The Rude Pundit

A Thousand Words Regarding Last Night's Debate Including, But By No Means Limited To, Its Effect on the Florida Primary and the Republican Nomination for President in General:

Your State Sucks: Arizona Is Filthy with Assholes:
So it was that Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona (motto: "We'll shoot your Democratic ass right out of the Congress") and ill-prepared debater, met President Barack Obama on the tarmac at the Phoenix Airport after Air Force One landed. Instead of greeting him with a gift basket of iguana jerky, cactus liquor, and rocks with googly-eyes on them, as is the custom there, Brewer handed Obama a handwritten letter that she said was about immigration policy. One might imagine the crayon-scrawled note says something like "Mexicans is bad, except for tacos. Help us get rid of Mexicans, but leave the tacos. Give us money?" At the bottom, there were probably "yes" and "no" boxes for Obama to check.

Brewer also asked for a meeting with Obama, and she invited him to return to the state when his schedule allowed. The President apparently mentioned that her description of a previous meeting in her book Scorpions for Breakfast was, to paraphrase, kind of cunty. This made for a tense face-off between Brewer and Obama, where the Governor probably said, "I write good. Sarah Palin said so," with Brewer thrusting her finger at the President, which should have made the Secret Service tackle her and drag her off to Gitmo, until Obama, realizing that talking to a crazy person was a waste of time, walked away from Brewer as she was in mid-sentence.

And what exactly did Brewer write that seemed to bear mentioning by the President? Well, we'll never know the trigger, but Brewer's book reads like it was ghostwritten by Sean Hannity while he was taking a dump, so it's filled with the usual nonsensical, huffy, snarky, insulting asides that conservative "writers" seem to think bring depth to a topic. Here's a hint to politicians: Leave that shit to idiot bloggers.

So not only did Brewer describe Obama as "patronizing" in the 2010 Oval Office discussion, not only did she say that, in their talk about immigration policy, "It was though President Obama thought he could lecture me, and I would learn at his knee," but Brewer dissed the Secret Service and the security measures around the Oval Office, where, you know, the President works:

"When we got to the White House, we were sent to a holding room outside the Oval Office. One of my staffers took pictures. This was apparently a no-no. The Secret Service confiscated all of our cell phones and cameras. Too bad we weren't illegal aliens, or we could have sued them."

You got that? Brewer, who, in the name of security, wants her state's cops to be able, on a whim, to ask you to prove you're a citizen or you'll get thrown in jail until you can, is mocking what's done for the safety of the President. And she's pissing on the people who enforce those laws because they briefly inconvenienced her and her staff. Whether or not that's what Obama was reacting to, fuck her. Here's another tip: Don't write books like that until you're no longer governor.

What really happened on the tarmac? Brewer probably invited Obama to meet, Obama probably said something sarcastic about how it might end up in another book, Brewer probably went off, and Obama probably thought "Fuck this" and walked away. And it's not outside the realm of possibility that Brewer was surprised to hear what was in "her" book. Because she's a dolt.

Why was Obama even stepping foot in Arizona? He was there to visit a massive new Intel semiconductor manufacturing plant that's being built in Chandler. Anticipating what Obama might say about the factory, Vice Mayor Jeff Weninger went on the insidious Twitter machine to say, "So @BarackObama is coming 2 @intel in chandler on Wed 2 take credit 4 a 1000 new #jobs & a 5 billion $ investment that he had 0% to do with." If you decode that, it seems that Weninger is mad that the President might say he's personally responsible for single-handedly building the joint. Also, buried deep within the code is the phrase "And I really am just a total asshole, like all elected Republicans in Arizona."

Weninger might have had a point if he hadn't been completely wrong. President Obama was there to give all props to Intel: "Let’s stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas. Let’s reward companies like Intel that are investing and creating jobs right here in the United States of America," he said. "I want to thank Intel for leading the way, because they're investing in startups, they're supporting science and math education, they're helping to train new engineers." Yep. Obama was there to praise a corporation for creating jobs in the United States, in Arizona, in Chandler, rather than sending them to death camps in China.

Oh, by the way, just to make Weninger that much more of an ignorant, knee-jerk, right-wing dickbag, he sent tweets to Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and Newt Gingrich informing them of Obama's egotistical intent: "Pres coming 2 Chandler AZ 2take credit 4 jobs that a conserv city council& a republican state leg got done." Someone was angling for a big-time Fox "news" or radio appearance. Which, ironically enough, would only be possible because of Barack Obama.

