Rand Paul: U.S. Senator and TSA Potential Terrorist Suspect

United States Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the son of United States Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul of Texas, was recently singled out and victimized as a potential dangerous terrorist suspect by armed and uniformed TSA thugs at his home based Nashville International Airport.

Just last year, Rand Paul sharply criticized the TSA for conducting unnecessary pat down searches. At a senate hearing, he told TSA administrator John Pistole, "I think you ought to get rid of the random pat-downs. The American public is unhappy with them, they're unhappy with the invasiveness of them."

Referring to reports of little kids getting intense, random pat-down searches, Paul said during the hearing, "It just really [s]hows that no one is thinking... We need to be doing better police work and doing less of the universal giving up of our freedom to live our life the way we would like to live our life." He suggested that there be a "trusted traveler" program for people who travel frequently, like congressmen who are known as non-threatening.  

But now, at the airport, our homegrown American Gestapo agents were telling him that there was an “anomaly” when he passed through the gate scanner. They demanded that the senator submit to a full-body pat down search. He refused.

Paul then offered to pass through the scanner again. The TSA thugs refused. And then they detained him for hours in a small cubicle for the “crime” of not meekly submitting to their authority like the rest of the cowering sheep at the terminal, causing him to miss his flight to Washington.

After this latest outrage was publicized, the TSA disputed that the senator was “detained,” and pointed to an incident report referring to Paul as “a passenger being irate.” However, a video released afterward by the Metro Airport Authority shows Paul being escorted by an airport official to a small glass cubicle while being watched by authorities, and at no time does he appear to be irate.

“It is our protocol to refer to law enforcement when a passenger refuses to complete the screening process,” explained a TSA official. Passengers who refuse to comply with security procedures are denied access to the secure gate area. In this case, Paul was escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement, according to the TSA.

Sounds like an arrest and detainment to me.

Hours later, the senator was re-booked on a subsequent flight and re-screened without incident.

His father, Ron Paul shortly released a statement to the press vowing that, as president, he would eliminate the TSA. "The police state in this country is growing out of control," he declared. "One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors, and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities. The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe.”

Truer words were never spoken. If this kind of thing can happen to a United States Senator, of all people, surely the rest of us miserable peons are in a world of trouble in the United Police States of America.

When everyone no matter what is a terrorist suspect, including those who are obviously not, we should rightly and properly suspect that it’s the United States government, and TSA that are the real terrorists.

Lobbyist or Consultant: Distinction Without Difference

Mitchell Delk, the newly installed chief lobbyist at The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), a.k.a. “Freddie Mac,” in 1999, hired Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, a prominent Washington insider to advise him on how to build support among conservatives on Capitol Hill, reports Reuters recently.

Gingrich’s job was to help strategize the firm’s building of goodwill in Congress by, among other things, holding fundraising events for influential members of House and Senate committees that had oversight of Freddie Mac. Gingrich had expertise in such matters as an architect of GOPAC, one of the Republican Party's most important and influential political action committees.

Was Newt Gingrich a lobbyist for Freddie Mac? Technically, no; at least that is the label Gingrich specifically wanted to avoid in his contract with the firm, so there is a clause in the initial document specifying that he would not do any lobbying. He now claims that he was paid as a “consultant” – more specifically an “historian” -- not a lobbyist.

A “lobbyist” is a person who tries to influence legislation on behalf of a special interest. A “consultant” is a person who gives professional or expert advice. In this case, Newt Gingrich was in reality a consultant employed to give professional expert advice to Freddie Mac lobbyists in regard to how best to influence legislation on Capitol Hill on behalf and in favor of Freddie Mac.

Lobbyist or consultant – here it was manifestly a distinction without a difference. Newt Gingrich was paid a total $1.8 million under two separate contracts between 1999 and 2008 to advise Freddie Mac’s chief lobbyist and his lobbying team about how best to influence Congress. He taught the lobbyists how to lobby.

