter of 2009 (earlier estimates had shown a smaller, 5.9 percent annualized drop across the two quarters).

Then, Congress passed the stimulus bill, the fall in growth dwindled to 0.7 percent in the second quarter, and, by the third quarter of 2009, we had 1.7 percent growth. “We went from negative to positive at precisely the time that the stimulus was providing maximum benefit in terms of tax cuts and spending increases,” Zandi says. “The numbers actually reinforce the importance of the stimulus in jump-starting a recovery.” What the stimulus didn’t do, however, was raise employment to the levels that the White House had predicted — partly because the economy was in worse shape than anyone, even the official data-crunchers, knew.

I will add to all that the fact that the 2010 GDP growth rate was 3.1%, which reflected the full effects of the original stimulus. This stuff is important to remember. There is a lot of history-distorting and history-ignoring going on in the GOP primary and beyond, but the fact is that in down times, particularly in really down times like we have had, government spending is a crucial part of the recovery process.  We have seen that in terms of the various stimulus measures that have been passed and, negatively, we can see that in the latest numbers out for economic growth last quarter.

Again, from Wonkblog:

Government spending cuts are biting into economic growth. Government spending contracted a whopping 7.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 — led by big cutbacks in defense spending. Had it not been for these cutbacks, the data suggest, growth in the last quarter would have been 3.7 percent. That’s the difference between “okay” growth and “good” catch-up growth that would make a meaningful dent in the jobless rate. It’s also a reminder that Congress can very much affect what happens in 2012 — especially since lawmakers still haven’t extended the payroll tax holiday or expanded unemployment insurance for the full year.

When this point was made this morning on This Week, I thought the heads of extremist George Will and vulgar extremist Laura Ingraham* were going to make news by detonating before our eyes. The lesson here is that government austerity—the core of the Republican economic plan—is a drag on economic growth, particularly during times like these.

And we don’t know yet how hard Democrats will have to fight congressional Republicans to get the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits extensions (they expire on February 29 and even though Mitch McConnell said on Sunday the thing will get done, he does not control the House), but that Democrats do have to fight for such basics should tell us all we need to know about what has happened to the Republican Party.

One more word about the stimulative effects of government spending: With all the talk coming from the right-wing about Obama being the food stamp president, here is a reminder of how important that program is not only to the individual or family receiving the help (about half are kids and almost a third have earned income), but to the economy as a whole:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture calculates that for every $5 of food-stamp spending, there is $9.20 of total economic activity, as grocers and farmers pay their employees and suppliers, who in turn shop and pay their bills.

While other stimulus money has been slow to circulate, the food-stamp boost [$19.9 billion] is almost immediate, with 80% of the benefits being redeemed within two weeks of receipt and 97% within a month, the USDA says.

___________________________

* There is never a person as rabidly far left as Ingraham is far right on this program. Never.

Santorum has often attacked both Gingrich and Romney on this issue—which pleases the Obama camp—but never as effectively (albeit dishonestly) as he did during Thursdays CNN GOP debate:

SANTORUM: Governor Romney was the author of Romneycare, which is a top- down government-run health care system which… has 15 different items directly in common with Obamacare…that government is going to mandate you buy something… mandate that you buy an insurance policy, something that Governor Romney agreed to at the state level…Something that everyone now, at least up on this stage, says is radically unconstitutional…

Santorum went on to describe what he believes are problems with the health care law in Massachusetts including higher health care costs and increased waiting times and a lack of sufficient care for some.

Now, this puts Romney in a difficult position.  He has two options:

1. Admit his plan in Massachusetts is a failure and repent.

2. Dispute Santorum’s contentions and defend his plan.

If he takes the first path, he thus admits his largest accomplishment as governor was a complete failure that ultimately has led to another disaster at the federal level, which conservatives keep telling us is coming.  It would be hard to tell folks in the general election that they should elect you as president when you have admitted to such a colossal blunder.

If he takes the second path, he is essentially defending the Affordable Care Act, along with its controversial mandate. And he will thus in the general election lose any persuasive force in advocating for its repeal, which, according to conservative-oriented pollster Rasmussen, just slightly over half of likely voters favor.

And it is hard to see how Romney can convincingly make repealing the law the “cornerstone” of a general election campaign, which well-financed groups like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads PAC will demand.

So, what does Mitt do in the face of fierce criticism from Santorum? Well, he tried at first to have it both ways, as usual:

ROMNEY: Our system has a lot of flaws, a lot of things I’d do differently. It has a lot of benefits. The people of the state like it by about three to one.

Flaws? The Massachusetts system has flaws? What are they? What would Romney do differently? I have never heard him answer those questions.  He goes on:

ROMNEY: We consider it very different than Obamacare. If I were president, day one I will take action to repeal Obamacare. It’s bad medicine. It’s bad economy. I’ll repeal it. (APPLAUSE)

And I believe the people — I believe the people of each state should be able to craft programs that they feel are best for their people. I think ours is working pretty well. If I were governor, it would work a heck of a lot better.

Clearly Romney has committed to the second option: He is defending his plan. But Santorum is not finished:

SANTORUM: What Governor Romney just said is that government-run top-down medicine is working pretty well in Massachusetts and he supports it. Now, think about what that means –

ROMNEY: That’s not what I said.

SANTORUM: — going up against Barack Obama, who you are going to claim, well, top-down government-run medicine on the federal level doesn’t work and we should repeal it. And he’s going to say, wait a minute, Governor. You just said that top-down government-run medicine in Massachusetts works well.

This is Santorum’s strongest moment. But Mitt’s not finished:

ROMNEY: Rick, I make enough mistakes in what I say, not for you to add more mistakes to what I say. I didn’t say I’m in favor of top-down government-run health care; 92 percent of the people in my state had insurance before our plan went in place. And nothing changes for them. They own the same private insurance they had before.

And for the 8 percent of people who didn’t have insurance, we said to them, if you can afford insurance, buy it yourself, any one of the plans out there, you can choose any plan. There’s no government plan.

And if you don’t want to buy insurance, then you have to help pay for the cost of the state picking up your bill, because under federal law if someone doesn’t have insurance, then we have to care for them in the hospitals, give them free care. So we said, no more, no more free riders. We are insisting on personal responsibility.

Either get the insurance or help pay for your care. And that was the conclusion that we reached.

