Thanks to commentor Sly for highlighting Tom Scocca’s “Shameless or Fearless” post:
Newt Gingrich would like you to know, via the Newt Gingrich Twitter feed, that you can find his thoughts on the Proposition 8 ruling at Newt.org. Here they are:
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Judge Walker’s ruling overturning Prop 8 is an outrageous disrespect for our Constitution and for the majority of people of the United States who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife. In every state of the union from California to Maine to Georgia, where the people have had a chance to vote they’ve affirmed that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
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“An outrageous disrespect” is a little grammatically shaky for a scholar and published author. Still, unlike Sarah Palin’s sanitized Facebook feed, Newt.org doesn’t seem to mind a little dissent. Or a lot of it…
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Newt Gingrich is unafraid to face his critics. That or he has a lazy webmaster. Either way, right now, the top-rated comment on Ginrgich’s Prop 8 post—liked by 49 Newt.org readers—is“Which one of your multiple marriages was the most sacred to you?”
Didn’t have the patience to register myself, but right now there are 330 comments on that Newt.org thread, and counting…
Kristine
Oh, BJ should set up an easy Twitter/Facebook click n share system, because things like this are priceless.
General Stuck
Some people don’t know the meaning of “Disgraced Former House Speaker”
Keith G
Gosh, I detest that dense little man, but I hope he makes a serious swipe at the nomination. Watching him hatefully maul fellow Republicans would be so joyous.
Gives me chills.
AhabTRuler
@Keith G: Look, the destruction of the Republic is going to be painful to us all, we might as well derive whatever pleasures we can derive from the experience.
And morphine. We’re gonna need a shitload of morphine.
Mark S.
Newt’s site damn near crashed my computer. I feel like I should run a virus scan; who know what spambots and trackers that slimeball uses on his site?
Just Some Fuckhead
Someday Newt will be able to gaymarry the corpse of Ronald Reagan and that one will be the most sacred.
Bill E Pilgrim
Or at least one at a time, in Newt’s case.
kdaug
OT – (mainly because nobody named Newt needs to be anywhere other than hiding under the floorgrates from the vicious alien queen) – anyone else see this over at Sully’s?
http://vimeo.com/13788403
Fairly incisive, I thought.
JGabriel
I’m always amazed and flabbergasted by people who voluntarily write themselves into the history books as a bigot.
Gingrich was Speaker of the House. A statement against allowing gay citizens to marry – from a former Speaker – will be cited for decades, possibly centuries, as an example of the homophobia and bigotry present at the time.
And yet, Gingrich volunteers for the role, seemingly without a thought that he’ll be going down in history as a bigoted, homophobic, jackass.
It’s a truly wondrous and gob-smacking sight to behold.
.
dmsilev
@Keith G: Gingrich vs. Palin would be highly amusing to watch from a safe distance. Say, from Mars.
dms
Martin
The Atlantic has a little game going. Guess who said the following quote – OBL or Newt.
JGabriel
dmsilev:
They’ll just spend the whole time agreeing with each other. Palin is a GOPac’er from the Gingrich days and learned all her schtick from him.
.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Martin: I could take Newt a lot more seriously if he had a long beard and turban to go with his multiple wives and clash of civilizations rhetoric.
Pete
Can anyone ding McMegan for this stupidity please?
Keith G
Pondering the mess that is Newt, I remembered, from back in the haze, a time when the Mercurial Gingrich was bouncing around (94-96) teaching us his take on Toffler’s Third Wave.
Some Goggle Fu got me this. Very interesting:
http://www.themoralliberal.com/2010/01/30/gingrich-toffler-and-gore-a-peculiar-trio-steve-farrell/
Edit: The article describes a time before Newt had to become a wingnut. He was just an ass.
eemom
@Keith G:
now that is interesting, because I think of him more as an overblown balloonish sort of man. Inflated with toxic gas instead of helium.
Wonder if anyone has ever tried poking him with a sharp stick to see if he pops.
New Yorker
@JGabriel:
What, you mean Roger Taney isn’t a hero to you?
Mark S.
Has anyone ever considered that maybe it was all the sex that made Tiger so good at golf?
Anne Laurie
@JGabriel:
No, Gingrich & Palin are both grifters in competition for the same pool of marks. They might agree to cooperate temporarily, but any such agreement will break down the first chance one or the other gets a shot at cheating, because that is what grifters do.
I would take more pleasure in watching these two hustlers try to out-gay/race/misogyny-bait each other if they weren’t so publicly encouraging the worst impulses of the 27%ers. Although there is a certain poetry in watching the aging ‘Middle-Class Professorial Male Bigot’ being replaced by the ‘Working-Class Anti-Intellectual Female Bigot’ in the evolutionary race to the bottom of the lowest common denominator…
Bill E Pilgrim
@Pete: This part was classic glibberish:
Yes. The ridiculous things that the Republicans claim are often baseless and stupid, but since people like me listen to them and then write about it, they have an effect!
Self-awareness would not seem to be her strong suit.
dmsilev
@JGabriel:
Disagree. They draw from the same pool of primary voters, and both of them would go in the contest thinking that it was a remake of _Highlander_ (“There can be only one!”).
dms
eemom
wow. Here is a totally different perspective on the Cordoba mosque issue:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080603006.html
pablo
Chapter, verse, just where is it in our Constitution, dickweed!
Keith G
@eemom:
From the article:
I have a hard time giving a shit. To me its nothing more than those stupid crosses littering road sides across America.
Yeah, somebody died. Somebody always dies. It’s what we do. Now can we please just get on with our lives?
AhabTRuler
Wait, isn’t there already a church that borders on the WTC property?
