The GOP establishment has gone into serious panic mode with the very real possibility that Newt Gingrich might end up as their candidate.  Three weeks before the opening caucuses, a bevy of recent polls indicate that Gingrich’s surge is solidifying.  In Iowa, he leads Romney 22% to 17% in one poll  (a second poll has Gingrich with a 10 point lead).  In Florida, Gingrich is leading Romney by 15 percentage points (44/29) while in South Carolina, the Newt’s lead is even bigger – 19 points (42/23).

Republicans in the know understand that an Obama/Gingrich match-up almost guarantees an Obama second term.  A sampling of conservative thought…

Michael Gerson:

Gingrich has a history of making serious charges that turn out to be self-indictments — witness his recent attack on congressional advocates for Freddie Mac, despite having been one of its well-paid consultants. Gingrich’s language is often intemperate. He is seized by temporary enthusiasms. He combines absolute certainty in any given moment with continual reinvention over time.

These traits are suited to a provocateur, an author, a commentator, a consultant. They are not the normal makings of a chief executive.

Everyone deserves forgiveness for the failures of their past. But the grant of absolution does not require the suspension of critical judgment. Gingrich’s problem is not the weakness of a moment, it is the pattern of lifetime.

George Will:

Gingrich, however, embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive. And there is his anti-conservative confidence that he has a comprehensive explanation of, and plan to perfect, everything.

My favorite line from the piece is use of a Churchill quote where Will advises Gingrich to “stop being a bull who carries his own china shop around with him.“  Good one.

Peggy Noonan:

“He is a human hand grenade who walks around with his hand on the pin, saying, ‘Watch this!’”.

Then there’s hate-mongering asshole Michael Savage (I’m not sure if I’m aware of a person more repulsive than this low-life, bottom-feeding pile of scum) who has offered Gingrich $1 million if he drops out of the race.  Savage’s criticism of Newt include (the caps are his, not mine)…

• HE MADE ADS WITH NANCY PELOSI PROMOTING THE FALSE THEORY OF GLOBAL WARMING.

• HE’S IN FAVOR OF AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS.
• HE’S TAKEN HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FROM FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC, TWO OF THE MOST CORRUPT FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS IN HISTORY.
• HE’S CHEATED ON TWO WIVES AND LEFT BOTH OF THEM WHILE THEY WERE BOTH SERIOUSLY ILL, WHICH WILL DESTROY HIS CHANCES AMONG FEMALE VOTERS.
• HE CALLED THE REPUBLICAN PLAN TO REFORM MEDICARE “RIGHT WING SOCIAL ENGINEERING.”
• IN A PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE AGAINST OBAMA, REGARDLESS OF HOW WELL HE DOES, ON TELEVISION, HE WILL COME OFF BADLY COMPARED TO OBAMA AND LOOK LIKE NOTHING MORE THAN WHAT HE IS: A FAT, OLD, WHITE MAN.

Right.  One can’t have as president a fat, old white serial adulterer who promotes “false” scientific theories, shows compassion and understanding toward illegal immigrants, makes millions as a Washington lobbyist while, in a rare moment of honesty, is willing to criticize the Ryan budget plan.  I’d love for Gingrich to take the $1 million for the simple pleasure of knowing that Savage screwed himself out of a million dollars.

Have I mentioned how much I despise Michael Savage?

In any case, the problem so many conservatives have with Gingrich has to do with his electability due to the number of skeletons graveyard in his closet as this Ron Paul attack ad so perfectly shows.

It’s unfortunate for Republicans (and fortunate for Dems) that the teabagger mindset blocks recognition of real talent within their own party.

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Erick Erickson’s open love letter to Herman Cain.

Herman,

I owe you a good bit of my present career in radio. You leaving opened the door for me.

I still believe you can win the Republican nomination.

I still believe you can beat Barack Obama.

I still believe you can be one of the most inspiring Presidents since Ronald Reagan.

The Herman Cain I know would not and could not do what you are accused of. And I know it is incredibly unfair to ask you, in effect, to prove a negative. How the hell does one prove one did not do something?

…

Sweet, if not totally embarrassing.  If the above wasn’t posted on Erickson’s website, I’d swear it was written by a 10-year old girl who set aside her Barbie dolls long enough to pen a love note to her Teen Magazine idol.  I wonder if Erick sleeps with a picture of Herman under his pillow.

Erickson believes Cain can be the “most inspiring President since Ronald Reagan”?  Really?  Did he not watch the debate last night?  What part of that performance would Erickson call inspiring?