Uh-oh. Santorum just forced Romney into defending not only the concept behind the Affordable Care Act, but he forced Romney into making a very convincing case for the dreaded mandate to purchase health care insurance!  Obama couldn’t have done a better job himself.

Santorum realizes this and wants to make sure everyone understands what Romney has done:

SANTORUM: Does everybody in Massachusetts have a requirement to buy health care?

ROMNEY: Everyone has a requirement to either buy it or pay the state for the cost of providing them free care. Because the idea of people getting something for free when they could afford to care for themselves is something that we decided in our state was not a good idea…

SANTORUM: Just so I understand this, in Massachusetts, everybody is mandated as a condition of breathing in Massachusetts, to buy health insurance, and if you don’t, and if you don’t, you have to pay a fine.  What has happened in Massachusetts is that people are now paying the fine because health insurance is so expensive. And you have a pre-existing condition clause in yours, just like Barack Obama.

So what is happening in Massachusetts, the people that Governor Romney said he wanted to go after, the people that were free-riding, free ridership has gone up five-fold in Massachusetts… Why? Because people are ready to pay a cheaper fine and then be able to sign up to insurance, which are now guaranteed under “Romney-care,” than pay high cost insurance, which is what has happened as a result of “Romney-care.”

You can sense at this point that Romney realizes his predicament and comes back with this:

ROMNEY: First of all, it’s not worth getting angry about…(APPLAUSE)

Oh, Santorum wasn’t angry, he was just excited because he had drawn blood. Romney goes on to explain that it “is simply impossible” for there to be an increase in people “free-riding the system,” and then he begins to lie about Obama’s plan and ends with assuring the audience that he will repeal it.

Santorum won’t let it end, though, without having the last word:

SANTORUM: Wolf, what Governor Romney said is just factually incorrect. Your mandate is no different than Barack Obama’s mandate. It is the same mandate. He takes over…(APPLAUSE) You take over 100 percent, just like he takes over 100 percent, requires the mandate. The same fines that you put in place in Massachusetts are fines that he puts in place in the federal level. Same programs.

Now, I by no means completely endorse this approach—I’m still thinking about it—but I present it as a counter to those on the right who think Mr. Obama is a left-wing radical. The “reward excellence” mantra is something you hear from both ideological camps, although no one has demonstrated to my satisfaction just how it we can fairly determine who gets the rewards.

In any case, here is the clip:

Tagged: Arne Duncan, Barack Obama, college tuition, Education ]]> http://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/obama-and-education-hardly-a-leftist/feed/ 11 duanegraham http://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/good-riddance/ http://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/good-riddance/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:01:03 +0000 R. Duane Graham http://duanegraham.wordpress.com/?p=15366 ]]> I thought I would just share with you some notes I took while dutifully, if painfully, watching the CNN GOP debate last night:

____________________

The thing opens with NFL football seriousness, what with the music and the introduction of the candidates. I am thinking there is going to be a Stealth Bomber flyover.

I note there are three or four black folks in the audience. Perhaps a debate record for the GOP.

I couldn’t tell if Newt was booed when he came on the scene or whether it was Newwwwwt‘s. But I am convinced he enjoys it no matter what.

Oh, my God. I have to revise my count: there are three African-American kids in the choir singing the national anthem. Three out of twelve. Now, we are definitely talking a record here. The GOP is the party of inclusion!

I notice Newt is not singing along. Neither is Ron Paul.  Man, if the President Who Was Born In Kenya did that, he would really get the business on Fox News later tonight and all day tomorrow.  But at least Newt has his hand over his chest. That’s a good patriotic sign, or else the too-spicy tamales on the Mexican buffet backstage are getting to him.

When Rick Santorum introduces himself it strikes me how much he would look like Pee-wee Herman, if he only had a bow tie. Where’s George Will when you need him?

The debate gets going:

In response to a question about his calling Mitt “the most anti-immigrant candidate” in an ad, Newt says we have to be “realistic in our indignation.” I’m not immediately sure what that means, but I know Newt has never done it.

Wolf Blitzer, the amiable moderator, won’t let Newt escape and he is forced to admit that he does indeed think Mitt is “the most anti-immigrant candidate.”  This is where Mittens begins his attack, using what I will call gentlemanly aggression, and Newt is shrinking before my eyes. And I never thought I would ever put Newt and “shrinking” in the same sentence.

“That’s inexcusable!” Mitt says. And then he drops a Marco Rubio on him, saying Rubio also believes the ad was “inexcusable and inflammatory and inappropriate.” Wow! A Triple Adjective Takedown! I haven’t seen one of those in a while!  But Mitt really wounds Newt with this:

Mr. Speaker, I’m not anti-immigrant. My father was born in Mexico. My wife’s father was born in Wales. They came to this country. The idea that I’m anti-immigrant is repulsive.

Then Mittens says,

I think you should recognize that having differences of opinions on issues does not justify labeling people with highly charged epithets.

Oh, my. If Newt can’t label people with highly charged epithets, he won’t be able to say another word the rest of the campaign.

Next, Wolf turns to Mitt’s ad about Gingrich calling Spanish “the language of the ghetto.”  And here we find out why Mitt Romney will have a lot of problems going up against Big O. Mitt says he hasn’t seen the ad. And then asks,

Did he say that?

Moments later he adds,

I doubt that’s my ad, but we’ll take a look and find out. There are a bunch of ads out there that are being organized by other people.

Dammit Mitt! This is bleeping CNN! They’ve hired fact checkers for this special night! You can’t get away with that stuff.  Sure enough, Wolf comes back later and says:

We did double-check, just now, Governor, that ad that we talked about, where I quoted you as saying that Speaker Gingrich called Spanish “the language of the ghetto” — we just double-checked. It was one of your ads. It’s running here in Florida in — on the radio. And at the end you say, “I’m Mitt Romney and I approved this ad.”

Oops!

But Mitt soon rehabs himself. Blitzer asks Newt about Romney’s personal finances, and Newt, trying his old shtick, tells Wolf he has asked a “nonsense question.”  But the crowd isn’t tearing the place down and Wolf refuses to be detoured (this is his finest moment; later he will degrade himself and ask about the candidates’ wives, a typical cutesy CNN question) and confronts Newt with reality:

BLITZER: But, Mr. Speaker, you made an issue of this, this week, when you said that, “He lives in a world of Swiss bank and Cayman Island bank accounts.” I didn’t say that. You did.