Gingrich was part and parcel of that lobbying team right up until the U.S. Treasury placed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae under conservatorship after the firm sustained $14.9 billion in losses when the U.S. housing market crashed. In short, Freddie Mac played a major role in the subprime lending crisis causing the U.S. housing market to implode, and Newt Gingrich was involved in the mess up to his eyeballs.

Gingrich's campaign admitted last year that part of his job was to help Freddie Mac build bridges to conservatives. His contract stated that he would work with Delk and other Freddie Mac officials, i.e. lobbyists, on "strategic planning and public policy," as well as contribute to “corporate planning and business goals."

He joined Delk’s government affairs department at Freddie Mac right at the very time the firm was actively hiring several former members of Congress and congressional aides for his lobbying team. It was when conservative Republicans in Congress were seeking regulations to rein in the profits of government-sponsored lenders such as Freddie Mac.

Delk successfully opposed such regulation attempts by hiring dozens of outside consultants, including Newt Gingrich, and spending as much on lobbying as many major corporations. His lobbying team came under investigation by the FEC in 2003, and Freddie Mac was found to have improperly used corporate resources to put on 85 fundraising events that raised about $1.7 million for federal candidates, a majority of them Republicans.

In 2006, Freddie Mac agreed to a $3.8 million settlement for violating federal election rules, the largest civil fine the FEC had ever levied. In 2007 the housing market crashed when too many un-creditworthy homeowners given generous mortgage terms by Freddie Mac and other lenders began defaulting on their loans. And the rest is history.

The painful irony now is Newt Gingrich’s pitiful characterization of his job with Freddie Mac as an "historian." It’s laughable to say the least. The lobbying team at Freddie Mac was hardly interested in the subject of history in 1999 when the boss hired Newt Gingrich, the consummate Washington insider. It wasn’t history they sought; no, it was much more about how to get influence on Capitol Hill.  

It was about influence peddling -- lobbying, consulting and influence peddling;  in this case it’s all the same – a distinction without a difference.

Newt Gingrich: Evangelical Space Cadet

Newt Gingrich is often described as the smartest most intelligent man in the room as compared to his rival running mates on the debate stage, however, if this is so, it’s a mystery to me how he can come up with some of the dumbest must unintelligent ideas I’ve ever heard.

Most of the candidates, with the refreshing exception of Dr. Ron Paul, feel obligated to pander to the evangelical religious right with their pious anti-gay and family values positions. Gingrich does all of that too but then goes far beyond any semblance of rational hyperbole with inane attempts to please his Bible thumping constituents.

Lately, for example, the Newt has been on what he calls an “anti-religious-bigots” jag.

The standard dictionary definition of the term “bigot” refers to a person who is utterly intolerant of anyone different than himself, usually in regard to physical appearance, such as skin color, cultural practices or beliefs. Thus, “bigot” is often correctly applied to uncompromising religious people who vilify and want to discriminate against those who do not conform to their standards of religious morality.  

Newt Gingrich, for example, fits the dictionary definition of a religious bigot, but being the slippery tongued disingenuous politician that he is, he likes to turn that definition around one hundred and eighty degrees to the opposite so that a “bigot” in his fraudulent lexicon is the one who won’t conform to his personal religious ideas, and perhaps objects to being imposed upon by them, especially in the name of government.

Government in America is supposed to remain neutral in matters of religion. Gingrich knows this but has taken the liberty to turn that proposition around on its ear by asserting that government officials who adhere to religious neutrality as they are supposed to do are anti-religious-bigots. That has been his incredulous position in the last several debates.

Gingrich declared in South Carolina: “One of the key issues is the growing anti-religious bigotry of our elites and if you get a chance, if you go to newt.org, my campaign site, there's a fifty four page paper there on the balance of power, putting the judiciary back in its proper role and eliminating dictatorial religious bigots such as Judge Biery in San Antonio…,” (who issued a ruling against organized public school prayers at graduation ceremonies.) “Now, we don't have speech dictatorship in America by anti-religious bigots, period.”

