Gingrich Uses Nice Tragedy To Fan Muslim Hatred

The body of a young victim in Nice

A trip to my local after work last evening to cool off with a drink and unwind morphed into a sobering experience when I received a news alert on my iPhone via the New York Times about the horrific act of terror that took place in Nice, France.

I asked the bartender to switch one of the flat screen TVs mounted on the wall over the bar from the golf highlights no one was really paying attention to over to CNN so we could all watch the first reports of  yet more innocent people being killed.

The lighthearted conversation was quickly replaced by a sour mood as the gathered patrons began to express frustration and anger over the actions of those who would use terror to take the lives of innocent strangers using barbaric acts meant to shock and seize the attention of global media.

Once again this latest mass killing was carefully and diabolically timed to dominate headlines heading into a summer holiday weekend; and we're left to ponder the aftermath.

At least 84 people (including 10 children) reported killed, including a father and son from Texas, and more than two hundred injured; including at least three students from UCLA.

What makes this heinous act even worse are the deplorable attempts by prominent Republicans and conservative media figures to use this tragedy to once again vilify all Muslim refugees.

Gingrich calls for Muslim "tests"

As you've likely heard, former House Speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gringrich is making headlines for comments he made during a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity in which he suggested that America needs to begin implementing some kind of religious litmus test for all people of Muslim faith to determine if they profess a belief in Sharia Law.

A test? How would that even work?


According to estimates by the Pew Research Center, there were approximately 3.3 million Muslim-Americans in this country as of 2015; the very idea that the U.S. is somehow going to "test" the beliefs of of more than 3 millions American citizens is ludicrous.

And as President Obama said in a statement, Gingrich's "test" idea is "repugnant" to the very ideals of the Constitutional protections afforded to all citizens; including the freedom of religion and the freedom of expression.

Did Gingrich call for "testing" Christians after 20-year-old Adam Lanza gunned down 20 people in Sandy Hook Elementary back in 2012?

I certainly can't recall conservatives calling for a Christian "test" after 21-year-old Dylan Roof shot and killed nine people at a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17 last year.

Orlando shooter Omar Mateen - Born in New York

As Justin Salhani observed this morning in an article on ThinkProgress.org, none of the perpetrators of the recent string of high profile terrorist acts in France and Belgium were Muslim refugees; they were legal citizens of those respective countries.

Just consider the horrific mas killings we've seen across the United States recently, including in Charleston, Orlando, San Bernadino and most recently in Dallas.

They were all committed by unbalanced American psychopaths who had easy access to guns - they were all Americans born right here in America.

None of them were Muslim refugees, in fact there's no evidence any Muslim refugee has been arrested for plotting to kill Americans at all - in fact as Vox.com reported, 80% of terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11 have been committed by Americans.

Governments around the world, not just in American and Europe, have enough to deal with to try and figure out a practical and effective long-term strategy to deal with the global threat posed by people who've been radicalized by groups like ISIS, Al Qaeda and Boko Haram that pervert the Koran to justify barbaric acts of violence and cruelty.

Newt Gingrich calling for the establishment of some kind of thought police in America is not the solution, and creating some kind of "American Taliban" is anathema to the principles on which this country was founded.

Congressional Deja Vu & The Right's Attack On Consumer Rights

House Speaker Paul Ryan & Majority leader Kevin McCarthy

Like millions of other Americans around the nation, our Republican-majority Congress headed back to work this morning after the long holiday break.

A huge drop in the Chinese markets this morning prompted a sluggish start to the new year for Wall Street.

Armed militia members are still occupying a federal building in rural Oregon.

Mideast tensions have been ratcheted up over the escalating conflict between Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia and Shiite-majority Iran.

Given all those news events on this first Monday of 2016, you'd think GOP lawmakers in the House would have plenty of new business to tend to on behalf of the American people right?

Well... not so much.

Chalk it up to kooky legislative nostalgia for the record lack of productivity of the Boehner years, a disturbing obsession passion for political gridlock, or just plain old conservative stubbornness, Republican legislators are mining all-too familiar territory to kick off 2016.