GINGRICH: I did. And I’m perfectly happy to say that on an interview on some TV show. But this is a national debate, where you have a chance to get the four of us to talk about a whole range of issues.

BLITZER: But if you make a serious accusation against Governor Romney like that, you need to explain that.

GINGRICH: I simply suggested –

(BOOING)

GINGRICH: You want to try again? I mean –

And this is where Romney triumphs. Not content to let the slimy little Newt get off that easy, he says,

Wouldn’t it be nice if people didn’t make accusations somewhere else that they weren’t willing to defend here?

Damn, Mittens is now on fire! And Newt is forced to respond, which he did, weakly:

GINGRICH: OK. All right.

Given that standard, Mitt, I did say I thought it was unusual. And I don’t know of any American president who has had a Swiss bank account. I’d be glad for you to explain that sort of thing.

Which, of course, Mitt does, unconvincingly. But the damage to Newt is done.  He asks for a “two-way truce.”

Game over.

Just a few more notes on the night (I will deal with Santorum’s critique of Romneycare in another post; it was fantastic):

I am feeling sorry for the woman who asks what she is supposed to do about being unemployed for the first time in 10 years and “unable to afford health care benefits.”  Sadly, she gets a lecture on conservative economics from all the candidates, which, no doubt, helped cause her to be unemployed and without insurance in the first place. Newt even says this in response to her question:

We need to have a program which would start with, frankly, repealing Obamacare, repealing Dodd-Frank, repealing Sarbanes-Oxley.

You gotta love that compassionate conservatism.

And I feel sorry for a man who identified himself as a Palestinian-American Republican. I immediately wonder how someone could be a Republican and a Palestinian-American, given the right’s attitude toward the Palestinians, but then I also wonder how someone could be a gay Republican. Go figure. The man asks this:

How would a Republican administration help bring peace to Palestine and Israel when most candidates barely recognize the existence of Palestine or its people? …I’m here to tell you we do exist.

I can guess what is coming: It’s Obama’s fault!  Romney says that,

This president threw – I think he threw Israel under the bus with regards to defining the ’67 borders as a starting point of negotiations. I think he disrespected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

If Mitt keeps repeating this lie enough, perhaps Politifact will eventually rate it as “true.” Who knows. But this is one of many lies about Obama on the night.

_______________________

Truth-challenged Mitt Romney will win the nomination, and the sooner the better. I don’t think I can watch another one of these debates, especially since Newt has decided not to stick anymore firecrackers in Mitt’s skivvies and watch him squirm.

And even though Newt did manage in his closing to drop a couple of references to food stamps and gave a nod to Saul Alinsky, it appears the fight has been knocked out of him this night by Mitt and earlier in the day by the Republican establishment—including a weird tag team of Bob Dole and the disturbing Ann Coulter.

And as much as I’d like to see him get the nomination and thus lose the general election, as a good American, I say good riddance.

His first comment included this:

I just “heard” that President Obama gave 1% of his income to charities last year. True or false, I do not know. Do you?

After I proved that assertion false, he wrote,

The internet is now filled with tax comparisons between Obama and Romney. Total taxes and charitable contributions for Romney in 2011 is estimated to be 42% of his income…

Cut it however you want to do so in terms of total dollars or percent of taxable income. The differences between the two families is STARK, in my view. Note that Obama’s income before he became famous was around $200,000 per year (2000 through 2004). Wonder how a community organizer made that kind of money????

Now, forget for a moment the implication that a mere “community organizer” might have come by his money (which is chump change to Mitt Romney) in, uh, shall we say, ways other than working for it.  Let’s look at the other assertion, which he repeated in a subsequent comment:

Romney has paid, as a percentage of income or total dollars in taxes and charitable giving than Obama, far more in either case. His 2011 estimate of all taxation and charitable giving is 42% of his taxable income.

So who has “given more for his country”, Romney or Obama?

The suggestion is clear. Democrats, especially the uppity Obama, are hypocrites. They want to take rich people’s money and don’t sacrifice themselves.

Well, I did some searching and I discovered that this claim has made the right-wing Internet rounds and the originator seems to have been none other than Jennifer Rubin, a right-wing columnist for The Washington Post (the piece was titled, “Romney paid 42 percent of 2011 income in taxes and charity“).

Here’s what she wrote:

Another way of looking at it is that in 2011 the Romneys paid out 42 percent of their income in taxes and charity. Here’s how I got there: Total tax (line 60) + foreign taxes (line 47) + state taxes and real-estate taxes + other taxes (Schedule A, line 9) + charitable contributions (Schedule A, line 19) divided by Adjusted Gross Income (1040 line 37).

I thought I would follow her formula (even though line 47 is a tax credit for paying foreign taxes) and check out her claim. Romney’s 2011 estimated return showed:

____________________________________________________________

1040 Line 60 (total tax; it’s actually line 61 on the 2011 form): $3,226,623

1040 Line 47 (the tax credit for foreign taxes paid): $0

Schedule A Line 9 (state, local, and other taxes): $1,549,596

Schedule A Line 19 (charitable gifts): $4,020,572

____________________________________________________________

Now, let’s follow her formula so far: $3,226,623 + 0 + $1,549,596 +$4,020,572 = $8,796,791

Her next step was to divide that number by 1040 Line 37 (Adjusted Gross Income), which Romney estimates as: $20,901,075. So, we have:

Romney’s charitable giving and taxes paid ÷ Adjusted Gross Income 2011 (estimated)

$8,796,791 ÷ $20,901,075 = 42%

So far, so good, right? She’s correct using her formula for 2011. But the comparison was to President Obama, remember? Here’s what the Globe blogger wrote and what the right-wing blogosphere is pushing:

Romney has paid, as a percentage of income or total dollars in taxes and charitable giving than Obama, far more in either case.

So, since they want to compare Romney and Obama, let’s do so. But we will have to use 2010 returns, since those are the most recent ones we have for both of them.

Let’s start with Romney’s 2010 tax return numbers and again apply Jennifer Rubin’s formula:

____________________________________________________________

1040 Line 60 (total tax): $3,009,766

1040 Line 47 (foreign tax credit): $129,697

Schedule A Line 9 (state, local, and other taxes): $898,946

Schedule A Line 19 (charitable gifts): $2,983,974

____________________________________________________________

Thus, $3,009,766 + $129,697 + $898,946 + $2,983,974= $7,022,383

The final step: divide by 1040 Line 37: $21,646,507. So, we have:

Romney’s charitable giving and taxes paid ÷ Adjusted Gross Income 2010

$7,022,383 ÷ $21,646,507= 32.4%

Wow! Only 32.4%? When Mitt wasn’t in campaign mode, his percentage dropped off, didn’t it?

