So Help Me: Check Your Premises

If this post seems to ramble from one extreme to the other...well, so does the  morality of the so-called Moral Right. So, help me with this: is Newt's head really so outsized because it has to hold not only his ego, but also all those dissonant, conflicting convictions? Apparently, his is a morality that believes in taking what it wants right now and using Jesus to justify it.

[Borrowing quotes from an old post, Ayn Rand's Right: Vomiting Into It's Own Hat, to sprinkle like spring flowers along the way.]

"What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it? What is the people but millions of puny, shrivelled, helpless souls..." --Rand

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"Christianity 'is the best kindergarten of Communism possible.'"--Ayn Rand

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 He cheated on, and then abandoned, not just one sick wife, but two. His first wife got Gingrich's final word on their divorce in the hospital, while recovering from cancer surgery; he then married his mistress. Esquire revealed last September that the mistress turned second wife, Marianne Gingrich, learned about Newt's infidelity with a young staffer just after Marianne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. (Salon.com)

From Marianne Gingrich's 2010 interview for Esquire:

[Marianne] called a minister they both trusted. He came over to the house the next day and worked with them the whole weekend, but Gingrich just kept saying she was a Jaguar and all he wanted was a Chevrolet. " 'I can't handle a Jaguar right now.' He said that many times. 'All I want is a Chevrolet.' "

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

He'd just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he'd given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.

The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, "How do you give that speech and do what you're doing?"

"It doesn't matter what I do," he answered. "People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live." 

Note to America: If you elect this  man, do NOT get sick. He hates that. It forces him to do bad things.

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 Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves – or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.--Ayn Rand

One of the top priorities for Republicans this year has been to preserve and extend corporate tax breaks. This includes GOPers like former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) who have eagerly defended corporations like Bank of America, ExxonMobil, and GE which have avoided paying a dime in corporate income taxes in recent years, but rake in huge annual profits.

Another one of those companies making millions in profits but failing to pay any corporate income tax is Arch Coal. In 2009, for instance, the corporation netted over $42 million, yet was able to use tax loopholes and gimmicks to avoid contributing anything in corporate income taxes.

ThinkProgress asked Gingrich about these corporate tax-dodgers this week at a St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in Nashua, New Hampshire. Gingrich defended Arch Coal and other corporations who avoided paying income taxes because “they don’t owe that” to the U.S. government. Striking an anti-populist note, the former House Speaker also praised the fact that even though many corporations were avoiding taxes, their employees would still be forced to contribute to the government’s coffers.

Gingrich concluded by enthusiastically championing corporate tax loopholes, telling ThinkProgress that corporations were using “an incentive…not a loophole.” “We should celebrate that as a good thing,” Gingrich added:

KEYES: There have been a lot of complains from the left and right about corporations not paying their fair share in taxes. For instance, Arch Coal in 2009 made $42 million but paid nothing in corporate income tax. (Think Progress)

Watch his eyes. Notice the constant shift from right to left. It's like he's got two teleprompters in there and they just won't be reconciled. 

"Last year, Arch Coal made a direct $100,000 corporate donation to Gingrich’s political committee American Solutions for Winning the Future." (Think Progress). Gingrich claims here that Arch Coal must have done something right if they managed to avoid paying any corporate taxes at all in 2009. He implies that, where jobs were created,  Arch Coal's actions should be celebrated.

Full disclosure: Arch coal benefited from a 19.6 million excise tax refund in October 2008, according to their investor newsletter, under Public Law 110-343, a part of Bush's TARP program. Arch Coal practices mountaintop removal mining. In a 1999 lawsuit brought by The West Highlands Conservancy, Bragg v. Robertson, Judge Charles H. Haden ruled for the Conservancy, saying, "If there is any life form that cannot acclimate to life deep in a rubble pile, it is eliminated. No effect on related environmental values is more adverse than obliteration...Under a valley fill the water quality of the stream becomes zero. Because there is no stream, there is no water quality." 

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It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.--Ayn Rand

Gingrich on right and wrong:

"There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate," Gingrich said.

"What I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn't trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them," he said.  (Marietta 11 Live) 

Note to America: If you elect this man, do NOT work him too hard. It makes him do bad things.

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Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. - Ayn Rand

Trust him