All posts for the month May, 2010

Tim Davis: A Better Republican Than Democrat

I had a rather lengthy conversation with Tim Davis several months ago.  Just who the hell is Tim Davis, you ask?

He is a guy running against whichever extremist survives the GOP primary in the fight for Roy Blunt’s 7th District congressional seat.

In other words, he is a Democratic choice for Southwest Missouri’s representative in Washington.

I have to be truthful here.  After finding out that one of the Democratic candidates for Blunt’s seat would be in Joplin, I was excited to talk with him. Maybe, I thought, this year Democrats would field a candidate that could make some progress in this calcified conservative corner of the state.

Unfortunately, after my conversation with Mr. Davis, I actually wondered why he was running as a Democrat. In fact, I ask him why he was running as a Democrat. I really did.

Don’t get me wrong.  He is a very smart man, what with a Ph.D. in economics and a law degree from Oxford.  Yes. That Oxford.   So, there is no doubt he is a very smart man.  And he seemed like one heck of a nice guy.

The trouble is, he’s not really much of a Democrat.  He seems to know that, too. KY3’s Political Notebook recently posted a Q&A with Tim Davis, in which he was asked:

Q: How do you plan to cut through the bitterness and rancor of Capitol Hill so it’s not more of the same old debate?

Leaving aside the fact that I think that’s a dumb question—the reason there is some rancor is that the “same old debate” is important stuff—here is Mr. Davis’ answer:

It’s not in my nature to be blindly partisan.  Also, my policies tend to be middle-of-the-road.  So they’re going to appeal to Democrats and moderate Republicans.  For that reason, I don’t anticipate that I’ll get sucked into the partisan debate.

Perhaps it is that Davis’ approach is the way for a Democrat to win in Southwest Missouri, although I doubt it. But in any case, what would really have been nice is if Mr. Davis had run in the Republican primary, where his “moderate” [read: thoughtfully conservative] views would be a welcome relief from that nauseating contest of conservative candidates trying to out-Limbaugh each other. 

But since Mr. Davis doesn’t seem to want to “get sucked into a partisan debate,” I don’t think he would fare very well on the Republican side.  Maybe that’s why he decided to run as a Democrat. Among that less-than-stellar slate of Southwest Missouri Republican conservatives, he would stick out a little bit, but only because he can explain in great (and sometimes excruciating) detail just why he thinks his fairly conservative views are correct.

In other words, he is a conservative with a brain.

Anyway, during my conversation with him I asked about his training in economics (remember that Ph.D?) and I quickly found out that essentially Mr. Davis is a supply-sider, in the vein of Arthur Laffer and folks like that. 

If you read his answers to some of KY3’s questions here, you can sort of figure that much out. But I want to highlight just one response:

Q: How can the Congress promote economic growth and  jobs?

Tim Davis: Other than adjourning for major holidays…

Now, it’s one thing for a Republican to use such sarcasm about government’s ability to help with economic growth and jobs, but it’s quite another for a Democrat to do so. It just doesn’t sound right coming from the lips (in this case, likely the keyboard) of someone who calls himself a Democrat.

I asked him about economics first because in my opinion what one thinks about the interface of government and the economy is a major clue as to one’s fundamental political philosophy, and before I give up my vote, I want to know what one’s political philosophy is.

If you think the government should limit its involvement in the economy in such a way so as to only allow “the private sector to create wealth and jobs” and should not step in, say, to bail out a business like GM, then you are most likely a conservative.

If you think government can at certain times and to some extent stimulate economic growth by injecting money into a sluggish economy, and if you believe government should regulate the economy in such a way so as to allow the private sector to create wealth—but not at the expense of the environment or by compromising other cultural values—then you are probably not a conservative.

I’ll leave it to the reader to evaluate where Mr. Davis fits in, but there is no doubt, after speaking with him, that he sounded like Jack Kemp on intellectual steroids.  It doesn’t make him a bad man, it just makes him an economic conservative.

Since his economic views were not what I expected for a Democrat, I decided to probe for other areas in which I could support him.   

What about the abortion issue?  He’s emphatically pro-life, he said.  Uh-oh. And I found out his convictions about abortion stem from his religious beliefs. Uh-oh. 

Okay…Then what about homosexuality? I wondered, since he had such strong, conservative religious convictions, if he thought homosexuality was a sin.  So, I ask him, “Is homosexuality a sin?”

