Neutered Getrich in Tizzy Fit Over Former Employer Fox's Coverage of Campaign:

Deposed former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is upset with Fox News' biased coverage of his embarrassing presidential campaign. Newt claims Murdoch is at fault because the Auzzie likes the Mormon better than the recent convert to Roman Cotholicism:

“I assume it’s because Murdoch at some point said, ‘I want Romney,’ and so ‘fair and balanced’ became ‘Romney,’ ” Gingrich was quoted as saying. “And there’s no question that Fox had a lot to do with stopping my campaign because such a high percentage of our base watches Fox.”

(Jeremy Peters, NYT, 4-12-12)

Fox, for its part, asserts Nuke'm Getrich is auditioning for a job with CNN. Comedy Central, however, has already identified the failed community college professor as Mayor of the Moon. (I thought I recognized that face!)

It's Hard To Kill Off Evil:

Seventy-one-year-old draft dodger Dick Cheney finally got a heart, according to an aid. The man behind the lies that were used to justify the deaths of thousands in Iraq and the near bankruptcy of the U.S. economy received a heart transplant. It's certain arms manufacturers everywhere are cheering. (See The Washington Post story.)

T-Party Hypocracy:

T-Party members are found of demanding less government in everyone's life, but in Chisago County, Minnesota, whose voters gave Rick Santorum 57 percent of the vote, every man in the recent primary, every man, woman and child received $6,583 in some form of federal benefit in 2009.

While in 1979, 54 percent of benefits went to the bottom fifth, in 2007 only 36 percent reached that group.

As New York Times  reporters Binyamin Appelbaum and Robert Gebeloff point out,

In 2000, federal and state governments spent about 37 cents on the safety net from every dollar they collected in revenue, according to a New York Times analysis. A decade later, after one Medicare expansion, two recessions and three rounds of tax cuts, spending on the safety net consumed nearly 66 cents of every dollar of revenue.

To read more, see the Times article here.

Boiling Your Blood:

While you, Mr. and Mrs. Average American, have seen your wealth go down over the past 25 years, the average congressman has gotten 2 1/2 times richer.

Now, make no mistake, this hasn't occurred because working in congress is so profitable, although no politician ever leaves office poorer than when he enters. The wealth growth has occurred because the demographics of who runs and wins a congressional seat has shifted.

Once upon a time, congress actually had some resemblance to its constituency. At least in terms of the wealth of its members when they entered office. Nowadays the place consists of almost solely of the country club set. And yes, that includes Republicans, who make up the majority in the House. Is it any wonder that their views are identical to those of the Koch brothers?

See The Washington Post article.

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.

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.

Did He? Or Didn't He?

Charges of sexual harassment have surfaced against another Black right-wing, conservative. (Remember Clarence Thomas?) Herman Cain has been busy denying the charges and arguing that he is unaware that any money was given to the two women involved in the charges. Reportedly a five figure payoff was made.

Cain claims liberals are behind the charges, but any one of the people he's currently running against in the Republican primaries has more to benefit. My money's on the Mormon. Can't trust those cult types. (See The New York Times' story.)

Why Is Herman Cain Leading in the Republican Polls?

Unlike Michele Bachmann and Ricky Perry and Mitt Romney, dag gonnit, people jest like him! (Check out the Washington Week podcast.)

I say it's about time we hire a CEO to run this country. Give him a big stock option worth millions, so when he completely screws things up we can fire him and he can buy his own island and afford to hire his own army to guard it. Everybody knows gov't would run so much better if it were run like a company. The CEO could hire and fire whomever he pleases without worryin' 'bout no stupid consensus. Why would you want your gov't to actually try to please people when it should just be doin' the right thing, which is what I want it to do, and to heck with you. Jest as long as we make lots of money so's the CEO can be paid enough to be a part of that top 1 percent.

A CEO, after all is going to look around to see what's unproductive; that is, doesn't bring in sufficient income, and order them to start making the company a profit are he'll close'm down.

Ooops! There goes the military. Our armed forces makes lots of money for the private sector, but they sure don't bring in much, and they're still the largest single part of the federal budget.

More on income inequality:

The Washington Post quotes Erin Currier, project manager with the Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project on the matter today: "The amount of growth of the top 1 percent is shocking. But the piece that is missing is income mobility, and what we see there does not reflect the American dream. We're not seeing equality of opportunity."

The Flat Tax Is the Answer to All Our Problems, Right?

