Who Are You To Judge?

The Thing Newt Gingrich Doesn’t Get

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Republican Heavyweight Re-Writes Constitutional Power

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Gingrich Writing on Judges is the Kama Sutra of Position Papers: Disturbing and hard to understand

Newt Gingrich is not going to be president, so maybe this is like kicking a guy while he is fat. The former Speaker of the House that was chased out of the position like a Mormon being tarred and feathered has made quiet a splash in this campaign. Hailed as an “idea man,” Gingrich is something of a ethereal creature. Neither smart nor dumb, not liberal or conservative, Gingrich is an enigma. He’s the sleazeball that ran your high school as principle, the foul criminal salesman that sold you a bad Toyota. And now, he wants to arrest and possibly imprison Supreme Court Justices.

His website does plenty to make you feel warm and fuzzy. He even quotes himself at the top of his page on protecting life and religious freedom, before providing a helpful link to a position paper he recently wrote. The topic? Subpoenas for federal judges (including those on the Supreme Court) that make “Anti-American decisions.” Gingrich makes it clear that the legislative and executive branch are completely passive to the rulings of the high court. Gingrich — surely giggling wildly and sipping on powerful brew while penning the 25-page madness — says that a constitutional amendment shouldn’t be required every time the Supreme Court makes a decision that Congress doesn’t like.

According to Gingrich, the Courts are meant to be weak and checked regularly by the executive and legislative branches of our government. But now, judicial activism has made the courts supremely powerful and unbalanced.

Poor, sad Mr. Gingrich. It must be difficult, operating with such an infantile understanding of our government. Normally, I’d spend a tender-thousand words explaining that Newt is a criminally negligent fear-mongering fascist. But instead, I’ll just explain why he is wrong. Here are some myths that Newt-the-no-so-Cute would have you believe about judges:

Myth 1: Other than Constitutional Amendments, the legislative and executive branches are powerless to overturn Supreme Court decisions.
Fact: Members of the legislative branch approve all Supreme Court justices in a lengthy nomination process.

When it comes to Federal judges at all levels, the President can merely nominate an individual. That individual has to be approved by a simple majority vote in the Senate after review by the appropriate boards and commissions. Generally, only Supreme Court Justices are carefully scrutinized. The legislative branch can literally reject ANY federal judge proposed by the President. And by the way, they have, in record numbers.

Myth 2: Supreme Court Justices are sometimes guilty of judicial activism and refuse to interpret the Constitution as written. This leads to progressive, liberal decisions like Roe v Wade.

Fact 2: Judicial activism has done nothing for this country except uphold the civil rights act, overturn separate-but-equal laws and establish anti-trust laws. Judicial activism is a cue-card scare word that ugly whelps like Gingrich throw around to make southerners imagine mandatory abortions and legalized bestiality.

I was going to keep going, but the farther you get into Gingrich’s mind of the law and judges, the less connected you feel with reality. This is a man who’s policy is so reminiscent of McCarthy I hesitated to even use the metaphor until now, because it seemed so obvious.

Sure, the executive and legislative branches should exercise their power to keep judges from running wild,  but what exactly is Gingrich and his Band of Merry Malcontents imagining constitutes a nightmare scenario? Oh, I can see it now: black robed Judge Dredd-types, administering gay-marriages on street corners, confiscating hunting rifles and executing old ladies saying Grace at public restaurants. Yes, liberal activist judges will be the death of us — unless we empower the Attorney General to drag them in for questioning pending charges if they make “controversial” decisions.

Mr. Gingrich. Ahem, Sir Toad. Most of the greatest decisions in the history of law were “controversial.” And I’m going to trust, you know judges, to judge the law. I’ll trust Sir Grinch (or whatever) to ruin the law.

Crazy Doesn’t Die

Madman die, but they get reincarnated as celebrities

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The Other Kim Makes Headlines 6 Feet Under

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Brand New Batch of Problems at the 38th Parallel

 

Crazy doesn’t die, it gets passed on like dormant genetic illness until the proper circumstances arouse it. And North Korean crazy is far from dead, despite the not-so-tragic passing of the Glorious Cartoon Himself, Kim Jong Il. I will not write him the obituary of record, I’ll leave that to the New York Times. But he is dead now, from old age or whatever it is that kills ancient men of startling power in nations far away.

