Robert Scheer - Government-Sponsored Sinner

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/government-sponsored_sinner_20111208/

Posted on Dec 8, 2011

By Robert Scheer

Who would have thought that Republican voters would prove so accepting of sin? At least when its committed by a white guy, like the serial philanderer Newt Gingrich, who betrayed not one but two wives while they were enduring serious medical difficulties.

In the latest New York Times/CBS poll of Iowa Republicans, alleged philanderer Herman Cain’s once impressive support shifts to the new front-runner, Gingrich, whose richer history of marital deceit is not a problem even for the self-described evangelical Christian voters who favor him over Mitt Romney by a ratio of 3-1.

It is the first time that I have felt sympathy for a candidate experiencing the prejudice directed at a practicing Mormon. Clearly the ultimate of “squeaky clean” doesn’t cut it for a presidential contender of that faith among Republican Christian “values voters,” even when he is compared with a sexual roué of Gingrich’s considerable magnitude.

Click to read more ...

Matt Welch - Republican Jewish Coalition Bars Ron Paul From Presidential Debate, Saying He's Too "misguided and extreme"

Matt Welch | December 1, 2011

http://reason.com/blog/2011/12/01/republican-jewish-coalition-bars-ron-pau

On Wednesday, Dec. 7, the Republican Jewish Coalition will host a presidential-candidates forumfeaturing Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum. Not invited is the GOP candidate currently polling around third in New Hampshire and second in Iowa: Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). The explanation:

Paul was not invited to attend the RJC's candidates forum because the organization - as it has stated numerous times in the past - "rejects his misguided and extreme views," said [RJC Executive Director Matt] Brooks.

"He's just so far outside of the mainstream of the Republican party and this organization," Brooks said. Inviting Paul to attend would be "like inviting Barack Obama to speak."

Link via the Twitter feed of an approving Jamie Kirchick.

Brooks gave a more detailed critique of Ron Paul back in May:

Click to read more ...

The European Union Times - Obama Issues Ron Paul “Kill Order” As Russia Prepares For War

The European Union Times - 2011-11-30

http://www.eutimes.net/2011/11/obama-issues-ron-paul-kill-order-as-russia-prepares-for-war/

The Federal Security Service (FSB) is reporting today that the “secret letter” sent to Prime Minister Putin by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda contains a warning that United States President Barack Obama has issued an executive-level “kill order” against US Congressman Ron Paul over fears this charismatic politician, who many believe could capture the Republican Presidential 2012 nomination, is about to expose to all Americans what can only be described as the largest mass theft in human history. The “kill order” is a metaphor for silencing down congressman Ron Paul in the mass media as if he doesn’t exist.

According to this report, Prime Minister Noda first became aware of this “kill order” after a private meeting with Obama at last weeks ASEAN Summit meeting in Indonesia when the American President expressed his “unconstrained joy” over the toppling of the Greek and Italian governments in bloodless coups by EU banksters who installed to run these countries unelected former Goldman Sachs executives.   

Not known to many Americans is that the giant global investment firm Goldman Sachs put Obama into office by being its top donor and after winning the Presidency put so many of its former executives into the US government it is known as the “Wall Street Cabinet.”

Click to read more ...

Robert Reich - The Rebirth of Social Darwinism

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Rebirth-of-Social-Darw-by-Robert-Reich-111201-487.html

December 1, 2011 By Robert Reich Social Darwinism offered a moral justification for the wild inequities and social cruelties of the late nineteenth century. If one of the current crop of Republican hopefuls becomes president, and if regressive Republicans take over the House or Senate, or both, Social Darwinism is back. What kind of society, exactly, do modern Republicans want? I've been listening to Republican candidates in an effort to discern an overall philosophy, a broadly-shared vision, an ideal picture of America. They say they want a smaller government but that can't be it. Most seek a larger national defense and more muscular homeland security. Almost all want to widen the government's powers of search and surveillance inside the United States -- eradicating possible terrorists, expunging undocumented immigrants, "securing" the nation's borders. They want stiffer criminal sentences, including broader application of the death penalty. Many also want government to intrude on the most intimate aspects of private life. They call themselves conservatives but that's not it, either. They don't want to conserve what we now have. They'd rather take the country backwards -- before the 1960s and 1970s, and the Environmental Protection Act, Medicare, and Medicaid; before the New Deal, and its provision for Social Security, unemployment insurance, the 40-hour workweek, laws against child labor, and official recognition of trade unions; even before the Progressive Era, and the first national income tax, antitrust laws, and Federal Reserve.

Click to read more ...

Eric Alterman - The Virus of GOP Ignorance

By Eric Alterman, The Nation

Posted on November 23, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153198/the_virus_of_gop_ignorance%3A_why_don%27t_media_protect_us_from_the_lies_spewed_in_the_republican_primary  

It is a symbol of our current political predicament that anytime anyone tells the truth about anything in the contest for the Republican nomination, a new scandal erupts. Newt Gingrich was briefly drummed out of the Republican Party for accurately terming Paul Ryan’s destructive Medicare plan a “radical” step toward “right-wing social engineering.” Jon Huntsman caused virtually the only stir of his all-but-invisible campaign when he admitted to what the Salt Lake Tribune straight-facedly called the “politically dicey belief that climate change is human-caused and needs to be addressed.” And most recently, CBS’s John Dickerson caused a contretemps when a stray e-mail revealed that Michele Bachmann was “not going to get many questions” in the debate the network was sponsoring because “she’s nearly off the charts.”

Being a member of the MSM in good standing, Dickerson was in all likelihood referring to Bachmann’s poll position rather than her approach to reality, and uncharacteristically for this race, they happen to be pretty much perfectly proportional. Bachmann has long been loony, but it has been her poll standing that has determined the treatment she has received from the press.

 

The respectful response of the media to the batshit-crazy statements one hears from the second-tier Republican candidates—candidates who occasionally rise to the first tier and then just as quickly sink down again, having never been serious contenders in the first place—is doing definite damage to this country. How many credulous Americans may have decided to shun the HPV vaccine for their daughters after hearing Bachmann’s nutty suggestion that it causes mental retardation? What of the insistence of that ignorant idiot Herman Cain that the “objective” purpose of Planned Parenthood’s founding was to “kill black babies before they came into the world. It’s planned genocide.” Now we’ve got a new front-runner, Gingrich, who holds, among other crazy notions, that the Obama administration’s “secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did,” when his diseased brain is not focusing on his moronic (and racist) contention that “only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together” the inspiration for Obama’s foreign policies.

Click to read more ...