Ron Paul’s newsletter in 1992:

“Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. … What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided.”

1994:

“. . those who don’t commit sodomy, who don’t get blood a transfusion, and who don’t swap needles, are virtually assured of not getting AIDS unless they are deliberately infected by a malicious gay.”

Ron Paul, 1995, telling you how great this literature is:

. . followed by Ron currently refusing to discuss all the racist, homophobic junk he published for years and profited from.

It’s been out there for a long time, so it’s not a question of what sort of man Ron is. He’s fatally flawed. The question is: How has he remained so popular? He clearly doesn’t merit the attention.

You will recall a Black candidate from 2008 who had to disavow the personal and professional relationship he’d had with a supposedly racist pastor, Jeremiah Wright. That was so disgusting a liaison in Conservatives’ eyes that it categorically eliminated Barack Obama from being president. It didn’t matter that Wright was not, in fact, a racist.

Now you’ve got an Iowa caucus frontrunner that, if not himself a racist, ran a business that peddled nasty bigotry year after year after year. He profited handsomely from the trade. But he’s currently more popular than ever.

I’m sure our Conservative friends will get around to holding him up to the lofty standards that all presidential candidates must meet, eventually.

The Newt and his marriages. What happened with that first wife, Jackie Battley, incidentally? Was he the self-obsessed horndog, looking for a younger model? Was he sick of being married to a woman actually older than him?

Well, he was already porking Marianne Ginther — a woman 11 years younger. He later tossed Marianne aside for Callista, who’s 23 years younger than him.

So there appears to be a pattern. He’d love to pretend otherwise. The original story goes that he demanded a divorce from Jackie while she was in the hospital. He has the nerve to use his daughter to spin that on his campaign website:

Recently, Newt’s daughter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, wrote a column to set the record straight about this smear. The column reveals that 1) It was her mother that requested the divorce, not Newt, and it was months before the hospital visit in question . .

CNN was interested in the facts surrounding the divorce and dug up the court records. Turns out he’s lying:

Newt Gingrich filed a divorce complaint on July 14, 1980, in Carroll County, saying that “the marriage of the parties is irretriebably (sic) broken.”

Jackie Battley Gingrich, the congressman’s wife and the mother of Jackie Gingrich Cushman, responded by asking the judge to reject her husband’s filing.

“Defendant shows that she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce, but that she does not desire one at this time,” her petition said . .

In a brief interview in 1985, she told the Washington Post: “He can say that we had been talking about it for 10 years, but the truth is that it came as a complete surprise.”

Friends say the same:

Leonard H. “Kip” Carter, a former close Gingrich friend, backed the contention that it was Newt Gingrich who wanted the divorce.

“He (Gingrich) said, ‘You know and I know that she’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a president,’ ” Carter, who now lives in South Carolina, told CNN recently, relating the conversation he had with Gingrich the day Gingrich revealed he was filing for divorce. Carter served as treasurer of Gingrich’s first congressional campaigns.

Carter, who was a fellow history professor when Gingrich taught at West Georgia College in Carrollton, said he broke off his friendship with Newt Gingrich because of the congressman’s treatment of his wife during the divorce.

Anyway, it’s old news. He’s now got everything he needs to win the presidency:

Has he got your vote?

ARCHIVED: WaPo tells how it happened to wife #2:

Marianne Ginther Gingrich was visiting her childhood home in Ohio in early May to celebrate her mother’s 84th birthday when her husband phoned. After offering birthday wishes to his mother-in-law, Gingrich asked to speak to his wife. Virginia Ginther soon found her daughter in tears.

“I said, ‘Marianne, what’s wrong?’‚” Ginther recalled yesterday. She said Marianne replied: “He doesn’t want me as his wife anymore.”

Over the phone. Sad.

She’s nasty, she loves violence. She’s a predictable WaPo right-opinion hack. She’s certainly in line for a raise.

She’s Jennifer Rubin. Jennifer’s a celebrity of the Permanent War Punditry. Why does she cheer the deaths of Americans? In print? Because Israel exists.

Obama’s worst error
Dec 23 2011 | Jennifer Rubin | Washington Post

President Obama missed the boat on tax reform. He put politics above entitlement reform. He worsened already-tense relations with Israel. But the worst error, in large part because it was both avoidable and is not irreversible, was to pull all troops out of Iraq.

