Caught Trying To Shit A Shitter

So Newt Gingrich goes on Jon Stewart and just starts making up shit including the demonstrably false claim that shoe bomber Richard Reid was a US citizen. Do Republicans still think they will go on the Daily Show and get away with this shit?

Seriously?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Newt Gingrich
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Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Newt Gingrich Extended Interview
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Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Oh, That Silly Newt...

Newt Gingrich is starting up a new website aimed at outreach to the Hispanic community and he is even going to use what he previously called "the language of the ghetto" as well.

No, seriously.

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.

GOP=FAIL

Well waddya know...

The new poll by the non-partisan firm Research 2000 for Daily Kos strongly suggests that the two main right-wing talking points about Sonia Sotomayor are a bust.

First, on the claim, echoed by many mainstream conservatives and GOPers, that Obama’s call for “empathy” in a judge is a cause for concern:

Do you think empathy is an important characteristic for a Supreme Court Justice to possess or not?

Yes 52%

No 29%

Not sure 19%
…and then, on the claim by Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich (who subsequently retracted it) and others on the right that Sotomayor is a “racist”:

Based on what you know or have heard about Sonia Sotomayor do you think she is a racist?

Yes 8%

No 61%

Kinda makes E.J. Dionne look silly doesn't it?

I'm Calling Bullshit

E.J. Dionne had an uber concern trolling column today in the Washington Post over President Obama elevating Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. Now I was going to post on it, but instead I decided to just leave a comment on the WaPo website telling Dionne to grow a pair and quit being scared of a fight. There is no way in hell an objective person would say that Rush or Newt are "winning" this fight. It really comes down to Dionne being worried about them dominating news cycles. But you see THAT'S THE POINT! We want those douchebags on Tee Vee all day everyday, not for the idiotic pundits who will try to score balls and strikes, but for the electorate, particularly independents, so they can decide for themselves if they want to align with a party that has those to assholes as "leading voices".


Now like I said, I wasn't going to post on it but then a funny thing happened on the way to the barn. I noticed that several different progressives bloggers that I generally agree with on most things put up posts lauding Dionne's column

Steve Benen

Matty Y

Eric Alterman


Now I don't know if this was some kind of journolist collabo or something (just kidding) but I really fail to understand how they believe what's going on right now will hurt Democrats and or President Obama. But that's how it happens sometimes that liberals and progressives are strong on policy but not as much so on politics. Not to say thats definitely the case here but I don't think any of them E.J. Dionne included could put forth a credible argument how this hurts Democrats politically.

And of course, it it was working Newt Gingrich wouldn't have taken back his words yesterday about calling Judge Sotomayor a racist.

Dick Durbin For Majority Leader

Dick Durbin brought the heat to Newt Gingrich today and personally I want and need someone with that kind of temperment as Majority Leader in the Senate. I am almost positive if that had been Harry Reid he not only would have thrown Speaker Pelosi under the bus, he probably would have apologized on her behalf.

Out With The Old, In With The.....Old?!

At some point members of the Republican Party are going to start asking what exactly is "new" about the National Council for a New America.

GOP Circular Firing Squads

Its beginning to look like Democrats won't have to expend a lot of energy fighting Republicans in the midterms because the Republicans will do the job for them. Yesterday Newt Gingrich sparked a new round of cannibalism when he referred to RNC members who were trying to undermine Michael Steele's authority as chairman as basically being self important egomaniacs. Well as you might expect, that didn't go over very well.

Defending Steele’s tumultuous start, Gingrich said the chairman might be under fire from some in the committee because he “probably has not yet learned the art of massaging the egos of RNC members.”

“They all think they’re precious, and they all think they should be taken care of, and they all think the job of the chairman, first of all, is to make the RNC members happy,” Gingrich said of the committee’s 168 members.

Tennessee GOP chairwoman Robin Smith objected to that suggestion, saying that “RNC members, on the whole, are committed individuals who sincerely work for the best of our party.”

