[Ed. note: We break into our countdown of top videos for a few notable videos of the past 24 hours]

Here we have Republican Newt Gingrich tearing up as he recalls times with his mother, who struggled with mental illness and died of cancer in 2003 - or - here we have Republican Newt Gingrich desperately trying to save his floundering campaign by crying a couple of days before voting starts. Your call.

"You'll get me all teary-eyed, Callista will tell you, I get teary-eyed every time we sing Christmas carols. My mother sang in the choir and loved singing in the choir," Gingrich said, referring to his wife, as he fought back tears.

"But I identify my mother with being happy, loving life, having a sense of joy in her friends, but what she introduced me to, is late in her life she ended up in a long-term-care facility. She had bipolar disease, and depression, and she gradually acquired some physical ailments, and that introduced me to the issue of long-term care, which I did with Bob Kerrey for three years, and that introduced me to the issue of Alzheimers, which I did with Bob Kerrey for three more years, and my whole emphasis on brain science comes indirectly from dealing with the real problems of real people in my family," the former House Speaker continued, at moments stopping to cry.

The audience sympathetically cheered for Gingrich as he spoke about his mother.

"I do policy much easier than I do personal," Gingrich joked.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz asked how his mother would react if she was at the event Friday, Gingrich said she would have been working the crowd.

"She'd be talking to all these people, and she'd be telling them how nice I was," Gingrich said to laughter.

[Video via TPM]

Never thought I'd write these words, but Krugman is depressing me: (h/t Vicci Rocco)

It’s time to start calling the current situation what it is: a depression. True, it’s not a full replay of the Great Depression, but that’s cold comfort. Unemployment in both America and Europe remains disastrously high. Leaders and institutions are increasingly discredited. And democratic values are under siege.

On that last point, I am not being alarmist. On the political as on the economic front it’s important not to fall into the “not as bad as” trap. High unemployment isn’t O.K. just because it hasn’t hit 1933 levels; ominous political trends shouldn’t be dismissed just because there’s no Hitler in sight.

That's right, Paul Krugman just pulled the Godwin card. But as anyone who has studied periods of great economic strife in history, this isn't a flippant thing. Howie Klein continues:

I've had friends who have been saying we've been in a Depression since the last year of Bush's disastrous term. But they don't have Nobel Prizes in economics. NY Times columnist/Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman is a Nobel laureate and he's managed to not call it a depression-- until this week. And not just a depression, but one that is already starting to inspire a fascist reaction, the way the Great Depression of the 1930s did in much of the world. He points out that the euro crisis "is killing the European dream. The shared currency, which was supposed to bind nations together, has instead created an atmosphere of bitter acrimony." Spain just elected a far right government. Italy and Greece had far right governments imposed on them by banksters backed by Germany.

It's a like a rubber band: you can only stretch it so far and if you stretch beyond that, it snaps and breaks. Economically, we appear to be right at that breaking point. You cannot steal the livelihoods and futures from so many people, demanding austerity and sacrifice, while simultaneously protecting those who are living large and refusing to hold anyone accountable for this kind of injustice.

We've seen what this kind of economic disparity did in the 1930s and it sure looks like we're barreling right back over that cliff again. More Krugman:

Nobody familiar with Europe’s history can look at this resurgence of hostility without feeling a shiver. Yet there may be worse things happening.

Right-wing populists are on the rise from Austria, where the Freedom Party (whose leader used to have neo-Nazi connections) runs neck-and-neck in the polls with established parties, to Finland, where the anti-immigrant True Finns party had a strong electoral showing last April. And these are rich countries whose economies have held up fairly well. Matters look even more ominous in the poorer nations of Central and Eastern Europe.

Last month the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development documented a sharp drop in public support for democracy in the “new E.U.” countries, the nations that joined the European Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not surprisingly, the loss of faith in democracy has been greatest in the countries that suffered the deepest economic slumps.

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This is so sad. Ever since the Reagan era, mental health services have been inaccessible to a large segment of the population, particularly the poor and disadvantaged. And especially now the embrace of austerity by our Republican overlords is taking a toll. A deep one.

Via Yahoo! News:

Suicide is on the increase in rural America--nowhere so much as in western mountain states like Idaho, Wyoming and New Mexico. Mental health professionals attribute it in part to cutbacks in Medicaid funding, to the recession and to the culture of the rural West.

In Idaho, somebody kills himself every 35 hours, according to a 2009 report to Idaho's governor by the state's Council on Suicide Prevention. Their report calls suicide "a major public health issue" having a "devastating effect" on Idaho's families, churches, businesses and even schools: 65 students aged 10 and 18 killed themselves in a recent five-year period.

Recently, a county sheriff in Bonneville told the Idaho Falls Post Register that his department was getting more suicide calls than in 2010—a year in which 290 Idahoans took their own lives. "We're in a spike right now," he says.