But how does that compare to Obama? Let’s use the Rubin formula on his 2010 tax return:

_____________________________________________________

1040 Line 60 (total tax): $453,770

1040 Line 47 (foreign tax credit): $22,215

Schedule A Line 9 (state, local, and other taxes): $78,269

Schedule A Line 19 (charitable gifts): $245,075

____________________________________________________________

Thus, $453,770 + $22,215 + $$78,269 + $245,075= $799,329

The final step: divide by 1040 Line 37: $1,728,096. So, we have:

Obama’s charitable giving and taxes paid ÷ Adjusted Gross Income 2010

$799,329 ÷ $1,728,096= 46.2%

Huh? 46.2%? You mean Obama, in terms of the percentage of income he paid in taxes and gave to charity, outdid Romney by 30% (13.8 points) in 2010?  Yep, that’s right. And even taking Romney’s higher 2011 number, which conservatives were trying to rub in Democratic faces, Obama outperformed Romney by 9% (4.2 points)!

Damn, that Obama is one slick community organizer. How’d he do that?

As Republicans, our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life’s ladder. We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots. We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.

Daniels claims that the “first concern” of Republicans is for those who desire to “climb up life’s latter.” Now, I’m going to pause right here and give you time to grab a tissue and wipe the tears of laughter from your face…

Back? Good. Let’s move on and look at Daniels’ last sentence:

We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.

The truth is that if voters continue filling Republican prescriptions for what ails us as a country, we will, indeed, “always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves,” because the soon-to-haves will always be waiting and hoping for their economic boat to be floated by trickle-down economics.

Americans throughout history have tended to believe that with hard work they could at least better themselves economically. And for more than a generation now, the meme spread by the Republican Party has been that if you just let the “job creators” enjoy more and more of the wealth of this country, then anyone can become, say, a Mitt Romney, even if few people have the stomach to get rich the way he has become rich.

But even if becoming a Romney-like “have” has always been beyond most folks’ expectations or desires, it remains true that economic mobility is the foundation of the American Dream. But upward mobility and income distribution in the U.S. is not what they should be and are certainly is not what they need to be in order to keep the American Dream from becoming the American Mirage.*

From our country’s founding, most Americans have believed that government should have some role—we have always argued over the size of that role—in ensuring that everyone has a fair chance of improving their economic position and reducing—reducing, not eliminating—inequality. The Preamble to our Constitution indicates that our government was formed, among other things, to “insure domestic Tranquility” and “promote the general Welfare.”

Surely we can all agree that our domestic tranquility and general welfare are threatened by the gross economic inequality we see around us. Surely we can agree that, in the richest country the world has ever known, the grit and determination woven into American workers’ DNA, manifested in their willingness to work hard and play by the rules, ought to count for more than just earning enough to stay alive.

With the slow death of middle-class-creating unions in this country (remember also that the wages of even non-union folks are higher because unions exist), and with corporations—conscious only of the bottom line—shipping away jobs or keeping wages low and cutting benefits for their American employees, the prospect of improving things for working folks looks bleak.

And it should be obvious that in the face of such bleakness is where government—the people’s government—can act such that Americans today can enjoy what Americans used to enjoy, best expressed by President Obama in his State of the Union address,

the basic American promise that if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement.

In other words, a hard-working American could at least expect to move into the middle-class, if not become a “have” of the stature of a Mitt Romney.  I can say without fear of contradiction that most American workers don’t get up in the morning, go to their low-paying jobs, work hard, come home to their families, fret over the cost of health care and the price of gasoline, all in the hopes of one day having Romney-like tax returns, with all the excitement of parking money in the Cayman Islands or in Swiss bank accounts.

And since I believe strongly that Romney will become the Republican nominee, I think it is important to understand what he thinks about all this. Something he said recently—without rehearsal—gives us an insight into how he views America’s income inequalities.

From NBC’s Today Show:

MATT LAUER: When you said that, “We already have a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy,” I’m curious about the word “envy.” Did you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious? Is it about jealousy, or is it about fairness?

ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. I think when you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on 99 percent versus one percent, and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent, you’ve opened up a wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. And the American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it.

LAUER: Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as envy, though?

ROMNEY: I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made this part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it’ll fail.

To Romney there are “no fair questions about the distribution of wealth” outside of those discussed in “quiet rooms.” And for President Obama to point out the need to do more to address the problems we have with what Lauer called “the distribution of wealth and power in this country,” is an act of “dividing America” and somehow threatens, for God’s sake, “the concept of one nation under God.”

If you hear Mitt Romney say, as he has said before, that “Republicans are about middle-class America” and that he is “fighting to help middle-class Americans get better jobs and better incomes,” remember that interview.

And if you ever hear Mitch Daniels or any other Republican say again that their “first concern is for those waiting…to begin or resume the climb up life’s ladder,” feel free to laugh, long and hard.  Just keep a tissue in your pocket.

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* From a piece in The Washington Post (“The downward path of upward mobility“):

The most comprehensive comparative study, done last year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, found that “upward mobility from the bottom”…was significantly lower in the United States than in most major European countries, including Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark. Another study, by the Institute for the Study of Labor in Germany in 2006, uses other metrics and concludes that “the U.S. appears to be exceptional in having less rather than more upward mobility.”

The Roots of Obama’s Rage reveals Obama for who he really is: a man driven by the anti-colonial ideology of his father and the first American president to actually seek to reduce America’s strength, influence, and standard of living. Controversial and compelling, The Roots of Obama’s Rage is poised to be the one book that truly defines Obama and his presidency. 

Newt Gingrich, who is the current frontrunner for the GOP nomination, actually added a blurb to D’Souza’s book:

“Stunning…the most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.” —NEWT GINGRICH

Now, let’s get this straight. D’Souza and Gingrich aren’t saying they just have policy differences with the President . They are saying Barack Obama is actively seeking “to reduce America’s strength, influence, and standard of living.”  In other words, Mr. Obama is working against his country’s interests. His heart is not with America.

In case this idea wasn’t clear enough to the right-wing Obama-haters, Human Events offered some help by adapting part of D’Souza’s book and presented it under the title,

All of which brings us to last night’s excellent State of the Union speech. I present to you a selection of short statements uttered by the President Who Hates America:

We can do this.  I know we can, because we’ve done it before.