Let’s see, there’s Obama’s bureaucracy, and his policy, and, sure, there’s his gubbmint’y-gook. But where have his corpses gone? Heavens.

So, Rubin’s downcast. She’s crestfallen. The dead Americans in Iraq used to prove that Israel was worth fighting for, readers. Now what? There must be something she can do.

La de da, saw this thing on tulips. Back in the 1600s, the Dutch went crazy for them. Selling bulbs for as much as $100,000. It screwed up the economy, ended in major market crash. Screwed up their values, too — what are we, idiots? How could this have happened? Who buys a flower for $100,000? Wha?

Totally related (see the state of blogging?) — the Obams on Twitter. Dumb. Can’t count. A bag of imbeciles.

Pictures: Obama Campaign Can’t Do Third-Grade Math
Posted by Aurelius | Pundit Press | Dec 24 2011

And these are the people who are trying to “fix” the American economy?

The Obama Campaign has launched a coordinated effort urging people to save money… or something. On their official Wisconsin, California, and Indiana twitter feeds, the President’s campaign is slamming Republicans for their supposed “fuzzy math.” Unfortunately for Obama, he is employing idiots.

$40 times 12 is . . uh . . not a thousand bucks. Stupid jerks. But then there’s this:

Using the hashtag #40dollars, the White House’s official Twitter account launched an online campaign on Tuesday night to help spotlight the real-life effect that not extending the current payroll tax cut would have on working-class families.

For a family earning $50,000 a year, the change would result in roughly $1,000 less to spend over the course of a year—or $40 per paycheck.

These “working-class families”? If Mom and Dad worked, they’d get two paychecks? Where, in what galaxy? Patriots, don’t you buy this hype:

Obama Campaign, Are they Smarter than a 5th Grader, NO … Cannot Do Math on Payroll Tax Cut
Scared Monkeys | Dec 24 2011

From the Pundit Press comes the following perils of wisdom and math from the Obama campaign.

Danger Will Robinson.

First they played politics with the payroll tax cut that funds social security, now it appears that they cannot do simply math. Is the Obama campaign smarter than a 5th grader, Not even close.

Not. even. close.

We are the Scared Monkeys. Good afternoon.

Maybe being Christian gives morons a certain boldness everyday fools lack. They think “I stare at the moon. It moves. My eye beams have hands.” They can’t keep a secret, they shout “Zodz-babble and zekes. I’m a preacher!” Their faces get honey glazed, their underwear gets thick.

Perhaps that’s a good thing. Your cat sees something like this and thinks, “I’m doing alright. I’ll have a second helping of feces.” The cat would eat it anyway. Can you argue with a cat? You can’t argue with a cat. Never kiss a cat. Why fret?

This has happened to you: you lick a spoon, paste it in on your nose. You tell the spoon “I only want to date. I’m keeping my options open.” It thinks “I am levitating, by Jesus. I must tell the leaden ones. Gays undermine the kitchen.” Next day, your silverware drawers look a bondage and discipline convention. The cupboard’s full of nuts, fruitcakes and bananas. You wonder “Why can’t my kitchen be funny? Or rock?” And purple wallpaper? The ants laugh. You can hear them.

The most trusted, most high-profile folks in religion are horrifyingly dumb. See below. Who else is capable of opening their mouths and making you want to run? Like a tin skunk in a thunderstorm? By contrast, our retarded friends are brilliant.

Merry Christmas, fools:

If you believe Jesus bestows an infrequent human with the lizard-power to regenerate, stay indoors. Shoelaces can catch. Keys are sharp.

Fox News is no Jules Manson. They’re not going to come right out and call the president a “fucken n*gger.” Sure, they think he is one, but they don’t have that sort of courage.

Instead, they do this. They say he lives in a big crib. Lays about in a hizzy. Hangs out with black hoodlums. Shirks responsibilities, won’t do any work. Drinks 40s all day.

. . and if you haven’t gotten the message by now, they call in Brent Bozell. He gives it to you straight. Barack Obama is a skinny ghetto crackhead.

Goodnight, viewers. God Bless. Merry Christmas from all the Christians at Fox.

Newt Gingrich knows something we don’t know. Oh hell, let’s just admit it: Newt knows about 100 times more than we’ll ever know. Probably 1000 times more than everything I ever knew combined and multiplied by a hundred to the power of ten.