The State of the Union Is "Can We Just Start the Campaign Already?" (Random Observations):
President Obama's State of the Union speech last night (aka "Shit What I'm Proposin' That You Bastards Ain't Gonna Pass") was fine, dull, whatever. But a few things stuck in the Rude Pundit's craw and brain that he didn't really discuss while he was a-tweetin' it.

1. The use of the Osama bin Laden raid and killing as an analogy for how Republicans and Democrats can come together for a common purpose was just really weird. At first, it seemed like Obama was going to give his most obvious foreign policy achievement a subtle, almost in-passing reference at the top of the speech. But at the end, he dove in head first: "Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation Room, when I sat next to Bob Gates -- a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary -- and Hillary Clinton -- a woman who ran against me for president. All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics." How does this transform into tax policy or immigration reform? It's something about getting each other's backs or being stitched together human centipede-style or something. It was hard to tell, really. And coming from the President who regularly orders murder without trial, it probably might have been better to just toss bin Laden's rotting head in John McCain's lap and say, "That's what you get when you're not afraid to go into Pakistan, bitch."

2. But the positive outweighed the negative (a sentence that ought to be the Obama campaign slogan) in the speech. He seemed to indicate he was going to go after a couple of people in the financial industry. He said he was going to do some green stuff. He made a pitch for infrastructure spending. He said the word "unionized." He made another pitch (albeit with less commitment) for more bipartisanship. He didn't come at Republicans nearly as hard as he could have, although he did call out their rhetoric, as he has before, and he did say that they were big fucking hypocrites: "Even my Republican friends who complain the most about government spending have supported federally financed roads, and clean energy projects, and federal offices for the folks back home."

3. The thing that Obama does best, when he's not in "Fired up, ready to go" mode, is to present himself as this eminently calm and reasonable guy who is pretty much the polar opposite of the caricature that is tossed around by Republicans and the right-wing media every day. The speech was for the fence-sitters and for people who may not like Obama (primarily because they don't hear about the reality of what he's doing) but think the GOP is wacky. You'd have to be pretty nutzoid conservative, like licking-Gingrich's-taint crazy, to think that the rational man speaking of how make moderate changes to the tax code to save the economy is the Bolshevik Kenyan cartoon monster who is forcing people to take his goddamn food stamps and act European or risk being put in Sharia law concentration camps. Of course, Gingrich's taint is probably pretty clean these days.

4. Ultimately, what President Obama did last night was give a template for his campaign for reelection. And you can see that, in taking on Mitt Romney (which he will), all he needs to do is keep emphasizing that rich fucks can afford to pay more. He also spoke in a squishy, non-committal way about being open to war with Iran and being willing to negotiate on Medicare and Medicaid spending, leaving himself plenty of wiggle room. In other words, other than taxes, immigration, and a few other domestic issues, he's leaving Republicans with precious, precious little to run on.

5. Regarding creepy ass Mitch Daniels, staring at us like a mellow version of the screaming dude from the Munch painting, and his Republican response, the Rude Pundit didn't know what country he was talking about. When he said that "The late Steve Jobs -- what a fitting name he had -- created more [jobs] than all those stimulus dollars the president borrowed and blew," it wasn't just notable for the dumbass aside. No, it was an outright lie, by a factor of 20. And what the hell does "We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves" mean? "Soon-to-have" sounds like a guarantee of economic comfort and stability. The only way you can do that is with, you know, socialism.

Newt Gingrich: It Depends on What the Meaning of "Lobbyist" Is:
Here's a September 19, 2007 UPI headline: "Gingrich lobbies for health insurance plan." The first line of the article: "Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich Wednesday lobbied Congress to support a health insurance measure he said would aid children." UPI was never asked to retract the story.

The only moment worth a damn in last night's endless, dull, repetitive, pathetic, bullshit debate in Tampa, Florida, was when Mitt Romney finally put down the juice box, grabbed a bottle of caffeine-free root beer, and went at Newt Gingrich like he wanted to start a bar fight. Gingrich kept insisting that he was not a lobbyist. That may be true in the technical sense that he was never given that title. But if you get paid for fixing people's pipes, you sure as shit are a plumber, even if you're not licensed.

Romney changed it up with the phrase "influence-peddler," attacking Gingrich for his work with the Center for Health Transformation, a "think tank" that Gingrich founded. Gingrich tried to play his tired "I'm just a citizen" routine to respond, but Romney pounced, saying, in essence, "No, you lying shitball, you're not just an ordinary citizen. You're the former Speaker of the House. If Johnny Underwater Homeowner calls up Congressman Dickbag's office, he'll be told to come to a townhall meeting. You dial Dickbag's cell phone directly."