What’s at stake aren’t Democratic values or Republican values, but American values.  And we have to reclaim them.

The state of our Union is getting stronger.

America is more productive.

We don’t begrudge financial success in this country.  We admire it.

I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed:  That government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.

…when we act together, there’s nothing the United States of America can’t achieve.

…tyranny is no match for liberty…

We’ve made it clear that America is a Pacific power…

America is back. Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those 50 stars and those 13 stripes.  No one built this country on their own.  This nation is great because we built it together.  This nation is great because we worked as a team.  This nation is great because we get each other’s backs.  And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard.  As long as we are joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, and our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.

A mere 83 words into his response speech, the Man Who Republicans Wish Would Have Run For President, Mitch Daniels, said this:

On these evenings, presidents naturally seek to find the sunny side of our national condition. But when President Obama claims that the state of our union is anything but grave, he must know in his heart that this is not true.

It’s strange to me how Republicans always seem to know what is in Barack Obama’s heart.

And now that we know he is a stockholder in Fannie and Freddie, he’ll have hell to pay from Freddie’s one-time lobbyist influence peddler historian lover Newt Gingrich.

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“I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more. I don’t think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes,” said Mitt during last night’s debate.

No siree! Mitt’s not going to give and extra dollar to the country he loves, as some of it might end up supporting the troops, who will be expected to give the last full measure of devotion so Mitt can look tough when he gets in the White’s House.

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Also during the debate, Mitt revealed his extraordinary clever and evolving immigration plan—those non-law-abiding folks will simply engage in “self-deportation.” Next up, Mitt’s plan to curb crime: Elect him president and folks will simply stumble down to the Mayberry jail, like a bunch of civic-minded Otis Campbells, and lock themselves up! Why didn’t Obama think of that one!

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Stand-up comedian and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich complained about not having the crowd into his performance last night on NBC. He said he won’t do any more shows unless the audience is allowed to boo and cheer at all the wrong times.

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Naturally, Newt blamed the media for stepping on his shtick:

We’re going to serve notice on future debates. The media doesn’t control free speech. People ought to be allowed to applaud if they want to.

“The media doesn’t control free speech“? Is Newt calling for a government takeover of the press? If he starts with Fox, I’m all in!

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Oliver Stone, moviemaker and conspiracy peddler, has said he would support Ron Paul over President Obama. Makes perfect sense to me.

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This is what R.E.S.P.E.C.T. means to some members of the Republican Party:

Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., said on Monday he is boycotting President Obama’s State of the Union address.

In a tersely worded statement released by his office, Lamborn said he decided instead “to pass” on attending the speech on Tuesday night, though he will watch it on television and participate in a live chat hosted by Heritage Action for America.

“Congressman Lamborn does not support the policies of Barack Obama,” the statement said.

The statement also said:

Congressman Lamborn respects the President personally, and the office of the President.

I’m sure Mr. Obama will miss Mr. Lamborn, whoever he is.

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Speaking of a lack of respect, Rick Santorum’s has a new excuse for not correcting a woman who said at one of his events that Obama was not “legally” the president and that “he is an avowed Muslim.” He told John Heilemann on Morning Joe this morning:

This was an elderly lady. She was there leaning on a cane; she was quite wobbly. I’m not going to sit there and slam an older lady because she has some way off, you know, bizarre beliefs.

So, the old gal gets the senior discount from a generous Rick Santorum. If only he would be as generous to future Medicare recipients. Santorum is one of the biggest backers of Paul Ryan’s plan to kill Medicare as we know it, which would eventually make folks like that wobbly woman wish Obama were legal.

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Finally, Senator Rand Paul’s incident with the TSA in Nashville has his old man all hot and bothered: “The police state in this country is growing out of control,” said the elder Paul.  That coming from a man who wants to criminalize abortion. What a Grand Old Party!

Randall Terry plans to shock Joplin area television viewers during the Super Bowl, and he’s using his presidential candidacy to do it.

The founder of Operation Rescue, Terry is a Democratic candidate for president. He plans to air anti-abortion television ads during the Super Bowl in Joplin and in other markets in Missouri, Oklahoma, Colorado and Kentucky.

First of all, if you buy the suggestion that Randall Terry is a Democrat, then Newt Gingrich has a Marriage Is Forever book he’d like to sell you. Terry is only using the Democratic Party name in order to force local stations to sell him air time under a federal statute that prevents stations from rejecting ads based on their content. That’s quite a feat of deceit for someone who founded the Society for Truth and Justice.

Terry says his in-your-face dishonesty is aimed at denying Obama the presidency by targeting the “55 percent of Catholics and 35 percent of evangelicals” who voted for him. I can pretty much guarantee he’s wasting his time around here on that one.

Many folks around southwest Missouri may remember the freakishly extreme Terry’s involvement in the groundbreaking Nancy Cruzan case, in which a local Carterville girl was revived after a car crash on an icy Jasper County country road in 1983, only to fall into what her family would later learn was a persistent vegetative state. She remained that way for almost eight years.

Her family, who excruciatingly decided to give Nancy the dignified death they believed she would want, fought for years with people like Randall Terry and then-governor John Ashcroft and former U.S. Solicitor General Ken Starr, all big-government conservatives who were more than willing to use the power of government to enforce their Bible-based morality that allegedly demanded Nancy “live” as less than a human being indefinitely.*

Author Marilyn Webb quoted Randall Terry:

We’re going to basically beg [Missouri Attorney General Bill] Webster to intervene for this woman. I am outraged that he has not intervened. I have to ask myself, Do we have just another political opportunist here or do we have a true pro-lifer?”

Joe Cruzan, Nancy’s father, shared the family’s agony with PBS’ Frontline:

I signed the consent form to begin the artificial feeding of Nancy, to have the tube implanted. Looking back on it, I would like to have let her go that night because Nancy died—our Nancy died that night. We’ve got her body left, but she has no dignity whatsoever there and she was a very, very proud, independent person and you would see what was left there and you wondered why. Why? What’s the purpose in this?

Later he said,

There have been times that, you know, I’ve thought, “How can you murder your own child?” Our decision was based on what we felt like that Nancy would want and that’s all we have to justify. What—if the decision’s wrong, if we’re playing God, then I’ll have to live with that, and I’m willing to.

