Father Santorum adheres to fundamentalist Catholic dogma on issues like contraception but, when it comes to giving, he falls well short of the Biblical mandate to tithe 10 percent of your earnings.
In no year was charitable giving more than 3 percent of his income, and he dipped below 2 percent in one year.
As Jennifer Rubin notes, “so much of Santorum’s career and a good deal of his writing focus on faith-based charities. So why did he personally give so little to the groups he lauds?”
The right is already making excuses for Newt. “Psychiatrist” Keith Ablow, writing for Foxnews.com, does them one better, arguing that Gingrich’s serial adultery will make him a better president.
1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.
2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.
3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.
Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.
4) Two women—Mr. Gingrich’s first two wives—have sat down with him while he delivered to them incredibly painful truths: that he no longer loved them as he did before, that he had fallen in love with other women and that he needed to follow his heart, despite the great price he would pay financially and the risk he would be taking with his reputation.
Conclusion: I can only hope Mr. Gingrich will be as direct and unsparing with the Congress, the American people and our allies. If this nation must now move with conviction in the direction of its heart, Newt Gingrich is obviously no stranger to that journey.
If I was falsely accused by my significant other of dumping them six months after learning they had MS I’d make sure everyone knew it wasn’t true.
If you’re Newt Gingrich, you play the victim and blame the media. And if you’re a hypocritical Republican, you eat it up with a spoon.
Smug condescension used to be vice. So did cheating on your wife while castigating others for doing the same thing.
But Newt’s enablers on the right will let him get away with it. Imagine if ABC held a story about Bill Clinton’s infidelity until AFTER the New Hampshire primary, as many suggested should have happened with the Gingrich story.
A few side notes:
Jay-Z’s Rocawear has come out with a T-shirt emblazoned with “Occupy All Streets” to spread the news that “there is change to be made everywhere” and not just on Wall Street.
But if Occupy Atlanta and other offshoots of the Occupy Wall Street movement expect to cash in on Jay-Z’s show of support, they may be disappointed. Rocawear says it isn’t sharing any of the revenue from the T-shirt sales, according to a Business Insider report.
It appears Russell Simmons is an even bigger phony than I thought. The man had a solid gold toilet in his house for Chrissakes. He also peddles a pre-paid debit card that exploits the poor (Florida’s attorney general is investigating the hip hop mogul’s RushCard for making fraudulent claims and charging hidden fees).
So it was heartening to see some OWS demonstrators call Simmons out during his visit to Zuccotti Park last week. As an unidentified woman says in the video below, Simmons is part of the problem.
(via Big Hollywood)
It depends on what the definition of hypocrisy is:
Rep. Barney Frank might sympathize with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, but he’s still got friends in the financial world.
The Massachusetts Democrat is heading to New York hoping to raise tens of thousands of dollars Thursday at a fundraiser at the home of Charles Myers, a senior investment banking advisor at Evercore Partners. Myers is one of several Wall Street execs listed on the invite soliciting up to $2,500 from attendees for Frank’s reelection committee, according to a copy obtained by POLITICO. …
“If you take money from them, but you don’t vote [for] the things they want, how does that put you in conflict?” Frank questioned.
Funny, the Tea Party doesn’t seem very upset about this:
Taxpayer costs associated with Perry’s rental home in western Travis County have sometimes totaled $10,000 per month.
From an Associated Press report in 2010: “It costs more than $10,000 a month in rent, utilities and upkeep to house Perry in a five-bedroom, seven-bath mansion that has pecan-wood floors, a gourmet kitchen and three dining rooms. Perry has also spent $130,000 in campaign donations to throw parties, buy food and drink, and pay for cable TV and a host of other services since he moved in, the records show.”
Perry and his wife are living in the rental home while the Governor’s Mansion is rebuilt. The mansion was already undergoing renovations when it was severely damaged in a 2009 arson fire. No arrests have been made in the crime.
At the rental home, advertised for sale for $1.85 million in 2007, Perry’s taxpayer-funded expenses have included $18,000 for “consumables” such as household supplies and cleaning products, $1,001 in window coverings from Neiman Marcus, a $1,000 repair of the governor’s filtered ice machine, a $700 clothes rack and $70 for a subscription to Food and Wine Magazine.
And talk about pay to play.
Perry often gives the state’s most prestigious appointments to major campaign donors. Of the 3,995 people Perry appointed from 2001 to June 2010, 921 of them or their spouses gave his campaigns more than $17 million, and Perry has collected more than $6 million from the people he appointed to university boards of regents, according to Texans for Public Justice , a liberal watchdog group. Regent posts are among the most prestigious a governor can dole out.
The new chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee was criticizing Republicans who opposed President Obama’s bailout of the American automakers union, oh, no, make that American automakers.
“If it were up to the candidates for president on the Republican side,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, “we would be driving foreign cars. They would have let the auto industry in America go down the tubes.”