During the last Florida debate, Gingrich ranted: “Third, one of the reasons I’m running is there has been a war on religion, particularly on Christianity in this country, and I frankly believe it’s important to have leadership that says, enough, we are given the right for religious freedom, not religious oppression by the state.”

You see, according to the Newt, Judge Biery is an anti-religious-bigot for not allowing a public school function to be taken over by Christian prayer. There is a war on Christianity in America being waged by anti-religious-bigots who object to government sponsorship of his Christian religion.

The proper role of the judiciary is to support his religious beliefs. Any jurist who refuses to do that is an anti-religious-bigot. So he’s going to reform the judiciary by getting rid of anti-religious-bigot judges who have the temerity to enforce the First Amendment Establishment Clause. Religious freedom in the United States of America is limited to Christianity, period.

Now these are pretty dumb ideas, for sure, but it gets even worse. It seems that the ultra-right-wing evangelical fanatic Newt Gingrich is also a dedicated and fanatical space cadet. If elected president this so-called fiscally conservative Tea Party Republican vows to spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in a “bold vision” to put an American colony on the Moon by 2020.  

Campaigning (i.e. pandering) on Florida’s “Space Coast,” last Wednesday, Gingrich made no apologies for his admittedly “grandiose ideas” on space. “I accept the charge that I am an American and Americans are instinctively grandiose,” declared the Newt, referring to a proposal he made early in his career, which called for American residents of the moon to petition for statehood when they reached a population of 13,000.

Gingrich admitted on Wednesday that the proposition was “the weirdest thing I’ve ever done,” but said he was still a proponent of the plan. “I will, as president, encourage the introduction of the ‘Northwest Ordinance’ for space to put a marker down that we want Americans to think boldly about the future, and we want Americans to go out and study hard and work hard and together we're going to unleash the American people to build the country we love,” he said.

Businessman, Mitt Romney mocked the proposal as prohibitively expensive and outrageous, but Newt was undaunted, contrasting himself to Romney: “Here's the difference between romantics and so-called practical people, I wanted every young American to say to themselves, ‘I could be one of those 13,000, I could be a pioneer.’” Americans should feel “part of a generation of courageous people who do something big and bold and heroic.”

The Newt doesn’t want to stop at a mere 13,000 member Moon colony and statehood for his Moon inhabitants. He also has his sights set firmly upon Mars. “By the end of 2020, we will have the first continuous propulsion system in space capable of getting to Mars in a remarkably short time, because I am sick of being told we have to be timid and I am sick of being told we have to be limited in technologies that are 50 years old,” Gingrich enthused.

If he is so smart, why has he dismissed the simple truth that there is nothing on the Moon or Mars that people want, at least nothing worth the trouble and expense to go after now. President Kennedy launched the Moon expeditions for the sole purpose of proving that it could be done. Well, it was done alright, and for the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, the American people have nothing whatsoever to show for it save a lot of worthless bragging rights.  

This is why Newt Gingrich, and other fanatical evangelical space cadet minded politicians shouldn’t be allowed to represent much less govern people here on planet earth.

They’re just too damned “smart” for our sake.

Kiddie Porn Punitory

The U.S. Supreme Court last November declined to hear an appeal examining whether a person convicted of possessing child pornography can be forced to pay the full amount of restitution to a child victim depicted in the seized images even though not responsible for the initial crime.

The case arose out of a federal undercover sting operation on an Internet chat room believed to be used by pedophiles. A subsequent raid caught a defendant named Monzel in the net along with more than 800 images of child pornography on his computer. He was convicted of possessing the material and sentenced to a 10 year prison term.

Thirty children were identified by experts from among the pictures, three of whom, including a nine-year-old victim named “Amy,” filed requests for restitution under a law, known as Section 2259, passed by Congress directing the courts to order defendants convicted for crimes involving sexual exploitation of children to pay restitution to cover the “full amount of the victim’s losses.”

This punitory damages law has resulted in a wide variety of decisions within the federal judiciary over the question as to exactly what Congress intended. Amy’s lawyers requested that the judge order Monzel to pay Amy restitution in the sum of $3,263,758, even though he had nothing to do with her sexual abuse.

So the question is: should someone guilty of possessing child pornography be subject to the same potential multimillion-dollar restitution penalty as the criminal who actually physically abused the child, recorded the abuse, and distributed the resulting illicit images?

One federal district judge in Florida ordered a defendant convicted of possessing six images of a child victim to pay her full restitution totaling $3,680,153 even though the man had nothing to do with her abuse. Several other courts have similarly ruled that mere possession of illegal images can make a defendant liable for the full cost of a child victim’s injuries, including all the underlying sexual assaults and abuse.

But other federal courts in Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania have declined to order any restitution at all in situations where the defendant merely possessed pictures. These decisions hold that there must be evidence showing that a defendant’s conduct in possessing the illicit images was a proximate cause of the child’s injuries.

A California federal court ordered $3,000 in restitution under the law; a Virginia court, $4,500; an Indiana court, $5,448; and a Georgia court, $12,740. A Washington judge ordered $1,000 for each of 65 photos found in the defendant’s possession -- $65,000 in restitution.

Child victim advocates insist that the law requires anyone convicted of any involvement with child pornography including mere possession of pictures must be forced to pay the full amount of the child’s damages resulting from the abuse. The law should be interpreted as a powerful deterrent to pedophiles and to undercut the flourishing international trade in images of child sexual abuse, they argue.

Paul Cassell, a Utah law school professor, claims that “Congress broadly commanded that district courts must award restitution in every single case for the full amount of the victim’s losses.

More reasonable minds, including those in the Obama administration, disagree, arguing that restitution should be commensurate only with harms caused by the particular defendant. An overly broad enforcement of the law raises constitutional issues about fairness, due process, and excessive punishment, they reason.

The law doesn’t specify exactly how judges are to decide the question. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the comprehensive restitution approach, the Second; Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have favored more targeted restitution tied to proof that actions by the defendant were the proximate cause of injuries.

Amy’s lawyers have filed more than 700 requests just in the U.S. for full restitution of more than $3 million. “I am being exploited and used every day and every night somewhere in the world by someone,” Amy said in a 2009 victim impact statement. “How can I ever get over this when the crime that is happening to me will never end? How can I get over this when the shameful abuse I suffered is out there forever and being enjoyed by sick people?”

The judge in Amy’s case rejected her request, ruling that the law authorized compensation for the harm caused by Monzel, not the total harm she suffered. He set the amount at $5,000. The appeals court reversed the $5,000 award and remanded the case back to the judge to determine an appropriate level of restitution that reflected the actual harm done to Amy by Monzel’s possession of the images of her being abused.

Her appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, as indicated above, was denied.

Few reasonable people would argue least of all me that victims of child sexual abuse were injured and deserve damages for their suffering and humiliation – from the criminal; the abuser who caused the damage – not from those who merely looked at the pictures.

To argue or hold otherwise is patently insane. It’s like holding a person fully responsible for a murder for merely looking at a picture of the victim after the fact. By that reasoning the police who seized the porn pictures, the prosecutor, judge, jury, experts and anyone else who looked at them during the trial process should likewise pay the full amount of restitution.  

This is just another example among many of the collective irrational hysteria over “thought crimes” which cause no harm whatsoever to victims, but somehow offend the Authority’s sense of morality.

The idea of forcing someone to pay punitory damages in the millions of dollars for merely looking at pictures of criminal activity – kiddie porn punitory -- crosses way over the line of what is right and what is wrong.

