WILL NEWT HELP REDUCE THE INFLUENCE OF GASBAG RADIO?

Despite endorsement or semi-endorsements from Sarah Palin, Herman Cain and Fred Thompson, I don't think Newt will last much beyond Florida.   That would show the real-world limits of the influence of Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin and may affect their ratings.

I AM SO LOVING THIS!

I would vote for Newt in the AZ primary if I could because he's helping to smash movement conservatism:

“Gingrich's clashes against the establishment are classic Alinsky,” writes Philip Klein, senior editorial writer for the conservative Washington Examiner.

“GOP nomination fights are often described as battles between Rockefeller Republicans and Goldwater Republicans,” writes Klein. “In 2012, Gingrich has brought us the Alinsky Republican.”

On the other side, we have this preposterous claim:

Mark Levin: Gingrich Is Strong Conservative

Friday, 27 Jan 2012 11:25 AM

By Dan Weil
NEWSMAX

THE END OF CONSERVATISM IN AMERICA?

Since 2001, I've been used to a generally monolithic conservative ideology and I think that may be collapsing, in part due to Newt Gingrich & Ron Paul.  Paul provides a sensible alternative to neo-con foreign policy which is appealing to enough conservatives to reveal a serious fissure in the movement.  Gingrich (and Perry) has done America a real favor by going after Mittens for his vulture capitalist career.  This issue is not whether Gingrich's attacks are well-founded but how he has enlarged the acceptable conservative discourse about capitalism.

This has put many conservative propagandists like Rush Limbaugh in a bind because they have had to both defend Newt and attack him simultaneously.

Just as telling is the reaction to Newt's claim to be a "Reagan conservative."  It doesn't matter that he's wrong but it does matter that major conservative outlets like the NRO debunk his claim. Jeffery Lord has tried to defend Newt on this issue and unwittingly reminds us that the Raygun Mythology is bunk:

In other words, Newt was picking up on a concern, prominent in the day and voiced by no less than Reagan's then ex-UN Ambassador Kirkpatrick, not to mention prominent Reagan supporters Will and Kristol and the late-Mondale aide turned conservative Krauthammer, that Reagan's anti-Communist policies could be stronger if better institutionalized and not tied as much to the Reagan persona.

This is an another admission, like the earlier one by NRO's Ponnuru, that conservatives were far from being united in their support of St. Ronnie. Because Raygun is the conservatives' version of FDR, this can only harm the movement.

HARD TIMES FOR THE NEWT

First, he seems to have gotten most of the Establishment Wingnuts against him and that's no small feat for a former GOP Speaker of the House.  Second, he tried to smack around Wolf Blitzer but Wolf came out the winner.

I'd say that Gingrich is doing something right if he's got wackos like Ann Coulter fighting him.

BERNIE MCGUIRK IS A RIGHTWING ASSHOLE

He's the racist pig on The Imus Show and today I heard him lie about the Brewer/Obama airport interaction.  McGuirk falsely claimed that Pres. Obama pointed his finger at Gov. Brewer when in fact it was the other way around:

Brewer defends finger pointing at Obama
By Adele Hampton - 01/26/12 11:04 AM ET
THE HILL

Photographers also captured a picture of Brewer pointing her finger at Obama's chest — a photo that has become a rallying cry for opponents of the president who are looking for a conservative politician to take him on.

Here's a pic:

I DON'T THINK "UNSTABLE" IS THE CORRECT WORD

I won't go into enough details to make the person I'm talking about identifiable out of a concern for his privacy.  I will say that my adviser when I was in graduate school was noted for his creativity and that really meant he had a LOT of ideas.  Obviously, most of them didn't work out, mostly because he had been spoiled when he was a graduate student by having too many assistants, so he never developed an "output editor."  I think Neut is the same kind of thinker, so Mittens is wrong to call him "unstable."

On the other hand, this characteristic makes Neut unsuitable to hold an executive position. 

LINUX (UBUNTU) PART II

Neither of the two Windows drivers I downloaded were for the version of the wireless card I have.  The good news is that I did manage to get the Ethernet connection to work.

RETURN OF THE GILDED AGE?

The conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife have recently given $10 million to Neut's SuperPAC and that permitted Neut to do well in South Carolina and beyond.    Foster Friess, another billionaire, has played the same role for Fetus Boy Santorum.

I am a little worried that two families can have so much effect on our national politics.

MAYBE THIS WILL HELP SPREAD THE WORD

A long time ago I made some posts about Adam Smith favoring a progressive income tax and a basic welfare state.  I also posted the same info on several comment threads but it never caught on.

Now that The Dish has also done so, maybe the truth about Smith will finally hit the mainstream.

THE WACKO PARTY IS ENTERTAINING

On the face of it, Neut's Moon idea isn't as krazy as the Fetus Food bill but it is MUCH more expensive:

Newt pledges moon base by second term

By ALEXANDER BURNS |

1/25/12 5:32 PM EST 

Oklahoma Lawmaker Wants To Outlaw Use Of Human Fetuses In Production Of Food

By Adam Peck on Jan 24, 2012 at 7:40 pm

Perhaps Bret Stephens put it best in the WSJ:

A primary ballot for Mr. Gingrich is a vote for an entertaining election, not a Republican in the White House.