“Forming circular firing squads only gives aid to the Democrats who are doing quite nicely in undercutting the public trust in our government,” Smith said.


Ada Fisher, committeewoman from North Carolina, said RNC members are not “as ego driven as some professional politicians and pundits would like to believe.”

“Most of us are not receiving large sums from being on television, serving as commentators, giving speeches or writing books, nor do we devote our waking hours to playing politics,” Fisher said in a thinly veiled jab at Gingrich.

snip

“Newt is right that RNC members believe they are ‘precious,’” said California committee member Shawn Steel. “However, Michael is more popular than ever. He communicates much more frequently than the prior chair."

North Carolina Republican party chair Linda Daves, who backed South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson during the race for the RNC chairmanship, knocked the members who are now pushing the resolution to regulate Steele’s financial powers.

“I think some of the members should spend more time trying to build the party on the state level and spend less time trying to micromanage the RNC and trying to tear down Michael Steele,” Daves said.

Norcross argued that the good governance resolution is only being proposed to fill the vacuum left by the retirement of veteran RNC comptroller Jay Banning, who was let go by the committee last month after more than 30 years. He said that oversight of the chairman’s purse strings by the committee is nothing new.

“Newt ought to get his facts right,” Norcross said. “My ego does not need to be taken care of, but my Treasurer does.”

This issue is now fracturing the RNC from within and I am sure that such a public spat won't be good for fundraising. My advice for the DNC and other Democratic groups is to just stand back and stay out of it. Let them knife each other to shreds while we reap the benefits. There is no need to try to hurt the RNC at this point, they are doing a damn good job of handling that all on their own!

Waxman Comes Off The Top Turnbuckle

First rule of fight club is use credible sources. When Newt Gingrich cites the Weekly Standard to start off you know this is about to go left. From the video you can tell that Henry Waxman was pretty much hoping that Newt brought the weaksauce today and he wasn't dissappointed. I bet Newt won't be running his ass to the Hill to testify again anytime soon.

Newtastic Fail

Talk about needing to give back your degree in history!

What Hoping For Failure Looks Like

I don't think any commentary is necessary.

(h/t O Dub)

Do As I Say...

Uhmmm Newtie, did you REALLY think people were going to forget the anti-Catholic values YOU have displayed in your own personal life?






Seriously, step away from the twitter, you are only making a bigger ass out of yourself.

Once Again Its On

First Newt Gingrich launched this shot across the bow aimed at Rush Limbaugh:

On NBC’S Meet The Press today, Gingrich fired back, saying that “you’ve got to want the president to succeed.” “You’re irrational if you don’t want the president to succeed because if he doesn’t succeed, the country doesn’t succeed,” said Gingrich.

Asked by host David Gregory if that clashed with the views of people like Limbaugh, Gingrich warned against calling for Obama’s failure:

GREGORY: Do you think that Republicans are discordant on that point, about whether they want him to fail or succeed?

GINGRICH: I don’t think anyone should want the president of the United States to fail. I want some of his policies to be stopped, but I don’t want the president of the United States to fail. I want him to learn new policies.

Well now as he is want to do Rush Limbaugh has fired back:

“You know, I’m frankly getting tired of talking about Newt, I mean, it’s a pointless exercise.”

snip

"They are fly-by-night operators, and most of them stand for nothing until they see a poll about what the American people want, and then they go out and try to say one way or another what the American people want while trying to falsely hold onto an ideology at the same time — and you can’t count on them. You can’t depend on them. They will sell you out; they will throw you overboard to save themselves, faster than anything. And they’ll use you on their way up as often as they can at the same time."

Now this is what you call an interesting development. You see Newt Gingrich for all his faults isn't the type to go grovelling back to Limbaugh. And honestly the more moderate Republicans are going to feel a lot closer to Newt than they will to el Rushbo. This may just be the altercation that helps to permanently fracture the GOP. All I can say is, in the words of TO, "get your popcorn ready"!

New Ideas?

