Still Lying After All These Years

Nate Silver really should know better.  For reasons both unknown and incomprehensible to me, he's decided to help Newt Gingrich sell his latest book, by way of an interview published on Silver's generally excellent Web site, fivethirtyeight.com.  Not surprisingly, the deservedly former House Speaker rewards this adulation by doing the one thing he absolutely does best:  lying.

In this interview, he describes the 1980s and 1990s as a time of uninterrupted economic growth, thanks to Reagan-era tax policies.  He conveniently overlooks the fact that there were, during this period, not one but two major recessions that were only reversed when Democrats took the lead and insisted on paying the bills Republicans were running up--by raising taxes.

Even more disingenuous is his arbitrary distinction between Obamacare, which he describes in starkly statist-socialist terms, and Medicare, which he describes as "part of the Bismarckian insurance state because it in fact pays all the money to the private sector."  Well, guess what, Newt?  So does what you call "Obamacare," which is why a lot of people on the left are unhappy with it.  This quote illustrates Gingrich's other gift, relative to his lying:  manipulation of words.  By describing Medicare as "Bismarckian," he makes it sound like something conservatives supported from its inception, when he knows (or should know) that conservatives initially denounced Medicare with the same rhetoric they're using to denounce health care reform.

Obviously, Gingrich is attempting to re-introduce himself to the public in a way that allows him to lay the foundation for a presidential campaign.  This speaks poorly of the potential Republican alternatives, if a politician as thoroughly discredited as Gingrich thinks of himself as having a shot.  There are so many examples of the man's lowlife nature that it's difficult to list all of them, and nauseating to even try.

I'll settle for this, for right now.  Back in 1994, he had the gall to use the unfortunate murder-suicide of a young South Carolina mother named Susan Smith and her two children to claim that "there's a sickness out there, and the only way to cure that sickness is to vote Republican."  Wrong, Newt.  The catastrophe in the Gulf, on top of the catastrophes of the Bush-Cheney Administration, on top of the double exercise of fascism known as the Reagan and Gingrich Revolutions, are all the evidence anyone needs of the real sickness afflicting America.  It's a sickness that's afflicted this country for thirty years, and it may yet suck this great country down into the oil hole poisoning our waters.

And, as imperfect as it is, there's only one real cure:  vote Democratic.  On that note, I wish everyone a safe and happy Memorial Day, especially to those in uniform, here and in harm's way.