Here’s one thing: a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack will kill you. Maybe soon. Watch the first minute of this clip and take some notes. Then launch a surprise attack on North Korea before they kill your ham radio:

North Korea could launch 3 nuclear missiles and completely wipe out our electrical grid? Send us back to a pre-industrial era? No, please, don’t be silly.

North Korea could launch just one missile. That single detonation would send us back 300 to 400 years. And it would kill 90% of us within a year. That’s the honest prediction of that ‘expert,’ Newt Gingrich’s co-author and good friend, William Forstchen:

Russia could lob a dozen nukes at us and kill millions, but most of us would survive. We’d also still be a modern country. But if, say, Iran launches a single, small nuclear-tipped missile from a boat in the Atlantic and detonates it 200 miles up in the atmosphere, almost all of us will die before Christmas 2013. Oh, and America will turn into Latvia cerca 1726.

Strange. But Conservative experts on national security everywhere can be seen warning exactly that. The President of the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney:

The Heritage Foundation:

In 33 minutes or less, life as we know it in America could end. That’s how long it would take for an enemy ballistic missile launched from the other side of the world to hit the United States. If it carried and detonated a nuclear weapon high over the center of the country, the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) would literally fry the nation’s electrical grid and all of the circuitry that powers our homes, businesses, hospitals, phones, cars, planes, traffic lights, ATMs, water supplies, and anything else not “hardened” against such attacks. The EMP Commission chairman has testified that, within just one year of such an attack, 70 percent to 90 percent of Americans would be dead from starvation and disease.

These guys all think we’re about to die.

There really once was an EMP Commission. They were tasked with figuring out how substantial a threat the EMP from a nuclear explosion might be. The commission produced reports in 2004 (here) and in 2008 (here) and written testimony before the House Armed Services Committee (here).

They predicted the deaths of all but a few Americans? They produced plenty of dry boring analysis but no evidence that all but 30 million of us could be murdered with a single bomb. Not that that matters, of course. Because the idea of an impending sky-holocaust is simply too wonderful for the fear and book merchants of the right-wing to leave alone. So, they don’t.

From what I gather, the popular proof of your approaching death came from a Newsmax article. A reporter named Kenneth Timmerman, attending a meeting of missile defense hawks at The Claremont Institute, heard a talk by the EMP Commission’s chair, Dr. William Graham. Unable to discern the difference between Graham speaking in simpatico to his whacko friends and Graham testifying under oath to Congress, Timmerman became confused. In his sober post titled “U.S. Intel: Iran Plans Nuclear Strike on U.S.,” he reported:

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee and in remarks to a private conference on missile defense over the weekend hosted by the Claremont Institute, Dr. William Graham warned that the U.S. intelligence community “doesn’t have a story” to explain the recent Iranian tests.

Timmerman was never aware of Graham’s actual testimony. Obviously. But if Graham is saying stuff at the conference, surely he said the same things to Congress, right? Congress has slightly lower standards for shiny intellectualism and honesty, but they’ll do. And so everything Graham lectured at The Claremont Institute became the Commission’s report to Congress. Like this:

“If even a crude nuclear weapon were detonated anywhere between 40 kilometers to 400 kilometers above the earth, in a split-second it would generate an electro-magnetic pulse [EMP] that would cripple military and civilian communications, power, transportation, water, food, and other infrastructure,” the report warned.

No, Graham warned. Yes, that’s roughly what the report said, but the quote is Graham’s. And thus, this . .

Asked just how many Americans would die if Iran were to launch the EMP attack it appears to be preparing, Graham gave a chilling reply.

“You have to go back into the 1800s to look at the size of population” that could survive in a nation deprived of mechanized agriculture, transportation, power, water, and communication.

“I’d have to say that 70 to 90 percent of the population would not be sustainable after this kind of attack,” he said.

. . Graham’s own runaway comments, became the Heritage Foundation’s “The EMP Commission chairman has testified . . ” Now the League of Doom predicts you’ll die of starvation once Iran manages to buy a fishing trawler. Newt Gingrich’s stagecraft morality leans to educating the media. This, friends, is exactly why we call some people “Wingnuts.”