So Michael O’Brien of The Hill newspaper went and checked what kind of automobile loyal-American-car-supporter Debbie Wasserman Schultz owns.
Yup, you guessed it — Japanese.
I’ve come to understand the appeal of libertarian zealots like Ron Paul: consistency. You can’t say that about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who wants to stop defending state law giving gay couples hospital visitation rights.
I guess government knows better. Sorry, sick gay man, but we’ll be choosing your visitors.
Talk about tyranny.
(via Andrew Sullivan)
Today’s featured HuffPo bloggers prove you get what you (don’t) pay for:
Answer: Was I conceived during the making of Showgirls?
In Sarah Palin’s world, everyone who graduates from a prestigious university or resides in New York City is an elitist. She’s obsessed with so-called elites, as Janet Malcom points out in a post-mortem of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.”
New York, of course, is code for all the things that Palin-style populism is against. I don’t have to tell my fellow Commies what these things are.
Imagine a show called “Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco” in which the former House speaker repeatedly chided the gun-toting Bible thumpers of the Heartland. Sean Hannity’s head would explode and Pelosi would be forced to apologize to every yokel she might have offended. But somehow it’s okay when Palin demonizes those unlike her.
“[Sarah Palin's Alaska] has the atmosphere of a cold war propaganda film,” Malcom writes. It shows the Palin family during the summer of 2010, making happy trips to one pristine Alaskan wilderness area after another—fishing, hunting, kayaking, dog sledding, rock climbing—and taking repeated little swipes at the left.
Usually about how the left won’t let us drill for oil in the “pristine Alaska wilderness.”
*I understand his passion, but Pima County (Az.) Sheriff Clarence Dupnik’s indictment of fringe fanatics like Palin, Limbaugh and Beck in the Arizona shooting massacre was ill-timed. Law enforcement’s duty in such a crisis is to stick with the facts, and there’s no evidence to support Dupnik’s assertion. The suspect is clearly driven by demons unrelated to current political rhetoric.
*That’s not to say the macho posturing from the right is above criticism. You would think people so enamored with guns would’ve taken the opportunity to enlist in the military, but very few of them did. I think this screen shot illustrates their absurdity.
*Speaking of absurd …
*One of the chief exploiters of fringe sentiment screams hypocrisy, and, for once, Rusty Limbo has a point:
Only in these instances is something that is said in the media said to influence public behavior. Go out and try to tell these same people that one of their top grossing movies has influenced abject perversion or radical behavior and they will attack you left and right, saying, “That’s entertainment. It stands alone. People know the difference.” You go out and accuse them of engaging in work, their art, such as crucifixions in jars of urine or whatever other acts of perversion they engage in that they call “art” — their movies, their music — and you go try to tell them that their music is responsible for criminal behavior. Look at the reaction you get from that. You are considered to be a numskull, old-fashioned, out, and not with the times.
*The broadcast media’s coverage has been predictably mawkish. On “Meet the Press,” David Gregory asked a Democratic congresswoman, “Is this a moment?” Yes, David, it is a moment, just like the moment wasted by your stupid question. And this morning on cable news I heard a correspondent wonder, “Has Tucson lost its innocence?” Yeah, I’m sure nothing bad has ever happened in Tucson before this.
Obviously the class isn’t paying attention to this “teachable moment.”
*Speaking of, can anyone with a straight face defend the sale of extended magazine clips such as the one that allowed Jared Loughner to fire 33 rounds without reloading. And don’t say the Second Amendment, because if you take that to a logical conclusion, citizens should be allowed to own howitzers. If you’re looking to blame either party, try both. The GOP long ago sold out to the NRA, and the Dems, afraid of losing votes in Ohio and Pennsylvania, don’t even raise the issue anymore.
Though Zelig McCain deserves to lose his seat in the Senate, his primary challenger, radio talk show host and tea party favorite J.D. Hayworth, is a major tool. Turns out the small government advocate is a major hypocrite, as well.
Republican Senate challenger J.D. Hayworth appeared in a 2007 television infomercial in which he helped convince viewers that they could rake in big bucks by attending seminars that would teach them how to apply for federal grants that they wouldn’t have to pay back.
George Rekers, a leading advocate of straight therapy for wayward “deviants” and co-founder of the arch-conservative Family Research Council with James Dobson, recently returned from a 10-day European vacation. He was accompanied by a young man with a “smooth, sweet, tight ass” and “perfectly built 8 inch cock (uncut)” he met on Rentboy.com, which features homepage images of “crotch-rubbing twinks,” according to New Times Miami. Rekers doesn’t deny meeting “Lucien” on the site but denies the obvious.
Rekers said he learned Lucien was a prostitute only midway through their vacation. “I had surgery,” said Rekers, who has testified as an expert witness to uphold bans on gay adoptions, “and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.”
At least he wasn’t found hogtied, wearing two wet suits, rubberized underwear and a head mask with a dildo stuck up his ass like a conservative Alabama minister a few years back.