And that last line where Erickson expresses disbelief that the great and wonderful Herman Cain could possibly harass and assault women, is terribly pathetic.  It brings to mind the story of Shoeless Joe Jackson, one of eight Chicago White Sox players found guilty of throwing the 1919 World Series.  Legend has it that as Shoeless Joe walked out of the Black Sox trial one day, a young boy ran up to him on the steps of the courthouse.  Clutching Jackson’s coat sleeve, the boy looked up at his hero and cried out, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”

Totally understandable that a young boy would choose to believe that his heroes could do no wrong.  They also believe in Santa Claus and Tooth Fairies.  The problem with Erickson here is that he’s 36 years old and a political pundit for CNN.  What’s his excuse for crying out, “Say it ain’t so, Herman!”

Grow up, Erick.

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I would think that an endorsement from America’s number one Islamophobic, hate-mongering, twisted and overall evil person can’t be a positive thing.

Pamela Geller unloads on Rick Perry and endorses Herman Cain.

The latest eruption in the Cain campaign sabotage is the bombshell that Rick Perry was the one who leaked the anonymous sexual harassment charges against Herman Cain.

Perry is a snake. Watch him. He is creepy. And his drunken, freak show speech this past weekend belonged in a Roger Corman film.

I questioned his very bad judgment when I exposed his entire Islamic curriculum, dawah and proselytizing, to Texas school children. But this? Perry is a really bad guy. Only a lowlife (or a Democrat — Perry was Al Gore’s campaign manager) would eliminate a better man with innuendo and gossip. Men like Perry do not win on merit.

I endorse Herman Cain. What he doesn’t know, we’ll teach him.

Do you get the feeling that Geller is not a Perry supporter?  Here’s the reason why.  Simply knowing someone who knows someone who knows a Muslim is enough to get you on Geller’s hate list.  In any case, a Geller endorsement for Cain is a bit strange.  Just a few months back, she had this to say about Cain after he backtracked and apologized for his hard stance on hiring Muslims.

…the only thing Herman Cain had going for him as a candidate was his apparent courage in facing the real enemy within and without. In issuing this apology, he thought he saved his candidacy; in fact, he killed it.

The fact that Geller can ignore her dislike for Herman Cain and now endorse him in the way she has says much about the state of affairs in the Republican primary.  Basically, everyone in the GOP wishes there was an electable candidate whose last name was not Romney – a man who cannot get his approval rating within the party above the 25% mark.  Unfortunately for them, there isn’t.  In today’s GOP, a sane mind and non-wingnut conservatism gets you a Huntsman-like 2% approval rating.

What all this points to is how truly screwed up the Republican party finds itself…not that they have any awareness of the state their party is in.  Between the teabaggers and religious nuts, the Gellers and Bachmanns, the Becks and Palins, the Boehners and Cantors, the Kochs and Norquists and, of course, the haters of anything gay, Islamic or Hispanic, the GOP is on a downward spiral of historic proportions.  And the only thread keeping it all together is a common hatred for the current President and an even greater hatred for anything resembling liberalism.

The only question is who crashes first, the GOP or the country they supposedly love.

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Here’s a little comic relief from all of that debt ceiling nonsense.

Via MediaMatters:

Following McDonald’s decision to offer “more nutritionally-balanced” Happy Meals and First Lady Michelle Obama’s praise of its move, the right-wing media jumped to attack McDonald’s for supposedly bending to the will of the “fat police” and making Happy Meals “less happy.”

What? That can’t be right, can it? Has Obama Derangement Syndrome so invaded the minds of conservatives that they can view a healthier Happy Meal as a clear sign of Obama’s socialistic takeover of the lives of Americans? Apparently so.

McDonald’s decision to reduce the portion of fries and add apple slices to their Happy Meals has Fox News, Michelle Malkin and other right-wing nutjobs screaming bloody murder. Here’s a sampling from The Blaze:

A child could once feel excitement over hearing a parent utter those beautiful words: “honey, we’re going to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal.” But those carefree days are over and that sense of childhood wonderment and abandon is about to be seriously curbed by a new McDonald’s policy that cuts an order of fries in half, throws apple slices, raisins and pineapple chunks around as if they were ketchup, and just generally makes Happy Meals “healthier,” and, less happy. And even though the apples are reportedly not well-received by customers, guess what? McDonald’s is forcing the fruit in its Happy Meals anyway. Whether you want it or not.

And what’s more, politics, perhaps even the White House itself, could be to blame.

[...]

So after all the years of satisfied customers “lovin’ it,” it is political pressure, including First Lady Michelle Obama’s war on childhood obesity, that reportedly forced McDonald’s hands.

[...]

McDonald’s: another casualty in the Nanny State’s war on personal choice, or is the fast food giant bringing this on themselves? Will the new, and perhaps not improved, McDonald’s menu affect your decision to patronize the long-time burger institution?