And what about this EMP? Is it dangerous? I don’t know, I really didn’t feel like blowing more hours than I already have doing a triple-check. But I do know this: plenty of nuclear bombs have been detonated far above ground without sending countries 1000 miles away into permanent decline. From the commission’s own 2004 report:

In [1962], the Soviets executed a series of nuclear detonations in which they exploded 300 kiloton weapons at approximately 300, 150, and 60 kilometers above their test site in South Central Asia. They report that on each shot they observed damage to overhead and underground buried cables at distances of 600 kilometers. They also observed surge arrestor burnout, spark-gap breakdown, blown fuses, and power supply breakdowns.

While interesting, we also note that the Soviet Union survived. And it did so without being thrown even further back into the Dark Ages. Now I congratulate myself: I have waited the entire post to remind the loons that electrical grids have only been around 130 years. Silly people. Also: we have, for some time, been concerned with our enemies lobbing nuclear bombs at us because they could come down. There’s a whole system in place for tracking incoming missiles, launching lightning counter-strikes, and turning countries into craters.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six first person shooter is developing its latest iteration. Alyssa Rosenberg at Think Progress mentions that previous releases had you gunning down nuclear terrorists, bio-terrorists, genocide-whetted Hutus and murderous masterminds who planned to wipe out Las Vegas. I remind no one in particular that Siegrfried and Roy reside in the area.

The newest version is on the way. And look who’s about to get shot in the face, for eternity:

It’s, uh, hmm. Who the hell is that? They’re short-haired, clean shaven, heavily armed, well-organized, hopelessly violent, and clad in tailored suits. Blackwater? Is that you?

. . the bad guys are basically Occupy Wall Streeters on steroids. Or, considering all the rioting, attacks against police, and pyrotechnics coming from the occupiers lately, just a better organized next step for the more violent members of the 99%.

The right-winger, tongue outside cheek, then points us to the latest anarchist “pyrotechnics”:

. . the conflagration that vaporized Denver. Breaking capital news: it’s butt-pucker Fahrenheit.

Alyssa:

. . nowhere has the Clancyverse done better at upping the stakes and turning conservative boogeymen into national security threats than in the Rainbow Six franchise . .

Oh, it’s a game? Fair enough. How about Al Gore fanatics carrying liquid nitrogen tanks on their backs? They blast-freeze carbon-wasting citizens and snap them in half. Crack! Or eco-green maniacs dragging fast-food fans off to labor farms. They work the fatties like Burmese slaves for a couple weeks, then roll ‘em onto compost piles to burn. Look, they wiggle like Turtles. Whatever. We’ll supply the men, you program the boogey.

Some Tea Party/Libertarian politician living not too far from me, near Carson, CA, recently bought himself a load of trouble. Apparently unhappy about the indefinite detention provisions in the recently signed National Defense Authorization Act, Jules Manson took to his Facebook page to post this screed (sorry fuzzy):

Notice the call for assassinations of political figures, their children, and anyone in the military carrying out their duties. Also notice Manson calling the prez “that monkey.” Jules was not done — he added even better comments later:

Quoth the Jules: “Assassinate the fucken nigger and his monkey children.”

Jules later deleted the page. Then he deleted his account. Then he got a visit from the Secret Service. Then he added this:

. . the comments on his Facebook page [were] “careless, emotionally driven remarks that had no real substance” and wrote, “Not including my regular friends whom I converse with often or have in the past and always welcome their comments and posts, I do not believe many of you are concerned citizens.”

Thus when you call for the death of a n*gger president, you’re a responsible citizen.


. . h/t Rachel for the tip . .

[--Part one.]

Slate posts Newt ‘Gingrich’s Doodles.’ These are a group of notes Newt wrote to himself back in 1994 that ended up part of his 1997 House ethics investigation. And if you’re interested in the current Republican frontrunner, maybe you take notice. You click over to the post and see this:

. . a diagram of Newt’s world. He is the “system designer.” Gingrich sits at the center of the universe, you see, while lesser citizens populate ever-further, more bucolic concentric neighborhoods. Reality eventually terminates in our far-flung address, “the public.”

You can see that Newt views himself as an uncommon man. And for folks like me, who have seen debilitating narcissism close up, this is a familiar sight. People like Newt make these little scribbles to exercise the disease in their brain. They do it to remind themselves who they really are. Having done that, they then go out and act the part: I am the center of a vast universe, friend. A cross between Catholic Oliver Cromwell and post-modern Will Durant, I am the Newt Gingrich.

