Atrios flags this headline at the Washington Post. Speaking of Newt’s ideas, I know that his child-labor plan has been discussed here, but I think we missed his take on food stamps. He believes that even millionaires are eligible, and that food stamp benefit cards can be used to fund trips to Hawaii. Polifact, who seem a little less enamored with the presumptive nominee than the WaPo, calls that one a “pants on fire”.
r€nato
I like his idea for mainstreaming man-fembot marriage.
dmsilev
See, what is important is the quantity of ideas. Quality is apparently not a valid metric.
MattF
Is the domain ‘newtgingrichlies’ taken?
4tehlulz
MEANWHILE
US unemployment rate falls to 8.6 per cent, payrolls up 120,000
EconWatcher
I expect I’ll be hearing what a “man of ideas” Gingrich is from my wingnut relatives over the holidays. My tentative plan is to reply, “name one.”
Is there any genuinely clever idea that was actually originated by Gingrich? I’m not asking this rhetorically; I want to know if my plan is as foolproof as I think it is.
Joseph Nobles
Gingrich Wonka and the Bullshit Factory
Here’s one of Newt’s bright ideas: Life begins at implantation. Now he really is toast.
MattF
@EconWatcher: Noot’s life-goal of getting into the pants of a hard-eyed blonde seems to have been successful, probly involved considerable thought and planning.
Butch
I was a reporter on Capital Hill in the 1980s. A spot at the Washington Post was supposed to be the goal of every single reporter in the city. I wasn’t in that group; I thought it was a terrible newspaper then and it’s even worse now.
Hawes
Leroy Newton IS a man of ideas. Bold, new ideas! Ideas for an idea starved time!
I’m going to keep saying that until he wins the GOP nomination. Then I will enjoy watching him sell orphanages and poorhouses to the undecided voters. Those undecided voters may, indeed, be morans, but they aren’t stupid.
kd bart
Incredible wealth has made Paris Hilton a paragon of hard work and determination. She has her “nose to the grindstone” or is it to a mirror?
JPL
@4tehlulz: Could it be that is why the repubs want to increase taxes on the middle class?
OMG..Could it be they want to tank the economy?
Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
stuckinred
WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — Hiring picked up in November, and the unemployment rate plummeted.
Employers added 120,000 jobs in November, the Labor Department reported Friday, marking a pick-up in hiring from October.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate fell to 8.6%, as more people returned to the workforce, while others dropped out altogether.
Rommie
Ideas Factory? For what, the Confederate States of America 2.0?
Hawes
And before everyone worries about the media fellating Newt, let’s remember that everything was good news for John McCain except the actual will of the voters.
Comrade Javamanphil
Newt really is who the DC press corps has been searching for in the GOP primary: the bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks who they just know they can tame with their adulation.
maya
Idea factory? Ah, yes. Heritage Foundlings will be chipping coal in the WH Left Wing under Newt’s new privatization/child labor plan. Gov will be run out of a West Palm Beach condo saving taxpayers billions of rupees.
General Stuck
@stuckinred:
Good news indeed. Puts a crimp in the GOP bullshit factory for Obama fail. If UE gets below 8, we should be in like Flint.
Gin & Tonic
Ideas? Getting a blow job in your car is an OK idea, as far as I’m concerned.
JPL
@General Stuck: It won’t help because the GOP is intent on taxing the middle class 1000 average next year. They won’t extend the payroll tax period.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
The idea that this bullshit is not only being treated like human thought, but is actually being fucking lauded as something we should see in a fucking President is just….good fucking jumped up fuck.
It’s stuff like this that sends me into nigh-bipolar swings of rage and despair.
Xenos
@General Stuck: Flynn, as in Errol Flynn.
Certified Mutant Enemy
Speaking of fellation, the first time I heard the excuse that oral sex really isn’t adultery was from a Gingrich supporter (or Newt himself). This was long before Monica Lewinsky.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Xenos: No, Flint like Coburn.
