Politics

Politics from my sister in New Zealand

“He(Gingrich) knows how to deflect a negative against him back onto the projector as proven by his stern reprimand of John King at the beginning of the CNN debate.”

Yeah, that was classic Republican-right shoot-the-messenger and it seems to work very well for them.

“I am dismayed by voting statistics that say married women have rallied behind Gingrich.” My mother, a staunch Republican, said of Rockefeller, a Democrat, when he was running for president 50 odd years ago that she could never vote for someone who was divorced reasoning that if they couldn’t run a marriage they couldn’t run a country. It didn’t matter several years later when she voted for divorced Republican Ronald Regan.

I watch the Fox news channel occasionally to try to understand where those folks are coming from. The most recent rant seems to be how unfair the “liberal media” was in their attacks on Gingrich when they gave Clinton and Edwards a free pass on their extramarital affairs. Apparently the Murdoch Media (FOX) doesn’t watch Liberal Media because it was on “Liberal Media” that I got more information about Clinton’s blow job and Edwards’s affair than I cared to hear. If the Liberal Media was so over the top attacking Newt, you would think they would have brought up the South Carolina governor’s lying and affair with the woman in South America. If they did, I missed it. I’m betting FOX would have made something of it if the governor and Newt were Democrats.

“Personally I cannot stand Sarah Palin being inserted into the conversation, as if she has any influence.”

Ah, ha, you are watching Fox because the only place I ever see Palin these days is on Fox where she said: “If I had to vote in South Carolina, in order to keep this thing going I’d vote for Newt and I would want this to continue. More debates, more vetting of candidates because we know the mistake made in our country four years ago was having a candidate that was not vetted…” I guess Palin wasn’t paying attention to the Democratic primaries and the debates between Obama and Clinton and the close scrutiny of Obama by the “liberal media” and the Murdoch Media. Of course, she wouldn’t have been paying attention then because that was before she was picked as Republican VP candidate and she was much too involved in her job as Governor of Alaska, a job she loved so much she quite mid-term. (For any who don’t know me, that last sentence is meant to drip with sarcasm.)

Mort Media here says Newt must like quitters as he told CNN “I would ask her to consider taking a major role in the next administration if I’m president…” Like what, Newt, Secretary of State?

“I would sure like to know your opinion about this election process to date.”

Well, Sis Chris, I think we have more problems than any president can fix without making a lot of people unhappy. I think that we, the citizens of the U.S., have come to the place that someone said of our Constitution 200 years ago that when we figured out we could vote for our self-interest our system of government would fail. We don’t seem to have a long view. Rich people seem to think that they can hold onto all the money and somehow the economy will thrive even though the vast majority doesn’t have buying power. Henry Ford paid his workers good wages so they could buy his cars. Smart.

We are afraid to make a transition to a different source of energy even though the current source is killing us, damaging the world we live in, contributing to our national debt and making us vulnerable to foreign powers. We have a political system that is so divisive it is unlikely any leader no matter how extraordinary he or she might be has little chance of making positive change. There is a part of me that thinks one of the Republican candidates as president might not be such a bad thing as they would not fix the problem and could then take the Republican nonsense down in flames two years later and then again two years after that but then a better part of me holds out hope that four more years of Obama might give him a chance to turn things around.

This is a difficult time to be a caring U.S. citizen with a long view.