Needlenose

Gingrich has been gradually creeping out from the shadows into the limelight since his fall from grace when leading the impeachment crusade against the very popular Bill Clinton.  But the Gingrich of the 90s seems relatively tame compared to the teabaggers and birthers of today – and even compared to Gingrich 2010!

In a recent speech to the reactionary American Enterprise Institute, Gingrich seems to have planted one foot firmly amidst the teabagger camp with his calls to forbid the so-called Ground Zero Mosque (which is neither a Mosque nor at Ground Zero), and the other solidly planted in the Wolfowitz/NeoConArtist era of never-ending war on Radical Islam:

“I believe [Bush] was right but in fact could not operationalize what he said. That is, there was an Axis of Evil, Iran, Iraq, North Korea. Well we’re one out of three. And people ought to think about that. If Bush was right in January of 2002 — and by the way virtually the entire Congress gave him a standing ovation when he said it — then why is it that the other two parts of the Axis of Evil are still visibly, cheerfully making nuclear weapons? And it’s because we’ve stood at brink, looked over and thought, “Too big a problem.”

“If Franklin Roosevelt had done that in ‘41, either the Japanese or the Germans would have won,” Gingrich said. The U.S. has to “over-match the problem,” he said, adding, “That’s what Americans are all about.”

I wonder if he got the memo that various Repug leaders were starting to bail on Shrubya’s Afghanistan Folly?  Palin/Gringrich in 2012 – the worst of 3 eras of Repug misleadership!  It would be kinda luck the Germans in WWII – invading a bunch of weak countries (Iran, N. Korea), then going crazy and attacking Russia from Palin’s house…I don’t even want to think about the hell they’d create.

PRC ‘take’ on Sarah Palin:

Wish they would make this into a video game!

It seems like only yesterday when politicians were shouting Drill, Baby Drill to a growing chorus of SUV-drivin’ whiners.  Frankly, given the history of oil spills, I couldn’t help but wonder how politics in the U.S. could have shifted so sharply in my lifetime from a moratorium on new drilling to supposed Totalitarian Liberals like Obama and a ‘moderate’ Repug like Schwarzenegger pushing for renewed coastal drilling.

What a difference a multi-million gallon oil spill off wetlands, fisheries and resort beaches makes.  Now, thanks to BP’s fuckup and the failure of an oil rig that was supposedly spill-proof, it looks like additional coastal drilling may be off the table…at least while this is still in the news.

It really comes down to this – I don’t believe Americans can really remember stuff that happened before the current news cycle.  Seriously, just watch – somebody will discover some politician or celebrity’s reproductive organ lodged somewhere it isn’t supposed to be, the oil spill will fade from memory (along with countless threatened and endangered spills in the Gulf of Mexico), and Palin et. al. will be out screaming Drill, Baby Drill with renewed vigor.

It’s like all that talk a few years ago about how nuclear power was gaining new support. Obama even included building a few new of the unstable light water reactors in his energy plan.  What the hell will it take to take that option off the table, another Three Mile Island or a Chernobyl (history of those nuclear power accidents, in case you too have amnesia)?

Just throw a stone into any gathering of conservatives and you are guaranteed to hit one! Two in this case. Sarah “Death Panel” Palin reveals that she is an erstwhile socialist medicine tourist, and anti-gay rights crusader and Repug California State Senator Roy Ashburn admits that he is more gay than Adam Lambert.

Trial by Monster Truck

I can’t determine which is crazier – the claim that Obama shouldn’t be President because he wasn’t born here, or the belief by a large majority of Repugs that he didn’t wind because little old ACORN managed to steal 9.5 million votes.

Are they stupid, crazy or does this just demonstrate the success of the big lie technique as applied by Faux News and the Wrong-Wing Media Echo Chamber?  Or all three?

Combine this with the obvious popularity of Caribou Barbie among the wingnut set, and you come to realize that Idiocracy is closer at hand than 500 years in the future.

Maybe we could make the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial more popular with the Palin crowd by including monster trucks, flamethrowers and chainsaws.

*Update 11/24/09* case in point:

Although Sarah Palin didn’t get the chance to shoot the nation’s wolves from an upgraded White House helicopter, she will still get the last laugh as Obama decides to pursue Shrubya’s rancher-friendly policy of delisting wolves from the Northern Rockies from the endangered species list.  Although I had thought Obama was shaping up as a Lyndon Johnson, he is now reminding me of Bill Clinton, who pulled the rug out from under Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s attempts to make ranchers and miners pay free market rates for their exploitation of public lands.

Sorry Sarah, not only was there be no ‘talent portion‘ to the beauty contest, but there will be no consolation prize either.

Arctic temperatures are at record highs.  And just for the record, the McCain/Palin ‘solution’ to global warming?  Drill, baby, drill!

…if you can afford to wear a $2,500 custom tailored Valentino jacket. Remember what a big deal the asshole Repugnants made over John Edward’s $200 haircut? Their media shills kept that story around for a whole month – but the $2,500 hockey mom ‘costume’ story gets buried.

After continually ragging on Obama as a ‘one speech wonder,’ McBush has counseled Anna Nicole Palin to avoid all questions and just parrot soundbites from her attack convention speech at all press events. If we had an free and aggressive press, I wonder what type of questions they’d ask? Would they probe into her links with disgraced Alaska Senator Ted “Sleezy” Stevens?

Tip of the ‘Nose to regular and frequent commentor “Kilgore Trout”

P.S. – As if validating the Exiled article linked above, apparently Alaskans still love Sleezy – Palin’s popularity has given him a ‘bounce’ in his re-election bid. Can we strip them of statehood?