Fine Print Politics
Newt’s rolling out his “Contract on America,” we heard,
Though this time — unlike ’94 — it’s more awkward.
They’ll sign the contract,
Fingers crossed at their back —
‘Cause when have Republicans kept their word?
Newt’s rolling out his “Contract on America,” we heard,
Though this time — unlike ’94 — it’s more awkward.
They’ll sign the contract,
Fingers crossed at their back —
‘Cause when have Republicans kept their word?
Newt Gingrich says it’s just not OK
For the Prez to pick wins in the double-A,
Not when Japan’s got Godzilla
And Gaddafi’s a killa …
Chill out, Newt, and let the man play!
What the heck is it about Newt?
Do women really think he’s cute?
Is it his aura of power?
Does he look good in the shower?
Or is he just a musky old coot?
When will you stop toying with us, Newt?
Yesterday you announced — a website — what a hoot!
You expect us to believe you’ve only just begun
To think about getting ready to maybe consider a run?
Fact is, Newt, you can’t beat Obama, so the question’s moot.
You’d have to go back to the Jim Crow era to find a law as imbued with bigotry and hatred as DOMA, the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which Pres. Clinton signed into law in 1996. It’s back in the news now because Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week that the administration would no longer defend it in court.
DOJ has made it clear, however, that the Legislative Branch is free to defend DOMA in upcoming hearings, which would put Speaker Boehner and his tea party bosses in the same position as the defenders of Proposition 8, California’s anti-gay constitutional amendment. The Prop 8 defenders lost in federal court last year because their “expert” witnesses’ biblical-based testimony that gay marriage should be illegal because homosexuality is a sin was deemed inadmissible in court and because they were unable to provide any evidence that same-sex marriage harms society.
Newt Gingrich, who, as speaker of the House, was instrumental in pushing the law through in 1996, has criticized the president for abandoning the defense of DOMA, and has even suggested that the president could be impeached because he “swore an oath on the Bible to ensure that laws be faithfully executed, not to decide which laws are and which are not constitutional” — a typical falsehood-within-a-falsehood that only liars as practiced as Gingrich can get away with. In reality, the administration said it will continue to enforce the law, and the courts will ultimately decide whether DOMA is constitutional, with or without a defense by the Executive or, for that matter, the Legislative branch.
Gingrich feels free to weigh in on DOMA because he’s never had to address the fact that while DOMA was sailing through the House under his direction, he was quite openly engaged in an extramarital affair with a congressional staffer. His affair with Callista Bisek, which apparently started in 1995, had been reported in British newspapers, Time magazine and Salon.com well before DOMA was debated in the House. The affair continued for years, and was still going on while Speaker Gingrich led the impeachment of Pres. Clinton over the president’s own affair with a staffer. In fact, Republicans in Congress became so unnerved by the prospect of the speaker’s affair coming to light while they drummed up outrage over Clinton’s dalliances that, in 1998, a group of GOP House members — including at least briefly current Speaker John Boehner — demanded that Gingrich resign. Gingrich was finally forced to acknowledge the affair the following year when it became public record during his second divorce.
A serial adulterer, Gingrich had multiple extramarital affairs when he was a college teacher. He is also infamous for an incident during his first divorce — he left wife number one after a lengthy affair with soon-to-be wife number two — when he forced his first wife to discuss details of their separation while she was in a hospital bed recuperating from cancer surgery.
Peter Boyer’s nearly 9,000 word profile of Speaker John Boehner in the New Yorker last month filled in a few gaps in what is commonly known about Boehner’s biography, but there was a notable item missing — the fact that just four months ago the Capitol was aswirl with rumors that Boehner was having an extramarital affair with a (female) lobbyist.
Similarly, in describing events that led to the ouster in 1998 of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Boyer omitted one of the central reasons — some would say the real reason — Gingrich was forced out: At the same time he was driving efforts to impeach Pres. Bill Clinton over a perjurious cover-up of an affair with a staffer, Gingrich was himself engaged in an affair with a congressional staffer, his current wife, Callista Bisek.
Newt Gingrich and his right-wing brethren
Think they’ve hatched a plan that can win.
They’ll play their race cards
As they’re trying so hard
To make folks believe Obama’s a Kenyan.
Is a person’s behavior determined by his or her race?
Take the case of a theoretical mixed-race American boy — let’s call him Barack Obama — whose mother is a Caucasian American and whose father is an African native of Kenya. Let’s say the father leaves the boy and his mother when the boy is two years old and moves back to Kenya, 10,000 miles away, never to be heard from again, except for one visit when the boy was 10 years old. How will the father influence the boy when he grows up?
A) Is the boy predestined by his genetic connection to his father to grow up and emulate his African-ness (whatever that is) — even going so far as to hold the same political beliefs rooted in Kenyan culture as his father?
Or B) is the boy more likely to identify with the culture and politics of the United States, the country where he spent most of his formative years and that he considers to be his home?
If you answered A, you are a racist, just like Newt Gingrich, the smartest guy in the Idiocracy — who is floating a possible run for president in 2012 — who made one of the most outrageously racist statements by a national politician since the Jim Crow era: