10 Catholic Teachings Conservatives Reject While Obsessing About Birth Control

Santorum and Gingrich are both Catholics, and wear their faith on their sleeves, but they are hypocritical in picking and choosing when they wish to listen to the bishops.

February 13, 2012

The right wing Republican politicians who have been denouncing the requirement that female employees have access to birth control as part of their health benefits as an attack on religious freedom completely ignore the church teachings they don’t agree with. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are both Catholics, and wear their faith on their sleeves, but they are hypocritical in picking and choosing when they wish to listen to the bishops. 

1. So for instance, Pope John Paul II was against anyone going to war against Iraq I think you’ll find that Rick Santorum managed to ignore that Catholic teaching.

2.The Conference of Catholic Bishops requires that health care be provided to all Americans. I.e., Rick Santorum’s opposition to universal health care is a betrayal of the Catholic faith he is always trumpeting. 

3. The Catholic Church opposes the death penalty for criminals in almost all situations. (Santorum largely supports executions.)

4. The US Conference of Bishops has urged that the federal minimum wage be increased, for the working poor. Santorum in the Senate repeatedly voted against the minimum wage.    READ MORE

US elections: no matter who you vote for, money always wins

Mitt Romney's personal wealth is double that of the
last eight US presidents combined.
Photograph: TJ Kirkpatrick/Corbis

Dollars play a decisive role in US politics. And more so since the supreme court allowed unlimited campaign contributions
 Gary Youngeguardian.co.uk,
Sunday 29 January 2012 15.30 EST


Republican presidential debates are not for the faint-hearted. Last week in Jacksonville, Florida, Rick Santorum warned of the "threat of radical Islam growing" in Central and South America. Newt Gingrich advocated sending up to seven flights a day to the moon, where private industry might set up a colony, and reaffirmed his claim that Palestinians were invented in the late 70s. Mitt Romney argued that if you make things tough enough for undocumented people, they will "self-deport".

Given the general state of the Republican party, such comments now attract precious little attention. Truth and facts are but two options among many. The party's base, overrun by birthers, climate change deniers and creationists, floats its warped theories and every now and then one makes it to the top and bobs out into the airwaves.

So the oft-touted notion that these debates have been responsible for shifting the trajectory of this primary race would be worrying if it were true. It is difficult to think of anywhere else in the western world where these debates would have any credibility outside of a fringe party (even if the fringes in Europe are now spreading). Far from indicating America's exceptionalism, it looks more like an awful parody of the stereotypes most outsiders already believed about American politics at its most bizarre. "Those who follow this race daily may have long since lost perspective on how absurd it is," said the German magazine Der Spiegel last week. "Each candidate loves Israel. They all love Ronald Reagan. Each loves his wife, a born first lady, for a number of reasons."

The good news is, with the exception of Perry's demise, the debates have not been pivotal. The bad news is that the truly decisive element has been something even more insidious: money. Lots of it.
READ MORE

While Republicans Play Politics Over Food Stamps, New Film Focuses on Hunger in America

Amy Goodman and Raj Patel discuss the 49 million people who are struggling to get enough to eat in America, and why GOP candidates' posturing isn't helping.

January 23, 2012

The new documentary "Finding North" premiering here at the Sundance Film Festival exposes how one in every four American children suffers from hunger, despite living in the wealthiest nation in the world, and nearly 30 percent of American families, more than 49 million people, often go without meals. 

While Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich decries President Obama as "the food stamp president," author Raj Patel says what is really needed is a conversation about poverty and why the need for food stamps is so high. "It’s true that disproportionately people of color are affected by food insecurity. 

But what Gingrich is doing, of course, is racially coding poverty by calling President Obama 'the food stamp president,'" Patel said. "He’s invoking these ideas of racialized poverty. Of course, if you look at the people who are on the food stamp program, you see that the majority of them are white and poor." Patel is author of the popular book, "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System." 

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Park City, Utah, home of the Sundance Film Festival, the nation’s largest festival for independent cinema. I’m Amy Goodman. Continuing with our South Carolina Republican primary coverage, we turn now from the wealthy, whose influence on elections has been multiplied by Citizens United, to the poor, who could be greatly impacted by this influence.

 READ MORE

Carter: Gingrich knows how to appeal to racists

Former President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday accused former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of trying to appeal to racists in South Carolina.

“I think he has that subtlety of racism that I know quite well, that Gingrich knows quite well, that appeals to some people in Georgia, particularly the right-wing,” he said.

Speaking to a crowd in New Hampshire in early January, Gingrich said African Americans should demand jobs instead of food stamps. At the recent Republican debate in South Carolina, he defended the remark and said it was not insulting to African Americans.

“I wouldn’t say he is racist, but he knows the subtle words to use to appeal to a racist group,” Carter added.

“When you emphasize, over and over, welfare, food stamps, and ‘why don’t the black people get jobs,’ and if I’m president, I’ll make sure they turn toward a work ethic, rather than an ethic of welfare and food stamps, that’s appealing to the wrong element in South Carolina.”
Watch video, courtesy of CNN, below:

The G.O.P.’s ‘Black People’ Platform

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Charles M. Blow

By CHARLES M. BLOW

Published: January 6, 2012 

That didn’t take long.  

As we’ve gotten around to casting votes to select a Republican presidential nominee, the antiblack rhetoric has taken center stage.
You just have to love (and despise) this kind of predictability.

On Sunday, Rick “The Rooster” Santorum, campaigning in Iowa, said what sounded like “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” At first, he offered a nondenial that suggested that the comment might have been out of context. Now he’s saying that he didn’t say “black people” at all but that he “started to say a word” and then “sort of mumbled it and changed my thought.”

(Pause as I look askance and hum an incredulous, “Uh huh.”)  READ MORE

The Return of Bad Newt

By Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns, Politico

04 December 11

The all-too-familiar character from the 1990s has only peeked out in public a handful of times so far. But already, Newt Gingrich flush with pride over new polls showing his left-for-dead candidacy now leading the pack - is letting his healthy ego roam free again, littering the campaign trail with grand pronouncements about his celebrity, his significance in political history and his ability to transform America. "I helped lead the effort to defeat communism in the Congress," Gingrich said this week on Sean Hannity's show. "I'm going to be the nominee," he informed ABC News while in Iowa. "I was charging $60,000 a speech and the number of speeches was going up, not down," Gingrich said in South Carolina, explaining why he didn't actually need his consulting fee from Freddie Mac. "Normally, celebrities leave and they gradually sell fewer speeches every year. We were selling more." READ MORE