Good for the Soul – Another Republican Falls to Hate-Based Blowback

The Republicans have been in power in too many places for far too long. It’s made them say the most stupid, hateful things and they’re starting to pay the price for it.

In keeping with the theme underlying the McCain-Palin campaign, North Carolina congressman Robin Hayes sought to warm up the crowd for a McCain campaign rally with this zinger:

“Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.”

Hayes later denied he’d said any such thing – until the tapes came out. When he shot himself in the foot, the incumbent Republican was five points ahead of his Democratic rival. Oopsie! Hayes Democratic opponent now leads 51-46.

 

A Message to the Grand Old Party

My dear Republicans.

When this is over it would be a good time to clean house. Time for the grownups to take back the Grand Old Party. It’s supposed to be a conservative party in what may just be the most conservative country in the industrialized world. Conservative, as in conserve, as in preserve.

First things first. From now on, “political freak of nature” won’t be an acceptable credential for high office. You’ve had Bush II, you’ve had Sarah Palin, you’ve had it. What have you got, 60, maybe 80-million citizens who consider themselves Republican? They’re not all bozos, they’re not all incurious, they’re not all rabid ideologues.

You really have to stop pissing in the gene pool. Your anti-intellectualism, this absolute phobia about “elites,” is transforming Republican leadership into a carnival sideshow. You don’t have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find genuine, patriotic Americans.

Being well-educated, well-informed and highly accomplished shouldn’t blacklist a person from the top spots. Understand that your party needs a leader who doesn’t bite when some swindler tells him that deficits don’t matter or who isn’t gullible enough to believe that you can topple a dictator and be in and out in under 90-days at a cost of less than $60-billion. You need a leader who understands that the only thing worse than ‘tax and spend’ politics is ‘spend and borrow’ politics.

Speaking of taxes, try to find a leader who understands what taxes mean to effective government. Maybe you can find one who grasps what Oliver Wendell Holmes meant when he said, “I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.” There must be someone on the GOP shortlist who recognizes that governments need to spend on some things but shouldn’t spend on others like endless wars of whim, especially when they’re spending borrowed money.

Above all else, find someone who doesn’t absolutely cleave to the mysticism of the American myth. Being the first at something is great but it doesn’t permanently endow you with exceptionalism. Go for reality, it won’t bite. And for Christ’s sake get religion out of government.

So run along now, you’ve got some cleaning to do and some trash to take out. Actually, you’ve got a lot of trash to take out.

 

Republican Glad Tidings

Rudy Giuliani seems to have fallen from his perch in the belfry. A New York Times poll indicates Rudy or “The Mayor” as much of the American media now calls him, has plummeted from numbers in the low 30’s down to Mitt Romney territory in the low 20’s. The Rude Man is sick at the moment. His aides say it’s a touch of the flu but I have it on reliable sources he got ill from drinking bad blood.

And the Mad Mormon Romney has been outed by the Daily Kos. For some time now Romney has been peddling the line how he’s down with civil rights issues. He’s reminded anyone within listening range how his daddy, George, marched with Martin Luther King.

In a speech he gave from the George (HW) Bush presidential library, entitled “Faith in America,” Romney threw out this line:

” I saw my father march with Martin Luther King. “

And, later, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Romney let out this one:

“You can see what I believed and what my family believed by looking at our lives. My dad marched with Martin Luther King. My mom was a tireless crusader for civil rights.”

Turns out that was plain old-fashioned, Mormon bullshit. Outed by David Bernstein of ThePhoenix.com, Mitt’s spinmeisters threw themselves into overdrive and claimed that George Romney and Martin Luther King did indeed march together in June. 1963 just not on the same day or in the same city.

Whew. That’s like Romney saying his kids didn’t go to Iraq but were serving America anyway by working on his campaign. This guy is almost as creepy as Count Rudy.

 

One Crazy Sumbitch

Is the Republican presidential frontrunner a genuine sociopath? Here are a few of the common characteristics:

Glibness and Superficial Charm

Manipulative and Conning They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.

Grandiose Sense of Self Feels entitled to certain things as “their right.”

Pathological Lying Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.

Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.

Shallow Emotions When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.

Incapacity for Love

Need for Stimulation Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.

Callousness/Lack of Empathy Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others’ feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.

Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.