So he’s grandiose, overblown. Everyone already knew that, so what? He’s leading in the polls, that’s so what. This would be a catastrophic U.S. President, that’s what. And the possibility has serious consequences for our lives; you recall that the George W. Bush administrations killed thousands of Americans.

But I’m here to tell you, he’s not likely to win the whole thing. He’ll have a very hard time just taking the Republican nomination. Narcissists do very poorly managing responsibility, and fewer things are more difficult than successfully carrying something as large as an entire campaign for a year. Great men regularly fail at this. Flawed men almost always fail at it.

The interesting thing for us with regard to Newt the Great is that narcissists are utterly predictable sorts. While he’ll likely fail, we can make some pretty fair predictions about how he’ll do it. Starting with this:

1.) Newt will eclipse his own campaign. The need to impress upon you his greatness will kill the campaign’s messaging. Gingrich has surely been telling his staff that talking about himself is the same as talking about the campaign (it isn’t). And the ways Gingrich will hype himself will come twofold: bragging and gargantuan ideas. Method one:

At the Reagan presidential library this fall, Gingrich boasted of how “I helped Reagan create millions of jobs while he was president.” And after modestly acknowledging his own less significant role than Reagan’s, added, “We helped defeat the Soviet empire.”

This is pretty preposterous stuff — Reagan was president 30 years ago. This self-stroking doesn’t really do much in the eyes of coveted swing voters other than make Gingrich seem weird and old, which he is. It’s also a crock of shit: Newt routinely ripped Reagan because that’s what narcissists do, read Mark Shields for the details. Method two:

. . Gingrich indicated that it was in the president’s power as commander-in-chief to deem any Supreme Court ruling irrelevant if he or she in the White House disagreed.

. . “A commander-in-chief could simply issue instructions to ignore it, and say it’s null and void and I do not accept it because it infringes on my duties as commander-in-chief to protect the country.”

This is nothing less than the dismantling of the Constitution’s separation of powers, a critical feature of the Founding Fathers’ new government. Still, Gingrich has been going on and on about it for days. Why? Because it’s such a winner with voters? Because it’s vitally necessary at this time? Because this is what leaders do? God, no. Because it’s fucking HUGE. Pulling the Constitution apart at the seams usually is. But notice how gigantic old Newt is? No one else has the balls to propose this, and for good reason. Newt simply can’t resist.

This is how you eclipse a campaign. To win the presidency, what should he be talking about incidentally? Are you kidding? The economy, stupid. That’s how you beat a vulnerable incumbent. America’s seething anger sits right there, just below the surface, waiting to be tapped. Haven’t seen him bother with it, though, have you?

2.) Newt will not be prepared. Narcissists are some of the spottiest workers you have ever seen. They are long on grand designs and short on carry through. They are great dictators and horrible managers. Don’t expect Newt to be any good at anything other than talking.

In an embarrassing display of organizational weakness, for example, Gingrich recently failed to qualify for the ballot in Missouri’s primary. The campaign structure, such as it is, simply didn’t follow through. Similarly, the Gingrich team was supposed to provide New Hampshire officials with a list of 40 committee volunteers who would represent the campaign as Republican National Convention delegates — but Gingrich’s staff couldn’t track down 40 willing supporters. Instead, they submitted a hand-scrawled, typo-ridden list of 27 people.

Steve Benen mentioned this 17 days ago. As of now, the Gingrich campaign have barely gotten a ground game going in any of the primary states. They’re months behind in mounting a serious effort. Newt will tell you it’s because he’s so ground-breaking. But that’s just narcissism 101 — recall Sarah Palin’s excuses for being quintessentially incompetent. And there’s no excuse for this:

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich explained on Sunday that his policies would require up to 9 million undocumented immigrants to return to their home nations — and he predicted that they would do it voluntarily . .

“There are 11 million of these people,” Schieffer noted. “I mean, what are you going to do with them?”

“My guess is that 7 or 8 or 9 million of them would ultimately go home, get a guest-worker permit, come back under the law,” Gingrich replied.