He was a member of the Evil Dudes club. He had a permanent place at the table of the hated, weird oppressors of nations with inconceivably extravagant military parades. They all seem to hate their own people by demanding total obedience and sacrifice while they plunder the treasury and buy solid-gold Lear Jets.

But he is dead and his son is in power now. He is probably already a member of this club. Legacy and whatnot will have surely assigned him a place at the round table of Madness. Good luck, N. Korea. He was a rotten fool and a sorry pimple of a man. Pray for lightning or Chinese Special Forces to strike his boy dead where he stands, because daddy’s boy will be a handful

When you have a moment, look into the sky and remember that Kimy is in no place like heaven. He is the stuff of soil and worm food. Flee, flee while you still can.

Trumped Up, Turned off and Tuned Out

How Donald Trump and compulsive right-wingers gave President Obama a second term.

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Inmates Running the Asylum: Why the madness of Romney, Gingrich, Perry et al will doom the planet

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Failing Upwards: How losing can help the GOP win…and then lose.

 

Jesus, it’s been a while. I never update this damn thing anymore, probably because I write my column weekly in print, and I never had the strength to re-write the rants here. But I need to begin utilizing this tool, and since there isn’t an issue of The Journal for the better part of a month, I’ll be needing an outlet for my work. Most writers are like this: compulsive and insistent about their work. There is a strange kind of fever that comes over, when that moment of inspiration strikes. Like overwhelming sexual arousal or the first drag of a cigarette: you no longer have an option, you simply must.

Donald Trump is a worthless scumbag. Not the best transition, I know, but at least it’s brief and honest. Normally, men like the Donald wouldn’t even warrant more than the occasional scoff and 30 seconds on the nightly news when he goes bankrupt for the 23rd time. But in an election year, the moon is always funny, and strange creatures emerge from the blackness. Trump is one of the creatures, along with the rest of the band of cartoon characters currently trying to suckle from the teet of the right-wing silent majority.

Unemployment is sky high and the mortgage crisis hasn’t finished beating this country to an ugly pulp just yet. By all accounts, President Obama should be on the ropes and the Republicans should have this whole thing locked up by the convention. But they don’t, because there hasn’t been such an epically, deliberately bad cast of candidates in modern memory. Certainly there hasn’t been any group on either side of the aisle as pathetic as the Republican nominees for President. So when men like Donald Trump are being interviewed and considered for the role, or hosting debates, survivalists tend to begin stocking bomb shelters.

Trump is proof that this year you don’t need qualifications, just the right set of lines.

Do you hate President Obama’s entire legislative agenda? Do you question the legality of his birth (and, implicitly his patriotism and his race)? Are you in favor of less taxes (make sure not to get more specific than that)? Congratulations! All you need is a bizarre prejudice, an off-putting demeanor and large quantities of heavy narcotics and you could be the next GOP frontrunner!

With crippling lack of popular support and ugly personal backgrounds nearly every one of these walking nightmares has already disqualified himself on face value alone. And as soon as they open their mouths you’ll find that every one of these fascists holds positions conservative enough to make Barry Goldwater blush. Some of them want to make income tax illegal, successfully reverting the nation to a 1912 budget. Others want to abolish the Department of Education and the EPA.

In particular, the EPA has been the whipping boy of every good Republican in this race. While Rick Perry (a man so unashamedly unqualified to be President that large numbers of his aides are said to be planning a mass suicide before the Iowa caucus) likes to claim that we are actually in the middle of a “global cooling period,” and calls global warming and invention of Al Gore, the rest of the Republicans are tripping over themselves to out-holy-shit each other. Nevermind that the EPA is the brainchild of the Nixon administration (possibly the most recognizable politician for any of the current band of thieving pigs). In fact, Barry Goldwater said of environmental regulation in 1970:

“While I am a great believer in the free-enterprise system,” the Arizona senator said in 1970, “I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean, pollution-free environment.”

