To all the conservatives out there who keep posting your idiotic comments on my FB page:

You’re taking everything out of context and running with them and at the same time complaining that the Democrats are doing the same.  Obama’s recent statement about entrepeneurs not getting where they are by themselves was from the middle of a campaign speech about how we all have to rely on one another.  In other words, in case you missed the rest of the speech (or didn't understand it), a business owner wouldn’t have any goods to sell unless someone made them or grew them.  They wouldn’t be delivered without a truck.  The truck wouldn’t exist without someone to build it, the truck wouldn’t go anywhere if there wasn’t someone to drive it, and he couldn’t drive it unless there was someone to build the road.  So they weren’t successful all by themselves, they relied on a lot of other people to get them where they are.

And for all you conservatives who think that government stimulus or “hand outs” as you call them, are so bad, let me tell you a true story, a personal American history story.  My grandfather owned a warehouse in the 1920’s, storing personal belongings of the wealthy and overstock from companies.  When the stock market crashed in ’29 many people pulled their storage or just left it there and didn’t pay their bills.  He eventually went broke and was unemployed for years.  The week that my aunt Germaine was born in 1939 he made $5 doing odd jobs.  But he took advantage of FDR’s work programs and took a free course in sheet metal working which led him to a job at Bethlehem Steel, and then eventually to the Staten Island shipyards.  Stimulus works, and it always has.  Get off your damn high horses.  If YOU were in that position you wouldn't be complaining about those "hand outs".

Memo to Newt

Newt, you ended tonight’s debate in Jacksonville with another comparison between President Obama and Saul Alinsky.  I’ve heard you make the same comparison on news talk shows and in your campaign stump speeches.  It’s obviously meant to be a disparaging comparison, and I’ll admit that I didn’t know who Saul Alinsky was.  I doubt that the majority of Americans know who he was.  So I googled him.

And you know what Newt?  He was a great guy.  Now I’m starting to think that you don’t know who he was.

Here’s a short history lesson.  Saul Alinsky was a community organizer, (like Barack Obama), who strived to improve poverty stricken communities in major cities across the United States.  He started in the slums of Chicago.  His early efforts to “turn scattered, voiceless discontent into a united protest aroused the admiration of Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, who said Alinsky’s aims ‘most faithfully reflect our ideals of brotherhood, tolerance, charity and dignity of the individual.’”[i]

His success in Chicago led him to other large cities with slums or ghettos from Kansas City to Detroit to New York and Southern California.  Although some of his tactics were unconventional, he’s considered a master organizer.  In fact, his book Rules for Radicals has been handed out to Tea Party organizers as a guideline on grass roots organization. 

Just before his death in 1972 he described his plans to take his organizations to help middle class America who he felt were living in frustration and despair and worried about their future.

In his own words from his 1946 “Reveille for Radicals” he states:

“A People’s Organization is a conflict group, and this must be openly and fully recognized.  Its sole reason in coming into being is to wage war against all evils which cause suffering and unhappiness.  A People’s Organization is the banding together of large numbers of men and women to fight for those rights which insure a decent way of life.” 

He was not a communist or socialist or Marxist, in fact, he never belonged to any political organization.  He just happened to think that poor people and the middle class needed help giving themselves a voice.

The fact that you continue to refer to him in a denigrating manner leads me to believe that you disagree with his principles of organizing poor or middle class communities in order to improve themselves.

So then Newt, what are you for?  Oh that’s right, you’d rather spend money on a lunar colony. 

Oh my you do make me laugh!

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[i] Saul Alinsky “Playboy Interview”, Playboy Magazine, 1972

The Hypocrisy of Newt

I’m watching the CNN Republican debate as I write this.  In the first place, I’m angry at the moderator John King for starting with a question for Newt Gingrich about his second wife’s allegations that came out today.  It gave Newt the opportunity to take the high road and point his finger at King and say he’s “APPALLED” that he would open a presidential debate with such a question,  adding that the question bordered on “despicable”.

But Newt, you didn’t answer the question.  I’d like you to explain a few things. 

Please explain why you notified your first wife of your divorce proceedings while she was recovering from cancer surgery.

Please answer the allegations that your second wife made today claiming that you asked her for an “open” marriage because you were having a long term affair with your current wife Calysta.

And most importantly, please explain how it is not the height of hypocrisy that while you were in the midst of your six year extra-marital affair with Calysta, you were leading the Republican charge to impeach President Clinton for having an affair.

So as much as you like to point fingers and yell “appalled”  I think that your unwillingness to answer the question is appalling.  

Your credibility is already compromised by your history as Speaker of the House after being overthrown by your own party and fined for ethics violations. 

Face it Newt, you are a HYPOCRITE, and I think you've made it very obvious.