Quote from a Gingrich spokesman

Newt Gingrich doesn't give a shit about your fact-based reality

Pay attention to the details: Chris Wallace (of FOX!) points out that continuing the Bush tax cuts for millionaires has the lowest "bang for the buck" of 11 different kinds of stimulus studied.

Newt's response to these facts? "BUREAUCRATS!!!!" He treats facts like a $10 whore (or his first two wives). They're less than meaningless.

Whenever confronted with reality -- with mathematical, objective reality, they simply blow it off and replace it with baseless ideology. Here's Newt Gingrich shrugging off the CBO's stimulus vs. tax cut numbers.

- Bob Cesca

By the by - Moody's Analytics has provided a chart showing the return benefits of various tax cuts versus spending increases. Of course, the facts are just liberal playtoys.

Gingrich goes full-on birther

Jonathan Chait at the New Republic dives into Newt Gingrich's headfirst dive into birtherism this weekend:

Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D’Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview.
Gingrich says that D’Souza has made a “stunning insight” into Obama’s behavior — the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.”

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

As Newt finds himself being outflanked on his right by the Beck/Palin connection, he's found himself increasingly playing to the wingnuts because that's the path to the nomination.

But D'Souza is an equivocating nut, and I don't care if he recently became a college president. I wrote a piece about an evening spent with him. He's an arrogant apologist for the right who can operate only in the realm of his theoretical. His theories don't adapt well to the real world. Hell, his nickname is Distort D'Newsza. But both are smart, educated men embracing whackjob paranoid ideas. As Chait alarmingly notes:

"Gingrich was once the most powerful Republican in America and remains an influential figure within the party. D'Souza has done stints at the most prestigous conservative think-tanks. The line between man and kook is getting harder and harder to discern."

Or, as Bob Cesca notes: Everybody knows you never go full Birther.

Media Matters captures the Morning Joe reaction. Interesting that Gingrich makes Scarborough look reasonable.

Newt Gingrich wants to go to war with Iran and North Korea

Newt Gingrich - contender for the Republican nomination for President in 2012, cozy buddy with Sarah Palin and sure to be high in her cabinet if she were to win the Presidency - wants to start 2 more wars based on the failed ideology of Geroge W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" comments.

HuffPost

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich twice called on the United States to attack North Korea and Iran Thursday because the United States has only attacked "one out of three" of so-called "Axis of Evil" members by invading Iraq.

Right.

How do I even begin to list the reasons that this is boneheadedly stupid? We can't afford the two wars we're already in. We're broke. We'll be paying off Iraq and Afghanistan for decades to come and he wants to start two more? Our military is stressed to the breaking point, military suicides are at all-time highs, soldiers on their 3rd and4th tours through combat zones.

This is supposed to be a reasonable GOP strategy to retake the White House? Dear sweet Zeus.

America is a stupid country - the reality of 'throw the bums out'

Let's look at the reality versus the truth that's being spun regarding this president and his "failures".

John Cole/Balloon Juice

When the President was elected and this congress took office, we were losing over half a million jobs a month. Now, we are gaining jobs.

In the past year and a half, they’ve stabilized the banks, the economy, and the major car companies, they passed health care reform that adds thirty million people and cuts the deficit long term while getting rid of the worst abuses of the insurance companies, extended the solvency of Medicare for a decade, we’re drawing down troops in Iraq, we are making progress with green energy, there has not been one successful terrorist attack on American soil, we’ve just signed a nuclear arms reduction treaty and re-examined our use of nuclear weapons and we are making great progress on the global stage. Hell, the DOW is up over 3,000 since we got rid of the bums. Personally, we’re getting a road paved near me that was a disaster, and it is being paid for with stimulus money. We’re gonna put some people to work and have a nice paved road! And Obama and company did it all without getting blowjobs from interns.

And we’re going to reward them by kicking a lot of them out of office. We’re a really stupid country.

Ford's turning a profit, the president made $8 billion for the nation in the Citi bailout, jobs are up, if START II passes the threat of nuclear holocaust is pushed back, the troops in Iraq are coming home without it turning into a bloodbath, we've avoided terroist attacks on our homeland (unlike Bush), we've captured or killed 10 top terrorists in just over a year.

Yeah, throw the bums out.

If we do, this is what we get: a reversal of all of the gains we made. And a return to the world created by this guy. Don't believe me? Here's the guy who shut down government and drove us to our knees 15 years ago in the name of dogmatic conservative "principle":

Dave Weigel

"Stage one of the end of Obamaism will be a new Republican Congress in January that simply refuses to fund it," said Gingrich -- that last word was drowned out in a standing ovation.

Gingrich ribbed the media for suggesting that this wasn't possible. "I think they forget that once upon a time I used to be Speaker of the House," he said. "Under our Constitution, Congress doesn't have to pass the funding."

What's funny is that Republicans claim to be for tax cuts. They're not - they're for them as political leverage when they deliver them. When President Obama cut taxes by 10% for 95% of all Americans, that's bad.

Bad.

So bad that Glenn Beck wants you to give it back.

Here's the President in his Weekly Address

Benen

"So far, Americans who have filed their taxes have discovered that the average refund is up nearly ten percent this year -- to an all-time high of about $3,000. This is due in large part to the Recovery Act. In fact, one-third of the Recovery Act was made up of tax cuts -- tax cuts that have already provided more than $160 billion in relief for families and businesses, and nearly $100 billion of that directly into the pockets of working Americans.

"No one I've met is looking for a handout. And that's not what these tax cuts are. Instead, they're targeted relief to help middle class families weather the storm, to jumpstart our economy, and to bring the fundamentals of the American Dream -- making an honest living, earning an education, owning a home, and raising a family -- back within reach for millions of Americans."

