All About Newt: Trump Considers Former House Speaker Gingrich as Running Mate

by Nomad

According to the latest rumors, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is at the top of Donald Trump's running mate list.  One can see why Trump would be attracted to a person like Gingrich and yet, once you get past the Republican revisionist whitewash of his history, Gingrich is and has always been one hot mess.

The Ted Cruz of the 1990s

If they can do nothing else, Republicans are extraordinarily good at revising the history record and rehabilitating images. It's something they have to be good at, I suppose. Newt Gingrich is a case in point. Today the Far Right seems to idolize Gingrich as some kind of senior statesman.

His opinion is valued as though his words were made of honey. It was a very different story back in the 1990s. As Speaker of the House, Gingrich was the Ted Cruz of his day and was never one to let his conscience distract him from a political opportunity.  

Hypocrisy and politics generally go hand in hand, however, Gingrich was something of a phenomenon and new records were set for deceit and dissemblance. 

For instance, even while calling for President Clinton's impeachment for carrying on a tryst in the Oval Office, Newt himself was allegedly engaged in an affair with a Congressional aide. (Today he makes the fine distinction that the president had lied under oath. Fortunately, Gingrich was never asked about his affairs under oath.)

The Ignorance of Donald Trump and the Shameless Capitulation of the Republican Party

by Nomad

When Trump revealed the details of his long-anticipated economic program, economists shuddered. It was suddenly clear that Trump hadn't the faintest grasp of fiscal realities. Tea Party voters and Reagan Conservatives also had their own reasons to tremble in disbelief at their own politicians' endorsements.

With Ignorance and Confidence

The sardonic Mark Twain once wrote:

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

Had he been privileged enough to meet Mr. Trump, Twain might have added a few other more requirements to his epigram: "an angry and ignorant electorate, a compliant or timid press and lots of ready cash."  
Apparently armed only with those five qualities, any fool can rise to the top of the Republican Party and, with a little luck, become president of the United States.

In this election, there's been a shortage of policy discussion from Donald Trump. We know he intends to build a wall and force Mexico to pay for it. He plans to stop all Muslims from entering the country.
We have been assured his plans were going to be "great" and they were going to be "huge." Other than that not much else to report. a surprising number of voters didn't seem curious so long as they were entertained.

It was assumed that he would share his wisdom at some point. sooner or later, people were bound to get tired of the Trump's schtick and start asking for a few specifics.

Meanwhile, Back at the North Carolina State Legislative Building Restroom...

by Nomad

Karma Teaches Former Anti-Clinton Crusader and Baylor President Ken Starr a Lesson

by Nomad

In the late 1990s, Ken Starr was a name on everybody's lips. This was the independent prosecutor whom the Republicans hoped would derail the Clinton presidency.
Today, as president of Baylor University, Starr has been struggling to deal with criticism over the university's handling of a series of rape allegations.

Runaway Investigations

As a walking footnote to history, Kenneth Starr was once a name of everybody's lips. He was portrayed by the Far Right as a heroic independent prosecutor determined to expose all of the scandals of the Clinton administration. Others claimed that he was a commissioned by the Republican party with attempting to destroy the credibility of the president, and to provide the basis for the impeachment of President Clinton. Suffice to say, for awhile, he was a controversial figure. 

Starr was head of what was in some ways a runaway investigation. Initially, Starr was appointed to investigate the suicide death of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster.

After three years, Starr made the disappointing discovery that the severely depressed Foster had killed himself, and was not the victim of foul play. This reaffirmed previous findings.
The Republicans were not ready to call it quits.

When that line of questioning proved to fruitless, the investigation was expanded to include the Whitewater real estate investments of Bill Clinton. That too reached a dead end.
In December 1997, Starr shut down the Whitewater investigation because of insufficient evidence.

That inquiry was revived one more time. in January 1998 to include an extramarital affair that Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky. 

Harrassment and Bullying 

The justification for this expansion was the allegation that the president had engaged in a form of workplace sexual harrassment. The idea that this was a personal matter between two people made no difference whosoever to Starr's case. 

Homefront: How WWII and the US Military Provided the First Spark for the Civil Rights Movement 3 / 3

by Nomad

In the previous installment in this series, we examined how the a progressive president's wife, a black workers' union and an imposed reform of the armed forces all combined to helped to jump-start the civil rights movement in the US. In the final part of our series, we will show, how a military president from the Republican Party took a very different view.

The Little Rock Crisis and Why Eisenhower Intervened

For moderate Republicans, President Dwight D. Eisenhower is the one president - outside of Theodore Roosevelt- that they can point to as in any way, reformist. They tend to cite Eisenhower's stand on ending segregation in the South as proof that he was committed to equality for the races and progress in general. 

Despite evidence that Eisenhower was a moderate, the part he played in the story of civil rights was much more of a result of his military background, rather than a question of morality or an appreciation of fairness for African Americans. 

It was actually a matter of proper organization.    

When we look a little closer, we see that Eisenhower's attitude toward integration was much more ambivalent than it is commonly painted. Scholars still debate how firm his commitment was to civil rights. 

It is true that he signed civil rights legislation in 1957 and 1960, but he was overly-enthused about having to deal with racial issues.

He never endorsed the Supreme Court’s ruling in 1954, Brown v. Board of Education (Kansas), that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional, and he failed to use his moral authority as president to urge speedy compliance with the court’s decision.

Claiming states' rights, many governors, and legislatures, particularly in the South, refused to recognize the SCOTUS decision.

It was clear that the some politician leaders were ready to rebel, and they planned to use the state militias to protect their state's rights.

In the autumn of 1957, the epicenter of this battle of wills became Little Rock when Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas announced his absolute refusal to comply the court's ruling. 

While the Fayetteville, Charleston, and Hoxie school districts integrated without incident, the attempt to desegregate Little Rock Central High School in the fall of 1957 led to a crisis, as Faubus tried to block the attempt to integrate the school by nine black students (the “Little Rock Nine”).