Yep. He told me he believed homosexuality is a sin.  SIN.  S-I-N.

Here is the definition of “sin” from Merriam-Webster’s OnLine:

1 a : an offense against religious or moral law b : an action that is or is felt to be highly reprehensible <it’s a sin to waste food> c : an often serious shortcoming : fault
2 a : transgression of the law of God b : a vitiated state of human nature in which the self is estranged from God

Uh-oh. 

So, we have a Democratic candidate for the 7th District who is a supply-sider worthy of comparison to any economist who served in the Reagan administration; a pro-lifer who would not disagree much, if any, with Phyllis Schlafly on the issue of abortion; and a religious believer so conservative that he believes homosexuality is either a “sin,” “an offense,” a “highly reprehensible” act, a “serious shortcoming,” or a “transgression of the law of God.” 

In other words, our Democratic candidate is basically a conservative Republican. 

But he is a much better choice than any of the other conservative Republicans, if that makes anyone feel better.

by R. Duane Graham on May 28, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on May 28, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/tim-davis-a-better-republican-than-democrat/

Orgasmic Conservatives Spew Impeachment Talk

Over the last 30 years, our country has been governed by Democratic presidents about one-third of the time.  Clinton served eight years and Obama is in the middle of his second year.

From the beginning of Clinton’s term as president, the right-wing had it out for him.  The worst of the lot, including the Reverend [sic] Jerry Falwell, claimed Clinton was a cocaine smuggler and a killer.

The best of the lot impeached him, essentially for trying to hide his unfaithfulness to his wife.*

Now, comes the inevitable and hysterical talk of impeachment of President Obama. It seems that this ideologially-sick generation of conservatives has never met a Democratic president they couldn’t impeach.

Darrell Issa, a Republican congressman from California and a frequent visitor to the brothel at Fox “News” Channel, had intercourse with Sean Hannity last night over the allegation that someone at the White House offered Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) a government job in exchange for not challenging Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania.

Now, you know you’re in for a treat when Sean starts reading from the United States Code to make a point and uses the old line, “what did the president know and when did he know it.”  It is a little like foreplay for these folks.  So, naturally, given such titillation, threats of impeachment were soon ejaculated during Hannity’s interaction with Issa. 

The congressman is seeking a special prosecutor—that, of course, is how the Clinton impeachment fiasco began—to determine if any laws were broken.

Meanwhile, the rest of the sane world, including George F. Will, realizes that some government jobs have always been a sort of currency in the world of politics.  Heck, Roy Blunt once offered me a job as Ambassador to the Joplin Spook Light, if I would stop writing bad things about Jack Abramoff.  I was too scared to take it, though.

On ABC’s This Week, this brief conversation between Jake Tapper and George Will just about says it all regarding the seriousness of Issa’s and Hannity’s talk of impeachment over the “Sestak Affair“:

TAPPER: So, first of all, let me ask you a question, George. This — this — the Republicans are trying to make hay over this alleged deal that the White House made to Sestak. If you don’t run against Specter, we’ll give you this other job. A big deal or not a big deal?

WILL: Not a big deal. It’s — politics is a transactional business. They offered him a transaction — if they did, and I don’t see a thing wrong with it.

TAPPER: They are trying to make a big thing out of it, though.

WILL: I don’t care what they’re trying to do. It’s a small thing.

UPDATE:

During Obama’s long-awaited press conference today—which understandably was dominated by the BP oil disaster—none other than Major Garrett of Fox “News” thought he would earn his Fox “News” bonus this week for asking the president about the  allegations surrounding Joe Sestak. 

Obama said “nothing improper took place,” and that an official response would be forthcoming, and soon, too.  That answer should keep Sean Hannity busy tonight on his show.

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*Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House at the time and cheerleader for Clinton’s impeachment, admitted he was having an adulterous affair while he publicly ridiculed Clinton and urged his colleagues and the country to condemn him.  See here Jake Tapper’s piece on Gingrich’s interview with James Dobson, an evangelical promoter of family values conservatives like the thrice-married Gingrich.
by R. Duane Graham on May 27, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on May 27, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/orgasmic-conservatives-spew-impeachment-talk/

The Republicans’ “War On Arithmetic”

Gene Lyons’ column in the Globe this morning knocked me out with this:

…we’ve seen the GOP increasingly dominated by its irrational Chicken Little wing, seeing grim portents and predicting doom. Continuing their party’s decades-long War on Arithmetic, Republicans act as if the highest form of patriotism is to demand tax cuts even as USA Today reports that its analysis revealed that “Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman’s presidency. . . . Federal, state and local taxes-including income, property, sales and other taxes-consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports.”