That’s Conscious of a Conservative Barry Goldwater. Each candidate seems determined to undermine any Republican agenda previously approved by the general public. The conservationist habits of Teddy Roosevelt are gone for the convenience of offshore drilling. There is an unofficial competition among all the candidates. A competition: Can you Top This?

-Rick Perry proposes a fence the entire length of the boarder, seconding Michele Bachmann. Perry favors militarized weaponry on the fence. Point to Perry.
—Herman Cain proposes ELECTRIFIED fence the length of the boarder. Crocodile, moats and hot-tar still in development. Point to Cain.

-Rick Santorum calls gays “ungodly” and vows to ban gay marriage and reinstate DADT.
—Rick Perry makes his “strong” ad in which he openly criticizes gay men and women currently serving openly in our armed forces. Perry, unaware that insulting the troops is a good way to piss off everybody in the country, apparently is just happy to be involved.

I’m sure you know the rest, and I don’t need to reiterate a series of monumental series of bloopers and blunders for you to get the point. The insanity of this race, the permissible level of totally indefensible positions is destroying the system of Presidential campaigning. Not a single meaningful discussion will be had in this whole race. The actors will take the stage, hold their press conferences and smile for the cameras, but nothing will be said, because they’ll be foaming at the mouth and raving about flat taxes and immigrants.

Most people I know are broke, or on the verge of broke. The one’s that aren’t broke aren’t rich. People aren’t hiring, crime is everywhere and apparently large factions of the Middle Eastern and Asian world really hates us. But none of the politicians — particularly the ones running for President for the Grand Ol Party — are going to talk about that stuff. They’re worn to the bone. Many of them will be campaigning for 15 months or more before the whole deed is done, and that kind of shameless self-promotion can drive anyone to madness.

It’s no wonder Romney seems so desperately inhuman and detached. He doesn’t recognize faces anymore, his whole body is on auto-campaign. Gingrich, from years of systematic bullshitting, is something of a transparent, empty man, despite his considerable girth. When you spend years lying, selling, cheating and fucking you’re bound to lose part of your soul. Chalk the rest of the field’s failings up to stupidity and birth defects (Jon Hunstmans was tragically born without a personality. Very sad.) and you suddenly have a race to the bottom.

Way down at the bottom is where you’ll find the 2012 nominee. He’ll have a whole pile of shit heaped on him and the whole he is digging won’t take him to the White House. Maybe to China, but not the White House.

So, speaking as a registered Democrat, I encourage all candidates to keep digging. Keep heaping shit all over the place until it’s all we can see. Then maybe your outside will match your inside.

Decade of Decay

Today, facebook status updates, tweets, emails and texts will flood the electronic sphere we live in, and they will all be about a tragedy ten years ago. 9/11 shook the world, and there will be more meaningful, more thoughtful and more fully researched pieces written than this. I will be brief.

Ten years ago, people went to work. Then, hateful fascists crashed planes into their offices. The people that died were commuters and businessmen and travelers. They weren’t in uniforms, or employed by an army. Neither were their killers.

But smoke and fire and debris killed them. Some of them leapt from their windows, plummeting to their deaths in a moment of such horror many of us had little to say, we simply stared.

And as they died, time and time again, someone turned, looked at the fire and rubble and chaos, and ran in to help others. Time and time again, someone turned and ran back into the flames.

The streets of Heaven are too crowded with angels tonight, as they were on that night one decade ago. The streets of Heaven are too crowded with angels tonight.

The Battle Cry of the Reagan Wannabees

Without Reagan The Republican Presidential Race Is Bound for Turmoil———-Why Conservatives Can’t Win in 2012 Without a New Party Face like Reagan——–The Sad, Awful Story of the GOP Field As It Stumbles Fourth

An election is coming.  Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry    ~George Eliot

For people like me, hopelessly addicted to the theater of politics and of course the grandest stage of all, the presidential race, it is hard to ignore the typical headlines from the desperate GOP race. I didn’t blink when Gingrich announced, because it was typically devious and wonderful. Gingrich has the muscle and the mind to be a major contender for the title (the nomination, for the nerds). Of course, he has to get past himself. And the man is a blundering, blithering gaffer on levels of Joe Biden magnitude. So instead of staying quiet, doing the rounds at whiskey-gentry fundraisers and backwater Texan donar-a-thons at $1,000-per plate, he’s decided to ruin his slim credibility to the current power structure.