GregB
Newt’s balls are going to be as smooth as onyx after The Village is done massaging them with their soft and callous free hands the next month or so.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@GregB:
Reaches for the brain bleach…
EconWatcher
@General Stuck:
The folks in Europe are showing signs of actually getting their act together. If they do, I think the US recovery will pick up steam.
We keep seeing little positive hints in the data, only to be drowned in the deluge of doom and gloom from across the Atlantic. If that ends, we’re poised to rock ‘n roll, I think. But there are still some big “ifs” there. (Angela Merkel, by the way, may come out of this looking like the world’s greatest poker player.)
Interesting fact from the Economist last week: The US correction in housing prices went further than in almost any other country, and house prices here are now actually way below long-term trend in comparison to both rents and median income. We might actually see that remaining loose inventory get hoovered up, and then–rising prices, new building, and—most importantly–construction jobs.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Gin & Tonic:
While waiting to pick up the kids…
Mark S.
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
See? He’s an ideas man.
fasteddie9318
What’s the deal with Politifact, anyway? Is it one of those things that we revel in when we agree with it and denounce when we don’t and, if so, does that make it the Andrew Sullivan of fact-checking?
Joseph Nobles
@General Stuck: Ha! From Boehner’s twitter feed this AM:
How long do you think they’ve been sitting on that “34th consecutive month” line?
kay
It’s not that Newt will get traction. It’s that the lies will get traction.
He’s going to lie constantly about food stamps, and that won’t be treated as a lie. It will be treated as a difference of opinion.
In six months, half or better of the country will believe Newt Gingrich’s lies about food stamps.
I would never have believed that so many people would take something as simple as a state birth record process and turn it into this elaborate, complicated, unknowable mystery, but they did. It wasn’t just birthers, either. The birth record process in Hawaii was only “controversial” because Republicans and media muddled it so much there was all this room for “doubt”.
It’ll go the same way with food stamps.
“Are food stamps credit cards?” will be treated as a legitimate question, and the poor souls who have to appear and explain that food stamps are not credit cards will be treated as “pro food stamps”.
We’ll have the “food stamps are credit cards” people, and the “food stamps are not credit cards” people. You decide!
I think we have to immediately start sending tv and newspapers links to state welfare agencies, before “food stamps” become a theory.
Tone In DC
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
And here, as well.
Didn’t really need to read that, Greg.
gonzone
No one said they would be GOOD ideas!
dmsilev
@Joseph Nobles:
33.9 months, at a guess.
Boots Day
Yeah, I would really like to know if any of Newt’s several million ideas actually turned into enacted legislation. I’d settle for one of them that ever became popular, or even was endorsed by another sentient human being. I don’t see a lot of people jumping on the whole “let’s get schoolkids to work as janitors” idea.
Tone In DC
Thirty four months of all-out, uber nihilistic obstructionism. And daily importation of metric tons of bullshit, besides.
Orange Julius really needs to Shut The Fuck Up.
SiubhanDuinne
@Joseph Nobles:
And if it drops to, say, 7.2% in December, Orange Julius and Company will release the following statement in early January (edited because I’m still uncaffeinated):
“Today marks the 35th consecutive month of unemployment above 7 percent under Pres. Obama. Where are the #jobs?”
Certified Mutant Enemy
Republicans have a jobs plan, an alternative to the president’s failed policies, & it’s been our focus all year
The Republican jobs plan has been tried before and is currently in operation. Where are the jobs?
Satanicpanic
These media people are sociopaths.
Villago Delenda Est
Newt needs to go on food stamps for a month and find out how it works.
Because apparently he’s way too lazy to find out otherwise.
Cacti
Newt’s biggest problem is that he’s extremely venal and mean-spirited and does a poor job of hiding it.
“Fire janitors and replace them with poor kids” will be the statement that defines his campaign if nominated.
Villago Delenda Est
Jerzy Russian
@EconWatcher:
I remember hearing that the only bills Newt had actually sponsored while in Congress had to do with space travel, and they were kind of stupid. However, a quick search came up empty. For example, this page
http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/rep_bios.phpcategory=bills&rep_id=72471931
shows that he did not sponsor anything. Perhaps that database does not go back far enough.
