Please "enjoy" his whole piece wherein he repeats the smear that Ms. Fluke "demands to be paid for her sex life," refers to those of us who have fought back as "the blacklisting crowd" emerging from our "Stalinist caves" (that mixed metaphor is rich,) and repeatedly berates the young woman "for her obnoxiously intolerant behavior when it comes to the free speech of others."
I really am not making this up. It's not from the Onion.
So, all you "Stalinist" loons, put your "blacklisting" hats on and let him know how sorry you are at jlpa1@aol.com
It's understandable, I suppose, that Gingrich would be trying to beat Rick "Crazy-Pants" Santorum at his own game. After all, Santorum's star seems to be rising with the GOP base in direct proportion to his widening orbit away from both reality and decency.
But, two of Newt's recent statements are particularly unbelievable:
Defeating President Obama is now"a duty of national security" because "he is incapable of defending the United States."
"At a campaign event in Suwanee, Georgia, the former House Speaker told supporters that he would bring back cheaper gas because "you can’t put a gun rack on a Volt."
Although CPAC 2012 was predictably depressing (coverage HERE and HERE) and largely represented the worst that the elites who have taken control of the "conservative" movement have to offer, there was one development about which I had to smile...
"You're probably getting the impression by now that Ron Paul thinks that pretty much everything the federal government does is unconstitutional. That's because Ron Paul thinks that pretty much everything the federal government does is unconstitutional."
Yesterday, I wrote that I thought Rep. Bachmann's handling of the news that her Iowa campaign Chairman, Kent Soreson, had defected to the Ron Paul camp was "crazy and conspiratorial." I resisted the urge to declare that I believed it to be an outright lie. However, Mike Enos, Bachmann's political director in Iowa, issued a denial that nearly seemed to do just that:
"I can say unequivocally that Kent Sorenson’s decision was, in no way financially motivated," Enos said in his statement. "While I personally disagree with Kent’s decision, and plan to stay with Michele Bachmann because I truly believe in her, I cannot, in good conscious watch a good man like Kent Sorenson be attacked as a 'sell-out.'"
Despite his stated intention of remaining with her campaign team, he later resigned. This seems to indicate that he was purged from the campaign for insisting on rational truth.
Rep. Bachmann is, unsurprisingly, doubling down:
"No one else knows about that conversation other than Kent Sorenson and myself."
It's extremely implausible that Bachmann would not have revealed this conversation to her team immediately to begin planning damage control. The reaction of Enos and his subsequent break from her team expose not only Bachmann's executive inability but, also her apparent mental instability.
The Ron Paul camp insists her claim is fiction. Paul himself is quoted by KCAU:
"He called up and asked if he could join us and I said 'That's a great idea!' He's somebody I've known for a long time and we've helped him in the past."
Sorenson appeared on CNN to declare that the alleged conversation "never happened."
I am no fan of Ron Paul. I find him absurd. But, Bachmann is coming out of this looking both desperate and delusional.
With four days to go before the Iowa Circus, I expect this all to get even more entertaining.
"In a humiliating climb-down for a man used to getting his way, the billionaire today announced he would not moderate the debate in Iowa at the end of the month.
"It is very important to me that the right Republican candidate be chosen to defeat the failed and very destructive Obama Administration, but if that Republican, in my opinion, is not the right candidate, I am not willing to give up my right to run as an Independent candidate," he said."
Am I the only one waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Taking a page from Paddy Chayefsky, Herman Cain has actually finally channeled Howard Beale. Literally. Speaking to a gathering of "young Republicans" in Atlanta,Ga. today, Mr. Cain told the audience he decide to run President of the United States after God told him to. This is not parody.
"I prayed and prayed and prayed. I’m a man of faith, I had to do a lot of praying for this one, more praying than I’d ever done before in my life. And when I finally realized that it was God saying that this is what I needed to do, I was like Moses. 'You’ve got the wrong man, Lord. Are you sure?'"
"...what distinguishes crises like this one from typical recessions is household debt. When the financial markets collapsed, household debt was nearly 100 percent of GDP. It’s now down to 90 percent. In 1982, which was the last time we had a big recession, the household-debt-to-GDP ratio was about 45 percent.
That means that in this crisis, indebted households can’t spend, which means businesses can’t spend, which means that unless government steps into the breach in a massive way or until households work through their debt burden, we can’t recover. In the 1982 recession, households could spend, and so when the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates and made spending attractive, we accelerated out of the recession.
The utility of calling this downturn a “household-debt crisis” is it tells you where to put your focus: you either need to make consumers better able to pay their debts, which you can do through conventional stimulus policy like tax cuts and jobs programs, or you need to make their debts smaller so they’re better able to pay them, which you can do by forgiving some of their debt through policies like cramdown or eroding the value of their debt by increasing inflation."
So, we who have studied the ebb and flow of large interconnected financial systems keep beating the drum behind the refrain that "aggregate demand has collapsed."
Of course central monetary solutions and state investment are required. However, there is simply no arguing with the incredibly powerful and intellectually staggering arguments of the Republican opposition:
"It's Socialist to keep lead out of toys! Freedom means every one can be a millionaire but only if millionaires don't pay taxes! Deep Fried Butter for all, electric cars for none!"
I know it has annoyed my contemporaries lately that I have continued to insist that Jon Huntsman would make a decent President. No, I don't support his general prescriptions for what ails us. But, he is not certifiably insane or, worse, willing to deny empirical truth to get donations. In one little tweet today, he not only again proved me correct, he also effectively ended his campaign.
It's not the first time he has rendered himself unattractive to the hardcore GOP base. In May, he said this:
"This is an issue that ought to be answered by the scientific community; I’m not a meteorologist. All I know is 90 percent of the scientists say climate change is occurring. If 90 percent of the oncological community said something was causing cancer we’d listen to them. I respect science and the professionals behind the science so I tend to think it’s better left to the science community -- though we can debate what that means for the energy and transportation sectors."
Jon, you just can't go around anymore not talking crazy in that party.
This is nuts. Michele Bachmann has topped Ron Paul and achieved the electorally meaningless victory of winning the Iowa Straw Poll. There are so many levels on which this is disastrous for the broader Republican brand.
The incredibly paranoid and would-be-funny-if-it-wasn't-true "deather" movement took a hit today. From Al Jazeera:
"Al-Qaeda has confirmed the death of its leader, Osama bin Laden, and said in an online posting that it would continue to launch attacks on the West.
The group said it would not deviate from the path of armed struggle and that bin Laden's blood " is more precious to us and to every Muslim than to be wasted in vain".
The statement was released on forums sympathetic to al-Qaeda and translated by the SITE monitoring service on Friday.
"It [bin Laden's blood] will remain, with permission from Allah the Almighty, a curse that chases the Americans and their agents, and goes after them inside and outside their countries,"al-Qaeda said."
To paraphrase Chevy Chase, "Osama Bin Laden is still dead."
There was a time when I found Alan Keyes' arguments intellectually frustrating. I sometimes found them infuriating. There were even times when I found them downright dangerous. But I have never before found them to be so wildly removed from the realm of reason that my jaw dropped. Apparently, living in the margins these past few years has not done him any favors. This is nuts. He has become a disaster of epic proportions.
