building a nation of know-nothings

NYTimes | Having shed much of his dignity, core convictions and reputation for straight talk, Senator John McCain won his primary on Tuesday against the flat-earth wing of his party. Now McCain can go search for his lost character, which was last on display late in his 2008 campaign for president.

Remember the moment: a woman with matted hair and a shaky voice rose to express her doubts about Barack Obama. “I have read about him,” she said, “and he’s not — he’s an Arab.”

McCain was quick to knock down the lie. “No, ma’am,” he said, “he’s a decent family man, a citizen.”

That ill-informed woman — her head stuffed with fabrications that could be disproved by a pre-schooler — now makes up a representative third or more of the Republican party. It’s not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.

Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate.

Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies.

The Democrats may deserve to lose in November. They have been terrible at trying to explain who they stand for and the larger goal of their governance. But if they lose, it should be because their policies are unpopular or ill-conceived — not because millions of people believe a lie. Fist tap Nana.

fears of regime change in new york

Naked Capitalism | Normally, I don’t report on anecdotes from my immediate circle, but a set of conversations in less than a 24 hour period suggests that even those comparatively unaffected by the crisis are bracing themselves for the possibility of sudden, large-scale, adverse changes. And that sort of gnawing worry seems to be growing in New York despite being buoyed by TARP funds and covert bank subsidies.

When out on my rounds the day before yesterday, I ran into an old McKinsey colleague, who had subsequently had impressively titled jobs in Big Firms You Heard Of before semi-retiring to manage family money. He and his very accomplished wife were big Bush donors and had been invited to both inaugurations.

He made short order of niceties and got to the point: “We need more fiscal stimulus. Obama did too little and too much of what he spent on was liberal pork. We could and need to spend a lot on infrastructure. This is looking a lot like 1936. I’m afraid it could get really ugly. And I’m particularly worried that the Republicans will win big this fall. They’ll cut even deeper, that’s the last thing we need right now.”

No I am not making this up, and yes, this is one of the last people I would have expected to express this line of thinking.

the new yorker strikes the root!!!

The New Yorker | As their fortunes grew, Charles and David Koch became the primary underwriters of hard-line libertarian politics in America. Charles’s goal, as Doherty described it, was to tear the government “out at the root.” The brothers’ first major public step came in 1979, when Charles persuaded David, then thirty-nine, to run for public office. They had become supporters of the Libertarian Party, and were backing its Presidential candidate, Ed Clark, who was running against Ronald Reagan from the right. Frustrated by the legal limits on campaign donations, they contrived to place David on the ticket, in the Vice-Presidential slot; upon becoming a candidate, he could lavish as much of his personal fortune as he wished on the campaign. The ticket’s slogan was “The Libertarian Party has only one source of funds: You.” In fact, its primary source of funds was David Koch, who spent more than two million dollars on the effort.

Many of the ideas propounded in the 1980 campaign presaged the Tea Party movement. Ed Clark told The Nation that libertarians were getting ready to stage “a very big tea party,” because people were “sick to death” of taxes. The Libertarian Party platform called for the abolition of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., as well as of federal regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Energy. The Party wanted to end Social Security, minimum-wage laws, gun control, and all personal and corporate income taxes; it proposed the legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs, and suicide. Government should be reduced to only one function: the protection of individual rights. William F. Buckley, Jr., a more traditional conservative, called the movement “Anarcho-Totalitarianism.”

buy goldline

WaPo | When Fox News and talk radio host Glenn Beck comes to Washington this weekend to headline a rally intended to "restore honor" to America, he will test the strength - and potentially expose the weaknesses - of a conservative grass-roots movement that remains an unpredictable force in the country's politics.

Beck, who is both admired and assailed for his faith-based patriotism and his brash criticism of President Obama, plans in part to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. as an American hero. He will speak on the anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech, from the spot where King delivered it.

Some "tea party" activists say the event, at which former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is also scheduled to speak, will have a greater impact than last September's "9/12" march along Pennsylvania Avenue. Although the attendance figures for that anti-tax rally are disputed, it was the first national gathering to demonstrate the size and influence of the tea party movement.

But with just a few days before the Beck rally, basic questions linger, including how big it will be and whether the event, which Beck says is nonpolitical, will help or hurt Republicans in November. Also unanswered is whether Beck can pull off the connection to King without creating offense - or confrontation with another event the same day led by the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Beck said in a recent broadcast that he did not intentionally choose the "I Have a Dream" anniversary for his rally - but that he believes the coincidence is "divine providence."

"Whites don't own Abraham Lincoln," he said. "Blacks don't own Martin Luther King. Those are American icons, American ideas, and we should just talk about character, and that's really what this event is about. It's about honoring character."

there is no democracy!!!

Video - Classic scenes from the movie Network

red cell memorandum

Video - wikileaks text to voice of the memo.

wikileaks | This CIA "Red Cell" report from February 2, 2010, looks at what will happen if it is internationally understood that the United States is an exporter of terrorism; 'Contrary to common belief, the American export of terrorism or terrorists is not a recent phenomenon, nor has it been associated only with Islamic radicals or people of Middle Eastern, African or South Asian ethnic origin. This dynamic belies the American belief that our free, open and integrated multicultural society lessens the allure of radicalism and terrorism for US citizens.' The report looks at a number cases of US exported terrorism, including attacks by US based or financed Jewish, Muslim and Irish-nationalism terrorists. It concludes that foreign perceptions of the US as an "Exporter of Terrorism" together with US double standards in international law, may lead to noncooperation in renditions (including the arrest of CIA officers) and the decision to not share terrorism related intelligence with the United States.

war defining human life by 2020

Video - Cenk on the Ambassador of Death

Marketwatch | Chris Hedges captures America's bizarre collective addiction to war. In "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning" this former war correspondent describes how a "communal march against an enemy generates a warm, unfamiliar bond with our neighbors, our community, our nation, wiping out unsettling undercurrents of alienation and dislocation."

He reminds me of my days going off to the Marine Corps and Korea. As one reviewer put it, Hedges looks "at what makes war so intoxicating for soldiers, politicians and ordinary citizens," the "outbreaks of nationalism, the wartime silencing of intellectuals and artists, the ways in which even a supposedly skeptical press glorifies the battlefield and other universal features of war." Yes, yes, we love war.

WWIII is coming not because we have terrorists, dictators and evil men wanting to destroy and depose us. Not because "they" are attacking "us." WWIII is coming because we have surrendered the fight, surrendered our honor, our integrity, our values, our moral compass as a democracy. We have surrendered to a new god, to the almighty dollar, the new Invisible Hand that controls not just capitalism but our nation's very soul.

Bottom line: We are at war with ourselves. Split souls, a hero, a demon. But we do not like ourselves, can no longer face ourselves in the mirror. Why? Our dark side is winning. The other has surrendered. We have lost our "self" in denial. Now the Righteous Right is bullying us with hope of redemption. False hope. That's suicide.

Still we are waiting to start World War III. And if the wait is too long, the Right will start to "bomb, bomb, bomb" someone and trigger WWIII. It's a macho "ego thing." They got a lot to prove. Don't care if they destroy America in the process ... because they know they are Right. Yes, folks, the real "mother of all national security issues" is within us.

america a walking dead zombie country

Video - Zombieland Hostess truck Twinkie search.

chaostheorien | “The key to understanding the current situation is to understand that house prices, jobs, wages, and pensions in the US are all being attacked with original-issue debt dollar junk.

This will continue until the middle class has been completely wiped out.”

Can you elaborate on this, please?

Yes, it’s a Financial Holocaust. It is designed to destroy the American middle-class. We face an original-issue deflation, if you will. It is as if Michael Milken ran the Fed. If you look at the work of Steve Keen (http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/), an economist in Australia and one of a very few economists who got the crisis of the past three years accurate, you understand that the banking system does not work on a system where deposits are the basis for fractional reserve. The banking system works on the basis of loans used as the collateral for more loans.

That means that the origination of all the fractional reserve lending that is going on is just more debt. There are no retail deposit reserves or wholesale deposit reserves, just original issue dollar based junk debt. And when you understand that debt is at the bottom of the pyramid and that there’s no equity at all, or capital as this term is usually understood, then you understand that the banks and the policy makers are continuing a programme at the behest of Wall Street to commit a Financial Holocaust to eliminate the majority in America, which is the middle-class. Wall Street banks with their CDS's, High Frequency Trading and bogus market making are injecting the equivalent of financial Zyklon B into the American and world economy.

my bus driver told me this yesterday morning..,

declineoftheempire | The housing market is crashing again. There are no positive indicators—none. Housing will be a drag on the U.S. economy for many years to come, but nobody knows how many. Demand for housing is in the toilet, and inventories are very high. Nobody knows how high. Amherst Securities estimates that the "shadow inventory" of available houses—the number of homes repossessed or in default that eventually will be offered for sale—stood at 7.3 million in the first quarter. That's over and above the huge unsold inventory we already know about.

Demand for houses is directly tied to high under-employment. Obviously, being unemployed or unwillingly part-time puts a crimp in your ability to buy a house. Since it reasonable to expect that under-employment will remain very high for most of the next decade, the ability of the housing market to bounce back will be impaired for just as long.

The only mystery in the housing market is why prices are still so high. With demand deteriorating rapidly, average home prices nationwide have no where to go but down. Falling prices will destroy wealth in the Middle Class over the next year or two (at least).

In the longer term, flat inflation-adjusted prices will not add to household wealth. In the 15 years preceding the collapse of the Housing Bubble, and because wages were stagnant or falling for ordinary Americans, the only way to build a nest egg was to own a home. With house prices going up & up, homeowners, especially in bubble areas (e.g. Arizona, California), felt wealthy. And on paper, they were as long as prices kept rising. When people feel wealthy, they spend money.

the third replicator

It's been a minute since we visited Blackmore - time for an update as she's still refining her concept of Temes.

NYTimes | All around us information seems to be multiplying at an ever increasing pace. New books are published, new designs for toasters and i-gadgets appear, new music is composed or synthesized and, perhaps above all, new content is uploaded into cyberspace. This is rather strange. We know that matter and energy cannot increase but apparently information can. It is perhaps rather obvious to attribute this to the evolutionary algorithm or Darwinian process, as I will do, but I wish to emphasize one part of this process — copying. The reason information can increase like this is that, if the necessary raw materials are available, copying creates more information. Of course it is not new information, but if the copies vary (which they will if only by virtue of copying errors), and if not all variants survive to be copied again (which is inevitable given limited resources), then we have the complete three-step process of natural selection (Dennett, 1995). From here novel designs and truly new information emerge. None of this can happen without copying. I want to make three arguments here. Imitation is not just some new minor ability. It changes everything. It enables a new kind of evolution. The first is that humans are unique because they are so good at imitation. When our ancestors began to imitate they let loose a new evolutionary process based not on genes but on a second replicator, memes. Genes and memes then coevolved, transforming us into better and better meme machines. The second is that one kind of copying can piggy-back on another: that is, one replicator (the information that is copied) can build on the products (vehicles or interactors) of another. This multilayered evolution has produced the amazing complexity of design we see all around us. The third is that now, in the early 21st century, we are seeing the emergence of a third replicator. I call these temes (short for technological memes, though I have considered other names). They are digital information stored, copied, varied and selected by machines. We humans like to think we are the designers, creators and controllers of this newly emerging world but really we are stepping stones from one replicator to the next.

your brain on computers

NYTimes | Technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.

Ms. Bates, for example, might be clearer-headed if she went for a run outside, away from her devices, research suggests.

At the University of California, San Francisco, scientists have found that when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory of the experience.

The researchers suspect that the findings also apply to how humans learn.

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”

At the University of Michigan, a study found that people learned significantly better after a walk in nature than after a walk in a dense urban environment, suggesting that processing a barrage of information leaves people fatigued.

Even though people feel entertained, even relaxed, when they multitask while exercising, or pass a moment at the bus stop by catching a quick video clip, they might be taxing their brains, scientists say.

“People think they’re refreshing themselves, but they’re fatiguing themselves,” said Marc Berman, a University of Michigan neuroscientist.

the decline of children and the moral sense

Psychology Today | It is becoming increasingly clear that the ways we are rearing our children today are not the ways humans are designed to thrive. As Thomas Lewis and colleagues point out: "A good deal of modern American culture is an extended experiment in the effects of depriving people of what they crave most." (A General Theory of Love).

The ill effects of these missing ancestral practices are becoming evident as children's well being is worse than 50 years ago. Characteristics that used to be limited to a subset of the population from neglect and abuse are becoming mainstream. Too many children are arriving at school with poor social skills, poor emotion regulation, and habits that do not promote prosocial behaviors or life success.

• The USA has epidemics of anxiety and depression among the young, indeed all age groups, and these are real numbers not artifacts of increased diagnosis.

• Rates of young children whose behavior displays aggression, delinquency, or hyperactivity are estimated to be as high as 25%.

• The expulsion rate of prekindergarten children31 and the number of children under age 5 with psychosocial problems or on psychotropic medications have increased dramatically.

• Ten years ago, it was determined that one of four teenagers was at risk for a poor life outcome and trends have not improved.

Although we can continue to minimize these problems and the risks in childrearing we are taking, the negative trajectories in well-being among children in the USA suggest that a reexamination of our cultural practices is needed. To the extent that our kids are not fully functioning threads in the social fabric, the quality of our cultural moral fiber is diminishing.

What Darwin considered the moral-engine of positive human thriving may be under threat. Ill-advised practices and beliefs have become normalized without much fanfare, such as the common use of infant formula, the isolation of infants in their own rooms, the belief that responding too quickly to a fussing baby is spoiling it, the placing of infants in impersonal daycare, and so on. We recommend that scientists and citizens step back from and reexamine these common culturally accepted practices and pay attention to potential life-time effects on people. It is an ethical issue.

wrong direction on stem cells

Video - James Sherley one of two "scientists" opposing embryonic stem cell research.

NYTimes | In a huge overreach, a federal judge has decided that the legal interpretation that has governed federal support of embryonic stem cell research for more than a decade is invalid. If the ruling stands, it will be a serious blow to medical research.

The ruling by Judge Royce Lamberth would block President Obama’s expansion of federally funded research to include scores of new stem cell lines. It also appears to bar funding for research on the handful of lines that were approved by President George W. Bush in 2001. The Department of Justice has rightly announced that it will appeal.

Scientists hold high hopes that this research will lead to cures for devastating ailments like diabetes, Parkinson’s and spinal cord injuries. The stem cells are also useful for screening drugs to treat such diseases. Researchers who already have federal money in hand could likely continue their work. But those who need new funding for proposed or continuing research would have to find private sources or shut their experiments down.

The judge’s ruling came as he granted a preliminary injunction blocking President Obama’s 2009 executive order expanding this research to use stem cells derived from surplus embryos at fertility clinics that would otherwise be discarded or frozen in perpetuity.

Although the injunction is temporary, the ruling is ominous because it means that the judge believes the two plaintiffs — scientists who do research on adult stem cells — have a “strong likelihood of success” if this issue proceeds to trial.

The case involves an obscure rider, known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, that has been attached to annual appropriations bills for the Department of Health and Human Services since 1996. It prohibits the use of federal funds to support research in which embryos are destroyed or discarded. It does not directly address research on stem cells derived from embryos, a field that developed later.

post katrina new orleans - focusing on what could be?

Video - The Sunken City: Rebuilding Post-Katrina New Orleans

UrbanLandInstitute | The city can keep its momentum going through careful consideration of how and where it grows, so that it continues to 1) become more accessible to residents and workers of a variety of incomes, age groups and household composition; and 2) more responsive to growing consumer demand for more energy-efficient and environmentally conscious places to live and work. This means sticking with a comprehensive strategy for development (and redevelopment) that conserves land and reduces the need to drive -- emphasizing development that integrates housing in a variety of price ranges, is close to employment and shopping, and is connected by transit.

Data from the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) offers a glimpse at where New Orleans stands in this regard. Earlier this year, the center released new data measuring location costs for more than 330 metro areas across the U.S., including combined housing and transportation expenses, miles traveled for local trips, and vehicle carbon emissions. Although New Orleans is not among the nation’s priciest markets, CNT found that the housing-transportation burden for the metro area remains high, totaling at least 45 percent of the income for the vast majority of residents.

The data also show the extent of car dependency in New Orleans: while those in the inner core drive less than 12,000 miles per year, those in the neighborhoods from just outside the core to the outlying edges drive 16,000 miles, even 18,000-plus miles per year for work and errands (nearly twice the national average). While 14 percent of downtown residents use public transit, the percentage drops to one percent or less for the suburbs. And, not surprisingly, the households farthest from major employment nodes have the highest carbon emissions. What this shows is the impact of sprawl in the suburbs, even in close-in suburbs, and even in a city with distinct land constraints.

As New Orleans continues the rebuilding process, how its suburbs grow is pivotal. Suburban growth in the 21st century does not have to be sprawl, not in New Orleans or other urban areas. In metro areas across the United States, the suburbs are where the growth will be, and in the suburbs, less land will have to be used to accommodate more people.

The need for more housing that is close to jobs, and the link between land use, driving, and environmental preservation all make a strong case for changing development patterns throughout urban regions, in the outlying areas as well as urban cores. In many ways, New Orleans is a city like no other, but in this regard, it is no different.

many clueless on how to save energy

Columbia | Many Americans believe they can save energy with small behavior changes that actually achieve very little, and severely underestimate the major effects of switching to efficient, currently available technologies, says a new survey of Americans in 34 states. The study, which quizzed people on what they perceived as the most effective ways to save energy, appears in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The largest group, nearly 20 percent, cited turning off lights as the best approach—an action that affects energy budgets relatively little. Very few cited buying decisions that experts say would cut U.S. energy consumption dramatically, such as more efficient cars (cited by only 2.8 percent), more efficient appliances (cited by 3.2 percent) or weatherizing homes (cited by 2.1 percent). Previous researchers have concluded that households could reduce energy consumption some 30 percent by making such choices—all without waiting for new technologies, making big economic sacrifices or losing their sense of well-being.

Lead author Shahzeen Attari, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the university’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, said multiple factors probably are driving the misperceptions. “When people think of themselves, they may tend to think of what they can do that is cheap and easy at the moment,” she said. On a broader scale, she said, even after years of research, scientists, government, industry and environmental groups may have “failed to communicate” what they know about the potential of investments in technology; instead, they have funded recycling drives and encouraged actions like turning off lights. In general, the people surveyed tend to believe in what Attari calls curtailment. “That is, keeping the same behavior, but doing less of it,” she said. “But switching to efficient technologies generally allows you to maintain your behavior, and save a great deal more energy,” she said. She cited high-efficiency light bulbs, which can be kept on all the time, and still save more than minimizing the use of low-efficiency ones. Fist tap Dale.

a critique of green reformism

Video - A critique of green reformism.

Green Reformism is a widespread response to the current ecological crisis. The term refers to the support for improved technology and resource efficiency combined with a commitment to the logic of capitalism. The video explains why this approach cannot work and why it represents a serious failure of intellectual leadership.

a critique of ecological economics

Video - Critique Part 1 and Critique Part 2

needsandlimits | Ecological economics is an academic field of study that merges ecology with standard economics. Here I outline its faulty historical vision as well as its errors with respect to value, cost, and capitalism. I also suggest that the field, by rejecting the necessary shift to a new mode of civilization, could be contributing to ecological collapse. Ecological economics is a prominent example of Green Reformism, which I criticized sharply in my previous video. The present video is intended for ecological economists, for students of the subject, and for those who may be attracted by the field's environmental strengths without appreciating its pronounced weaknesses.

peak oil alarm revealed by secret talks

Guardian | Speculation that government ministers are far more concerned about a future supply crunch than they have admitted has been fuelled by the revelation that they are canvassing views from industry and the scientific community about "peak oil".