Rape Baby

Mike Huckabee hosted his Fox News Channel talk show recently featuring a nice attractive young woman who was born the product of a rape. Her message, supported avidly by Huckabee, was how wonderful it was to be alive, how grateful she was that her mother didn’t decide to abort her, and why every woman who is raped and impregnated by her rapist should bring the product of the rape to term.   

I happen to like Mike Huckabee. He seems like a genuinely good hearted well meaning and kind spirited human being. I don’t agree with his religiously oriented position on abortion and other politically charged social issues but I like him as a person none-the-less.   

And I’m happy for the woman who was born the product of a rape. I’m glad she survived. She is understandably grateful for her mother’s sacrifice, just as we all should be for the sacrifices of our parents.  Her life is just as valuable and important now as yours or mine.  

But all of that is frankly beside the point. I consider myself just as “pro-life” as they are. Anti-abortion advocates do not own a monopoly lock on the concept of “pro-life” just because they have appropriated that term for their political causes.

The anti-abortion zealot’s are no more concerned with the value of “life” than me or anyone else, especially those of us who hold that the concept of liberty includes a woman’s right to control her own body and her own capacity for reproduction.  

In fact, I have concluded long ago after much attention and study to the issue that it is not so much the matter of “life” that the anti-abortion proponents are concerned about as it is their desire to force their religious values upon the lives of everyone. It is not enough for them to follow their own consciences as to whether or not to reproduce themselves in their own lives; they want to force their personal life choices upon others.

Of course, that is one of the biggest problems with the Republican Party over the last several decades. All of the candidates must satisfy a so-called “pro-life” litmus test, and if they fail that test, their chances of securing a presidential nomination are next to nil.

The major consequence of that is the fact that a substantial majority of rational people in America believe in fundamental liberty and a woman’s right to choose. We simply don’t want to be governed by the right-wing evangelical’s religion. It scares us. This situation makes it much more difficult for Republicans, who might otherwise espouse good political ideas, to be elected president.

Which brings me back to Mike Huckabee and the new documentary movie he’s been touting to his flock of religious conservatives called “The Gift of Life,” about the story of the aforementioned “rape baby,” and her purportedly “powerful” anti-abortion message.

The premiere of the film last December before the Iowa caucuses was attended by all four of the presidential candidates representing the most ultra of the ultra-right-wing faction of the Republican Party -- Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum – each of whom boasted and pitched their conservative credentials to the assembled crowd for votes.   

Santorum garnered the biggest applause line when he quipped against his competitors: “I have some problems with some of the folks running for office these days when they say, ‘I believe life begins at conception.’ That’s like, I say, ‘I believe the sun rises.’” “Why would you say you believe something that’s a fact?” he asked rhetorically.

Newt Gingrich had spoken just minutes earlier in favor of a congressional bill that would define personhood as beginning at conception, an idea which was seemingly not extreme enough to satisfy Mr. Santorum.  

The fact is, however, that Gingrich, Santorum, and all the rest of them are blinded by religion and therefore badly mistaken in this regard. Life most certainly does not begin at conception. Not even the Bible, which is silent on the matter of abortion, supports that assertion.

Life is an ongoing continuum which began on Earth billions of years ago, and conception is merely one stage in the process. Every human egg and sperm is alive and has only to unite in order to keep a particular line going.

A woman produces hundreds of eggs within her reproductive lifetime; a man millions of sperm. It is therefore entirely a matter of random chance that any one of us became a product of that process. Chance determined the timing of our parent’s coital activity which resulted in our conception. Chance determined the selection of the one particular egg out of many which was present on that occasion. Chance determined the single sperm cell out of millions which happened to unite with that egg.

The odds against any one individual surviving are enormous. Had a different sperm cell succeeded on that same occasion, the product would not have been you or me, but a different individual entirely. There was no magic moment intended by God; just random chance as is the case with the reproduction process of every other species of animal and plant on planet Earth.

