newt gingrich

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s reaction to high unemployment is creepy.

During an interview with CBS reporter Jan Crawford last week, Romney smirked as he mentioned that unemployment has remained above 8 percent for 39 months. more »

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You'd think Social Security would top the list of subjects for a presidential debate in Florida. How many questions did Wolf Blitzer ask about it during Thursday night's Republican debate in Jacksonville?

Answer: None. The words "Social Security" never passed his lips.

It was almost as if there were a "gentlemen's agreement" among the five people on the stage. And we use that phrase advisedly, since Blitzer sealed the boy's club atmosphere by asking each of the candidates why his wife would make the best first lady.

The candidates did mention Social Security a couple of times, but only in passing and only in the most misleading ways possible. It's too bad there wasn't, oh, a journalist nearby -- one who was inclined to ask follow-up questions.

What was said that night? Rick Santorum and Ron Paul both attacked Newt Gingrich from the right on Social Security. Santorum suggested that the Speaker's proposals, which would cut benefits, were too expensive and would "create a brand new Social Security entitlement."

Not true.

Ron Paul said that Gingrich's claim to have helped cut the federal deficit was false -- which is true. But then he said that the reason it's untrue is because Gingrich "doesn't count the money he takes out of Social Security" -- which is false!

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The GOP presidential candidates continue to play their parts in an implausible story of a world that could never exist, acting out nonexistent conflicts while delivering dialog that insults the intelligence. That's not because they're stupid. It's because they think you are.

It's like watching a low budget science-fiction movie from the fifties: Dr. Strange vs. The Vulture in the Caverns of the Moon. It's badly executed, even by the low standards of its genre, complete with cheap sets, bad special effects and wooden acting.

They're counting on their audience to provide that state of mind which literature professors call "the willing suspension of disbelief."

Three of the candidates are selling an nearly identical story of hardy earth people who are only able to save their planet once they've been freed from taxes and regulations.The fourth, Ron Paul, is offering a different script, a 10,000 Years BC scenario of unparalleled economic savagery.

Sure, Dr. Paul seems like a likable guy. And it's great that he's saying things about war, terrorism, and human rights that nobody else will, including Barack Obama. But he wants to lead us into a blood-drenched, kill-or-be-killed world. (Remember when he was willing to let an injured man die because he hadn't paid his health insurance premium?)

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Bain Capital must seem like a Frankenstein monster to Mitt Romney's campaign. Like Mary Shelley's creature, it's stalking its creator just as he's about to claim the thing he loves most. But Bain Capital—and Bain capitalism—isn't Mitt's creation. It was sewed together from the corpses of dead ideals and shocked into life in Washington's political laboratories.

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‘Tis the season of resolutions. With the new year comes pledges to quit smoking, get out of debt and spend more time with family. Gym memberships jump. Weight Watchers’ profits fatten.

This also happens to be the season of political resolutions. It’s that every-fourth-year event featuring presidential candidates in a contest of campaign promise one-upmanship. more »

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Our lives are defined by invisible wars, wars whose theater of combat is the human imagination. These economic and political wars are waged year in and year out, decade after decade, century after century.

Words are the weapons of choice in these wars, and the corporate-backed radical right adds new ones to its arsenal every year. This year was no different. From "entitlement reform" to "triggers," the corporate oligarchs couched their aggression in decoy language that made it possible for Democrats as well as Republicans to launch them on an unsuspecting public.

But something was different this year. This was the year that the people came up with some words of their own, outside the corporate- and billionaire-funded think tanks of conservatism. For the first time in many years, the right-wing warriors of language ran into heavy resistance. That's an important development that should be celebrated -- and repeated.

War of the Words

The corporatists own the Republican Party, and large swathes of the Democratic Party too. Most Americans disagree with their ambitions, but they've been so good at designing and using these linguistic weapons that the public hasn't had a chance. Major media journalists have used these words as mantras, while too many Democrats have embraced them for their own selfish purposes.

That's why they keep winning so many battles, no matter who's in power.

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Fire all the janitors and make poor kids clean their schools? Zap Korea with an airborne superlaser that's never worked during testing? Ignore global warming and plan to re-engineer the entire planet with untested technology instead? more »

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It wasn’t so much a vote as a proclamation of ideology last Thursday when Republicans filibustered Obama’s nominee to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The rebuff had nothing to do with the person, Richard Cordary, who even more »

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When you call yourself a "historian," you create the implication that you can speak authoritatively about, well, history. But last Friday, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich defied that common sense. more »

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Republican hostage-takers got President Obama to go along with their tax cuts for the wealthy by threatening to raise taxes on the middle class and blocking even modest stimulus funds for our struggling economy. more »

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