Brothers of Different Mothers

Separated at Birth? You decide.

Newt Gingrich:




Damon Wayans as "Oswald Bates" from In Living Color:

The greatest thing in the history of television

In case you missed it, John Lithgow reads Newt Gingrich's bombastic press release:

It's disconcerting because Lithgow bears a striking facial resemblance to Andrew Breitbart the way he's lit here. And it's doubly hilarious if you saw Lithgow's chilling performance as the Trinity Killer in Dexter season 4.

I wonder how those twisty Teabagger brains are going to manage this one

In recent years we've seen the political climate on the right fully embrace the Idiocy Is Great doctrine of political discourse. As Barack Obama, the thoughtful, measured former Harvard Law Review editor brought his cool, cerebral, measured, thoughtfulness to the White House, it infuriated those whose crania resemble that of the lunkhead in the much-maligned Planet Fitness commercials who repeats over and over again, "I lift things up and put them down." (By the way, this anti-PF rant is pretty hilarious with its complaints about judgmentalism of bodybuilders while it talks judgmentally about those who aren't, but the whole Planet Fitness foofarah is a topic for another day.)

The Militant Idiocy Movement reached its apex with the rise of Sarah Palin, a woman so incurious and so celebratory of willful ignorance that she can't even string together a coherent sentence. But the combination of her schoolmarm-as-dominatrix looks and reassurance of those who are gray matter-challenged that being stupid is infinitely superior to things like, well, ideas, made her the darling of the right -- at least for a while.

The stupidity-as-virtue doctrine still has a stranglehold on the right, and we see it everywhere, from Palin to Louie Gohmert to Virginia Foxx to the Doublemint Twins of stupid, the Kings Peter and Steve, and so on and so on.

Enter Newt Gingrich.

Say what you will about the Lizard King, he's many things but he's not stupid. He's as crooked as the day is long and he's elevated hypocrisy to an art form, but he's not stupid. His little lizard brain is always cooking up something that can be called "ideas" (if you want to call them that), if only because the rest of his party is obsessed with birth certificates and terror babies and Scary Brown People and evil sluts who won't keep their legs closed and must be punished with the curse of motherhood, which is also what they profess to worship above all else. His "ideas" may seem "intellectual" by comparison to, say, John Boehner, but they're mostly about getting him laid or getting more money into his own pockets. But in the Republican Party, that's enough.

And like the dutiful little puppets they are, the Usual Suspects in the punditocracy are already dusting off their Newt Gingrich Is An Intellectual talking points from those halcyon pre-1994 days.

So what will the teabaggers, who thought they'd get to drink beer with George Bush and that they'd get to fuck Sarah Palin, make of a guy who for all that he's greedy and hypocritical, likes to sell himself as an ideas guy? I mean, on the right, is there anything that shows an ability to think out of the box than to excuse his checkered marital history by saying that he was Fucking for Patriotism? Will they embrace the part of him that taps into their Inner Crazy, or will the fact that he can speak coherently make them suspicious of him?

We will soon see.

This may not be as silly as it looks on the surface

After all, Republicans have been able to claim, with some success, that the 9/11 attacks were Bill Clinton's fault, that TARP (instituted in 2008) was Barack Obama's program, that George W. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifBush'shttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif presidency was a success, and that Bush deserves the credit for capturing Osama Bin Laden.

So with their ability and willingness to rewrite history, why WOULDN'T Newt Gingrich run as a devout, devoted husband to his lovely wife Callista, whom he was fucking on the side while married to his second wife, whom he was fucking while married to his first? http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Still in her 20s when they met, Ms. Bisek had been raised in a town of 1,500, the only child of a meat packer and a secretary. A churchgoing Roman Catholic, she had attended a Lutheran college where she practiced piano five hours a day. “Is this the wisest course for you to be taking?” Karen Olson, her best friend, recalled asking.

Today, Ms. Bisek is Mrs. Gingrich, married for 11 years, but perhaps best remembered for the six-year affair that contributed to her husband’s political downfall. His critics cast Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, as a hypocrite who sought to impeach a president over infidelity while engaging in it himself with Ms. Bisek, who was a Congressional aide.

Yet in a curious tale of Washington reinvention, the onetime congressman from Georgia is counting on the third Mrs. Gingrich for his political redemption.

As he prepares for a Republican presidential primary run — he said Monday that he would formally declare his intentions on Wednesday — Mr. Gingrich is presenting himself as a family man who has embraced Catholicism and found God, with his wife as a kind of character witness. Depending on one’s point of view, she is a reminder of his complicated past, or his secret political weapon.

Barely a sentence goes by without Mr. Gingrich uttering the words “Callista and I.” They are constantly together — at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, at conservative political conferences, at book signings and screenings of their documentary films. She is the voice on his audio books; her face is all over his 2012 Web site, where visitors can read “A Note from Newt & Callista.”

At Villanova University on a recent Thursday night, Mrs. Gingrich warmed up the audience for a showing of the couple’s movie about Pope John Paul II by signing books and DVDs in her left-handed curlicue. But when asked whether she is ready for the scrutiny a campaign would bring, she smiled tightly and grew silent.