Historically the suicide rate in rural states has been higher than in urban ones. According to the most recent national data available, Alaska has the highest rate, at 24.6 suicides per 100,000 people. Next comes Wyoming (23.3), followed by New Mexico (21.1), Montana (21.0) and Nevada (20.2). Idaho ranks 6th, at 16.5. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Idahoans aged 15-34. Only accidents rank higher.

Kathie Garrett, co-chairman of the Idaho Council on Suicide Prevention, says the problem has gotten only worse since the recession. "The poor economy and unemployment—those put a lot of stress on people's lives," she explains. To save money, people skip doctor visits and cut back on taking prescribed medications. Cuts in Medicaid have reduced the services available to the mentally ill.

Assuming the Affordable Care Act withstands a Supreme Court challenge, Medicaid funding from the federal government will increase substantially, but for these people, it's too late. Between the economy and lack of access to mental health services, some feel overwhelmed and miserable, particularly at this time of year.

If you know someone suffering, please encourage them to call a suicide hotline or reach out to someone for help. The national suicide hotline number is 1-800-273-8255.

Phyllis Schlafly, who has obviously never known a hungry day in her life, says that besides "the Blacks" (yeah) Obama voters are single women who have "kicked out their husbands." Audio at Mock, Paper Scissors.

Open thread below...

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You can always count on Tom Tancredo to say all kinds of insane things, but sometimes it's hard to tell if he just says them to get attention, which he obviously craves, or if he really believes the things he says.

Well, the other day at a campaign event for his pal, Republican Senate candidate and renowned Tea Partier Ken Buck (a favorite of Erick Erickson, too), Tancredo seemed quite aware of this confusion, and did his best to clear it up for us all:

Tancredo: What could be more important for you to do, really, if you think about this? Everything is at stake here. Everything.

I firmly believe with all my heart, you guys, although we have had many threats to our nation -- and we have gone through a whole lot of things, and survived many things. We -- I always say, you know, we survived the Civil War, we survived the Depression, we went through all -- we survived Bill Clinton, for heaven's sake!

But nothing -- I do not believe -- not the Soviet Union, when we were in, you know, that thirty-five year period leading up to the fall of the Soviet Union, thanks to Ronald Reagan, God bless him. [Applause]

...

But we had that threat, we survived it. Later, we found out we had another threat to our way of life, and that was Al Qaeda, and we found that out on 9/11.

But I firmly believe this -- it's not just, you know, some dramatic statement a person would make to get press or something or ink. I believe this with all my heart -- that the greatest threat to the United States today, the greatest threat to our liberty, the greatest threat to the Constitution of the United States, the greatest threat to our way of life, everything we believe in, the greatest threat to the country that was put together by the Founding Fathers, is the guy that is in the White House today.

It's actually a bit scarier to realize that people like Tancredo (and Beck, and Limbaugh, and Weiner Savage, and Palin, et al et al) really believe the things that come out of their mouths.

And you'll notice that everyone applauded.

Will Bunch at Attytood brings us a story that's so bizarre, at first I thought it was a joke. It isn't. (The fact that anyone will pay the Beckster $10 a month during a depression to get Double-Secret Indoctrinated? That's a joke.)

I wish I could tell you that this is a clever photoshop on my part -- but sadly, no. This is the actual emblem of something called Beck University that was officially announced today by the king of all distorted right-wing media, although judging from the initial info its formal accreditation as one of America's institutions of higher learning may be a few years away (and there's no truth to the rumor that the Pac-10 immediately asked Beck U. to become a member):

From Beck's web site:This July, while others are relaxing poolside, head back to the classroom - from the comfort of your own home. That may sound like an oxymoron but Glenn’s new academic program is only available online.Offered exclusively to Insider Extreme subscribers, Beck University is a unique academic experience bringing together experts in the fields of religion, American history and economics. Through captivating lectures and interactive online discussions, these experts will explore the concepts of Faith, Hope and Charity and show you how they influence America’s past, her present and most importantly her future.

I guess you could call this "the Harvard of right-wing radio universities," in the sense that, well, to my knowledge there aren't any other right-wing radio universities. Unlike Harvard or Yale, where Beck was a half-term (sound familiar?) student in one theology course after his ex-friend Joe Lieberman pulled some strings, Beck U. is strictly a profit deal. Only by paying Glenn Beck Inc. to become an extreme insider($9.95 a month, or $74.95) can you enroll on Beck's pseudo-cyber-campus. How else do you think Beck expects to sell that $4.25 million manse and move into bigger digs?