MY UBUNTU (LINUX) ADVENTURE

Last night I installed Ubuntu on my laptop and deliberately erased the former OSs only to find that I did not have the driver for the Wireless card. :-(

The install program also didn't figure I would need the 2 programs (packages) necessary to install the driver. I did find & install the packages and I have 2 versions of the driver, so I will try again later this week.

THE ROARIN' OUGHTS

(h/t The Dish)

James Surowiecki explains why private equity firms can be harmful to the economy:

In the past decade, though, that calculus changed. Having already piled companies high with debt in order to buy them, many private-equity funds had their companies borrow even more, and then used that money to pay themselves huge “special dividends.” This allowed them to recoup their initial investment while keeping the same ownership stake. Before 2000, big special dividends were not that common. But between 2003 and 2007 private-equity funds took more than seventy billion dollars out of their companies. These dividends created no economic value—they just redistributed money from the company to the private-equity investors.

THE FLORIDA GONG SHOW

7:05 MST
Neut claims that when he was Speaker, there were 4 consecutive balanced budgets and that directly contradicts the wingnut claim that there were no balanced budgets when Clinton was President.

Let's see if any of the radio gasbags comment on this claim.

8:00 MST
Santorum blamed the recession on the oil price spike in the summer of 2008.  Wasn't that caused by speculators?


8:20 MST 
Several seem to want to give NASA a lot more money but I thought they were opposed to Big Government Programs?

AND THIS IS MUCH WORSE...

The massacre at Haditha has gone largely unpunished. 

Marine pleads guilty, ending final Haditha trial
By Mary Slosson

LOS ANGELES | Mon Jan 23, 2012 6:13pm EST

(Reuters) - The U.S. Marine sergeant accused of leading a massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha pleaded guilty on Monday to dereliction of duty, ending the final prosecution stemming from a 2005 incident that brought international condemnation of U.S. troops.

He faces a maximum sentence of three months of confinement, forfeiture of two-thirds of his pay for three months and a reduction in rank when he is sentenced on Tuesday, a Camp Pendleton spokesman said.

Six of the eight Marines originally accused in the case had their charges dismissed by military judges, and a seventh was cleared of criminal wrongdoing.

THIS INFURIATED ME

Some rightwing asshole in Arkansas killed a Democratic Party campaign manager's family pet and spray-painted "LIBERAL" on the dead animals fur:

My parents got a kitten for me when I was a little kid and I still remember the time when I was crying and Bitsy came over and rubbed up against me to cheer me up.  It worked.

UPDATE: This story also made Yahoo News.

WHY STEVE JOBS?

Fats Limbaugh has spoken well of Jobs over the past few months and because Fats is not a techie, I wondered if he might be doing so because he approves of some of Jobs' political opinions. It turns out that Jobs was strongly against teachers unions and so is Fats. Fats also likes the fact that Apple uses FOXCONN as a manufacturer:

They have 230,000 employees in one factory. They work six days a week, 12 hours a day. They earn the equivalent of 17 US dollars a day, and they are plum jobs in China. ... The one thing that is not mentioned in this whole story is unions. Of course there aren't any in China. ... It just can't happen, not the way things are currently structured in America. These circumstances I described: 60,000 living at the factory, within a block? Not gonna happen here. Hence jobs Americans won't do anymore.

Here's a little more about the labor practices at FOXCONN:

Foxconn chairman compares his workforce to ‘animals’

By Hana Stewart-Smith | January 20, 2012, 3:43am PST
ZDNet

Summary: In an ill-worded statement, the chairman of Foxconn’s parent company compared his workforce to ‘animals’ and sought management advice from the director of Taipei Zoo.

“Hon Hai has a workforce of over one million and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache,” said Terry Gou, chairman of Taiwan’s Hon Hai, the parent company of Foxconn.

I guess Fats wants Americans to work 12-hour days, live in dorms, and make less than $1.50 an hour.

BILLY CUNNINGHAM IS A MORON

He thinks Fetus Boy Santorum has a good chance of beating Pres. Obama

I KNOW ALL POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS HAVE A FEW FLAWS BUT...

I just can't understand why Mittens keeps on telling people that he's an ordinary Joe instead of a multi-millionaire.  Raw Story has a few of his whoppers:

In June, he told a group of unemployed people in Florida that he was “also unemployed.”
Returning to Florida in September, the candidate claimed that he was part of the middle class.
Romney told a group of workers at a steel plant in November that federal employees made more than he did.
He has also said that he knows “what it’s like to worry whether you’re going to get fired.”

NEWT LASHES OUT AT EVERYONE

Gingrich must think that more rubes will vote for him if he attacks the media and that makes some sense because wingers have been complaining about liberal media bias for over 40 years. On the other hand, attacking the bozos on FOX & Friends may turn out to be a huge blunder.  Even super-hack Neil Cavuto thinks Newt is out of line.