That is so half-baked, it’s honestly hilarious. Millions of people would end the lives they’ve created here, to move their families to some place that isn’t home, for what reason? To start a strange new life, in order to wait for years, for what? A perhaps chance to come back and re-start their previous life? Newt hasn’t actually thought about this for a second, his take’s a joke. Conservatives hate ‘amnesty,’ and reality hates fools. He’s winning nobody over with his comic absurdity.

3.) Newt will not carry the banner. Narcissists live to separate themselves from the crowd, so they’re horrible at being traditional leaders. You won’t see him being a Republican’s Republican. You can’t get him to play nice with others for more than a few difficult moments. This is why he attacked Paul Ryan just when Paul was becoming the Baby Jesus of entitlement reform:

“I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering,” Gingrich scoffed in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” . .

Gingrich later called the [Ryan] reform plan “too big a jump,” adding: “I’m against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.”

It wasn’t supposed to be “social engineering.” Wasn’t supposed to be “radical change,” it was supposed to be “a common sense approach to a pressing problem.” Why couldn’t he just toe the party line? Because Gingrich couldn’t resist putting the pretender Ryan in his proper place: far below Newt the Great. Get away kid, you bother me.

This need to be singular, to be transcendent, to be unique, it is a problem. That’s why you can dig into Newt’s past and produce brain-scratching highlight clips like this:

Is there anyone more despised by Conservatives than FDR? Can you imagine any other politician going so far out of his way to speak so glowingly of an accursed enemy? It’s amazing, isn’t it?

But FDR’s accomplishments are just too staggering not to covet. All narcissists are obsessed with recruiting greatness to their cause and shunning equals. Newt just can’t conceal his software: if FDR were around, Gingrich would be desperate to make him a friend.

Flipping that baffling script, can you imagine a Democratic presidential candidate in awe of Ronald Reagan? Can you see how bizarre that would be?

I can’t imagine it. You couldn’t put a gun to my head and get me to vote for that guy.

But that guy is leading the Republicans right now. That guy is also messed up. So don’t expect him to become president. I wouldn’t even bet on Newt winning the party nomination. The poor guy just isn’t built to pull it off.

I was bouncing around the internet when, lo and behold, I came across this. Slate has posted a group of notes Newt Gingrich wrote to himself back in 1994 that were culled as part of a House ethics investigation of him in 1997.

These little scribbles are amazing. For me, they are the nails in his political coffin. I always suspected Newt the Great of being a dysfunctional narcissist, but the ‘doodles’ are the proof:

Gingrich—Primary Mission

—Advocate of civilization

—definer of civilization

—Teacher of the rules of civilization

—arouser of those who form civilization

—Organizer of the pro-civilization activists

—leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces.

. . Commander of All Civilizing Forces in the Global Theater, apparently. You may think this is funny, silly stuff, but I don’t. I had to grow up with people suffering from personality disorders, and, if this isn’t the real thing, it’s close. Newt has a nasty case of narcissism.

Are you in the habit of hastily scribbling a 25-year prescription for yourself? Newt is:

This 1992 note appears to be a 25-year plan (the header reads “1993-2018”). Items on the list include: “A series of books (the history of Freedom, prosperity and safety),” “Possibly a series of courses with audio and videotape followers,” and “Campus (intellectual) appearances on ‘the histories,’ ” with “Gingrich the historian applying the lessons of history to public life.”

When you refer to yourself in the third person in your personal notes, do you also include your title? Newt does. It’s a shame he never got around to chronicling all of safety and prosperity and Freedom through time. I’d be interested to know when safety first appeared in history.

These are not memos reminding Newt of the various jobs he has ahead of him. You’ll notice he’s done exactly zero of these things. These are the exercises of a sick mind constantly asserting itself. Newt needs to see what it looks like, this reality of being great beyond all others. ‘Gingrich the historian applying the lessons of history to public life.’ Hmm, yes. That’s me. I think I can see it now.

And what does a sick mind do with this reflection? It acts the part. And this is the key with narcissists. They are usually completely incompetent, so they must pretend. They have to know what role they’re playing before they meet you and impress upon you how impossibly grand they are. Thus The Historian doesn’t write notes to himself that say: “Finish Chapter 23 on the History of Prosperity.” Instead, He writes this:

1. Articulate the vision of civilizing humanity and recivilizing all Americans (TASK 1

Since when do ‘historians’ civilize humanity? Since Newt volunteered to do it. Since it’s such a big job, that’s when. He hasn’t yet done it, you might notice. I’m not sure anyone who gets nailed for ethics violations and cheats on his wives knows much about civility.