MarkJ
Note to Post: Newt may espouse a lot of “ideas” but all of them are bad. Maybe if you practiced actual journalism once in a while you could figure that out.
daveNYC
And U6 dropped a bit too, so the drop of U3 is pretty solid, it’s not just from people dropping out of the job market.
eric
Newt — all on his own — thought to shut down the government. That was a great idea. He showed that adulterous Bill Clinton what was what.
Schlemizel
I mentioned this horror earlier this week – I am more afraid of Noot than of Willard. The Kool Kids Klub will lineup, falling over each other, to be first to run a story on what an intellectual he is & how – as a white guy – he had to get into college on his merits. The rubes will eat it up.
handsmile
Well, I just gave a couple of kopecks to Kaplan Test Prep Daily by clicking onto the article, a practice I strive to avoid.
Among the “ideas” being stitched in the Gingrich sweat shop is a plan to fire federal judges with whom he disagrees, declare certain laws to be ineligible for review by the Supreme Court, and instruct the executive branch simply to ignore Supreme Court decisions. “This is a fight we want,” boasts Tiffany’s favorite pol.
Every single person quoted in the article, other than Neut, is an employee of a right-wing “think tank.” My favorite remark, from an official at the Center for Immigration Studies, underscores kay’s comment above (#31) about Gingrich’s lies gaining traction and the target audience for those lies: “It’s the kind of thing that sounds right maybe when you sit on the couch and hear it.”
gogol's wife
@Schlemizel:
I disagree. I think Willard is more dangerous as an opponent to Obama. He’s more likeable than Newt by a long shot, even as unlikeable as he is.
Schlemizel
@gogol’s wife:
“Lets not argue of ‘oo killed ‘oo” :)
I agree with your point but I don’t see the press as enamored with Willard & the Christianists are more likely to stay home than vote for a cult member.
I think we are going to have to fight harder than a lot of people think we should have to in ’12. Maybe the Santorum/Palin ticket mentioned above this thread is what we should hope for.
handsmile
Should Neutmentum be more than simply this month’s collective anti-Mitt hysteria and should the “food stamps as credit card” lie take hold of the Village imagination, I have an idea for some enterprising Democrat to organize.
Food stamp recipients should go to Tiffany’s and present their vouchers for jewelry and other luxury merchandise. Why, they could call themselves the “Calista Corps.”
Villago Delenda Est
You see, I knew the vermin of the Village would just get all wet over the shitstain Gingrich. He’s their sort of Rethuglican; a thin veneer of “intellect” over vile racism and resentment.
The scum that are the Teatards of course eat this shit up. OvenMitt can’t deliver the sort of rush of assholishness that they crave, Gingrich can.
What remains to be seen is how long Gingrich can go without committing the sort of major gaffe that is impossible for the Village to wish away. Because he’s not electable in the general, and the money boys of the party belong to OvenMitt who, after all, is one of their own.
Elizabelle
@MarkJ:
The Washington Post is rarely a credible source.
Dana Milbank occasionally writes a good column. (Kyl as “walking napalm” was spot on.)
I guess Dana Priest and Anne Hull might still be employed there.
But it’s a dreadful paper otherwise. Anne Kornblut works there, doesn’t she? She’s horrible. I felt sorry for Hillary Clinton when I learned Kornblut would cover her campaign. No one deserves that level of obtuseness.
Elizabelle
Tiny bit of light at the end of the tunnel:
given that the Village does fellate these fools, serially and seriously, might they lose what credibility they retain, and be seen for the hard-work shrifters they are?
Maybe we will see some fact-based, accountable, NOT “objective” journalism?
objective: definition:
noun
1) A thing aimed at or sought; a goal.
Adjective:
2) (of a person or their judgment) Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
I think we’re getting the first definition of “objective”, and it’s keeping journalists’ sources happy — bring on those GOP talking points; making the world safe for Republican idealogues, and advancing one’s own career.