We are all extraordinarily lucky to be here – not just the “rape baby.” It’s as though each of us has won the multi-million dollar lottery. For every one of us who survived the ordeal, millions more have died and were discarded by nature in the process. Nature discards many lives – inevitably all lives – in the ongoing continuum of life.

Why are the religious conservatives; Huckabee, Gingrich, Santorum, and the rest of them not concerned with all these other discarded lives? The answer to that question is that it is not the life they care about but their religion and the importance to them in forcing it upon everyone.

They aren’t concerned with the life of a woman who has been raped.  They want to force her to carry the spawn of the rapist inside her. They don’t mind if she feels that she is being raped again and again every day of her life thereafter, not only during the pregnancy, but until the day she herself dies. They don’t care about her husband or father or other loved one who would be forced also to witness her anguish.

They don’t worry about the lives of victims; their only concern is religion. They are more concerned with an imagined afterlife than the fact of your life and my life. It is that profound irrationality that leads them to conclude that the spawn of a rapist is more important than the life of a victim.

What’s Wrong With Moderate?

The astounding results are being tallied right now as I write this post. Newt Gingrich has clearly won big in the State of South Carolina. This, I fear, is going to make the Newt’s already bulging head swell to hydrocephalic proportions. His penchant for unbridled grandiosity will magnify well beyond insufferable to the point of unbearable in the coming days and weeks.

Much of the credit is due to Newt’s two successful debate performances during which he fed his hungry Obama hating audience the all ultra-right-wing evangelical socially statist  pabulum they love to hear.  

He also got a huge assist right at the beginning of the last debate from John King, the CNN moderator, who started the contest with the stupidest and most irrelevant question I have ever heard in a presidential debate: “Do you want to talk about your ex-wife’s infidelity allegations against you?”

Not surprisingly, Gingrich blasted that puff ball out of the park and got a standing ovation in the bargain. The audience was his from that point on. Their fervid emotional hatred for the left-leaning mainstream media overwhelmed and blinded them to any semblance of sober and rational judgment. And they carried that hot emotional response right on through into the primary voting booths.

Newt Gingrich likes to paint his major rival, Mitt Romney, over and over again as a “Massachusetts moderate,” as if that’s a bad thing, but I ask you: what’s wrong with moderate? What is wrong with moderation in politics as well as in life?

Obviously, the alternative to a political moderate is a political extremist. Newt Gingrich is therefore admittedly a political extremist. His views are extreme. His politics are extreme. Both he and Rick Santorum are political right-wing-ultra extremists; war mongers; interventionists; social statists; and religiously oriented tyrants by any definition of those terms.  

Do the Republican’s really believe that they can successfully run a right-wing political extremist against Barack Obama in the general election?

Some hard core right-wingers like to think that Obama is a leftist extremist, but next to Newt Gingrich, Barack Obama looks like an attractive moderate. Hell, next to the Newt, he looks like the soul of moderation. And on top of that, Barack Obama, at least, appears to be a nice guy, an amiable fellow, which is a hallmark of personal moderation.  

Newt Gingrich admitted in an interview just recently that if the presidential election were a popularity contest he would lose because he is not perceived as a nice guy. He apparently knows too well that he comes across as a mean spirited, puffed up, angry, old white man; the kind of person who disdains moderation in all its forms.

I have some news for Mr. Gingrich: presidential elections are definitely popularity contests of the first order.  

Contrast the Newt with Mitt Romney, who seems like a nice guy. He doesn’t get mad. He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t become vicious. He just remains steady, intelligent, capable, caring, even keeled, rational, and likable. What’s wrong with that?

If there is one thing that irritates me with Mitt Romney it’s that he won’t own up to being a moderate. He’s a moderate, and that’s a good thing. He should make the most of it. Moderation is the stuff that will beat Barack Obama in the general election.