And this is Newt. Some of you are laughing, I know. But imagine this guy as your president. Not so funny now, is it? He has a sizable lead in Republican polls, so it’s actually terrifying.

Well, I’m here to tell you that unless Newt can keep his serious psychological deficit in check, he’ll have a hard time winning. He’ll have a difficult time just trying to hold on to the Republican nomination. Narcissists are almost always exposed once they have to take on real responsibility. They do badly under pressure. Newt’s short tenure as House Speaker and his resigning office all those years ago are testaments to that.

The numbers of mistakes, gaffes and strange moments will take their toll on the Gingrich campaign. It will not be pretty. It might be spectacular, as a narcissist’s collapse can be.

Secure in now knowing who and what Newt is, I’ll make some predictions as to how Newt’s campaign will wobble and eventually fall. Until then, I’ll leave you with some words from my favorite narcissist. Not long before he died in a small town in Northern California, he reminded me: “John Glenn is a close personal friend of mine.”

–Part two.

Allen West, the Florida Tea Party representative from a very Jewish district, offered us an opinion yesterday. When asked about Americans having a negative view of Congress, Allen said it was unfair. The reason people thought Republicans were douchebag politicians, he said, wasn’t because it was true. It was because Democrats were master media manipulators, like those of the Nazi Party. Liberals are modern-day Reich Ministers of Propaganda:

Tea party favorite Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) said Thursday that Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels would be “very proud” of Democrats for shifting public sentiment against Republicans, and he blamed the press for helping spread their message.

“If Joseph Goebbels was around, he’d be very proud of the Democrat Party because they have an incredible propaganda machine,” West told reporters in the Capitol. “I think that you have, and let’s be honest, you know, some of the people in the media are complicit in this, in enabling them to get that type of message out.”

Are we Joseph Goebbels? I don’t think so. Goebbels was a homicidal lunatic, a man directly responsible for the deaths of countless Jews. We like our Jewish friends. They’re more likely to be Democrats than Republicans, and I’m happy to assume there’s a good reason for that.

So this sounds like an opinion offered for effect, doesn’t it? There’s a word for that, though it escapes me now. Anyway, more Democrats:

. . Goebbels told Hitler that “spontaneous” anti-Jewish violence had already broken out in German cities, although in fact this was not true: this was a clear case of Goebbels manipulating Hitler for his own ends . . He wrote in his diary:

“[Hitler] decides: demonstrations should be allowed to continue. The police should be withdrawn. For once the Jews should get the feel of popular anger … I immediately gave the necessary instructions to the police and the Party. Then I briefly spoke in that vein to the Party leadership. Stormy applause. All are instantly at the phones. Now people will act.”

The result of Goebbels’ incitement was Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” during which the S.A. and Nazi Party went on a rampage of anti-Jewish violence and destruction, killing at least 90 and maybe as many as 200 people, destroying over a thousand synagogues and hundreds of Jewish businesses and homes, and dragging some 30,000 Jews off to concentration camps . .

Are we the types of people to incite an anti-wingnut Kristallnacht in America? Would we murder or imprison thousands of Republicans? I doubt it. And though we hate the teabagger, the same way Goebbels despised Berlin Police President Bernhard Weiss, would we orchestrate a propaganda effort like this?

Gosh, maybe we would. That’s awfully funny.


JUST IN: You can’t make this comedy up . .

Media Matters brings word that furious right-wing truth teller, Andrew Breitbart — who believes Allen West should run for President — has been using classic Nazi imagery to attack the Democrat-controlled media:

In at least three instances, Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism website has used an image connected to a Nazi-era German magazine noted for anti-Semitic cartoons and pro-Hitler leanings.

The image appeared in a Big Journalism post Thursday morning written by Logan Churchwell, director of public relations at Accuracy in Media:

Here’s their pic of the post:

. . and here’s the original image, from a 1942 copy of Nazi propaganda fount Kladderadatsch:

No harm in using a time-tested image to attack the dirty propagandists, right? Okay, Allen, there’s your cue: “If Joseph Goebbels was around, he’d be very proud.” But you guys might want to shorten the hook nose and erase the Star of David before posting it. Oh, I see. Gut gemacht.