Oh and how bout another round of:
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@eemom: I am unmoved by her appeal to emotion as a reason to support the right wing’s anti-Islamic bigotry. If we poll the families of all the Muslims who died at the world trade center or who were innocent passengers on the hijacked planes I suspect they’d be split down the middle about the Cordoba center. I’m not sure what makes her opinion more special than others.
S. cerevisiae
Courtesy of N_B at Sadly, No is a medieval history lesson for Newt: professor-newts-distorted-history.html
Svensker
@eemom:
She’s allowed to have all the conflicting emotions she wants about “Ground Zero” — it’s a little tough to criticize. But her argument against the Center seems to be “I might not like those kind of Muslims”, which doesn’t seem very compelling to me.
Also, too, the fucking thing is NOT AT the site of the hole in the ground. Why the hell is it even an issue?
Svensker
I like the comment at Newt.org that says Newtie was known as “Nooners” when he was Speaker because he was well-known for getting his daily BJ at lunch time. This is just crude gossip, of course, but I for one think it would be irresponsible not to speculate about whether or not it’s true!
eemom
I wasn’t advocating the lady’s argument — just thought it deserved to be heard, because for someone in her position — unlike everybody else arguing about the issue — it is personal and not political.
Mark S.
@Svensker:
That’s the problem I had with it, especially
Well, ok. I don’t think any Christian churches should be allowed to be built, because I fear over time they may start embracing such beliefs like those held by Fred Phelps.
MikeJ
@New Yorker:
He never meant shit to me
Straight up racist that sucker was
Simple and plain
Mother fuck him and John Wayne
JGabriel
@eemom: I think it’s personal for every New Yorker, like me, who watched those planes fly into the WTC with their own eyes.
.
IM
And even that will be taken away from you…
by an new office building!
Is that an anti Obama dig?
Neda Bolourchi lives in Los Angeles.
And I thought she is surely living in Manhattan.
Amir_Khalid
@eemom:
@Mark S.:
I concur with Mark S. Neda Bolourchi’s argument against Cordoba House amounts to no more than a sense of vague discomfort. I guess it’s inevitable that she has painful associations with Ground Zero. But she doesn’t go beyond saying “I dunno, I just feel hinky about it.” She doesn’t offer any basis for fearing that Cordoba House will, over time, come to promote religious extremism.
I note her feelings with respect and sympathy, but I’m not all persuaded by them.
joe from Lowell
@Mark S.:
Similarly, we can’t not have any religious sites there, because I fear over time they may start embracing such non-belief like that held by Josef Stalin.
I’m terribly sorry for that woman’s loss, but that column was completely nonsensical.
PurpleGirl
Go to
http://www.panynj.gov/wtcprogress/index.html
for current photographs of the World Trade Center site. It’s a construction site! The Liberty Tower is at 32 floors. We need to remember this every time someone says the site hasn’t been rebuilt yet. The construction is happening.
Martin
@eemom: I have no objection to hearing and respecting her views – but Bloomberg has it perfectly correct. For the same reasons that victims should not be in charge of the fate of criminals, policy needs to be set from a perspective where emotion isn’t ignored, but at least is kept at arms length. If individual pain and hardships drive every policy decision, nothing would ever get done and what got done would be totally unpredictable. I’d never be able to eat another cheeseburger because some girl who grew up in Nebraska is still distraught after her pet Bessy got turned into filet mignon back when she was 7.
What became of your lamb, Clarice?
josefina
@eemom: But the fact that her reasoning comes from personal, not political, motives doesn’t make her ideas more solid or more substantive or betterer in any way. She suffered a tremendous loss on 9/11 and I can understand why she feels the way she does. But she doesn’t own the day, its meaning, or the WTC site. I mean, if you want to play who-got-the-biggest-booboo, then the Iraq invasion would never have happened because—despite the barking-mad bloodthirst of Real America—a large majority of New Yorkers opposed it.
As an aside: remember all those calls for Muslim centrists to step up and represent? That’s exactly what the Cordoba House is about. You’d think Newtie would claim this as a victory.
Mike in NC
Who’d trade a small bag of cat feces for the outraged thoughts of ex-Speaker Newt? He needs to DIAF.
Keith G
And now for an equal time rant:
Newt is not the only one who needs his ass kicked
David Axelrod: “The President Does Oppose Same-Sex Marriage”
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/08/visit-msnbccom-for-breaking-news-1.html
Fuck you, Mr. President!!
QuaintIrene
Ha. Was waiting for the music to swell and Newt to burst into song.
“This heterosexual land is your land, this heterosexual land is my land…..”
asiangrrlMN
@Keith G: Yup. I’m with you on this one. Obama, do not be on the wrong side of history. You’re too smart for that tradition bullshit.
As for Newtie, I saw his piece linked over at TNC’s place. The comments were priceless. It’s funny how the right constantly bleats about the sanctity of marriage when so many of them are on their umpteenth marriage and/or wide-stancing in the Minneapolis Airport’s bathroom.
heydave
Stop being obstinate. He meant to say ” one woman and one man…. at a time.” Or if you are flying connect through Minneapolis.
Bitches.
demimondian
I grieve for her tragic loss. However, crime victims have no direct say on punishment of the criminals who harmed them, and no say at all on what happens too people whose only crime is living down the street from those criminals. The same applies here.
SRW1
Newt Gingrich is an interesting little phenomenon, but only because he (and a whole bunch of others amidst them) would need to be dead if fundamental Christianists were serious about their demand that every word of the bible has to be taken literally. If inerrant means anything then Newt needs to be stoned pronto. Since that hasn’t happened, these people can just f*ck off as far as I am concerned.
timb
@asiangrrlMN: He isn’t going to change that now! Be accused of flip-flopping? He is a politician, not a moral leader