In addition to the myriad other reasons, one thing that guarantees that Beck U. won't be showing up in the U.S. News and World Report survey anytime soon is that 33 percent of the faculty is a fraud. That would be the Christian-oriented pseudohistorian and Texas schoolbook perverter David Barton, whose sins against knowledge have been chronicled here in the past. Students at Beck U. can also learn economics from a Beck pal, David Buckner, with a mediocre pedigree (he has been an adjunct associate professor not of economics but of psychology and education at Columbia) and also from an actual professor who somehow sneaked in there, LSU's James Stoner.

The school motto is "To tyrants, uprising -- obedience to God." Or Beck, depending!

The other day, Krugman wrote that we're in the beginning of a new Long Depression.

Forgive me, but he's wrong: this isn't the beginning, it's been going on for about two years now.

During a Depression there are periods where GDP grows. There are periods where jobs grow. It's just that the periods of job growth don't last.

There were opportunities to end the Depression before it really dug in its heels. The last one was at the beginning of Obama's term. Kicking out of the Depression required two things.

The first was an adequate stimulus. This didn't just mean a large enough stimulus, though the one offered was not large enough, it meant one properly constructed. Tax cuts for ordinary Americans are not stimulative, because folks like banks who have pricing power (you must have a credit card, loans, etc...) will simply take that money away by raising rates and fees. And it doesn't mean short term shovel-projects, it means making commitments which will last for years so that businesses, when making plans know that hiring is worth it because those employees will be needed for more than a year or so.

Likewise the US has some serious problems with the structure of the American economy. The cornerstone of the stimulus had to be reducing US dependence on oil because as long as the US economy is so dependent on oil, full fledged growth is simply not possible. The days of $20/barrel oil aren't coming back, and every time the price of oil gets too high, it puts great pressure on the US economy (and every other modern nation.)

The second thing which had to be done is to force the banks to actually eat their losses. Wipe out the shareholders and let the bondholders take their losses. All the money plunged into the banks (and it was much more than the TARP money, which was the smallest part of it) was wasted. Banks are not lending, and restoring lending is what the bailouts were sold as doing. Moreover they have raised borrowing rates and fees on those who need credit most, soaking up money which otherwise would be helping the economy rather than simply being sopped up to plug holes in bank balance sheets.

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Glenn Beck seems to be on a crusade of sorts to try to claim the Civil Rights Movement for conservatives. Lotsa luck with that, big guy.

Yesterday on his Fox News show he opened a segment with this:

Beck: I told you this summer that we are going to concentrate on restoring history. The history of our nation, the founding, the 20th century, the Depression era, um, and the Civil Rights Movement, which has been co-opted by progressives.

Of course, if Beck wants to make this claim, he won't be "restoring" history, unless by "restoring" you mean "utterly falsifying and inverting on its head".

Because, of course, as we've explained several times, the Civil Rights Movement from its very inception was a progressive cause. Beck's favorite Civil Rights icon, Martin Luther King, was a leading advocate of the same "social justice" that Beck now openly despises.

This whole project of Beck's -- built around his August 28 "Restoring Honor" rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial -- is more than a little peculiar. It's become evident he wants to claim the mantle of the Civil Rights Movement for he and his fellows on the American Right.

There's only one little problem with all of that: Not only was the Civil Rights Movement a progressive cause from the start, it was the American Right that opposed, attacked, condemned, and undermined the Civil Rights marchers at every turn. It was conservatives, the Glenn Becks of their day, who publicly reviled them and inspired the deadly lynch mobs and Klansmen who committed acts of violence against them.

Indeed, some of their propaganda looks more than a little familiar, don't you think?

This, you see, was a flier that was distributed widely as part of a campaign to discredit King as a Communist. Among the formost leaders in that campaign, especially among Mormons, was none other than the Church's future president, Ezra Taft Benson.

Here are some prime quotes from Benson:

“LOGAN, UTAH-Former Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson charged Friday night that the civil-rights movement in the South had been ‘formatted almost entirely by the Communists.’ Elder Benson, a member of the Council of the Twelve of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said in a public meeting here that the whole civil-rights movement was ‘phony.’” (Deseret News, Dec. 14, 1963)

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Change.org is gathering signatures to petition Congress to add another tier of unemployment benefits. (No, the just-passed legislation doesn't do a thing for people who have just exhausted their 99 weeks of benefits - even though there aren't any jobs for them.)

You would think we wouldn't have to shame Democrats into standing up for those who need help, but apparently we do. Please, go sign the petition!

Greetings

Senators and Representatives:

You have decided to ignore the people you reduced to poverty. The longest unemployed workers did not create this depression, you did. You did this with your failure to regulate the banks, health industry, and corporations. People who were fully employed, paying taxes, and raising families are now paying the price for your negligence. They trusted you to keep something like this from happening. You failed them.