Which, if successfully pursued, removes one from day to day contact with the middle class. You’re smarter and know more than your support staff or the drones who work in production, or who serve you lunch and check you into your hotels, and you just have to rub elbows when you get sent to East Armpit to elucidate what “the American voter” is thinking.
No penalties for getting it way wrong!
Comrade Rich
@EconWatcher:
Well, according to an article I read this morning on Mother Jones, Newt made the Web safe for pr0n. So there’s that.
Comrade Mary
Surely this will be what ruins blow jobs for me.
Judas Escargot
@Jerzy Russian:
Back in the early 1990s, the very pro-aerospace Newt used to be called “the Representative from Martin Marietta”, because MM was headquartered in his district. That would be a Lockheed-Martin plant now.
Before he was Speaker, his district was the one that received the most dollars-per-resident from the Federal Govt (I think Michael Moore even ran a story on TV Nation about this— this is all from memory).
Schlemizel
BTW – I want to “thank” you for the word ‘fellation’ (is that even a real word?)
Now on Sunday Morning I am going to hear them announce the guests on “Face the Fallation with Bob Schieffer”
ET
Whoever does the online headlines is stretching the article a bit. In the paper copy the headline (and subheadline is)
Gingrich offers up a bundle of ‘big ideas’
Parallel system, firing of judges among plans that draw skepticism
And the article does spend a fair amount of time going into negatives.
sukabi
yeah well, they need to recalibrate their lieometer as it clearly doesn’t begin to peg Gingrich as a ‘f^cking LIAR’, which everyone with a semi-functioning brain knows he is.
Until that happens they’re still helping him promote himself.
Maude
AP Headline: Gingrich’s unpredictability raises concerns.
For Newtie, it was nice while it lasted.
This is the beginning of the questions about Newtie’s reasoning. If you want to call it reasoning.
DanielX
Trouble is, so many of Newt’s ideas won’t really be new. I mean, repeal of child labor laws? Use of the stocks on the public square? Poorhouses? Flogging? Use of Xe Corporation specialists as strikebreakers? These are all concepts that go way back. Now, if he proposed that every American with a net worth of less than $1,000,000 be required to have a GPS/monitoring chip implant, THAT would be new.
Paul in KY
@Cacti: Thank God he can’t hide it.
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
@Jerzy Russian: I think it goes back about 34 months…
Brandon
How come I am not seeing any reporting about Rove’s massive fail in his support of the Romney campaign? If Romney fails to win the nomination or does so looking weak, at what point does that start to affect his reputation? The Mittens strategy seems to be to capture the nomination by default through being the last candidate standing. And it is fascinating to me and perhaps exemplary of Rove’s reputation that only Huntsman is attacking him and that Fox interview aside, the media have not given him a thorough examination. And once the general starts, the media will say that all candidates were vetted during the primaries and any scandals are old hat, which is clearly not the case and reminiscent of the treatment W received. The key difference though is that Romney is just too viserably repulsive and journalists would have great difficulty repeating the same narratives about which candidate is the preference for drinking beer, working class white men and suburban white mothers. I assume though that the Obama campaign would prefer Romney to Newt because Obama is very effective at blurring differences with opponents on policy and Mittens record is only distinguishable from Obama on domestic economic policy in that Mitts actually raised taxes and Obama has not. Probably wont stop Mittens from blatantly lying about Obama’s record on taxes though because Mitt has no shame and its classic Rove playbook.
gnomedad
You know who else had lots of ideas?
Sorry, someone had to say it.
PurpleGirl
@stuckinred: I want to know what the number of dropped out of the labor pool is. At some point there are a lot of people not being counted anywhere and anymore. (Me for one.)
Jamie
The Newt that Stole Christmas as a Philosopher-King is like the drive-through liquor mart clerk as a sommelier. Yes, on the one hand, Newt has ideas, and on the other, the tired 50yo small business owner has alcohol.
Run, Newt, run!
(If the Anti-Sex League were serious about stopping teens from having oral sex, they’d promote calling blowjobs “getting/giving a Newt.” Complete with pictures. )
Hey, baby… Wanna Newt me? I think it can be unisex.