Irresponsibility/Unreliability Not concerned about wrecking others’ lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.

Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, rape and sexual acting out of all sorts.

Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.

Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily.

Welcome to the life and times of Rudolph Giuliani, overall still the favourite of Republicans to become the next president of the United States. It’s telling that the one place not in thrall to Giuliani is the one place where his true character is best known – New York City. In its December 17 edition, The New Yorker takes a funny peek at “America’s Mayor”

On Giuliani:

“His goal in life is to spear people, destroy them, to go for the jugular” – Former Mayor Ed Koch

“He is not bound by the truth. I have studied animal life, and their predator/prey relations are more graceful than his.” – Schools chancellor Rudy Crew

“It’s like a cult he’s got there. You can’t work with the guy unless you’re willing to drink the Kool-Aid.” – Police Commissioner William Bratton

“[He] didn’t bring us together, our pain brought us together… We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor.” – Al Sharpton

“He is a small man in search of a balcony” – Columnist Jimmy Breslin

On The Blame Game:

When Giuliani blamed an underling named Jerome M. Hauer for the foolhardy idea of placing the city’s emergency=management headquarters in the World Trade Center, he was confronted with a memo in which Hauer had argued against the site and in favor of a less visible target in Brooklyn.

On Early Rudy:

Q: Who is Leo D’Avanzo? A: The Mob-connected uncle who employed Giuliani’s father as a bat-wielding debt collector.

On Abusing the Rights of Others:

What action by the Giuliani administration was found by the courts to have violated the First Amendment rights of New Yorkers?

(a) Preventing taxi-drivers from assembling for a protest.
(b) Requiring city workers to obtain permission to speak to the press.
(c) Refusing to issue a permit for an anti-police-brutality march.
(d) All of the above, and many more.

Don’t even ask.

On Giuliani’s Vindictiveness:

His legal skirmish with New York magazine over a bus ad touting the magazine as, “possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn’t taken credit for.”

On Judiths:

Judith Regan – carried on an affair with a top city official in an apartment near Ground Zero donated for the use of the relief workers.
Judith Nathan – carried on an affair with a top city official at a house in Southhampton.

On Rudy’s Appointees:

Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik – indicted on sixteen charges, including corruption, mail fraud and tax fraud.
Housing Commissioner Richard Roberts – pleaded guilty to perjury
Housing Development Corporation head Russell Harding – found guilt of embezzlement and possession of child pornography.

But wait, there’s more, so much more but I’ll have to post that later. The point is that Republican presidential frontrunner Rudy Giuliani would be one scary guy as leader of the free world. What’s scarier, however, is that all this background, and more, is public knowledge and yet a lot of Republicans would still support a Giuliani presidency. Heaven help us!

 

As Long as You Confess on Church TV, It’s Okay

Newt by name, newt by nature. The chrubic little salamander, Newt Gingrich, is testing the waters to see if he’d have a shot at the Republican presidential nomination for 2008.

Gingrich, considered the driving force behind the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress, remains very popular among US conservatives, even those who can keep their pants on.

Newt led the charge to impeach Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair. At the time, Repugs were literally gushing with family values indignation, so self-righteous that they spent many times more investigating Clinton than George W. did investigating the 9/11 attacks.

Now before you get into a presidential nomination campaign, common sense dictates that you first clear the decks. You gotta get rid of anything that smells, chuck it over the side, so that one of your rivals won’t make you wear it later.

It turns out that Newt, like Clinton, has a problem with his pants. There was the mini-scandal of his first wife who, while beset by cancer, learned that Newt had taken up with another woman. That woman, in fairness, did become Mrs. Newt II. He did clean that mess up – sort of.

Mrs. Newt II held the title from 1981, the end of Newt I, until 2000, the arrival of Mrs. Newt III. That’s when it came out that Newt had decided to trade up again, this time to current wife, Callista Bisek, a former congressional aide more than 20 years younger than he is.

Before launching his campaign, King Grinch decided to seek absolution in a TV interview with Focus on the Family founder and fundamentalist uber zealot, James Dobson. The way Newt described it, he was plainly the victim of the whole, sorry business:

”There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them,” he said in the interview. ”I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I’m … not proud of.”

Oh, c’mon Newt – just a little bit proud, really, eh? You can still score the young’uns.