Now you are deliberately failing them again. This may be a recession for you, but it's a depression for them. You know this depression will last longer than until March, yet you have no plans to add additional unemployment tiers to keep these people from becoming increasingly destitute. Tens of thousands will begin to lose all financial support on March 14. You know with full clarity that these benefits are the only money keeping food on their tables. You know that their benefits run out in March, and that these American families will be on the path to shelters and soup kitchens.

...and this is not of their making. They're not to blame. You are.

...and you're about to discount them again by allowing their benefits to end with Tier IV.

By the way, don't pride yourself on extending the current benefits for the more recently unemployed, as included in the Job Bill. Of course you should do this, but as you know, the bill as it is written will not help any of those who have been the longest and hardest hit by this depression. The Job Bill only half addresses the unemployed, and 50% is an F.

Please make sure that the only choice for Americans who want to work is either a job or unemployment benefits. Don't end benefits until there are jobs for them. As of now, there is only 1 job for every 6 unemployed workers. Take care of these victims. ADD A TIER V.

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Isn't that great news? He also told George Stephanopoulos on This Week there will be "growth in the spring." (Just like Chauncy Gardiner in "Being There.")

But it isn't true. The recession isn't over until jobs increase, and that's not really happening. Summers is saying we "only" lost 11,000 jobs last month, and that's not exactly true. The numbers were brought down by a number of factors, including the large numbers of people who have given up and stopped looking for work.

Nonetheless, everyone agrees Larry Summers is a Very Serious Person, so I will take his word for it and just sit here, waiting for my pony.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And Mr. Summers, let me begin with you, and let's start with just the overall economic situation right now, especially on jobs. We saw that drop in unemployment in November, but private economists predict that unemployment is likely to head back up. Mark Zandi sees it peaking at about 10.6 percent next year. Others say it could go up to 11 percent. Is that in line with your forecast?

SUMMERS: George, here is what I know. We were talking about depression, we were talking about the financial system collapsing. Today, everybody agrees that the recession is over, and the question is what the pace of the expansion is going to be. These things happen in stages. First, GDP goes up. That has happened. Then, hours that are worked by workers who already have jobs go up. That's starting to happen. Then employment goes up. We got very close to that this year, this month, with only 11,000 jobs lost. And then unemployment starts to come down. So these problems weren't made in a month or a year, and they are going to take a substantial time to solve. But what we can take satisfaction from is that we've walked back from the brink. And you know, forget what we say. Most professional forecasters are now looking for a return to job growth by spring.

Now, when job growth starts, more people are going to be looking for work, so it will take a little longer for the unemployment statistics to come down, but make no mistake, we were losing 700,000 a month when President Bush turned the economy over to President Obama. The number last month was 11,000.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me pin you down on that, though. You believe the economy is actually going to be creating jobs in the spring.

SUMMERS: That is the judgment of most professional forecasters. That's right, George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So given that...

SUMMERS: If you look at the employment statistics, they will show employment growth. They were showing losing 700,000 a month. Last month, they showed losing 11,000 jobs. They will bounce from month to month, but I believe that, as do most professional forecasters, that by spring, employment growth will start to be turning positive.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So given that, we saw the president allowed some job creation ideas earlier this week. What is the upper limit on what he will sign into law in terms of new job creation measures early next year? $100 billion?

SUMMERS: The president is going to work with Congress to do what's necessary. George, it's a bit of a Washington thing to put this in terms of price tags. For example, the president is doing a whole set of things, working with other...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the American people want to...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: It's not a Washington thing.

SUMMERS: To promote our exports. That doesn't have a -- that does not have a direct cost. But the president has talked about doing things for infrastructure. It doesn't cost anything to encourage banks, as the president will be doing, to meet their responsibilities and expand the flow of credit to small business.

We're in a very different -- we are in a very special kind of economic situation, and frankly, jobs have to be the top priority, and every bill is going to be a jobs bill going forward. We hope we can find common ground. We emphasize support for small businesses, repairing the nation's infrastructure. These ought to be things that everybody can agree on.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, let me just pin you down, though, one more time on that. You did lay out a number of ideas that don't cost money, but extending unemployment costs money. Aid to states and local governments costs more money. Investing in infrastructure costs money. So what is the upper limit on what President Obama will sign?

SUMMERS: The president is going to do what's necessary to respond to this crisis. He's put a figure of $50 billion on the infrastructure support that he proposes. His proposals on unemployment insurance are primarily a continuation of the legislation that the Congress has already passed and that has been put in place. And he recognizes that when we take new steps, we have to do it in the context of a framework that is fiscally responsible. We can't just look in isolation at one measure. We've got to look at the $8 trillion in deficit over the next 10 years that the president inherited, and start making progress with respect to those deficits. That's what the president did in his budget. That's what the health care bill does with the most consequential set of health care reforms that have ever been put forward, and they are now on the brink of passage.