And finally,

I don’t know if I’ll ever see Nancy again or not. I don’t know what’s going to happen after we die. But to me the most important thing was that—that  we had her for those 25 years and regardless of what people say about me or what they think of my motives or whatever happens, no one can ever take that 25 years from me.

Into this profoundly private family heartbreak (father, mother, and sister) and subsequent judgment, some conservative Republicans thrust the muzzle of government. It should never go unremarked that for all the anti-big-government rhetoric dripping from every conservative Republican’s lying lips these days, a large number of those same Republicans are waiting to get control of that big government so they can use it to enforce their controversial moral prescriptions.

GOP talk about limited government almost always means preventing government from doing things like providing unemployment benefits, Medicaid and other help for the poor, or in deregulating corporations so they can pollute and prey and profit.

But when it comes to involving itself in personal decisions, like abortion or end-of-life care, many Republicans want government in the family huddle. Fortunately for the Cruzans and their daughter, the conservatives were ultimately unsuccessful, and the battle waged by the Cruzans has benefited others who have sadly found themselves in their position.

Joe Cruzan said the day his daughter passed away in December, 1990:

Because of Nancy, I suspect hundreds of thousands of people can rest free, knowing that when death beckons, they can meet it face to face with dignity, free from fear of unwanted medical treatment. I think this is quite an accomplishment for a 25-year-old kid, and I’m damned proud of her.

But that pride wasn’t enough. In August of 1996 Joe Cruzan hanged himself in the carport of his Carterville home.

The AP reported the death:

A sheet-metal worker with only a high school education, Joe Cruzan waged a battle of national proportions to break new ground in the right-to-die movement.

In the end, though, he was just a father whose heart was broken beyond repair…

No one will ever know, I suppose, just how much the intense criticism—”Vicious letters labeled the Cruzan’s ‘murderers’ and warned them of ‘God’s judgment‘”—affected his mental health. But he did receive much praise for his efforts, including a Quality in Medicine Award presented by then-Senator John Danforth from Freeman Hospital, where his daughter was first taken for treatment.

In the end, it may have just been the hard choices he and his family had to make and the second-guessing brought on by so many religion-based protests. After all, that, as God-fearing Randall Terry’s plans to “shock” Joplin demonstrates, is the point of such actions.

Marilyn Webb described the “poignant inscription” on Nancy Cruzan’s gravestone:

Nancy Beth Cruzan, most loved daughter, sister, aunt. Born July 20, 1957. Departed Jan. 11, 1983. At peace Dec. 26, 1990. At the top is script that begins with the zigs and zags of a brain-wave scan; the zigzags form the words “thank you,” and then they trail off, becoming a flat line.

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* The U.S. Supreme Court heard the case and essentially held that a person has a constitutional right to refuse medical treatment, even if it results in death, but ruled 5-4 that the Cruzans didn’t present enough evidence of Nancy’s wishes in the matter. They later proved to a Jasper County judge’s satisfaction that the family accurately reflected her views.

Tagged: death with dignity, John Ashcroft, Nancy Cruzan, Randall Terry, right to die ]]> http://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/big-government-republican-style/feed/ 3 duanegraham nancy cruzan1 http://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/gut-reactionaries/ http://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/gut-reactionaries/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:34:34 +0000 R. Duane Graham http://duanegraham.wordpress.com/?p=15246 ]]> A recent study in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching indicated that the reason a lot of people—including biology teachers—refuse to believe that evolution is a fact is not because they don’t understand it sufficiently but because they don’t “feel” in their bones that it is true. (Read the findings here;  it is fascinating.) As one article about the study put it:

Gut feelings may trump good old-fashioned facts…

Keep that idea in mind, as you read on.

Ryan Lizza appeared on Morning Joe this morning to defend his recent New Yorker article on President Obama and how the reality of Washington has changed him from someone seeking to bridge the “surmountable” gap between our two political parties to someone who has had to accept the political reality that polarization is “the most important dynamic of the last forty years,” and that the consensus, “in the middle” politics of the type we had during the Eisenhower years and beyond is long gone.

Lizza noted that when Obama ran for his U.S. Senate seat, he

criticized “the pundits and the prognosticators” who like to divide the country into red states and blue states.

And Obama’s famous 2004 speech at the Democratic Convention, which catapulted him into the Democratic Party stratosphere, sounds, well, unnervingly naive today:

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America!

It turns out, as we all know now and as Lizza wrote and repeated this morning, that,

There really is, frankly, a red America and blue America.

Yep, there really is.

Two prominent political scientists cited in Lizza’s piece, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, “have devised a widely used system to measure the ideology of members of Congress,” and the verdict is:

both the House and the Senate are more polarized today than at any time since the eighteen-nineties.*

Now, we can argue about how and why things got that way.  My own theory is one that Lizza only suggested:

It would be hard for any President to reverse this decades-long political trend, which began when segregationist Democrats in the South—Dixiecrats like Strom Thurmond—left the Party and became Republicans. Congress is polarized largely because Americans live in communities of like-minded people who elect more ideological representatives.

I submit that the primary—but not the only—reason we find ourselves in such an ideologically polarized condition has to do with what I have called white cultural angst, expressed best by the now-exiled Pat Buchanan in his latest book, Suicide of a Superpower:

Due to the immigration and higher birthrates among people of color, America is becoming less white and less Christian — and therefore inevitably less Republican.

One can see how this might raise the level of anxiety among those on the mostly-white right and cause them to hole up in Lizza’s “communities of like-minded people who elect more ideological representatives.”

I thought about all this after I wrote a piece (“An Unlimited White Checking Account For Underclass Blacks”) on Newt Gingrich’s exchange with African-American journalist Juan Williams in front of a crowd of white Republicans from—this is important—South Carolina.

For my efforts, I was excoriated by another Joplin Globe blogger on his blog:

I don’t believe I have ever seen one quite so hate filled, disdainful or outright repugnant from him after almost four years of reading his “stuff”… His blog was RACIST in tone and substance and his attacks are nothing less than a call for class warfare between blacks and whites, rich and poor, and any other various segments of society.

God only knows what the comment section on that blog post contained, since I stopped reading after the first sentence of the first response, which happened to come from yet another Globe blogger, who wrote:

I read the same post and almost puked it was so vile and disgusting in its blatant racism and classism.