Blithering idiocy. In fact, the Happy Meal makeover was a clear business decision on the part of McDonald’s. From the LA Times:

The business strategy for McDonald’s is to make parents feel less guilty about feeding fast food to their children, so they’ll become more frequent customers.

“People tell us they want to feel good about visiting us regularly, about the food options that we serve, and want to visit us even more often,” [President of McDonald's USA, Jan Fields]

Department of Health numbers indicate that 1/3 of children and 2/3 of adults are either overweight or obese but those stats  don’t stop wingnuts like Michelle Malkin from foaming at the mouth over McDonald’s decision (“They [Michelle Obama] won’t rest until the Happy Meal has undergone the total Berkeley makeover“). Malkin has asked her readers to send in their photoshopped Unhappy Meals images.

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Every day, right-wing paranoia and insanity gets a bit more pronounced…and a bit more scary.

(Note: I entered Malkin’s Unhappy Meal Photoshop contest by sending in the illustration included at the top of this post. I’ll let you know if I get a response.)

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This one was easy to predict.

The hate-filled and quite unintelligent Pam Geller:

“The teleprompter is speaking *yawn* The teleprompter is taking credit for the killing. Every other word is I.”

and…

“Gd bless our troops. Obama can puff himself and shamelessly strut like peacock, but hats off to the US military that has been relentless, dogged and brave for ten years in their mission to kill that devout bastard.”

The equally deranged Michelle Malkin:

“Leftists are swarming Twitter to chastise any conservatives who dare give any credit to President Bush for his resolve and role in leading the post-9/11 counterrorism/national security response to the worst attack on American soil.”

“Meanwhile, Democrat hacks are burning the midnight oil making this All About Obama.”

Laura Ingraham:

Jason Mattera:

And here was a headline on the Drudge Report.

If this stuff wasn’t so sick it would be funny. Here was an opportunity for Americans to find common ground. The man responsible for the death of three thousand innocent people on 9/11 was no longer. And one can be sure that on that fateful day in 2001, no one was looking at the dead and counting Democrats and Republicans.  They were simply Americans killed at the hands of a lunatic. What a sad state of affairs that Americans find themselves so divided that every event instantly becomes so politically charged.  The cause of that division is an easy one to call – a conservative media that has become so unhinged that it has lost all sense of honesty and journalistic integrity. As for the sheeple who give heed to these people, they really don’t know any better.

I don’t know how you stop the haters from hating. Maybe you just can’t.  Americans will just have to wait another 40 or so years until demographic forces make the Republican party an irrelevant and obsolete entity.

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Saw this over at Bartcop.  I had to laugh.

I spent the last two days in an industrial motor shop where they played Beck,
Limbaugh, and Hannity all day. I think my IQ has dropped 10 points in the last 48 hours.
I also have a strange desire to purchase a bunch of gold coins, get a concealed carry permit,
start hoarding ammo, and join the Heritage Society.

I know exactly what this guy means.  I once spent a couple of days trapped in a car with a Miami conservative who had wingnut talk radio turned on for the entire time.  After that experience, I no longer wondered why many on the right are so out of touch with reality and I stopped doubting that right-wingers actually believe the crap they hear from these con men.  They do.

A steady diet of Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, Malkin or Savage fries brain cells faster than anything I could possibly imagine.  Throw in daily viewing of Fox and the prognosis for recovery is nil.  It makes you almost feel sorry for them.

As for Limbaugh et al, there’s no need to feel sorry for them. They’ll keep on raking in the millions as there’s no shortage of adoring fans who require their daily fix of BS.

Then again, maybe not…

On his Fox News show today, Glenn Beck suggested that the efforts of  Jewish Funds for Justice and Media Matters to “accelerat[e] Beck’s decline” are not working because “the lights are on” in his studio. In fact, Beck’s Fox News program has lost over 300 advertisers, he has lost more than 1 million viewers over the last year, his radio show has been kicked off various stations including ones in New York and Philadelphia, and there is a possibility that Fox News executives are reportedly “contemplating life without” Beck.

The “lights are on“?  For now.  It appears the Beck light bulb has begun to dim.

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So who or what is to blame for the Egyptian protests?  Well, if your brain is as warped as Glenn Beck’s, the culprits are any (or all) of the following...

• Islamic socialists
• Marxist communists
• food prices
• Bill Ayers
• Code Pink
• ACORN co-founder Wade Rathke
• Tides Foundation’s Drummond Pike
• Muslim Brotherhood
• AFL-CIO
• Barack Obama

That’s the nice thing about insanity.  It has no need for truth or reason.  You just get a show on Fox News or conservative radio knowing you have the ability to make stuff up as you please. You can then derive pleasure and big bucks from the knowledge that your adoring audience will believe anything you say.