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is also refusing to hand over policy documents about "peak oil" – the point at which oil production reaches its maximum and then declines – under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, despite releasing others in which it admits "secrecy around the topic is probably not good".

Experts say they have received a letter from David Mackay, chief scientific adviser to the DECC, asking for information and advice on peak oil amid a growing campaign from industrialists such as Sir Richard Branson for the government to put contingency plans in place to deal with any future crisis.

A spokeswoman for the department insisted the request from Mackay was "routine" and said there was no change of policy other than to keep the issue under review. The peak oil argument was effectively dismissed as alarmist by former energy minister Malcolm Wicks in a report to government last summer, while oil companies such as BP, which have major influence in Whitehall, take a similar line.

But documents obtained under the FoI Act seen by the Observer show that a "peak oil workshop" brought together staff from the DECC, the Bank of England and Ministry of Defence among others to discuss the issue.

A ministry note of that summit warned that "[Government] public lines on peak oil are 'not quite right'. They need to take account of climate change and put more emphasis on reducing demand and also the fact that peak oil may increase volatility in the market."

furious about a flagrant fiction

Guardian | Things seem awfully heated in America right now; so heated you could probably toast a marshmallow by jabbing it on a stick and holding it toward the Atlantic. Millions are hopping mad over the news that a bunch of triumphalist Muslim extremists are about to build a "victory mosque" slap bang in the middle of Ground Zero.

The planned "ultra-mosque" will be a staggering 5,600ft tall – more than five times higher than the tallest building on Earth – and will be capped with an immense dome of highly-polished solid gold, carefully positioned to bounce sunlight directly toward the pavement, where it will blind pedestrians and fry small dogs. The main structure will be delimited by 600 minarets, each shaped like an upraised middle finger, and housing a powerful amplifier: when synchronised, their combined sonic might will be capable of relaying the muezzin's call to prayer at such deafening volume, it will be clearly audible in the Afghan mountains, where thousands of terrorists are poised to celebrate by running around with scarves over their faces, firing AK-47s into the sky and yelling whatever the foreign word for "victory" is.

I'm exaggerating. But I'm only exaggerating a tad more than some of the professional exaggerators who initially raised objections to the "Ground Zero mosque". They keep calling it the "Ground Zero mosque", incidentally, because it's a catchy title that paints a powerful image – specifically, the image of a mosque at Ground Zero.

When I heard about it – in passing, in a soundbite – I figured it is a US example of the sort of inanely confrontational fantasy scheme Anjem Choudary might issue a press release about if he fancied winding up the tabloids for the 900th time this year. I was wrong. The "Ground Zero mosque" is a genuine proposal, but it's slightly less provocative than its critics' nickname makes it sound. For one thing, it's not at Ground Zero. Also, it isn't a mosque.

fast approaching the american shame threshold..,

Video - Daisy Khan spells out the truth of the matter.

NYDailyNews | This time it wasn't Sarah Palin leading the charge, the same yammering Palin who can dumb things down in ways that should be measured the way we measure fast times in the Olympics.

No, this time the gold medal went to Newt Gingrich, the front-runner in an awful lot of polls to be the Republican nominee for President in two years.

Gingrich showed up on a Fox morning show and talked about why the "radical Islamists" who want to build the cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, who want to show they can "build a mosque next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by Islamists," must be stopped.

"Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington," Gingrich said.

He wasn't done yet, because the guy never seems to run out of saliva: "We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor."

So somehow Gingrich, who is obsessed with what he calls the "secular socialism" of Barack Obama, was now good and geeked up, high on religion and what he believes is his higher calling to lead the whole country.

Gingrich is a Catholic now, by the way, having decided that's not just the best way into heaven for him, but perhaps into the White House as well.