The historic average has been 12 percent, the newspaper said.

The lowest level of taxes since 1950?  A “War on Arithmetic“? 

Why, yes.

The USA Today article Lyons referenced continues:

On average…the tax rate paid by all Americans — rich and poor, combined — has fallen 26% since the recession began in 2007. That means a $3,400 annual tax savings for a household paying the average national rate and earning the average national household income of $102,000…

Taxes paid have fallen much faster than income in this recession. Personal income fell 2% last year. Taxes paid dropped 23%. The BEA classifies Social Security taxes as insurance payments and excludes them from the tax calculation.

A table accompanying the article is very enlightening:

You can see very clearly the Republicans’ War on Arithmetic.

And you can see very clearly that if the share of income paid as taxes would return to 2000 levels, we could make some progress on the deficit problem. 

By now, it is certainly well-known that George W. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress inherited a budget surplus in 2001.  It is also well-known that after a couple of tax cuts—which benefited the wealthy disproportionately—deficits began to rise.

If you doubt that such tax cuts benefited mainly the wealthiest Americans, then how does one account for the fact that the tax rate for our highest income earners in 2007 fell to its lowest rate since the IRS began keeping track in 1992?

Discussing an IRS report a few months ago, USA Today wrote,

…the agency reports that the nation’s 400 highest-earning households reported an average income of $345 million in 2007 — up 31% from 2006 — and that their average tax bill fell to a 15-year low.

Why, any sane person might ask, are we stressed to the max about deficits and debt, when one cause is so obvious?  Republicans have successfully dammed up the revenue stream, or in Lyons’ words, they have declared a War on Arithmetic.

My only question is, why aren’t Democrats more effectively defending arithmetic?

by R. Duane Graham on May 26, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on May 26, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/the-republicans-war-on-arithmetic/

Where’s Big O?

My first instinct, when I heard that President Obama would be attending a fundraiser last night in California for Barbara Boxer, was to get pissed at the president’s political team.  After all, jetting to the West Coast, while the situation in the Gulf was still unfolding, and while the right-wing was having your ass for lunch every day, just wasn’t very smart.

But then I realized that ultimately it wasn’t the president’s political team or David Axelrod or Rahm Emanuel or anyone else who was to blame for the dumb decision to continue with the fundraiser.

It was President Obama’s dumb decision.

One of the few he has made, but a big one.

It’s not that I don’t believe the administration is doing all that it can to mitigate the damage from the crisis along the Gulf coast.  From what I understand, from the beginning the federal response has been about as good as can be expected.

And I understand why the government doesn’t shove BP out of the way.  Because generally when you push someone out of the way, you have someone else to step in and do the job.  In this case, apparently there is no one else.  The best minds are supposedly already working on the problem—which means that most of the complaints about what the administration is doing are pure demagoguery.

With that understanding—that the feds are doing all that can be done given the circumstances—President Obama’s leadership through this crisis has been tested and found wanting.

As I have said before, I like cool, calm leadership.  When I’m on an airplane—I have an extreme fear of flying—I like it when I see the pilot act like everything’s under control.  Were he to get on the intercom yelling and screaming, I would go into a panic. So, I like Obama’s pilot-like coolness.

But this crisis is different.  Obama does need to be yelling and screaming, in a presidential way. 

Every day, if necessary, he should be in front of a camera, reporting on the progress of the effort to cap the well and the cleanup efforts.  In a crisis this big, he shouldn’t leave that stuff to cabinet secretaries.

This is a president-sized catastrophe.

It’s not too late for Big O to be Big O.

But it’s damn close.

by R. Duane Graham on May 26, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on May 26, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/wheres-big-o/

Republicans Will Bring Gas To The Fire

I know some folks don’t want to hear it, and I know November 2012 is a long way away, but since the debt and deficit issues loom large in our politics these days, let’s look back, once again, on Republican presidential leadership vis-à-vis the national debt. 

Republicans blame Obama for out-of-control spending and for exponentially increasing our debt, so let’s review what they did when they held the White House over the past 30 years.

I created the chart below from treasurydirect.gov.  I began with the first fiscal year following the inauguration of Ronald Reagan and ended with the last fiscal year following the exit of George Bush II, for the simple reason that presidents can’t be held responsible for their predecessor’s budgets and should be held accountable for the last budget they signed, which remained in effect after they left office.