Mr. Gingrich answered for her. “Seems to be,” he said, with uncharacteristic tentativeness. “We’ve talked about it for a year. It’s difficult.”

Mr. Gingrich is well aware that social conservatives are skeptical of him because he did not emphasize their issues in Congress, but also because of his two divorces and admission of infidelity. He has been meeting with religious leaders around the country to address their concerns.

What concerns could they possibly have? After all, didn't Jesus die on the cross so that Newt Gingrich could fuck whoever he wants? Isn't that what Gingrich means when he talks about his belief in a "forgiving God"? That HE's allowed to do whatever he wants to because a Jewish guy some two thousand and some-odd years ago went through unspeakable agony so he could do it?

My head just exploded. I hate when that happens.

Newt Gingrich's statement on the decision today declaring California's anti-gay marriage statute unconstitutional (emphases mine):

"Judge Walker's ruling overturning Prop 8 is an outrageous disrespect for our Constitution and for the majority of people of the United States who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife. In every state of the union from California to Maine to Georgia, where the people have had a chance to vote they've affirmed that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Congress now has the responsibility to act immediately to reaffirm marriage as a union of one man and one woman as our national policy. Today’s notorious decision also underscores the importance of the Senate vote tomorrow on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court because judges who oppose the American people are a growing threat to our society.”

Newt Gingrich's glass house:

1962: Newt married Jackie Battley on June 19, 1962.
1963: Newt's daughter Kathy was born.
1966: Newt's daughter Jackie Sue was born.
1980: Newt met Marianne Ginther in January 1980.
1980: Jackie and Newt separated in April 1980.
1981: Jackie Battley and Newt Gingrich's divorce was finalized in February 1981.
1981: Six months later Newt married Marianne Ginther on August 8, 1981.
1987: Marianne and Newt separated in June 1987.
1993: Newt and Callista Bisek began their affair in November 1993.
1993: Marianne and Newt reconciled in late 1993/early 1994.
1999: Newt and Marianne separated in May 1999 and filed for divorce in July.
1999: Marianne and Newt reached a settlement in their divorce case.
2000: Marianne and Newt's divorce was finalized in April 2000.
2000: Callista Bisek and Newt announced their engagement.
2000: Newt married Callista Bisek on August 18, 2000.

Now I'd like to tell you about the shop where I get my hair done. It's a funky shop, in a struggling downtown in suburban New Jersey. It's owned and operated by two gay men, who have run this shop as business AND life partners for probably about 40 years. They live in an apartment over the shop. One is now seventy, the other is fifty-nine. They live AND work together. And they still take care of each other, as well as the many octe- and nonegenarians who comprise much of their clientele (with a few middle-agers like me thrown in). Their relationship is healthier and more affectionate than most marriages I know.

So tell me again why ANYONE should listen to Newt Gingrich on the subject of marriage?

Yes, and Scott Roeder showed us just what a Christian America would look like

Newt Gingrich, that good, virtuous Christian man who is converting to Catholicism so he can wipe his first two marriages and his adulteries off the map, is concerned that Americans are surrounded by paganism:

Two leading voices of the Republican Party's evangelical wing visited Rock Church on Friday for a forum aimed at recapturing some of the movement's political momentum.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee urged Christians to get involved in politics to preserve the presence of religion in American life.

"I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history," Gingrich said. "We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism."

They and other speakers warned about the continuing availability of abortion, the spread of gay rights, and attempts to remove religion from American public life and school history books.

Gingrich and Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, argued the rights of Americans stem from God and to ignore that connection is perilous. The two were among several speakers, including former U.S. Senate candidate Oliver North, at the three-hour "Rediscovering God in America" event. The event was closed to reporters but was broadcast live on God.TV, an evangelical Web site.

Huckabee told the audience he was disturbed to hear President Barack Obama say during his speech in Cairo, Egypt, on Thursday that one nation shouldn't be exalted over another.

"The notion that we are just one of many among equals is nonsense," Huckabee said. The United States is a "blessed" nation, he said, calling American revolutionaries' defeat of the British empire "a miracle from God's hand."

Uh....what did I say yesterday about God micromanaging people's lives?

Here's what I never understood: Why is it that so-called Christians like Gingrich and Huckabee are so insecure in their faith that they need constant affirmation of it in the public square? If they are so certain that theirs is the One True Way, isn't that enough?

If Rachel Maddow had been on MSNBC in 2002, would the Bush Administration have been able to be so successful in making the case for war with Iraq?

Every piece of information that comes out about the ginned-up case for war increases the horrible reality of how sick, depraved, and cynical the people we Americans allowed to lead this country for eight years were.

Last week, Rachel Maddow connected all the dots we have so far, and it's not a pretty picture:

I wonder if the same people who are willing to accept the legitimacy of torture in the nonexistent "ticking time bomb" scenario are as willing to accept it if the primary reason for torturing captives is to obtain not truthful, but FALSE information in order to gin up a false case for war?