CHT, for instance, has corporate members paying specifically for access to Gingrich. Is that because he's such a fucking genius? Is that worth $200,000 a year in dues? Or is it because he's got access? (By the way, the awesomest membership "benefit" you can have as a CHT member? "Discounts on Gingrich Group workshops and products." That's like saying, "Not only do you have to talk to Newt Gingrich, but he'll punch you in the tit, too.")

It's like they don't even understand what lobbying is, according to this October 22, 2007, Atlanta Journal-Constitution article: "[Wayne] Oliver, the project director in Atlanta, said the center's officials appear before lawmakers or other decision-makers but do not advocate specific legislation. Rather, he said, they expound on 'big ideas' to solve complicated problems. Likewise, he said, meetings that bring together members and public officials are 'solution-driven.'

"'We're really not lobbying,' Oliver said. 'We do play in the political sandbox, if you will, because that's where you can have an impact.'"

That's fucking called "lobbying." Companies that hired Gingrich or his "groups" did because his influence carried weight: "Gingrich's consulting firm, a precursor to the center, had a client, Millennium Plastics, that expected the firm would help it break into the lucrative government contracting business, according to a 2001 news release by the company."

How much more evidence do you want? Howzabout this from 2004, when CHT was started: "'Gingrich's center is a 'brilliantly packaged way of offering his services as former speaker and a man who can open doors to push along what he calls health transformation,' said Joseph Antos, a health policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute. 'In other words, lobbying.'"

But, you know, in a way that avoids scrutiny because of pesky ethics laws. "'He's making more money than he ever thought possible and doesn't have to tell everybody where it's coming from,' marveled former adviser Rich Galen. 'He has the amount of influence he chooses to have. I suspect there is virtually no one in this town of either party who will not take a call from Newt Gingrich, if only to hear what he has to say.'"

Everyone knows it's lobbying. And why does that matter? Because that means that Gingrich is a bought and paid for corporate whore. He's just one of those chatty whores who wants to talk about his kids before he sucks your cock. You listen only because he sucks it so good.

It was essentially a money fight on the stage in Tampa last night. The really rich fuck versus the really, really rich fuck. But, and the Rude Pundit's not proud about this, Romney landing a blow that actually rattled Gingrich gave him a momentary thrill, a bit of wood, even. It was fleeting, yes, but goddamn, it's sweet to see someone punch that white-domed phlegm globule right in his cash sack.

Oh, one last thing: Here's how the crazy conservative Weekly Standard mocked Gingrich's launching of the Committee for New American Leadership back on January 31, 2000: "Yet another anti-Beltway K Street lobby group run by people who've lived in Washington for 25 years." Everyone knows what Gingrich has been doing for the last dozen years. He doesn't even bother to wipe the semen off his upper lip.

Gingrich Wins South Carolina as the GOP Embraces the Devil:
You want to know what a lying shitsack Newt Gingrich is? It's easy. Choose anything that he repeatedly asserts and look at the truth. Chances are that he's bending the truth. Chances are better that he's just outright lying to your face.

For instance, here's something that Gingrich said to David Gregory on NBC's Meet the Wimpy Press, a line that he repeats whenever anyone dares to ask him about his time working for despised government-backed mortgage bank Freddie Mac: "David, you know better than that. I was not a lobbyist, I was never a lobbyist, I never did any lobbying. Don't try to mix these things up. The fact is I was an adviser strategically and if you look at the only thing ever published by Freddie Mac I said, 'You need more regulations.' If you look at the only article ever written about my talking to the Congress it was in The New York Times in July of 2008 and I said, 'Do not give them any money.'" He said pretty much the exact same thing in the last debate.

See, here's the thing: No, officially, Gingrich was not a registered lobbyist. He was hired by Freddie Mac in 1999 as a "consultant" for his expertise in dealing with Congress. The only reason Gingrich was not a lobbyist is that the law actually prevented him from being one. Here's how AP described Gingrich's role in 2008: "Gingrich talked and wrote about what he saw as the benefits of the Freddie Mac business model." He was hired, with other conservatives, in order to push back against any regulation that might end up "scaling back" Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as they were being hit by the subprime mortgage crisis. In other words, Gingrich wasn't a lobbyist by title. He just wrote about and talked to members of Congress about what Freddie Mac needed. That's like the difference between apples and...ummm...smaller apples?

Gingrich's other claim there, that New York Times article? Yeah, that's a lie. The article he's referring to is from July 26, 2008. It's about why congressional Republicans voted against the bank bailout, even though it was going to pass. The bottom line: it was a politically easy decision. And who helped them see it was a politically easy decision? "Former Speaker Newt Gingrich spoke at a private party meeting before the vote and joined Mr. Boehner in encouraging Republicans to oppose the measure." You got that? That line he quotes, "Do not give them any money"? Nowhere in the article. Gingrich was advising members of Congress how they could be weasels and not actually displease their banking masters.