It shows very clearly that the sainted Ronald Reagan—hero of the deficit hawks on the right—nearly tripled the national debt.  Tripled. Three times. 3X.  Okay?*  To put that number in perspective, it would be like Obama increasing the debt from the roughly 10 trillion he inherited to a staggering 26 trillion (260%), should he get elected to a second term.

The chart also shows that after 12 years of Reagan/Bush, the country’s national debt increased by about 400%, which makes the doubling of the debt under George Bush II seem modest in comparison.

Of course, I realize that any president represents only one branch of the federal government and that responsibility for our debt problems also resides in Congress.  But as the chart shows, the years between Reagan/Bush and Bush II—when Democrat Bill Clinton, the scourge of the right, was president—saw only a slight (in recent historical terms) increase in our indebtedness.  So, just judging by the record, a Democratic president performed better than any of the last three Republican presidents—by far.

What difference does any of this make, you ask?  The problems with the debt must be solved no matter who is to blame, right?

Yes, they do.  But when we’re looking around for someone to help put out a fire, should we ask the guy holding the five-gallon can of gas?

Here’s the chart:

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* I’ve previously addressed the false objection that Reagan was a victim of a Democratic Congress.

 

by R. Duane Graham on May 25, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on May 25, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/republicans-will-bring-gas-to-the-fire/

GOP Candidate: God Ready to Drop Large Pyramid On Greenland

Tea Party favorite Rand Paul whipped the GOP establishment in Kentucky, and so there is a downside to having enthusiastic but amateurish tea partiers thrust themselves into professional Republican politics. 

Full disclosure: I confess to having much fun watching the action. 

And nowhere is this phenomenon more hilarious than in the 8th Congressional District in North Carolina. 

There, the state GOP chairman has declared Tim D’Annunzio—who was backed by two tea party groups and who finished first in the Republican primary a few weeks ago—”unfit for public office at any level,” according to the Charlotte Observer. 

The chairman, Tom Fetzer, wasn’t finished with D’Annunzio: 

What he could do to the party as our nominee is secondary in my view to what he could do to the country if he got elected. If he got elected, for crying out loud, that would be a disaster. 

After an apparently troubled past, D’Annunzio straightened himself out in time to make a few million bucks and become a right-wing “religious zealot,” according to a judge who heard a 1998 child-support case involving the leading GOP candidate. 

Now, religious zealotry is generally a career enhancer in the Republican Party, but apparently not this time.  The story continues: 

D’Annunzio has said that for much of his life he was not particularly religious or political. That changed in 1994 as he sat in his yard under a partial solar eclipse. 

“When everything is falling apart around you, you have to look at why it’s happening,” he once said. “The conclusion I had come to was you have to return to your foundation.” 

Anne D’Annunzio alluded to her ex-husband’s conversion in a 1995 court document. 

She claimed he told her, among other things, that “God was going to drop a 1,000-mile high pyramid” on Greenland and that he had found the Ark of the Covenant in Arizona. 

She told the court that a psychiatric evaluation might determine whether he was fit to visit his children. The 1995 evaluation concluded that D’Annunzio’s religious beliefs “do not seem delusional.” 

Now, other than the fact that the psychiatrist who examined Mr. D’Annunzio may also moonlight as Glenn Beck’s spiritual advisor—since he apparently finds nothing “delusional” about someone who imagines God bombing Greenland with a rather large tetrahedron—I suppose it’s not too weird to think that our born-again Republican could have found Aaron’s Rod and the Tablets of Stone buried in the Arizona desert. 

Maybe that’s what the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was really about. The Earps, being God-fearing conservative Republicans* were probably trying to save the Ark from the hands of cowboy liberals, God-hating socialists, and other assorted Democrats. 

In any case, we do know one thing about D’Annunzio that puts him in the mainstream of the Tea Party-dominated GOP these days: 

As a candidate, D’Annunzio has called for dismantling much of the federal government. 

And as an added bonus, according to District Judge Richard Brown, who rendered judgment in D’Annunzio’s child-support case: 

(He) described the government as the “Antichrist.” 

Considering that a large number of people in the Republican Party consider Obama to be the Antichrist, I think D’Annunzio fits right in. 

Who knows, maybe if he gets elected, he’ll explain just why God is pissed at Greenland.  

