Want To See What An Ass Kicking Looks Like?

One thing I have never understood is why Villagers always refer Newt Gingrich as being a smart guy. Many will even go as far as to say he is "very smart". He has always and will always come off to me as a bullshit artist who is good when there is nobody to challenge his talking points but awful when there is even the slightest bit of push back.

Well for some odd reason he agreed to go on "This Week with George Stephanopolous" opposite Governor Howard Dean. Needless to say it didn't go so well for him...



Now that was bad enough, but then Newt decided he wanted to try to defend Sarah Palin's "death squad" attack. But George wasn't having any of it and neither was Governor Dean.

STEPHANOPOULOS: One of the other claims being made about the bill -- and it's related to cost control -- is an -- and opponents are spreading the idea that the president's plan will encourage euthanasia. Most recently, Sarah Palin, on her Facebook page yesterday -- I think it was Friday night actually -- said that, "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

Now, as you know, Mr. Speaker, the president called that outlandish. He said...

GINGRICH: But why -- why didn't you put up what Dr. Zeke Emanuel said? Because Dr. Zeke Emanuel, who's the chief adviser to the president and brother of the chief of staff, said in writing...

STEPHANOPOULOS: He's not the chief health care adviser. He's written three articles between 1996 and 2008 that include some of those phrases...

(CROSSTALK)

GINGRICH: ... standards.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Those phrases appear nowhere in the bill. The only thing...

GINGRICH: But...

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... but let me just explain what's in the bill and then get you to respond to that. The only thing in the bill is they would allow Medicare to pay for what they say is voluntary counseling on end-of-life issues.

GINGRICH: I think people are very concerned, when you start talking about cost controls, that a bureaucracy -- we don't -- you're asking us to trust the government. Now, I'm not talking about the Obama administration. I'm talking about the government. You're asking us to decide that we believe that the government is to be trusted.

We know people who have said routinely, well, you're going to have to make decisions. You're going to have to decide. Communal standards historically is a very dangerous concept.

STEPHANOPOULOS: It's not in the bill.

GINGRICH: But the bill's -- the bill's 1,000 pages of setting up mechanisms. It sets up 45 different agencies. It has all sorts of panels. You're asking us to trust turning power over to the government, when there clearly are people in America who believe in -- in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards.

DEAN: Well, look, this is something Newt and I agree on. I don't want somebody in between the doctor and the patient. I don't want the possibility of losing your health insurance. I don't want people setting standards or denying care. That's all what we have now under the private health insurance system. That's what happens.

Look, I've practiced -- I've practiced for 10 years. My wife is still practicing. Never once did I have a Medicare bureaucrat tell me what I could or couldn't do for a patient, but all the time we have bureaucrats from the insurance companies calling up and saying, "We're not going to cover this, and we're not going to pay for that, and we're denying coverage of that."

The system we have right now is broken. We need to fix it. I think giving the American people some choices about how to fix it makes sense.

Newt Gingrich is a moron and its pretty close to being media malpractice to continue trying to hold this guy up as an "ideas man". His only claim to fame comes down to messaging not governing. It is what it is.