Check out this excerpt from Bruce Bartlett's post about President Obama's budget at forbes.com.

Republicans will undoubtedly make extravagant claims about the detrimental economic effect of these higher taxes. When one hears these claims, however, it is worth remembering that they said the same things in years past and none of their dire predictions came to pass.

According to a recent Treasury Department study, Ronald Reagan proposed the largest peacetime tax increase in American history as part of a budget deal to get the federal deficit under control. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) of 1982 was signed into law on Sept. 3, and most of its provisions took effect on Jan. 1, 1983.

During debate on TEFRA, many conservatives predicted economic disaster. They argued that raising taxes in the midst of a severe recession was exactly the wrong thing to do. "Every school child knows you don't raise taxes in a recession unless you want to make it worse," The Wall Street Journal's editorial page warned. Said Rep. Newt Gingrich, "I think it will make the economy sicker." The Chamber of Commerce of the U.S. said it had "no doubt that it will curb the economic recovery everyone wants."

Looking at the data, however, it is very hard to see any evidence that TEFRA had a negative effect on growth. Indeed, one could easily make a case that its enactment stimulated growth. As one can see, the economy's growth rates after TEFRA took effect were among the fastest in history.

My my, that all sounds so familiar. Didn't I hear those very same arguments recently from many Congressional Republicans? As a matter of fact isn't that the very same meme that Newt Gingrich is once again promoting all over again? Now after they get off their fainting couches having learned that President Reagan actually RAISED taxes the GOP needs to do some serious soul searching The Republicans need wake up to the fact that their "new" ideas can't continue to be repackaged old ideas. That is at least if they ever want to have a shot at being relevant again in the future.

(h/t Steve Benen)

Not Very Bright, That One

Congressman Eric Cantor, an opportunist if there ever was one, it seems is not very bright. I guess up till now he has gotten over with decent looks and an ability to talk in complete sentences. But unfortunately the problem with being a power hungry politician is that sooner or later you get to a level where you actually have to DO something to justify your stature. It seems the more Cantor opens his mouth the more we see just how empty of a suit he is.

Whether it was last year when he blamed the House Republicans voting against the TARP on Nancy Pelosi hurting their feelings or whether it was his office a week ago releasing a very vulgar youtube parody of an old union ad (this after he campaigned against obscenity in media)in response to pressure put on him to vote for the bill by union groups Eric Cantor has seemed to undermine himself and his party at every turn. So now he comes out with the relevation that he "studies" Newt Gingrich's opposition as leader of the minority in the early nineties as some kind of model for what House Republicans should do now. Then when he catches flack for admitting that he his patterning himself after a guy who got run out of Washington on a rail because of his antics, Cantor doubled down on teh stupid.

Today over at Greg Sargent's Plum Line we find out that Eric Cantor has now released a statement to the media that he ALSO studies Winston Churchill as a model for how to react when in the minority. Now first of all wouldn't you know it, Cantor got the basic facts of when Chamberlain was even the leader of the minority wrong. But the best part of the story is how it might directly relate to the vote on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Churchill was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924 under Stanley Baldwin and oversaw Britain's disastrous return to the Gold Standard, which resulted in deflation, unemployment, and the miners' strike that led to the General Strike of 1926.[82] His decision, announced in the 1924 Budget, came after long consultation with various economists including John Maynard Keynes, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Sir Otto Niemeyer and the board of the Bank of England. This decision prompted Keynes to write The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill, arguing that the return to the gold standard at the pre-war parity in 1925 (£1=$4.86) would lead to a world depression. However, the decision was generally popular and seen as 'sound economics' although it was opposed by Lord Beaverbrook and the Federation of British Industries.[83]

Churchill later regarded this as the greatest mistake of his life. However in discussions at the time with former Chancellor McKenna, Churchill acknowledged that the return to the gold standard and the resulting 'dear money' policy was economically bad. In those discussions he maintained the policy as fundamentally political - a return to the pre-war conditions in which he believed.[84] In his speech on the Bill he said "I will tell you what it [the return to the Gold Standard] will shackle us to. It will shackle us to reality."[85]