____________________________________ 

* I know they were conservative Republicans because of this entry in Wikipedia: 

The Earps were viewed by their enemies as badge-toting tyrants who ruthlessly enforced the business interests of the town. 
 
by R. Duane Graham on May 24, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on May 24, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/gop-candidate-god-ready-to-drop-large-pyramid-on-greenland/

The Magic Kingdom Of Conservatism

You’re sailing softly through the sun in a broken Stone Age dawn. You fly so high, I get a strange magic.

Oh, what a strange magic.

—Jeff Lynne, Electric Light Orchestra

Bill Maher made an interesting observation about the difference between conservatives here in America and those across the Atlantic in the land of our Founder’s fathers:

…they just had an election two weeks ago and, power changed hands — but the party that lost is working WITH the part that won — they are not accusing them of being Bolshevik Zulus out to destroy the Magna Carta. Because the English are grown ups, including their conservatives who enjoy a wonderful luxury that conservatives on this side of the pond do not. They’re allowed to be sane. They don’t have to pander to creationists and anti-intellectuals. Only in this dumb country do liberals and conservatives argue over things like “evolution” and “climate change” and whether “sick people should be left to die in the street.”

Maher also pointed out that conservatives in America “tend to believe in magical ideas“:

America is never wrong; you can defeat terrorism militarily; and lower taxes will somehow fix the deficit. And I’m not even mentioning the stuff about how Jesus used to fly around on a pterodactyl and just hated it when homos ate wedding cake.

Now, no matter what you think about Maher’s brand of humor, there is something odd about the current iteration of conservative philosophy, as expressed by right-wing media and echoed by Republican politicians all across the country.

It does sort of have a strange magical quality to it. 

We can wave our tax-cutting wand, and jobs will come back, the deficit will diminish, and our debt will soon disappear.  

We can talk mean and nasty to the rest of the world, and then we can pull a rabbit of peace out of a hat.

We can build a magic wall, and our immigration problems will vanish.

We can elect Tea Party sorcerers to the Congress, and they will restore Lady Liberty—who Obama has cut in half—to her original state.

Oh, what a strange magic.

by R. Duane Graham on May 24, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on May 24, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/the-magic-kingdom-of-conservatism/

NEWS FLASH: BP Oil Spill May Ruin Konrad Heid’s Plans This Fall

I’m not sure what the point was of Sunday’s Konrad Heid “guest” column—apparently a regular feature now in the Joplin Globe—but other than learning that the Earth rotates and there are things called ocean currents, I did learn this valuable piece of information, which will cause me to lose sleep worrying about the quality of the Heid family retirement years going forward:

Please, not in our front yard. Barbara and I spend a lot of our retirement days sitting on the beautiful, white beaches of northwest Florida, in the Panhandle. We hope, of course they stay beautiful and white, not succumbing to the ravages of oil globs.

Yes, Konrad, I hope they stay beautiful and white, too.  But not necessarily so you and Barbara can wile away the time staring at nature’s beauty, enjoying the fruits of your hard labor in the banking industry. 

I hope they stay beautiful and white because there are millions of folks along the coast who depend on the Gulf to feed their families and because the ecosystem is in grave danger for years to come.

Perhaps our local bank president merely forgot to mention that, or perhaps he thinks readers of the Joplin Globe anxiously await each breathtaking report on the quality of his golden years. 

Perhaps Heid’s next guest column will be a commentary on the larger tragedy involved in the BP disaster slowly unfolding in our Gulf of Mexico*, or perhaps he will lament the rising price of oysters and the effect it will have on his lavish lifestyle.

But until then, I won’t sleep very well worrying about all that oil washing up on Konrad’s little piece of paradise.

God, I hope Mr. Heid keeps us informed.  I’ll be praying for him and his beach.

____________________________

* It’s doubtful, considering this stunning admission:

Since we have a vested personal interest and want to return this fall to our paradise, I did a bit of educational research; there’s so much I don’t know and don’t care about unless it gets down right personal and up close.

 

by R. Duane Graham on May 23, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on May 23, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/news-flash-bp-oil-spill-may-ruin-konrad-heids-plans-this-fall/

Paul Krugman On The Economy: We’re Not Doing Too Much, We’re Doing Too Little

So what we should really be asking right now isn’t whether we’re about to turn into Greece. We should, instead, be asking what we’re doing to avoid turning Japanese. And the answer is, nothing.