It’s not unlike filling a hole with manure.  You just need a big enough shovel, a number of empty holes and a whole lot of bullshit.

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You many not be able to afford adequate health insurance but Glenn Beck and his financial advisers are hoping you can afford food insurance.  Or as TPM put it:

If you ever find yourself in a post-nuclear holocaust environment and come across people eating beef stroganoff, odds are they’ll be Glenn Beck fans.

The latest scam making the rounds is Food Insurance, a company that counts on the apocalyptic messaging of Glenn Beck and other doomsayers to get you to purchase their food insurance package.  From their website:

Foodinsurance.com has designed an emergency pack and emergency kits to give people at least two weeks of great food and clean water until more permanent solutions can be obtained. Many of the meals are freeze-dried, which means they will last up to 10 years and retain their nutritional value. Also, unlike other survival food solutions that require you to grind wheat or employ some other 18th century skill, Food Insurance meals come prepackaged as lasagna, beef stroganoff, and a host of other great entrees. And to top it off, this food comes packaged in a high quality backpack so you can grab it and go.

While Foodinsurance speaks of natural disasters as a reason to sign up to their program (not an illogical thought), Beck has a much different reason he wants you to store up on food.

“I want to talk to you about the changing world that we live in. I want to talk to you about a company that I found called Food Insurance,” Beck says in a segment of his radio show featured on Food Insurance’s website. “We have health insurance, this is real food insurance.”

“I finished my food storage, and I couldn’t believe how relieved I was,” Beck continues. “I remember sitting down on the stairs of the basement and looking at it, and thinking ‘I could lose my job, and my family will eat.’ Sometimes guys don’t realize how much pressure is on them.”

“Do the easy stuff now,” Beck says, in conclusion. “Prepare yourself for what we all hope won’t happen, but probably will, if you’re not prepared. Thanks.”

Got that?  It’s a “changing world” – a changing world that in Beck’s devious mind began on January 20, 2009, the day a black, Marxist, liberal, socialist, Nazi, hater of white people became President of the United States.  The day when Beck and his cronies figured out that if you can scare the hell out of them, then getting the suckers to buy gold, hybrid seeds and food insurance would be easy pickings.

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I believe Tomasky is on to something here.

O’Donnell may be the first person who (to my eye) really is not deep down interested in winning office but in losing in just the right way – establishing a public profile that is endearing and enraging, that traduces bien-pensant liberalism but does so without all those Palinesque hard edges – that will permit her to launch a media career. So I have come around to the view that she is sort of a postmodern genius and an emblem of a future America in which technology finally erases all distinctions between politics and entertainment and enables all of us to become cross-platform performers, if we have the cunning.

O’Donnell is vying for the same deal given Palin and Huckabee – the opportunity to perform as a personality on a cable network devoted to idiots and simpletons: Fox News.  I have no doubt she’ll be successful in her endeavor.  Fox is always on the lookout for another pretty face and empty head to sell the GOP message.

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Watching U.S. politics nowadays must be what Alice in Wonderland experienced when she first crawled through the rabbit hole. She entered a world of crazy where up is down and down is up and not much made sense unless you were flying high on crystal meth. Nothing wrong with a little crazy now and then until you reach the point where crazy becomes the norm.  Crazy has now become the norm in American politics.

A blogger at TakeMyCountryBack makes the point by quoting a passage from the Adam Sandler flic Billy Madison.

“Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

Tune in to Fox News on any given evening or listen to what Boehner, O’Donnell or Palin has to say and you would be completely justified in saying the same.  Our blogger sums it up nicely.

America, we are currently facing dangerous times. A time where republicans are voting for folks who are so unbelievably unqualified for political office that we might as well elect Billy Madison.  [...]  Knowing that FOX has the largest viewership of any cable news channel is downright horrifying. They know what they are doing and they know that their audience does not. It is classic bait and switch and true snake oil salesman tactics on a massive scale. And lest you be fooled, it is working very well. Christine O’Donnell was a nobody last week, like Sarah Palin was once. An opportunist empty vessel who would jump onto any bandwagon for their own personal gain. And they are gaining. They are winning in the popular vote and in today’s breakneck media pace that is all that counts.

And his advice to you all.

In November, when Dems get to vote as well, it is my prayer that we show up and show up strong. We cannot allow people like O’Donnell or anyone that FOX promotes to become powerful. To do so vindicates the Billy Madison’s of the world and makes those who criticize them the stupid ones. It turns the world upside down and to right it will take a herculean effort. We have to stop it from happening and say this November as loudly as we can: Billy we’ve ”had to listen to your jawing for too long…Blah, blah, blah! Just shut up!”

Lewis Carroll would understand only too well.

“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with, and then the different branches of arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.” – The Mock Turtle, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

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