As you ponder those strange criticisms, I take you back to the beginning of this piece, which referenced the study on why some folks don’t accept the theory of evolution as valid. Ohio State University Research News put it this way:

In an analysis of the beliefs of biology teachers, researchers found that a quick intuitive notion of how right an idea feels was a powerful driver of whether or not students accepted evolution—often trumping factors such as knowledge level or religion.

That this “intuitive notion” or “gut feeling” is “a powerful driver” of what we believe helps, I suggest, explain why white anxiety has led us to where we are in terms of our cultural divide.  Pat Buchanan, the champion of white angst, wrote in his book—in a chapter titled, “The End of White America“:

Those who believe the rise to power of an Obama rainbow coalition of peoples of color means the whites who helped to engineer it will steer it are deluding themselves. The whites may discover what it is like to ride in the back of the bus.

That, I argue, is a visceral reaction—just like the one expressed by the two Joplin Globe bloggers—to what Buchanan sees on the cultural landscape. It is that same gut feeling that compelled a woman in South Carolina, responding to Newt Gingrich’s encounter with Juan Williams, to say the following directly to Mr. Gingrich—who didn’t bother to correct her:

I would like to thank you for putting mister Juan Williams in his place the other night.

That, my friends, is what a lot of the political polarization we see around us is about.  Since the civil rights advances of the 1960s, the white right has been anxious about what might happen to the days of their dominance. Putting  people of color in “their place” is what drives Pat Buchanan and others who believe white culture is being threatened by “intellectual, cultural, and political elites.” Those elites, Buchanan says,

are today engaged in one of the most audacious and ambitious experiments in history. They are trying to transform a Western Christian republic into an egalitarian democracy made up of all the tribes, races, creeds, and cultures of planet Earth. They have dethroned our God, purged our cradle faith from public life, and repudiated the Judeo-Christian moral code by which previous generations sought to live.

If you listen very closely, you can hear strains of that cultural gut-reaction fall from the lips of nearly every conservative Republican, from the campaign trail to talk radio and other conservative media and to, sadly, the Joplin Globe blogosphere.

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* Lizza also quotes “two well-known Washington political analysts,” Thomas Mann (of the bipartisan Brookings Institution) and Norman Ornstein (of the conservative American Enterprise Institute) who don’t believe the ideological divergence between the two parties has been symmetrical:

…citing Poole and Rosenthal’s data on congressional voting records…since 1975, “Senate Republicans moved roughly twice as far to the right as Senate Democrats moved to the left” and “House Republicans moved roughly six times as far to the right as House Democrats moved to the left.” In other words, the story of the past few decades is asymmetric polarization.

Most of us on the liberal side of the divide believe that symptomatic of this asymmetric polarization is the fact that Mr. Obama began his presidency by moving too far in the direction of unappeasable conservatives, who slapped his face time and again and demanded even more concessions. It took much too long for Mr. Obama to realize that short of giving Republicans everything they wanted, they could not be satisfied.

—Newt Gingrich, the day after he asked his sick wife for a divorce

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Likely lying in his marriage bed, next to his extra-marital lover, Newt Gingrich would phone his wife of many years, Marianne, and tell her he loved her.

How sweet.

And how sweet too is the right-wing’s reaction to Marianne Gingrich’s charge that her husband was not just a cheater, but a hypocrite, who the day after he asked her for a divorce, spoke before the Republican Women Leaders Forum about “The Demise of American Culture.”  “How could he ask me for a divorce on Monday and within 48 hours give a speech on family values and talk about how people treat people? she asked.

In that speech on American culture, Gingrich blamed liberals for the Columbine shooting. Later he would blame liberals and Democrats for the tragedy at Virginia Tech and for Susan Smith drowning her two children. One of the reasons he gave was that liberals “created a situation ethics.”

Hmm.

On Thursday night, when CNN’s John King opened the GOP debate with a question about Marianne Gingrich’s charge that her husband asked her “to enter into an open marriage,” Gingrich, indignantly, turned on King:

I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that…

Every person in here knows personal pain. Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. To take an ex-wife and make it two days before the primary a significant question for a presidential campaign is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine…

I am frankly astounded that CNN would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate… The story is false…I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.

For that, the white Christian crowd gave him a standing ovation.

There are those of us out here in the non-Republican world who don’t understand that reaction. We don’t understand how a man who promotes the religion of Jesus can stand on a stage, as he runs for the highest office in our land, and instead of saying to the world that he was wrong so long ago, that he made a grave mistake, that he is sorry, could instead turn and attack the press, and essentially call his wronged wife a liar in front of the world.

We also don’t understand how a crowd full of Christians can raucously applaud a man who not only made a fool of his wife, but made a fool of them by mocking them with his lifestyle.  Even if, in their estimation, he deserves forgiveness, did he deserve an ovation?

Sarah Palin, who has made a fine living off the pious sentiments of folks on the right, said that the “dumbarse” media’s featuring of “a disgruntled ex” would cause Newt’s campaign “to soar even more.” You see, in Sarah Palin’s mind Marianne Gingrich is nothing more than a disgruntled ex, nothing more than an obstacle in Newt Gingrich’s way. She is not worthy of Jesus-loving Sarah Palin’s sympathy, of God-fearing Sarah Palin’s compassion.

Rush Limbaugh, as close to a national leader as the GOP has, hid his thoughts behind a “a good friend” of his, who allegedly sent him a note that read:

So Newt wanted an open marriage.  BFD.  At least he asked his wife for permission instead of cheating on her.  That’s a mark of character, in my book.  Newt’s a victim.  We all are.  Ours is the horniest generation.  We were soldiers in the sex revolution.  We were tempted by everything from Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice to Plato’s Retreat, Deep Throat to no-fault divorce.  Many of us paid the ultimate price, AIDS, abortion, or alimony for the cultural marching orders we got.  Hell, for all I know we should be getting disability from the government….Newt’s slogan ought to [be], “Hell, yes, I wanted it.”

“Newt’s a victim.” Astonishingly, a bit later Limbaugh himself came close to blaming the real victim:

I think, of what we’ve seen so far from the Marianne Gingrich stuff, the thing I didn’t know… that Newt had asked for an open marriage…Most of the other stuff, I did know. I also know that Marianne Gingrich… I’ve been places shortly after Newt was made Speaker with Mary, social weekends and so forth, and she was never comfortable with the public eye — and that bothered him. He thought it limited his future.

