Newt Targets The Volt

In his latest attempt to distinguish himself from both President Obama and his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich blasted the President's transportation and energy policy while campaigning in Oklahoma by claiming it was anti-American to encourage the development of electric cars and more fuel-efficient conventional vehicles when the free market has shown a clear preference for light trucks, preferring instead to drill for more oil to increase the supply of gasoline and bring gas prices down (although American oil would be sold on the global market and have no effect on gas prices home). He drew numerous cheers from the hayseeds he was addressing when he added, "You cannot put a gun rack on a Volt."

It's easy to attack General Motors after it used its government loans to develop an electric Chevy that costs almost as much as an entry-level Cadillac and has had teething problems in its early stages. Also, anyone who needs a gun rack on his vehicle wouldn't buy one anyway. But it's weird that Gingrich would complain about so much money spent on helping American car companies develop electric cars when, as Michigan Live's Jeff Wattrick is ready to remind us, Newt wants a lunar base that would be more expensive and yield fewer consumer-friendly benefits. Newt also says he would prefer to spend the subsidy on helping Americans who can't afford a Volt to buy a cheaper used car - preferably a pickup, I'm sure.

Okay. Never mind that a subsidy for a used car would make it less necessary for GM to sell a new car and make it less necessary for GM to keep as many dealerships as they have remaining after the mass dealership closures of 2009. Yes, GM is making smaller cars, but they've been making small cars since the late seventies. That includes the downsizing of their larger cars in response to rising gas prices; the big sedans GM used to make before the 1973 oil crisis bear no resemblance to their largest sedans of today. The current crop of GM's largest cars are two feet shorter than the big sedans they were making forty years ago - because the free market demanded smaller (but not necessarily small) cars. And yes, the Volt costs nearly $40,000, but new technologically advanced products always cost a lot when first introduced. As they technology becomes more mainstream, the price of the product comes down. DVD players, after all, were very expensive when they first went on the market in 1997. Now they're so cheap that even CVS can sell them.

And, true, more people have bought pickups and SUVs in the past twenty years rather than small cars, but no one is stopping Detroit from making them. And if you do need a vehicle that can bear a gun rack, you can still buy a Chevrolet Silverado pickup.

Oh, and, by the way, while you can't put a gun rack on a Volt, you can put a gun rack in a Volt:

Happy driving!

To The Moon?

The Florida Republican presidential primary is today, and I'll be glad when it's over. Not because it'll bring an end to the sniping and snarling from Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich for awhile - that's going to resume in time for Saturday's Nevada caucuses - but because after Florida, it'll be the last we hear of Newt Gingrich's cockamamie scheme to colonize the moon in eight years' time. He only proposed it in Florida because of all of the jobs there connected to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and even after that, he's still behind in the polls.

Gingrich's 2020 vision of a permanent lunar base is a relic from a time when Americans thought that they could accomplish anything if they banded together (and we did make it to the moon, of course), and when space exploration hinted at a future dramatically different from what existed in the 1950s and the 1960s. It was expected that one day we'd be driving around in flying cars, vacationing on Mars, and eating capsules instead of real food. The only thing that came true is that we don't eat real food anymore.

A permanent lunar base, once entertained by both the Americans and the Soviet-era Russians, is a spectacularly bad idea, because it diverts resources toward establishing an unnecessary habitation project and away from doing things like trying to house people and fight poverty here on earth. I understand that Gingrich is suggesting a scientific base like the one at the South Pole, not a Tomorrowland-style city, but if the goal is to expand knowledge of the sciences, we can do it more efficiently with robotic vehicles on the moon, like the ones we sent to Mars in the nineties.

It's easy to understand Gingrich's obsession with a lunar base, since his politics and policy proposals border on megalomania. Harder to understand is Neil deGrasse Tyson's interest in the proposal. Neil deGrasse Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, and he's actually enthusiastic about the idea. His objection to Gingrich's proposal is not to the idea itself but to Gingrich's failure to explain how to do it or why to do it. But Tyson thinks it would be wonderful if we had such an ambitious project like a lunar base that would encourage young people to engage in and study the sciences (and a lunar base would necessitate study of biology, chemistry, physics - pretty much the complete works).  Never mind that it's impractical. He laments that we haven't done anything like that in nearly forty years.

Hmm . . . forty years . . . the early seventies. So, what happened in the early seventies that changed our big-picture outlook? How about the Arab oil embargo? The sudden shortage of oil that resulted from American support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War reminded us that limits exist not only in the mind but in the real world. Once we had trouble running our tech-happy civilization on earth, colonizing the moon or Mars and trying to begin a new civilization elsewhere seemed pretty silly. True, we did get some amazing technological breakthroughs from NASA's space exploration programs, such as the Internet and ready-mix foodstuffs, and I am grateful for a computer network that has allowed me to write this blog, but why should I care about Tang?

Besides, the space race with the now-defunct Soviet Union was an extension of the lamebrained Cold War psychosis that led both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to spend lots of money to demonstrate whose economic system was better. When the Cold War ended, it turned out that neither side won. Both the U.S. and post-Soviet Russia were flat broke.