The reality is that this President is standing up for the economic needs of the core demographic of Tea Partiers. Except, you know, he's black.

Right-wing violence: IRS agents getting death threats in response to Newt's lies

In response to Newt Gingrich's wildly inaccurate, willingly deceptive and outragously, purposely false comment about 16,000 new IRS agents being hired to enforce health care:

Fox News via Media Matters

The federal government is investigating dozens of death threats to IRS employees that have been posted online since the House passed the health care bill, FoxNews.com has learned.

The health care law has sparked protests on radical anti-tax and anti-government Web sites and within their private, password-protected e-mail lists and message boards. Some writers have labeled March 21 -- the day the House passed the bill – "Bloody Sunday," and they see it as a call to violent action against IRS workers.

In the days following the House vote, animosity toward the IRS intensified, and many heated online protests included specific discussions about the best way to go about killing tax agents.

Hundreds of comments were posted in response to an incendiary story on infowars.com, the radical far-right Web site owned by radio host Alex Jones. The story, entitled, "The Cost Of Defying Obamacare: $2,250 a Month And IRS Goons Pointing Guns At Your Family," focused on the “increasing militarization of the IRS” and its expansion of powers under the new health care law.

One commenter wrote: "If they actually try to do this, there is going to be a whole lot of thugs start vanishing. This is the last line in the sand. Those fools have just signed their death warrants!!!"

"theres gonna be alot of IRS agents needing healthcare if they try to terrorize us Americans," another comment read. Yet another wrote, "Come and take them…….they will have to hire so many IRS agents because…well when 10 a day get killed….you do the math."

A heartbreaking work of staggering hypocrisy

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project.

Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine (1961 recording)

(Steve Benen)

During last year's debate for the Vice Presidential candidates, Sarah Palin paraphrased a famous Reagan quote: "It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction.... We have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free."

And then, this week.....

“Don’t cut Medicare. The reform bills passed by the House and Senate cut Medicare by approximately $500 billion. This is wrong.”

Newt Gingrich

* THUD *

(Benen continued...)

The problem with the (Palin) quote (of Reagan) was that Reagan was, at the time, condemning the very idea of Medicare. In context, Reagan actually said, "[I]f you don't [stop Medicare] and I don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free." The line wasn't about "freedom," it was about a program to provide seniors with health care.

Apparently, conservatives still love the Reagan speech in which the line was delivered, but overlook pesky details, such as context.

Paul Krugman

Why is this amazing? It’s not just the fact that Republicans are now posing as staunch defenders of a program they have hated ever since the days when Ronald Reagan warned that Medicare would destroy America’s freedom. Nor is it even the fact that, as House speaker, Mr. Gingrich personally tried to ram through deep cuts in Medicare — and, in 1995, went so far as to shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those cuts.

After all, you could explain this about-face by supposing that Republicans have had a change of heart, that they have finally realized just how much good Medicare does. And if you believe that, I’ve got some mortgage-backed securities you might want to buy.

No, what’s truly mind-boggling is this: Even as Republicans denounce modest proposals to rein in Medicare’s rising costs, they are, themselves, seeking to dismantle the whole program. And the process of dismantling would begin with spending cuts of about $650 billion over the next decade. Math is hard, but I do believe that’s more than the roughly $400 billion (not $500 billion) in Medicare savings projected for the Democratic health bills.

Paul Begala: Sarah Palin is "about half a whack job"

Paul Begala and Newt Gingrich have decidedly different views on whether former Governor Sarah Palin can make a political comback. Gingrich outlined his strategy for Palin to reemerge on the national scene to Politico, but Begala remains deeply skeptical any such strategy would be effective.

In an interview with CNN, the Democratic strategist slammed Palin as "flaky and an intellectual lightweight," and "about half a whack job."

While Begala respects Gingrich's political skills, saying Palin would do well to listen to him, the Democrat ultimately sees Palin as a lost cause:

Here's the problem. He is trying to treat her like a serious person. She is not. OK? She is about half a whack job. She does not have the intellectual heft of Newt Gingrich or almost anyone else in the Republican Party, and I think she has proved that.

Race-baiting douchebags say what...?

Media Matters For America, the non-profit research and monitoring group, compiled a video of comments fromthe right, accusing Judge Sotomayor of being a racist, along with other "racist" accusations.

This is hysterical. Notice the ones crying "racism" are all white folks afraid of the change already happening. "Save us from progress"


Congratualtions to Sen. John Cornyn for repudiating the comments of Limbaugh and Gingrich

One of the top Republicans in the Senate, John Cornyn, is repudiating recent comments by Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich which claimed that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a racist.

Cornyn, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told NPR's "All Things Considered":

"I think it's terrible... This is not the kind of tone any of us want to set
when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advise and
consent."

Cornyn dismissed Limbaugh and Gingrich, adding: "Neither one
of these men are elected Republican officials. I just don't think it's
appropriate. I certainly don't endorse it. I think it's wrong."

Boehner and Gingrich forced to admit: CIA has lied to COngress before

(Daily Kos)

In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday, House Republican Leader John Boehner conceded that despite his attacks on Speaker Pelosi for accusing the CIA of lying to Congress, he too believes that the agency has lied to Congress.

Boehner said the CIA had lied to Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra last year about the 2001 downing of a plane in Peru carrying an American missionary and her daughter.

...and Newt Gingrich:


So why all the mock outrage over Pelosi suggesting that the CIA lied to her about waterboarding? It's not like the CIA hasn't lied before. That being the case, the only reasonable explanation for the outrage is that Boehner and Gingrich are hypocritical douchebags and the GOP as a whole has absolutely nothing else to offer America.