Toward Understanding Callista

O.K., we’ve all seen this one on Facebook, although I think it does a disservice to Dwight:

NewtDwight

But what can we discover about Callista Gingrich from this?

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Here’s my theory. Remember when Newt told Mrs. Gingrich II that Callista didn’t care who he sleeps with? I think if Mrs. G III were to loosen up that helmet and let some oxygen get to her head, she might encourage Newt to satisfy his lusty urges with other women even more emphatically.

Flashback to Romney’s ‘Blind Trust’ Argument

The blind trust is an age-old ruse. You give a blind trust rules. You can say to a blind trust, don’t invest in properties which would be in conflict of interest or where the seller might think they’re going to get an advantage from me.

— Mitt Romney, in a 1994 debate with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Romney currently defends his own investments on the grounds he can’t control money in a “blind trust.”

Even (Neo) Conservatives are Tired of Low-Information Republicans

Conservative columnist and neocon Bush II speechwriter David Frum wrote recently that he is tired of being surrounded by dumb people. At least, that was basically the point of his article, “When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?” in the November New York magazine.

On a recent CNN appearance, Frum tried to expand on the harmful affect of FOX News on American discourse although CNN’s Howard Kurtz seemed determine to err on the side of championing FOX.

Note: We wrote last year about the example Frum cites, a story that first surfaced broadly on the Drudge Report web site and was then taken up with fervor by FOX.

The White House Just Can’t Keep a Secret

If we wanted this event to be a secret, we probably wouldn’t have invited the press corps to cover it, release photos of it to Flickr or post a video from it on the White House website.

The White House, quoted by Politico, reacting to assertions made in a new book called “The Obamas.” The book claims the president and first lady threw an Alice in Wonderland themed Halloween party on the down-low, hoping to avoid Marie Antoinette comparisons during the recession.

Paul Supporters Reach New Low in Anti-Huntsman Ad

Words can’t adequately describe the hot mess of racism and xenophobia that is this anti Jon Huntsman ad, so we provided it here so you could see for yourself. It is, in fact, so bad that some Paulestinians claim it was actually made as part of a conspiracy on Huntsman’s part to make Paul and his nutty devotees look bad. Yes, there’s nothing that makes serial conspiracy buffs look more legitimate than allegations of a new conspiracy. Except there is no evidence in this case that anyone but Ronulans are to blame.

Huntsman has one adopted daughter from China and another from India, both of whom were abandoned as babies.

Ron Paul is zealously in favor of outlawing abortion in all cases, despite his assertion that outside of women’s reproductive decisions, government should stay out of people’s lives.

The ad questions Huntsman’s values but it looks like those of Paul and his believers are the ones in need of clarification. If women are forced to take unwanted and accidental pregnancies to term, shouldn’t adopting the resulting abandoned children be considered a virtue — if not an obligation?

How closely Paul is linked to NHLiberty4Paul, the group that produced the ad, is not known. The candidate himself claims, as with the newsletter he published that printed racist ravings, to know nothing about the matter. Paul finds himself at the mercy of unhinged folks more often than the starlet in a horror film.

Lie of the Year?

Politifact says the “lie of the year” is that Republicans voted to end Medicare.

But Steve Benen, writing in Washington Monthly, says it’s not a lie since Republicans voted “to privatize the existing system and replace it with something very different — a voucher scheme. It would still be called Medicare, but it wouldn’t be Medicare.”

Paul Krugman writing in the New York Times: “How is this not an end to Medicare? And given all the actual, indisputable lies out there, how on earth could saying that it is be the ‘Lie of the year’? The answer is, of course, obvious: the people at Politifact are terrified of being considered partisan if they acknowledge the clear fact that there’s a lot more lying on one side of the political divide than on the other. So they’ve bent over backwards to appear ‘balanced’ — and in the process made themselves useless and irrelevant.”

FOX Exploits Their Feckless Viewers by Switching Romney Picture for Obama

In what has become standard operating procedure at the so-called news organization, FOX, a graphic “accidentally” swapped out a photo of someone FOX doesn’t like and replaced it with a photo of a Democrat they like even less. Media Matters has both the original, from Wednesday, Nov. 14, and the “correction,” used later in the day.

Note to Romney: This is how you know FOX hates you. They show a picture of Obama while Megan talks about you. And then, when they announce the error, she says, “As it turns out, Romney and Barack Obama are not the same man.”