She didn’t like the media, she didn’t like the focus on her life, so she just wasn’t comfortable with the public eye — and I know that he said, “Well, you knew what you were marrying.” So there’s two sides to all this..

It “bothered” Newt that his second wife “was never comfortable with the public eye.” So gingerly does Rush Limbaugh tiptoe around justifying Newt’s betrayal, his stunning lack of faithfulness. Gingrich twice divorced women who were sick and demanded of at least one of them that they share him with other women or else, and for this Limbaugh and Palin and the crowd of Christians in Charleston essentially celebrated him, affirming if not his infidelity, his indignation.

Look, if Newt Gingrich didn’t frequently stand in the streets and beat his Christian chest in righteous anger, if he didn’t haughtily shout from every housetop how morally corruptive is the liberal spirit, if he didn’t wave his flag of conservative morality in the face of Americans, then what he did or didn’t do, said or didn’t say, to his ex-wives would be between them.

But he does hawk his moral wares in the public square and he has indicted liberalism for nearly all the ills of society.  But no liberal urged him to cheat on his first wife or forced him to lie about the nature of that divorce. No liberal joined him in bed with his lover and current wife Callista. No liberal put a gun to his head and forced him to phone his second wife, with Callista by his side, and tell her he loved her. No liberal tempted him to make a mockery of his faith.

The redemption of a human being is a beautiful thing in any context, religious or secular. Redemption is the solid core of Christianity, the summum bonum of Christian teaching, the raison d’être of the Incarnation. After Gingrich’s denial, Marianne Gingrich has reaffirmed her story and said her former husband never told her he was sorry. It seems to me, if the idea of Christian redemption means anything, if it is to maintain any respect in a civilized society, it ought to require of a man who seeks it to at least admit his crimes to the one he wronged and repent.

And those who say they believe in the religion of Jesus, but who have lately placed their faith in the Republican Party, ought to at least have the decency to sit quietly while a man on a stage who wants to be president refuses to humbly admit his sin and plead for mercy.

— Linda Kaboolian, a lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard

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Who would have ever thought that America—the bleeping United States of America—would be a low-wage haven, but, alas, it has become one:

Corporate profits are higher than ever, but for many workers, things just keep getting worse.

Take the situation unfolding at Caterpillar Inc.’s London, Ontario plant. The company, the world’s largest heavy machinery manufacturer, is insisting that Canadian workers take a 50 percent pay cut, give up their current pension plan and swallow a significant reduction in benefits. On Jan. 1, Caterpillar locked out the plant’s 465 workers, refusing to let them do their jobs until they make these sacrifices.

In the last three months of 2011, as Caterpillar was pressing Canadian workers to give in to its requests, the company reported a 44 percent surge in profits from the previous year. Now, if workers continue to resist, Caterpillar appears to be threatening to take their jobs out of the country. Not to China or Mexico, but just over the border to Muncie, Ind., where desperate Americans are eager to take any job — no matter how low the pay.

Let this be clear: Caterpillar isn’t facing hard times; it is not in financial trouble; it simply desires to make even more money by employing “desperate Americans” who will work for $24,000 a year—and without a union—doing what middle-class Canadians were doing for about twice that.

“In the small picture, Caterpillar is a really hard employer, but the big picture here is obviously the race to the bottom,” said Linda Kaboolian, a lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard, who studies workplace issues and has closely tracked the company’s practices through the decades…

“The larger story is that an extraordinarily profitable company like Caterpillar has determined that a fair standard of living for a semi-skilled manufacturing employee is $24,000 a year,” Kaboolian said. “Let’s face it — every time workers lose a fight like this, American business gets a clear message that you can ratchet down the wages a little further.”

This, my friends, is what America has become, after years of union-bashing, wage-slashing, middle-class thrashing economic policies, mostly supported by the Republican Party.

My God, people. Look at what we have become. A Fortune 500 Company now views America like Americans used to view Mexico and China.

In any case, at the GOP debate tonight in Charleston, expect Newt to announce his campaign for an “open presidency,” one in which he would sort of alternate between being America’s commander-in-chief and, say, being the King of Spain for a day or two.

I’m sure Juan Carlos and the Spaniards wouldn’t mind, and after a President Gingrich screws everybody here at home, Americans will be glad to share him with the rest of the world.

Yes, let’s turn the country over to Republicans, by all means.

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Newt Gingrich said this the other day:

I fully expect the Romney campaign to be unendingly dirty and dishonest for the next four days because they are desperate — they thought they could buy this.

Well, of course, Romney thought he could “buy” the election, Newt! Because the election, and American democracy, is for sale! That’s why we need to get money out of politics. Sign the petition now!  272,595 and counting.

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Speaking of Romney and Gingrich, they are fighting over who has been the greatest job creator since Jesus. In fact, Newt said he was there when the Savior was hiring his disciples.

Romney, not surprisingly, has said two contradictory things:

1. “Government doesn’t create jobs. It’s the private sector that creates jobs.”

2. “By the way, we created more jobs in Massachusetts than this president’s created in the entire country.”

To be fair to Newt, his job plan—replacing unionized janitors with kids “between nine and 14 years of age“—is definitely a winner. That age group unquestionably is an untapped source of cheap labor in this country.

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Newt Gingrich, fearful that one of his ex-wives, Marianne, will wake up a couple of slumbering skeletons in Newt’s double-wide closet, said this morning that ABC News‘ “intruding into family things that are more than a decade old are [sic] simply wrong.”

Except that Newt had no trouble intruding into Obama’s family things when he totally bought into Dinesh D’Souza’s insanely ridiculous theory (“The Roots of Obama’s Rage“) about the President, about his adoption of his father’s “anticolonial ideology” and his “off the American mainland” history.

Newt enthusiastically endorsed this theory via National Review Online:

Gingrich says that D’Souza has made a “stunning insight” into Obama’s behavior — the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.”

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

Well, I suppose in the world of moralistic Republican politics, it is fair to judge a man by a father he met only once—at eleven years of age—but it is “simply wrong” to judge a man—who presents himself as a family-values candidate—by what he did to those to whom he had previously promised faithfulness.

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And speaking of Newt and family values, he said his “daughters would be glad” to go on television  and talk about his ex-wife’s potential claims and vouch for his character. That a boy, Newt! There’s nothing quite as wholesome as bringing the kids into it!

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UPDATE: Uh-oh, Newt:

via Marianne Gingrich Says Newt Gingrich Wanted Open Marriage.