As Reena Flores reported for CBSnews.com over the weekend:

"Another year, another effort to repeal Obamacare. House Republicans are starting off 2016 with a renewed legislative push to roll back the president's landmark healthcare legislation, with proposals to defund Planned Parenthood tacked onto the bill," 

MO (R) Vicky Hartzler announced latest GOP attack on healthcare on Saturday 

This newest legislative salvo to healthcare access would be the latest of over fifty different attempts by Republicans to gut major provisions of the Affordable Care Act - they tried it recently back on October 23rd.

It might actually be funny if these lawmakers weren't being paid on the taxpayer dime to represent the interests of the American people and they weren't actively trying to cut off healthcare access for millions of people who might not otherwise be able to afford it.

That's just one part of the GOP agenda.

The news over the holidays that former Republican Ohio Congressman Mike Oxley passed away as a result of complications related to lung cancer strikes me as symbolic of the massive shift in GOP priorities that's taken place since the 1980's.

Oxley was best known for co-authoring the Sarbanes-Oxley Act with  Maryland Democratic Senator Paul Sarbanes in 2002 in the kind of spirit of bipartisan cooperation that's rarely seen in Washington these days.

In the wake of a rash of huge corporate scandals at behemoths like ENRON and WorldCom that cost investors, employees and taxpayers billions, Oxley, a conservative pro-business Republican who represented Ohio's 4th District, fought for more strict corporate accountability and more stringent oversight of the public accounting firms that had grown too close to the corporations they were paid to monitor.  

Sen Paul Sarbanes and Rep Mike Oxley

Sarbanes-Oxley was one of the legislative highlights of the 107th Congress and it passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, 334-90 in the House and 97-0 on the Senate, before being signed into law by then-President George W. Bush.

Oxley (pictured left) symbolized a time when even pro-business Republicans recognized the importance of protecting the foundations of the American financial system from fraud, unnecessary risk and abuse.

But that was then and this is now and today's Republican party seems to have made dismantling protections that guard average Americans from fraud and abuse a priority.

For example, it was just before Christmas that I blogged about a new Republican-backed bill called H.R. 1787 that would make it easier for companies that issue auto financing loans to fraudulently charge black and Hispanic consumers higher interests rates for auto loans by undermining the authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's oversight of auto loan companies.

Republicans fought tooth and nail to keep Massachusetts Senator and consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren from heading up the CFPB and they've done everything to undermine the one federal agency tasked with monitoring the rights of average consumers so banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions can't take advantage of them.

Consumer protection foe Newt Gingrich

In an article for TheHill.com back on December 16th, Sylvan Lane reported that Republicans even had the gall to bring former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich (pictured left) up in front of a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing focused on data collection by the CFPB.

Using fear over data collection breeches as a mask, Republicans tossed Newt softball pitches so he could prognosticate about the evils of the CFPB - an agency set up to protect average consumers from fraud.

Having Gingrich testify about the CFPB in front of Congress is like having Dick Cheney testify on environmental conservation, or Bill Cosby testify about the abuse of date rape drugs.

Just six days after Gingrich's anti- CFPB lecture testimony on Capitol Hill, Jessica Greenberg and Michael Corkery published a truly disturbing piece in the Dealbook section of The New York Times
about massive debt-buying companies like Midland Funding using the courts to sue consumers over old debt in order to garnish their wages (sometimes without their knowing) over old debts.

Then those same debt-buying entities then use the same courts to prevent consumers seeking redress from suing the debt  collection entities.

The Times account of retired Baltimore electrician Clifford Cain, Jr. discovering that his Social Security and pension benefits were being garnished without his knowledge is a heat-breaking and disturbing look into the ways lawmakers and the financial entities that spend millions lobbying them have allowed the fraudulent targeting of American consumers on a mass scale to thrive as a legitimate industry.

You won't hear the leading Republican presidential candidates doing a lot of talking about consumer fraud - they're too busy whipping up hysteria over immigrants, minorities, stem cell research, same-sex marriage, voting rights and abortion to be bothered to address a problem that has a far more insidious and lasting impact on the lives of average Americans.

It's toxic, dangerous to the fabric of American society and another example of what I argue is Republican Psychosis in the modern age.