During the past thirty years, the tax on the wealthiest Americans, the top 1 percent, has steadily been reduced. Wealth, Ronny Rayguns promised us, would trickle down.

The truth is that over the past thirty years is that the top 1 percent has seen their wealth double, while the rest of us are still earning the same amount of money. (Thus the key to American productivity: The rich earn more while the workers work harder and earn less.)

(See The New York Times' "Top Earners Doubled share of Nation's Income, Study Finds" explaining the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office.)

And, oh, yes, the flat tax—all the flat tax proposals would result in the richest Americans receiving another tax cut. But that's only fair; they're creating all the wealth, right?

Today's Must Read:

Richard Cohen tries to come to terms with OWS in today's Washington Post. Claims by the right that the movement (is it is one) is anti-Semitic prove to be nothing more than a right wing red herring. Cohen travels to the site and can find no evidence, neither can the Anti-Defamation League.

My favorite Cohen analysis follow:

Occupy Wall Street has become an event for its own sake, a destination for the aimless. It is something that occurs on countless iPhone cameras, a tourist attraction with the usual vendors, the usual zaftig young women doing the usual arrhythmic dance, somehow missing the beat of many drums. The nostalgic scent of pot wafts occasionally through the air, and I feel so much younger. This, I’m sure, will bring an end to the Vietnam War.

On a given day, I decide that Occupy Wall Street is about nothing and then I decide it is the Herman Cain campaign in aggregate, just a media event that has captured the flea-thoughts of many Americans. Then I decide it is an incoherent articulation of anger at the institutions that have failed us, including — by way of both self-pity and self-flagellation — the media. It seems, above all, a conspiracy to have left-leaning writers make jackasses of themselves by imparting grave and grand meaning to what is little more than a vast sleepover.

If this doesn't make you laugh, you need your battery checked.

Must Read:

The world is about to reach the 7 billion mark in population (or maybe it already has; it's impossible to know for sure), and the ramifications of the massive population growth witnessed over the past two hundred years can no longer reasonably be ignored.

Mathematical biologist, Joel E. Cohen, head of the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller University and Columbia University, presents the problems we'll face before this century is out in today's New York Times. This is a must read for anyone who believes we should actually have our eyes open.

For an additional story, see Juliet Eilperin's "Population growth taxing planet's resources" in today's Washington Post.

Henry Blodget Explains the OWS:

CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Business Insider, Henry Blodget, posted four interesting charts in an attempt to explain what the Occupy Wall Street folks are angry about:

1. Unemployment is at the highest level since the Great Depression



2. At the same time, corporate profits are at an all-time high





3. Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low.




4. Income and wealth inequality in the US economy is near an all-time high

Who's Herman Cain?

Gail Collins thinks she's able to tell us, or tries to shed some light in today's New York Times. The Herminator is apparently mostly a self-promoting, self-help sort of guy. Kind of a "bait piece" promoter of nose-to-the-grindstone and you-can-be-anything-you-want-even-if-you-have-no-known-abilities sort of person. We all love that. It's the American dream.

One of these days I'm gonna run for president too. As soon as they bring back the Know Nothing Party. I don't know what they stood for, but I guess that's the point.

The Social Contract and the Republican "Class Warfare" Myth:

Elizabeth Warren explains it.

When Warren Buffett Speaks …

We should all listen. Carefully.

Buffett wants to pay more in taxes. He wants most of us to pay less. In plain English, one of the world's richest, most financially successful men lays out the case for a more sensible tax structure in today's New York Times. Is anyone listening? Or are we all waiting for the "Texas miracle" to cure our ills? (See Paul Krugman's op-ed.)

$14 Trillion in Debt: How could this happen? What does it mean?

Zachary Goldfarb puts the situation in clear terms in today's Washington Post. The real problem is greed and stupidity.

The country has enough wealth to make this debt ludicrously small. To start with, the biggest portion of that money is simply owed to ourselves. Trillions are locked up in the mountains of cash private companies posses, including trillions the rich hide or invest overseas in order to avoid paying taxes.

Right-Wing Terrorists:

After the murders in Norway, it's worth considering that here in the U.S. we are more likely to suffer from right-wing terrorists than from the left or Muslims. A recent New York Times' article points out that "(t)he Hutaree, an extremist Christian militia in Michigan accused last year of plotting to kill police officers and planting bombs at their funerals, had an arsenal of weapons larger than all the Muslim plotters charged in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks combined."

The Norway murderer evidently fueled his hatred with right-wing American blogs.