So when the likes of Newt Gingrich despairingly call him a “moderate,” Romney should answer them simply and concisely: “Yes, I’m a moderate; I will govern as a moderate conservative. Do you want the alternative? Do you want an extremist? If that’s what you want, then go ahead and vote for Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, and Michelle Bachmann – the unelectable political extremists of the Republican Party.”  

Mitt Romney didn’t lose in Iowa and South Carolina because he’s a moderate. It wasn’t his tenure and success at Bain Capitol, or his reluctance to disclose his taxes that did him in.  And it wasn’t Gingrich’s skill at the debates either. He lost because he’s a Mormon, and most of the ultra-right-wing evangelical Christian bigots in those two states simply will not bring themselves to vote for a Mormon, even if it means Obama will be re-elected president.

A Mormon trying to pander himself to those types as someone he’s not is going to lose their vote and that is what happened in those Bible thumping states. If he would only assert that his conservative moderation is what’s necessary to win the general election, and start to paint Gingrich and Santorum as the statist political extremists they are, he’d revive his candidacy in my opinion.

But when it comes to the ideal of moderation in politics as opposed to extremism, Ron Paul is clearly the winner hands down. Of the remaining candidates, Romney comes in second by comparison, even though the blood thirsty ultra-right-wingers of the Republican Party call Paul’s politics extreme.

To that nonsense, I can only say:

Since when is the concept of liberty extreme?

Since when is the idea of sound money extreme?

Since when is the notion of thrift in government extreme?

Since when is advocacy for world peace extreme?

Since when is non-intervention; non-aggression; and non-violence extreme?

Since when is respect and tolerance for the rights of all extreme?

What’s wrong with moderate?

Newt Feeds Raw Meat to Snarling GOP Big Cats

Thursday, January 19, 2012

“South Carolina in the Revolutionary War had a young 13-year old named Andrew Jackson. He was sabered by a British officer and wore a scar his whole life. Andrew Jackson had a pretty clear-cut idea about America’s enemies: Kill them,” Newt Gingrich expounded to a standing ovation and thunderous applause at Monday night’s Republican Party presidential debate in South Carolina.

The Daily Beast described the line as “a killer rhetorical blow.”

Fox News political pollster analyst Frank Luntz called it “the best line of the entire debate. Those kinds of statements are what propelled Gingrich to the leader of the pack back in December, until Mitt Romney’s super PAC took him down. I think you’ll see some movement from this debate.”

“Gingrich’s performance was epic,” gushed The Daily Caller website in a story headlined Newt delivers potentially game-changing performance. “It very well may have been the single best performance during any debate in the current cycle.”

“[A] dazzling success that drew an unprecedented standing ovation and could propel him back into close contention for the nomination,” declared Newsmax.com. By Tuesday afternoon, Gingrich's performance was receiving kudos from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, who admitted to jumping out of his chair on several occasions while watching.

“It was everything that the establishment Republicans don’t want to hear and don’t want to see,” said Limbaugh. (Yes and probably a majority of the general electorate as well, I think.) “I have to say I think it was the best debate yet. It was Newt’s night, but they all did well,” Limbaugh concluded. “Obama doesn’t stand a prayer, if Newt were the nominee . . . in the debates.”

Most Republicans, especially the bible thumping evangelical Christians amongst us, just love to watch and listen to their political Authority screaming and banging the podium while dishing up raw red rhetorical meat about killing our enemies and waging endless wars. That always brings them to their feet accompanied by loud cheers, shrill whistles, and wild applause. Newt Gingrich knows exactly how to serve it up to them.  

The same ravenous crowd hissed and booed the libertarian candidate, Rep. Dr. Ron Paul, when he implored his Party to bring the troops home, dismantle the 900 or so military bases abroad, stop all the mindless killings and endless wars.

Many Americans today – predominately evangelical right-wing Republicans -- are downright bloodthirsty when it comes to perceived and imagined enemies of what they think of as our “exceptional” nation. It’s the reason why the United States of America is so utterly despised and reviled by rational people all around the world.