—Paul Krugman

Not being a trained economist, it beats me whether Paul Krugman—who is a trained economist—is right when he writes:

Recent data don’t suggest that America is heading for a Greece-style collapse of investor confidence. Instead, they suggest that we may be heading for a Japan-style lost decade, trapped in a prolonged era of high unemployment and slow growth.

Krugman believes that contrary to popular opinion, “policy makers aren’t doing too much; they’re doing too little.”  And the reason they are doing too little is that too many people in high places are worried about inflation.

The CliffsNotes version of Krugman’s analysis is:

Despite fears and predictions that interest rates would rise—which triggered calls for America to “slash its deficit right away or else“—Krugman says they are falling.  And that decline, he says, is not due to optimism about the economy, but pessimism, which “has sent investors fleeing out of anything that looks risky—hence, the plunge in the stock market—into the perceived safety of U.S. government debt.”

The pessimism about the economy partly has to do with the “troubles in Europe,” but Krugman seems more concerned that the pessimism has to do with a recent report on consumer prices that “showed a key measure of inflation falling below 1 percent, bringing it to a 44-year low.” 

Boy, that will piss off Glenn Beck for sure.

Anyway, Krugman—a trained economist, remember?—says this about the effects of such news:

Low inflation, or worse yet deflation, tends to perpetuate an economic slump, because it encourages people to hoard cash rather than spend, which keeps the economy depressed, which leads to more deflation. That vicious circle isn’t hypothetical: just ask the Japanese, who entered a deflationary trap in the 1990s and, despite occasional episodes of growth, still can’t get out. And it could happen here.

So, there you have it.  We’re either going to turn into Greece—the crazy analysis coming from the right—or we may (Krugman hedges at the end of his column) go the way of Japan and it’s “lost decade”—apparently the analysis coming from the left.

Even an untrained economist can see that the prospect of the U.S. turning into Greece isn’t going to happen for the simple reason that the United States is manifestly too big to fail, literally. In the end, we can sit on our nuclear arse-enal and tell the world: if you want your money back, you’ll have to come and get it.  Can Greece do that?  I didn’t think so.

In any case, it beats me if Krugman is right about the lost decade stuff.  He’s the economist, not me.

by R. Duane Graham on May 21, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on May 21, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/paul-krugman-on-the-economy-were-not-doing-too-much-were-doing-too-little/

What A Waste It Is To Lose One’s Mind

The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did. 

—Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich is obviously trying to dethrone Bill O’Reilly as the five-star general of the Army of American Culture Warriors. 

No doubt the right-wing suffers from many delusions, but looming large among them is the idea that the soul of America is in danger of damnation from the likes of evil secularists and socialists like Barack Obama.

Never mind that for a radical God-hater, Obama is a rather outspoken Christian, who prays out loud and everything.  Plus, apparently he takes seriously the swear-to-God oath he made to his one and only wife, unlike some prominent non-secular conservatives.*

Never mind that for a Marxist revolutionary, Obama has a lot of nice things to say about capitalism and is going so far as to try to preserve our capitalist system before the capitalists completely destroy it.

Look, I understand that to some extent the otherwise bright and “scholarly” Gingrich knows he can put stuff like “secular-socialist machine” in a book and call it, “To Save America,” and frothing conservatives will buy it.  I understand that reality.

But, damn!  A mind is a terrible thing to waste.  Or, no, I like this better:

Dan Quayle, our former Republican Vice President and the Sarah Palin of his time, once said:

What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

God, I miss Dan Quayle.

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*Here are two paragraphs from Wikipedia that would serve to make most people hesistate before they call other folks names:

Gingrich has been married three times. He first married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher, when he was 19 years old, and she was 26 years old.[54][55] They had two daughters. The couple decided to divorce after Gingrich told his wife of his extra-marital affair while she was recovering from cancer surgery.[56] In 1981, six months after his divorce was final, Gingrich wed Marianne Ginther.[57] He remained married to Ginther until 2000, when they divorced.

Shortly after his second divorce, Gingrich married Callista Bisek, who is 23 years his junior. He began his relationship with Bisek while he was still married to his second wife. Ironically, this extramarital affair started during the Congressional investigation of Bill Clinton‘s perjury relating to his affair with 23-year-old intern, Monica Lewinsky, which led to Clinton’s impeachment.[58]

by R. Duane Graham on May 21, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on May 21, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/what-a-waste-it-is-to-lose-ones-mind/

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