If we're going to have a massive technological project to expand our capabilities and grow our economy, I'd obviously prefer that we focus on something that can give us real value. I'd prefer we focus on building a national high-speed rail network - and build one that's accessible to everyone by 2020, not build one that's accessible to four out of five Americans by 2035, as President Obama's pathetic piecemeal approach would do. The only problem is that even Obama's modest plan has been repeatedly attacked as a government boondoggle (and Florida's own attempts to build high-speed rail lines keep getting canceled by Republican governors), so if Obama proposed something bolder and more dramatic, opposition to such a program might be even more hostile. And no one seems to be interpreting Newt's moon plans as anything other than the boondoggle it is. Romney has said if he ran a company that did business with NASA and someone came to him with that idea, he'd fire him. Good for him.

But Romney - no big thinker - would as President probably fire a Transportation Secretary who proposed a national high-speed rail network as well.

Countdown To Exiting

It's about a year from Inauguration Day. Could this be Barack Obama's last year in office?

The campaign for the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, taking place today, has taken numerous twists and turns. Newt Gingrich had turned the tide against Mitt Romney only to face new questions about his fidelity in his previous marriage - and then turned it into an asset by throwing the issue back at CNN's John King during a debate after King brought it up. Mitt Romney still won't release his tax returns, thinking that Republican voters don't care about how much money he makes and confusing that with their interest in how much money he pays. President Obama must be watching this with glee, hoping that the Republicans protract their nomination fight to the point where the eventual nominee is so weakened and bloodied, it will be an easy victory for the Democrats in November.

No, it won't. And the Democrats could still lose. Some pundits have noted that the eventual winner of the Republican presidential nomination could be toughened up enough to take the fight to Obama hard, just as Obama was toughened up by his long fight against Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. A more apt comparison might be the internecine warfare between Walter Mondale and Gary Hart in the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination contest that eventually weakened Mondale in his campaign against President Reagan that fall, as both Mondale did and the eventual 2012 Republican presidential nominee will go against an incumbent. But even that comparison has problems. Reagan was overseeing an improvement in the economy and renewed faith in the country's standing in 1984. Obama is currently overseeing little of either, and his mealy-mouthed campaign commercial touting his clean energy initiatives in response to a Koch brothers-funded onslaught is the textbook example of starting off on the wrong foot.

One year from now, the winner of the November election will be sworn in, and don't be surprised if Obama is an outgoing President swearing under his breath. His approval rating is at 44 percent, the economy isn't growing fast enough in 2012, like it was in 1984, the chances of Democrats regaining the House and holding onto the Senate are statistically difficult, and one of these Republican candidates could indeed very well be in a strong position going into the fall campaign. The clearest evidence that Obama could (will?) still lose is that his opponents obviously want to get rid of him more than his supporters (just as obviously) want to keep him.

Abandon Ship

On "Hardball" last night, Chris Matthews likened the mass exodus of Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign staff to Captain Bligh being left in a rowboat after the mutiny on the Bounty. Eh, not quite. This is more like Fletcher Christian and his crewmates getting in rowboats and leaving Captain Bligh in charge of an empty ship. Interestingly, the dust-up that caused this mass resignation was provoked by Gingrich's two-week vacation cruise in the Aegean islands off the coast of Greece (three weeks into his campaign) with Wife Number 3. A vacation? From what? Gingrich barely got his campaign started, and he's already taking it easy? I like the way Bill Maher put it - the campaign staff fired the candidate!

As the captain of an empty vessel, Gingrich has proven to be an empty suit. Unable to command any respect or support, he's put the best possible spin on his latest setback (we should be glad he never became a PR man) and promises that his campaign will begin anew starting Monday. Never mind that Gary Hart actually had more backers when he re-entered the 1988 presidential campaign after his sex scandal.

It's been said - and pretty much understood - that Gingrich is only running for President to have a platform for his ideas and to essentially show how learned he is. (I take it back; apparently he has become a PR man, for himself.) He's living proof that even smart guys do and say stupid things. He'll pop off throughout the debate cycle, as long as anyone can stand him - I give him two weeks - and he'll then quietly slip away into that realm of irrelevance that everyone wishes Anthony Weiner would enter.

Meanwhile, some of Gingrich's ex-aides are encouraging Texas governor James R. "Rick" Perry to run for President, seeing him, with his relatively strong economic record in the Lone Star State, as the best chance to beat President Obama. Given Perry's loutishness, I would have to conclude that these former Gingrich aides are loyal Republicans but unpatriotic Americans.

Newt As Ronnie's Heir

Newt Gingrich is running for President of the United States.

Many people have long been sickened by the fact that a divorced and remarried man who talks up a game of family values, a man known for speaking optimistically of America one minute and taking cheap shots against political opponents the next, and making incendiary comments based on gross distortions of history, would seek America's highest office.

But Ronald Reagan was elected President anyway.