America’s war mongers have forgotten the hard lessons of Vietnam and all the other murderous killing fields in our shameful militaristic historical past.

Newt Gingrich, especially, calls himself a devout Christian, and so do most, of not all, of his admirers, yet they are so quick to forget the central message of their own God, and his alleged representative on Earth, Jesus Christ, who reportedly exhorted God’s commandment: “Thou shalt not kill” (Ex: 20) and said, “Ye have heard that it has been said: Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” (Matt: 5)

“Kill them,” proclaims Newt, and the crowd goes wild. “No, we must find a way to stop the killing,” reasons Dr. Paul, and the crowd cat-calls him. They don’t want peace; they want war! They want to spend America’s blood and treasure on killing adventures all over the globe.

And while we’re at it, let’s have the poor children, especially the black skinned ones, picking up after their more fortunate peers at school while the rich ones look down at them, play football, and otherwise enjoy their leisure time, opines the Newt.

Asked by debate moderator Juan Williams whether he could understand why his comments that “black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps” and that “poor kids lack a strong work ethic” and perhaps should “work as janitors in their schools” were insulting to African-Americans, Gingrich dismissed the notion out of hand. “No, I don’t see that,” he said smugly, again to wild applause.

You see, that’s Newt’s solution to the flagging economy: put the black school children to work in their schools instead of the unionized janitors. The crowd loved it. “Well, first of all, Juan, the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history,” Gingrich declared, to more thunderous applause. “… It just lit up the audience, and they continued to applaud right into the commercial break,” said Luntz:

Gee, I don’t agree much with Barack Obama’s economic policies either, but I surely didn’t know that one of his responsibilities was to put people on food stamps. I thought that policy was formulated long before Obama became president, and there have been plenty of people on food stamps ever since, with Republican and Democrat presidents alike.

Hey, I always like to give credit when credit is due, and the truth of the matter is that Newt Gingrich is a pretty good debater – a lousy leader; poor candidate, mean spirited, and unlikable human being -- but a pretty good debater. That’s about as far as his political attributes go. He might possibly best Barack Obama in a one on one policy wonk style debate but Barack Obama would make mince meat out of Newt Gingrich in a general presidential election.

Newt Gingrich is simply not electable. He was recently described, and I think rightly, accurately, and humorously so, by one Republican Party pundit as: “an angry little attack muffin.”

He came in a distant fourth in the Iowa caucuses and fifth out of a field of six in the New Hampshire primary race, yet now, after just one admittedly decent debate performance in South Carolina, he has the nerve to urge his fellow rivals, Rick Santorum (who beat him in both contests)  and Rick Perry, to get out of the race so that he can become the so-called conservative alternative to front runner Mitt Romney.

"So I am respectful that Rick has every right to run as long as he feels that's what he should do, but from the stand point of the conservative movement, consolidating into a Gingrich candidacy would in fact virtually guarantee a victory on Saturday," Gingrich boasted in Florence S.C. after the debate. "And I'd be delighted if either Perry or Santorum wanted to do that."

Gingrich added that the reason conservatives should coalesce around him and not Santorum is because he knows how to design a national campaign. "I actually know how to set up a conservative alternative to Obama in a way that will be very, very effective and very strategic. And I don't think Santorum can do any of that. Again, it's not because he isn't a nice guy. He doesn't have any of the knowledge for how to do something like this."

According to Newt, nobody has much knowledge about anything except him.

"I'm a friend of Newt's, he's a good man, but the idea that someone who is 0 and 2 in races is that I am hurting him. Yeah I'm hurting him. I'm beating him. That's the difference," Santorum retorted.

For once, Rick Santorum has said something I can agree with. Newt Gingrich is great at the job of throwing raw meat to the ravenous crowds. He’s not so great at being a leader or even getting himself elected.