Day: May 10, 2011
Gingrich: Recognized, but Not Positively
84%
Newt Gingrich’s recognition rating among Republicans, as he prepares to announce his presidential candidacy on Wednesday. Gallup finds he has a below-average — and declining — Positive Intensity Score of 11. Mike Huckabee receives the highest Positive Intensity Score among Republicans nationwide at 24; Donald Trump has the lowest at 0.
It’s Goodbye, Gov.
Arnold Swarzenegger has achieved fame and wealth,
And he’s pulling his acting career off the shelf.
For his marriage, it’s curtains,
But one thing’s for certain —
That Maria Shriver sure is a MILF!
Tell Us How You Really Feel About Newt
I detest the man. He screwed me. He has no morality.
— Former Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari (R), quoted by the Staten Island Advance, on Newt Gingrich.
Palin Went From Reasonable to Radical
She set aside private concerns for the greater good, forgoing a focus on social issues to confront the great problem plaguing Alaska, its corrupt oil-and-gas politics. She did this in a way that seems wildly out of character today — by cooperating with Democrats and moderate Republicans to raise taxes on Big Business. And she succeeded to a remarkable extent in settling, at least for a time, what had seemed insoluble problems, in the process putting Alaska on a trajectory to financial well-being.
— Josh Green, writing in The Atlantic, suggesting that before Sarah Palin became “an unbending, hard-charging, red-meat ideologue,” she actually had a compelling record as Alaska’s governor.
Why Newt Gingrich’s Campaign Might Be Entertaining
To steal a line from Art Linkletter, “Newts say the darndest things.” Here are 10 remarks by the former speaker of the House of Representatives that offer insights into the mind of Newt Gingrich, presidential candidate, courtesy of BuzzFeed:
- The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument.
- I raised so much money over the years, from so many different people that … I don’t owe anyone.
- I love the environment, but I’m cheap on the environment.
- I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.
- I’m not a natural leader.
- The fact is, we can afford a fairly ignorant presidency now.
- In every election in American history both parties have their cliches. The party that has the cliches that ring true wins.
- We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.
- It may just be because I get homesick, but I have concluded Washington’s cherry blossoms are just plain overrated.
- It’s going to be a bummer if Mars turns out to be like us.
The Job Nobody Wants
0
Number of applicants for Florida Education Commissioner. Eric J. Smith, a Jeb Bush ally, announced his resignation in March, after new Republican Tea Party Gov. Rick Scott failed to meet with him more than two months into office. Smith was instrumental in winning $700 million for Florida in the White House’s Race to the Top initiative. Scott has refused federal dollars for Florida, most notably turning down $2 billion to develop high-speed rail along the failing I-4 corridor.
Is Skynet Behind the Schwarzenegger-Shriver Split?
The answer, of course, is that, even in the vivid imagineering of science-fiction, it strains credulity to believe Skynet, an evil artificial intelligent system that becomes self-aware, revolts against its human creators and mass produces machines whose sole purpose is to wipe out humankind and take over the world, would build a robot that looks the way former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger does now.
As silly as this is, it may explain at least part of the reasons for the newly announced separation between Schwarzenegger, who played the android (or its replica) in the first three installments of the “Terminator” franchise, and his wife, former NBC anchor Maria Shriver.
Bill Maher: Republicans ‘Have to Tell Us What Exactly It Is They’re Good At’
Quick. Name one thing George Bush accomplished during the eight years he was president — one successful endeavor that benefited the citizens of the United States that did not blow up the deficit or utterly fail later on.
Now name one thing that Republicans in Congress have done since Bush left office that could be called an unvarnished success and that, in some way or other, improved the lot of the people they represent, rather than their corporate masters.
On Bill Maher’s HBO show “Real Time,” last Friday, he asked, in the wake of the killing of bin Laden and the ongoing financial crisis caused by the Bush recession, what is it Republicans are actually good at.
The obvious answer is that Republicans are excellent at propaganda, lying, cheating and stealing elections, both outright, as they did in Florida in 2000, and by creating wedge issues based on hatred and fear, as they did in Ohio in 2004. No one can beat them at manipulating the news in order to, as Karl Rove once put it, create their own reality.
A better question would be, what is it Republicans are good for? Other than handing the goods, resources and treasury of the United States over to their big-money sponsors as fast and as efficiently as they can, it’s hard to say why the GOP even exists.
Here is a partial transcript of Maher’s take down of the GOP:
