Truth or Dare: Are Republicans Serious about Cutting Gov't Spending?

Republicans are campaigning on the federal budget, vowing to cut it, but just how serious are they? George Allen is running for a senate seat in Virginia on the cut spending and reduce taxes theme, but Virginia's economy runs on federal government spending. Some 38 percent of every dollar spent in that state comes from federal taxes. Without the federal government, the Old Dominion would be bankrupt. (See The Washington Post story.)

Allen, who once had aspirations toward the White House, knows this as well as anyone. He knows the voters of Virginia are perfectly aware that "cut the federal budget" is nothing more than code for racist sentiments in southern states.

Newt Gingrich: The Myth, The Man, The BS

Today's Washington Post addresses five myths about the disgraced former Speaker of the House. You remember him: he was the guy who spearheaded the "impeach Clinton" movement for fibbing about the former president's extra curricular marital activities while Nuke'm Getrich was busy doing a staffer while his wife was battling cancer. (And you thought John Edwards held the patent on that category of scumminess.)

My favorite is the first listed: "Gingrich is an academic." It's true that he was once employed as a faculty member at a small Georgian college. But he never produced any academic research. And "conservative political scientist James Q. Wilson … assessed materials for a televised history course Gingrich was teaching as a 'mishmash of undefined terms … misleading claims … and unclear distinctions.'" Sounds like a typical Gingrich speech.

For a City to Shine upon a Hill, Somebody Must Turn on the Lights:

Charles Bow reflects on the nature of American exceptional-ism, the myth that somehow the U.S. is superior to all other nations, due to God's grace. (See The New York Times' op-ed.)

Bow believes that if we want to be exceptional we have to earn it. That wasn't quite true following the end of World War II, when we became exceptional because all the other developed countries that competed with us had been devastated by the world war, and we were the world's banker.

Time Travel the Next Step:

More evidence that the universes tiniest particles can travel faster than the speed of light has come out of the CERN physics lab. Proof awaits further testing, but I'm betting on this tiny horse reshaping the world of physics and ultimately our vision of reality.

This little story is big stuff, folks. (See The Washington Post story, while I go read a real book!)

Nuke Getrich: The Republican Party Brain Trust

Okay, now I get it. I always wondered why the press insisted on calling disgraced former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich the smartest guy in the Republican Party. I mean, he generally appeared to me to have little more intellect than the average college sophomore, spouting a few quickly learned factoids that may or may not have relavence to any given discussion, but now the most important factoid has come out:

The man made $37 million just by selling his political influence over the past eight years! Now that's shear genius! (See The Washington Post story.)

And here I thought the press was just referring to the plethora of shabbily written books the man produced over the years.

Herman Cain Believers:

The New York Times' Charles Blow looks at the Pew Research Center data and discovers that Republican women are the people most likely to believe that Herman Cain is telling the truth with regards to the sexual harassment charges that have been made against.

What the report actually indicates, of course, is that the Cain supporters have chosen to believe what the want to believe is true rather than what the facts indicate. At this point, the facts available to all of us are too murky to have a clear idea about whether or not Cain crossed the line and how many times. One is inclined to believe that if there is this much smoke, surely there must be some fire. But then sexual impropriety assertions directed towards celebrities is quite common.

On the other hand, males in power are often prone to the sort of hubris that leads to this behavior.

What's Worth Reading Today:

Michael Kimmage addresses Adam Kirsch's new book, Why Trilling Matters, in Thursday's New York Times book section and explains the importance of 1950s critic Lionel Trilling:

For literary criticism to have any kind of political application today, literature must first have cultural currency. Here optimists are in the minority. Kirsch’s originality lies in a refusal to equate the existing crisis — literature is “on the verge of default,” he readily admits — with a permanent condition. Contemplating “our unmistakably fragmented literary culture,” Kirsch posits a virtuous circle derived from Trilling’s example. Trilling was “always less concerned with writers than with readers,” he points out, and “less interested in the way novels work than in the way we put them to work in our own lives.” Entertainment is peripheral, if not antithetical, to the true experience of literature, and it is surely less exciting than “the drama of individuals shaping their ideals and morals in reaction to texts.” The critic lives the drama, creating heroic readers in the process, and it is these readers who unite author, text and audience in a prospering literary culture.

Just for the fun of it, I've been watching the 1950s TV western Have Gun, Will Travel recently, and the quoted comments above rang particularly relevant.