In barely seven days, he practically sided with Obama on individual healthcare mandates, insulted the Republican can to slash medicare and reportedly short-sheeted Paul Ryan’s bed in his DC residence (reports are conflicting. Some have reported that Gingrich was seen leaving the Ryan residence at high speeds, carrying spray-paint and gasoline canisters. Authorities are searching for a bobble-headed man in a dark trench coat driving recklessly out of Virgina in an unmarked van.)

Hard copy publications of merit report his donors are bailing and his bridges are burned with the critical Tea Party 20% (trademark pending).

My suggestion to any and all remaining candidates: be insane. I mean that in the most level-headed way possible. Dutifully insane. Carefully insane. President Obama is an incumbent president with rising approval ratings. You’ll need crazy to win. To put in perspective, here is a list of incumbents beaten since 1900, and those that beat them:

Taft–lost to Wilson

Hoover–lost to Roosevelt

Carter–lost to Reagan 

Bush Sr –lost to Clinton

 

The simple truth, that incumbents are damned hard to beat unless you happen to be an anomaly, or you’ve got a scandal on your side. If you’re a voter hoping to watch Obama leaving sooner than not, you’re praying for either the incarnation of R.R., or for a white mistress to approach the Times or the WSJ and say that she, for years, has been doinking the Commander-in-Chief. And even then, you’d need hard proof.

Most liberals already know this. All it would take to derail the Obama Express is a white woman. Despite the racial catharsis his election may or may not have represented, plenty of people below the Mason-Dixon simply won’t tolerate that kind of behavior, especially from a man that good-ol fashioned white folks have to call ‘sir.’

But that is beyond the point. And I didn’t mean to get so lost in that nonsense. I meant to talk more about the rest of the field. Like Mitt Romney, the smiling former Governor of Massachusetts. Plastic Man. He can’t be real, because he looks too much like the man you’d hire to portray the president in a made-for-t.v. movie on the Sunday before the election.

WOW. Moving on. Mitt Romney is too ‘liberal’ to win the nomination and the field is too devoid of any astonishing charisma (or retired actors) to win the election on sheer force of personality. Ron Paul is, bless his heart, probably the most intellectually qualified. Paul tested the waters with his dangerously principled and unwavering Libertarian views with normal conservatives just last week on FOX News first Republican Presidential debate.

When asked about his views on gay marriage and whether he favored legislation in favor or opposition, Paul danced nicely into a careful condemnation in the federal government that comforted the crowd.

“I don’t support any legislation that outlaws gay marriage on the federal, national, level. Because these are things the federal government shouldn’t even be legislating. This is for the states only. We can’t impose values…..my values might not be yours…..the Fed can’t legislate values.”

And the crowd loved it. Imagine, a Republican advocating AGAINST forcing moral values on others and AGAINST allowing the Fed to legislate morality. But, Paul was dancing with the careful hypocrisy with two groups ultimately voting the same way. Family Values Conservatives and Anti-federalists.

Half the conservative population would gladly see the Fed grow and grow. These are the ones that yawned through eight years of George Bush emptying the bank int he form of wars, tax cuts and generally negligent behavior. It’s ok to spend, so long as it’s righteous, god-commanded, patriotic-type spending.

The other half are serious about loosening the power and scope of federal power. Usually, it takes nothing more than the mutual contempt of liberals that keeps them voting together. But if Paul has any real shot of getting people to look past his dwarfish demeanor, his hawkish little eyes, his determined, rounded head, he needs to unite the two sides. Paul reminds one of a stern teacher. He is edgy, surprised by his popularity. If only he could ad-lib.

But this isn’t the point. The point is that the field is so wide open, any crazy-person should dive right in, if not for the simple entertainment. Trump won’t be the clown this year, so who? If I were any Republican politician, be it Mayor or stumpville or congressmen or Senator, I’d be forming a committee and raising money.

Either that, or find out if there are any skeletons in No-Drama Obama’s closet.