The thing about the Devil is that he tells his lies with such utter confidence that the unquestioning listener hears them as truth. And the Devil wins when his lies begin to supplant the truth until there is nothing but lies left.

The idea that Newt Gingrich is positioning himself as some kind of Washington outsider is so laughable that it's pathetic. He has physically lived in the DC area for over 30 years. That meeting with members of Congress in 2008 wasn't some kind of anomaly: it's what he's been doing since he was whipped out of Congress by the members of his own party, not by Democrats, not by the elite media he so derides and uses as a safe foil for his own arrogance. The idea that a multimillionaire can position himself as the poor man against Romney is mind-boggling. The idea that he can keep berating the press without anyone in the press calling him on it is just depressing.

Gingrich is like a pimple you get on your forehead that you can't get rid of it. Sure, you can squeeze it, you can put creams on it, you can try alcohol or toothpaste or warm or cold compresses, but that fucker just won't go away. And it just gets bigger so that every time you look in the mirror, it's the only thing you see. You are your zit.

There's gonna be a war in the GOP between the Tea Party monster that was cravenly embraced and co-opted by the right and the old school Republicans, who just want their satisfactory corporate lackey who is easily controlled to be the nominee. It's more than likely going to be a civil war, with southern states going Gingrich and northern ones going Romney, thus making it an insurgency by evangelicals, people who have given a pass to the serial adulterer, but won't vote for a Mormon because it sounds almost like "Muslim." They wouldn't know the real Devil if he stabbed them in the ass with his pitchfork. If Gingrich wins Florida, it's gonna be wonderfully messy. (And if he gave a shit about Romney as a human being, the Rude Pundit would be advising him, "Dude, just tell everyone 'Kiss my rich white ass' and go home.")

The whole thing is chaos now. And having been a Democrat his entire adult life, so used to political chaos, the Rude Pundit can only sit back and enjoy watching Republicans tear themselves asunder.

In his victory speech on Saturday night, Gingrich continued with the lies, his ego inflated like a hot air balloon that's about to go up where the loss of pressure will make it collapse. He will fall again. It is natural. That's what the Devil must do.

Hey, Stephanie Miller Show Listeners, Order the Book:
Show the bastards at OR Books that they can't hold back the 2012 Rude Pundit's Almanack. We gotta get to 500 bought in the next month or so (and we're well on the way). Order it for the eBook (that's just ten bucks, fer chrissake) or, you know, the paper one.

Moments in the Life of Newt Gingrich from the 1990s:
On September 8, 1995, then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told a crowd of 4,000 believers at the Christian Coalition's "Road to Victory" conference in Washington, D.C. that he "got married when I was very young. And we have two wonderful daughters by that marriage. And I got divorced. Later on, I got remarried. And we have a marriage which has a fair amount of stress, and it's difficult. And I think that's fairly typical of a lot of families. It takes a lot of work, a lot of prayer."

The "stress" he was talking about was that, for two years, he had been putting his penis into the vagina and possibly the mouth and anus of Callista Bisek, a woman who is 23 years younger than him and 14 years younger than his then-wife Marianne.

Gingrich continued, justifying his sexual betrayal as fitting in perfectly with one way of looking at family values. He told his daughters that "we know precisely because it's been hard why you should emphasize family values. Because even when you're emphasizing them, it's hard."

The audience, who by then must have known the whispers about Gingrich's relationship with Bisek, which had been swirling, applauded and cheered. Ralph Reed, head of the Christian Coalition, later said, "[O]ur members are not looking for someone who is perfect...They are looking for someone who will stand up for what they believe in."

The audience also knew that a British woman had said she had given him a blow job during his first marriage, back in 1976. If you ever wanted to know why Gingrich didn't run for president before, it's because he needed plausible distance from his affairs as a demonstration of his redemption.

In talking about marriage, Gingrich told the gathered Christians, "I start with the premise that all of us are sinful and that's why we need to seek salvation through faith because we're never going to earn it because we're inadequate." See, when it comes to marriage, the Rude Pundit starts with the premise that, if you're a man and you get married, you shouldn't be shoving your dick in the orifices of others, especially if you asked your wife for an open marriage so you could do so without a scintilla of conscience and she said, "No." But he's old-fashioned that way.