The return to the pre-war exchange rate and to the Gold Standard depressed industries. The most affected was the coal industry. Already suffering from declining output as shipping switched to oil, as basic British industries like cotton came under more competition in export markets, the return to the pre-war exchange was estimated to add up to 10% in costs to the industry. In July 1925, a Commission of Inquiry reported generally favouring the miners, rather than the mine owners' position.[86] Baldwin, with Churchill's support proposed a subsidy to the industry while a Royal Commission prepared a further report.

That Commission solved nothing and the miners dispute led to the General Strike of 1926, Churchill was reported to have suggested that machine guns be used on the striking miners. Churchill edited the Government's newspaper, the British Gazette, and, during the dispute, he argued that "either the country will break the General Strike, or the General Strike will break the country" and claimed that the fascism of Benito Mussolini had "rendered a service to the whole world," showing, as it had, "a way to combat subversive forces"—that is, he considered the regime to be a bulwark against the perceived threat of Communist revolution. At one point, Churchill went as far as to call Mussolini the "Roman genius… the greatest lawgiver among men."[87]

Later economists, as well as people at the time, also criticised Churchill's budget measures. These were seen as assisting the generally prosperous rentier banking and salaried classes (to which Churchill and his associates generally belonged) at the expense of manufacturers and exporters which were known then to be suffering from imports and from competition in traditional export markets,[88] and as paring the Armed Forces too heavily.[89]

If you have been following the whole stimulus bill discussion you might remember that Keynes fellow. He is the guy whose theory of economics is the basis for President Obama's stimulus bill. He is also the guy that WingNuts like Cantor have decided didn't know what the hell he was talking about. If Cantor is REALLY studying Churchill maybe he would have noticed what happened when Churchill rejected Keynes' advice way back when. At the very least you have to wonder does he REALLY want to bring this kind of attention to Churchill when essentially he made the same mistake the GOP is right now in rejecting Keynes expressly for political reasons?

Like I said before, not very bright.

Im Not Buying It!

Newt Gingrich is not your friend. People need to say that over and over whilst looking in the mirror until 2010 gets here. The guy is trying to pull an "okie doke" and come off like he is rational and reasonable. Bull Effin Shit. This is the same guy who was gay gay baiting a couple of weeks ago. The same guy who jumped on the "Obama is a socialist train and damn near tried to be the conductor. This is the same guy who called Spanish "the language of the ghetto". This is also the genius who brought us "Drill here Drill now"So excuse me if I don't get all fluttery inside when he chides the RNC for attacking President Elect Obama over Blago Gate. Lets check out Daddy Gingrich chiding his kids over at the RNC.

In a time when America is facing real challenges, Republicans should be working to help the incoming President succeed in meeting them, regardless of his Party.
From now until the inaugural, Republicans should be offering to help the President-elect prepare to take office.
Furthermore, once President Obama takes office, Republicans should be eager to work with him when he is right, and, when he is wrong, offer a better solution, instead of just opposing him.

snip

This ad is a terrible signal to be sending about both the goals of the Republican Party in the midst of the nation's troubled economic times and about whether we have actually learned anything from the defeats of 2006 and 2008.

Blah Blah Blah. Blow it out your arse Newt Gingrich. Just a little over a month or so ago you were trying to paint Obama as terrorist sympathizer and a socialist. In comparison I have to say that the RNC attack ad not only was lame but a lot tamer in its accusations. Newt Gingrich is the same race baiting Dixiecrat that he has always been and he is just trying to lull everyone in to a false sense of security so they actually pay attention to his wingnut fantasies again.

If you think I am the only one who is skeptical check out this comment from an unnamed Republican strategist who was asked his opinion on the letter from Sam Stein at the Huffington Post.

"I think that Newt wants a change at the RNC, and it is an intervention in the RNC race."

I couldn't have said it any better myself.