Because if we as a people are willing to do so, even within the "context" of the climate here in the U.S. in 2002 (a climate whipped into a frenzy by the very same Bush Administration that resorted to the tactics of the worst tyrants in history in pursuit of a war they wanted so desperately), then there is in fact nothing in America that's worth saving. We are just another lost empire gasping its dying breaths in our lifetimes.

With Dick Cheney out on the hustings crowing about how torture kept us safe after the 9/11 attacks, one has to wonder why, with people like Richard Clarke trying to tell the Bush Administration what was coming, and with the now-infamous August 6 PDB screaming that Osama Bin Laden was "determined" to strike in the U.S., Dick Cheney was not "able" to "keep us safe" that day in 2001. I keep going back to this -- what some of us called LIHOP over the last seven years -- because every bit of information that comes out about how the Bush Administration used torture not to prevent another attack, but to gin up a case for war that George W. Bush had said he wanted even before being selected to the Presidency on December 12, 2001, points to my worst notions of a cost/benefit ratio being calculated in the Oval Office of what the potential negative fallout would be of allowing an attack to play out versus the potential gains in terms of support for the Iraq War.

This is why we now have the ridiculous spectacle of Newt Gingrich, who opposes any kind of investigation of the Bush Administration that ORDERED the use of torture techniques, running around demanding a Congressional investigation of Nancy Pelosi for claiming that the briefings she received about "harsh interrogation techniques" in 2002 and 2003 were incomplete and inaccurate. "Don't look here," he seems to be saying. "Look over there! Shiny object!"

Because the more information that comes out about why torture techniques were used by the Bush Administration -- to falsify a case for war -- the more it begins to look as if there really ARE no limits to which these people would have gone to go into Iraq. And if there are no limits, then you have to look at Dick Cheney in his underground bunker on 9/11/01, with George W. Bush conveniently out of town, ordering fighter jets to stand down while four planes are hijacked and head for the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Everything that came out of the Bush Administration from that day on can be traced directly back to that day -- a day which served them so well that suddenly the "inside job" people start sounding not quite so crazy. I'm not prepared to go that route, but if ginning up a fake case for an invasion of Iraq was that important, and since we know that Donald Rumsfeld ordered Richard Clarke immediately to find a link, is it really beyond the realm of possibility that allowing what they thought would be a 1993-style attack to play out would serve the needs of the Administration? Once you know just how depraved this bunch is, can you really draw a line and say "This is where they will not cross"?

I'm not going to go to the mat for Nancy Pelosi -- or any of the gutless Democrats who allowed George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to run amok for eight years -- a free pass on this. I know full well what the climate was in this country in 2002, but it is Congress' job to provide oversight -- and there was none. When I heard John Kerry's impassioned speech against a rush to war -- and then he voted for it anyway -- I knew that we could not rely on any kind of opposition to provide oversight. The Democrats allowed themselves to be cowed by bullies for eight years, and so were complicit in the ruination of this country.

And now we have the Obama Administration backtracking on all its promises in regard to cleaning up the worst offenses of the Bush Administration. So at this point I wonder: With what have they been threatened?



(h/t)

Can we tell the moral scolds on the right to shut the fuck up now?

Hoist, petard, etc:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.

"The honest answer is yes," Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards."

Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity.

"The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge," the former Georgia congressman said of Clinton's 1998 House impeachment on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. "I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury in your highest officials."

I guess that means Gingrich opposes a pardon for Scooter Libby then, right?

But of course, Gingrich has gotten down on his knees and asked God's forgiveness, right? Imagine how tired God must be of these people who have very little contrition and even less introspection, but beg God to forgive them. It's like that old Yiddish joke about God's answer to the pious, constantly-praying Job as to why the latter received all these tribulations from the Lord: "Because day after day after day, all you do is mutsche me!"

Clean slate Christianity in action

I'm starting to understand the attraction of evangelical Christianity -- you can do whatever the fuck you want to, and you will be forgiven. Think about it -- you can act on all your impulses and there are NO CONSEQUENCES, as long as you believe. Steal your neighbor's TV, shoplift, rape little boys in the choirloft, cheat on your wife or husband, embezzle money from your boss -- none of it matters, as long as you believe that a Jewish guy 2000 years ago who got nailed to a cross was put here by God and died a horrible death so that you could do whatever the fuck you want.

Go ahead, Bill Donohue....make my day. Of course, I'm not talking about Roman Catholicism, which at least has the ritual of confession, thus requiring you to acknowledge your sins.

Exhibit A on the appeal of clean slate Christianity is Newt Gingrich, who has decided that despite cheating on his first wife with the woman who would be wife #2 and then giving wife #1 divorce papers on her sickbed, then cheating on wife #2 with wife #3, he's gotten on his knees, sought God's forgiveness, and now he's an A-OK guy.

Doesn't it seem a little strange that a universe should be ordered so that you can be forgiven for any crimes against humanity by just asking for it, but being skeptical damns you to hell for all eternity?