Surprise! No, I wasn't talking about Gingrich just now, but what has been said about him can easily be applied to our fortieth President. We all know that Reagan, a family values apostle who once complained that we can't talk to God in our schools anymore, divorced actress Jane Wyman. Some of us many even know that Nancy Reagan was already several weeks pregnant with her daughter Patti when she and Ronnie got married. But does anyone remember Reagan's nasty disparaging of the counterculture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s when he was governor of California? He once spoke of seeing a hippie who "spoke like Tarzan, had long hair like Jane, and smelled like Cheetah." Seeing a group of demonstrators holding signs saying "Make Love, Not War," he turned to someone and said, "Those kids don't look capable of doing either."

Newt Gingrich likes to throw the word "fascist" around a lot. Well, it was the Reagan administration that once said that the New Deal and its proponents "espoused fascism." Newt likes to call opponents nasty names. Anyone remember what Reagan said about Michael Dukakis, when it looked like the son of Greek immigrants would succeed him in the White House, concerning a story that Dukakis had once seen a psychiatrist? "Look, I'm not going to pick on an invalid."

Witty. Witty.

So, there's actually a precedent for cynical nastiness - or nasty cynicism - in the Oval Office, even if Chris Matthews doesn't want to admit it.

And so, the notion of "President Gingrich" doesn't seem so preposterous.

Kenya Believe It?

I just have one thing to say to Newt Gingrich for suggesting that President Obama is a "con artist" motivated by a Kenyan, "anti-colonial" world view to avenge British colonialism in his ancestral homeland and somehow being guided by the influence of his late father.

Thank you!

Thank you, Newt, for exposing yourself and your fellow Republicans - including Dinesh D'Souza, who started this Kenya theory - as crackpots and lunatics who will stop at nothing to impede the progress of the middle class and use any tactic, however underhanded and ill-contrived, to regain power to benefit the rich white men who have made the world in general and America in particular a nastier, meaner place! Thank you, Newt, for lighting a fire under the American left - maybe this will encourage Democrats, not to mention blacks, to come out and vote in the midterm elections in massive numbers to blunt the insurgency on the right, as your comments about Bill Clinton and his sex scandal did in the 1998 midterm election, which caused your resignation as Speaker of the House.

Hey, Newt, didn't you say something about Obama's father directing the President's economic policies form the grave? Oh, is that voodoo economics? Gee, Newt, I thought you were smarter than that, beleiving in folk magic and all that rot. Anti-British colonialism? What could be more American than that? That was the whole point of the American Revolution, wasn't it? Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and the rest kind of got sick and tired of being colonial subjects, so they started a new country devoted to freedom - you know, what you purport to fight for?

You're a real scumbag, Newt, but I'm sorry to say who have yet to reach scumminess of Vitterian proportions. But when you do get to be as disgusting and as reprehensible as the junior senator from Louisiana, you'll hear it from me. Oh my, yes.

Loathing and Marriage

Dick Cheney has been appearing so much on television talk shows these days, people think he's considering a presidential run in 2012.

What would he run for, the excitement? With his heart? Why would he run, because of his excellent chances of winning? With a nineteen percent popularity rating?

And why would her suddenly endorse gay marriage, given the opposition to gay marriage among the Republican base? Since his daughter Mary is a lesbian, what stopped him from endorsing it in 2004? Oh, wait - Karl Rove.

Then again, the first caucus is in Iowa, and the first primary is in New Hampshire, both states as of today having legalized gay marriage. New Hampshire Governor John Lynch signed the bill making it legal in the Granite State today.

Nonetheless, we may have a pretty hard time accepting Cheney as an avuncular figure of trust, like Walter Cronkite.

Incidentally, this leaves Rhode Island - the place once described in the seventeenth century as a moral sewer by Massachusetts Puritans - as the only New England state not to allow gay marriage. Several attempts to change that have failed.

Meanwhile, putative presidential possibility Newt Gingrich says that maybe he was too strong in calling Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist. Oh - now he tells us!

Disorder In the Court

Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's choice for the Supreme Court, is under fire for her comment from 2001 that she thought a wise Hispanic woman with her background could make a more informed judicial decision than a white male jurist without a similar background. Although Sotomayor has sought to clarify her statement, explaining that she meant to say her upbringing gives her a unique perspective on the bench, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich have called for her to withdraw her nomination.

This remark was unearthed just as the Supreme Court is about to visit a case in which eighteen white firemen scored high on promotional tests but had their results rendered moot because not enough blacks scored high. Sotomayor was part of three-judge panel that let the ruling stand on technical grounds without comment. The Court is likely to overturn the decision, and it will likely ignite a debate over affirmative action.

Sotomayor may very well be enduring unfair treatment due to the fact that, while flame throwers like Limbaugh, Gingrich and Sean Hannity have the opportunity to mouth off on the issue of the Sotomayor nomination every day, Sotomayor herself hasn't been given enough opportunity to make a case for herself. Though her comments and this ruling has drawn blood, I still expect her to be confirmed. It helps that she's as wise as the hypothetical Hispanic woman of which she spoke, while the white men she's angered are fools.