That's the brilliance of Gingrich, by the way, shining even brighter than the delusional hypocrisy of anyone who ever bought the "family values" bullshit lie. See, where others heard "marriage" and "family values" and thought, "Oh, he means 'fidelity' and 'being good to kids,'" what Gingrich really meant was "Families and marriages are fucked up and, boy, so am I." Really, the entire course of the 1990s would have been changed if the right had been clear on that.

And that doesn't even get into the Clinton impeachment matter, where Gingrich was actually as smart as possible and refused to talk about it as being about sex precisely because everyone knew it was about sex. He demanded that no one in the House Republican caucus speak about it in terms other than as "obstruction of justice." Still, everyone knew it was about hummers in the Oval Office and jizz on a dress.

But also, back in the 1990s, Gingrich used to rail against the "liberal elite media" who he believed sought to downplay President Clinton's transgressions.

So when Gingrich went all angry chimp on CNN's John King at last night's GOP South Carolina debate over a question about Marianne Gingrich's interview with ABC, it wasn't only unexpected. It's what he does. He's always the victim. When he said, "I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans," you could have put Bill Clinton in there.

Oh, wait. Here's Gingrich in June 1996 in the Washington Times: "[T]here is no president in modern times more systematically protected by the elite media." (Indeed, one could go through much of the way Gingrich has attacked Obama and find almost verbatim antecedents in his attacks on Clinton, Gore, and Kerry.)

In December 1994, Gingrich was congratulating the House Republicans for their victory in the midterms. After talking about his family, he said, "I want to ask all of you to join me in -- (pauses) -- I'm trying to think. It's a little difficult to say. In thanking the person who has endured more from the media and more from the process than anybody should have to for me to be here, my wife Marianne." Callista Bisek, who was a House staffer, was probably there for that rally. Maybe she was a little uncomfortable as Gingrich introduced his wife since the Speaker had been fucking Callista for a year already.

No, there's no issue about a sociopathic character flaw here that might be of interest to the voters.

The Rude Pundit on Monday's Stephanie Miller Show:
The Rude Pundit and Stephanie Miller said all kinds of mean things about Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, but especially Mitt Romney:

If you want the Rude Pundit to canoodle with your digital music player, then subscribe to the free podcast, where pods of this and Cheater and the Rude are cast.

Random Thoughts on the Latest From the GOP Primary Season:
1. Marianne Gingrich's interview with ABC News, revealing, among other things, that Newt wanted an open marriage so he could bang Callista and not suffer any political or financial consequences, won't matter. Nor will her re-assertion that Newt left her shortly after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Because Newt Gingrich voters are divided between two groups: the Who-Gives-a-Fuck group and the Jesus-Forgave-Him-So-Can-I group. The former group's members are so deluded that they will tell you that the Clinton impeachment was about perjury. The latter group's members are so desperate for a candidate that, as long as he said he believes he's made peace with God, they wouldn't care if Newt had strangled his second wife with his first wife's intestines.

2. When Rick Perry first announced that he was running for President, do you remember how people were saying on the left and right that the nomination race, if not the whole election, was over? That a masterful manly man politician like Rick Perry, a George W. Bush who could ride a horse (yet, bizarrely, both were college cheerleaders), would fuck the asses of every other candidate like a horny hillbilly in a room of Ned Beattys? Yeah, that was awesome. Honestly, who'd've thought that Bush would turn out to be the articulate governor from Texas. The phrase "epic fail" gets tossed around and used too much, but in terms of success versus expectations, it's more than appropriate here.

3. Rick Perry endorsing Newt Gingrich was a no-brainer. After all, you can bet that Gingrich has an open marriage with Callista, so the man-love can be fulfilled. The real fun developing now is watching how visceral the hate for Romney is among the movement conservatives. For Perry and Gingrich, this shit is personal. Romney made Perry his bitch in the debates. And Romney's SuperPAC has been tearing into Gingrich with a savagery that Obama's ad people better be taking notes on. They want to destroy the fancier-pants Mormon who believes he's better than everyone else.

4. Oh, hey, looks like wee little Ricky Santorum might have won Iowa. And? The real story is that eight precincts lost their votes and can never be recounted. If that had happened during a Democratic caucus, Fox "news" would already be screeching about voter fraud and produced scary black people who did it.

5. So, just to get this straight, Mitt Romney says he paid his taxes at a 15% rate, which is the capital gains tax. And Newt Gingrich is running on eliminating the capital gains tax (with Romney running on some reductions). So they are both running for president to make themselves richer.

Christ. Just take your Romney pill already, GOP. You deserve nothing less and nothing more.

Late Post Today:
Just waking up from a SOPA/PIPA blackout. Back in a bit with more justifiable rudeness.