I Wouldn't Buy a Used ANYTHING from Any of These People

I wouldn't buy a new item from any of them, either.

They've had twenty debates thus far; I watch some of the discussion shows on TV...and listening to the four remaining Republican presidential hopefuls for 2012 makes me sometimes want to...sometimes want to vomit.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Willard Romney (I'm sorry; I refuse to use his nickname!) has been on both sides of far too many issues, be they REAL issues or the wedge issues Republicans have been dining on for decades. His father (that's right, George Romney, the one-time Michigan governor who ran for the presidency in 1968...only to become Richard Nixon's first HUD secretary) has got to be turning over in his grave over his son's desire to see the very industry that kept food on the Romney family's table go straight down. (Remember when Romney pere ran the old American Motors Corporation?)

Yes, I know, I know...Pennsylvania's old junior US senator, Rick Santorum, is being praised for his honesty and for the courage of his convictions.

Here's the thing about it, though: Santorum's convictions include having only the well-to-do (the GOP's main bankrollers) be able to see to it that their sons (and, just maybe, daughters) can get access to a real education. After all, he doesn't want state or federal government involved in schools.

And that leaves city governments and county governments. As strapped as they are today, how's it all going to look having them and only them bankroll public schools?

Oh, by the way, Mr. Santorum...not every parent in America today is equipped to homeschool his or her children. (Got that?)

I listen to one-time House Speaker Newton Gingrich and current US Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and conclude that they're still in the race to massage their egos.

And all the ugly, racist things Paul and Gingrich (as well as far too many other Republicans, especially these last three years) have said- be they in newsletters or speeches- make me feel that, like Santorum and Romney, they're not fit to give the next (or any future) inaugural speech.

That's what the Republican Party amounts to today...and has ever since the mid 1960s.

WHY?

Back then, the people in charge of the party courted the Southern Democrats who turned their backs on the Donkeys after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. (Strom Thurmond was one of those who switched to the Elephants at that time.)

The next time a presidential election came along, once Nixon got the 1968 GOP nomination, his campaign staff cooked up a "Southern strategy" to reel in all those Caucasian men angered over LBJ's decision to help make America live up to its proud promises.

One of Thurmond's trainees was Lee Atwater...the same Lee Atwater who helped Ronald Reagan get the greatest role of his career, then went on to enable Reagan's old veep, George Herbert Walker Bush, to become the first standing vice president since Martin Van Buren (in 1836) to win a presidential election.

It wasn't until Atwater was on his death bed that he decided, all at once, to 'fess up and admit that his racist views played a huge role in making that former CIA director into America's 41st chief executive.

Atwater's proteges are at work right now, 21 years after the former Republican National Committee chief died of a brain tumor. (And that includes ALL of the people who've taken out papers to get the opportunity to make Barack Obama the latest former president.)

Still wondering why Gingrich, Paul, Romney, and Santorum sound the way they do?

And then you've got these people's desire to tell women what to do with their bodies!

These four all are in favor of the amendment US Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) wants to push where any, any, ANY employer can opt out of providing access to contraceptives for religious and moral reasons. (This bill, if it becomes law, would allow CEOs to use any excuse they can think of.)

It's going to be a disaster for women here in the United States.

I don't know about these current Republicans. I feel nauseated over their desire to push this country all the way back to 1912...if they can't shift it all the way back to 1612.

Think about this.

If you're a middle-income person or a low-income person and you're thinking about giving any of these four men your vote on 11-6-2012, ask yourself if there's anything in it for you if you turn to the very people whose policies and attitudes helped pave the way for the Great Recession.

If they care so much about you and me, why are they so much more interested in telling women what they can do with their own bodies than in repairing America's economy?

I Didn't Think He Had It in Him

When I got home from work last night, I went right to the Internet. After I got online, I checked out the news headlines on my ISP's Website and saw this:

"Gingrich weeps as he recalls his mom."

The man who served as this country's House Speaker from 1995 to 1999- who wants to get back into politics by going right to the very top- was at a coffeehouse in Des Moines to give his campaign one final pre-Iowa caucus push.

At some point or another, the discussion came to memories of the woman who adopted the Harrisburg, PA native when he was a child (she died in 2003).

Newton Leroy McPherson Gingrich (that's his full name, folks) told the coffeehouse crowd about how his adoptive mother had to battle bipolar depression, talked about how she lived a happy life, and then...he teared up.

I just hope that his tears the other day were truly genuine.

When USA Today did the story, the reporter told the world that Gingrich's tears were reminiscent of when, in early 2008, then US Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) answered a reporter's question about the rigors of campaigning for the most talked-about job in politics...only to shed some tears.

I remember how those same reporters, coming into 2008 itself, talked about how Rodham Clinton "lacked the warmth" supposedly needed for her to succeed as a presidential candidate. (They'd been after the former first lady since 1992, after all!)

Now many of these same media people are out there speculating over the idea of HRC trading in her gig heading up the State Department for the vice presidency.

Anyway, after the story about Rodham Clinton's tears broke, she ended up getting plenty of support- especially from the reporters who savaged her over events like her and husband Bill's 1992 interview on 60 Minutes. 

And now, we're told that Gingrich's teardrops might pull more people toward supporting the former US representative from Georgia.

We shall see.

All I know is this: Many of the things NLMG has done since coming on the national political scene in the 1980s (especially masterminding two government shutdowns during the Bill Clinton years) have driven many people to tears.

And then you've got some of things Gingrich has said here in 2011 alone...especially his desire to rip the textbooks out of inner-city children's hands and replace those books with brooms and dustpans. (To say nothing of his contention that there's nothing American about the man who's got the job the ex-college prof and six other Republicans are after: Barack Obama.)

Above all, I'm wondering if Newton ever weeps as he recalls the two marriages he walked out on before he met a woman named Callista.

Oh, well...it was just a thought.

Well, that's all I've got for now...except: I'm Jim Boston, and I'll see you in 2012! Thanks for reading this blog!