Newt Gingrich Is Nothing You Want Him To Be:
First off, someone oughta point out that the Manchester Union-Leader, New Hampshire's largest daily newspaper (which means it has ten readers), is a shitty conservative rag that makes the Washington Times look erudite. Today's top news includes a warning that says, no, really, "Commuters should take it slow today since New Hampshire State Police will be out in force targeting aggressive and distracted drivers during heavy commuting hours" and crimes that involve a purse-snatcher and a crack whore, not to mention the safe return of an elderly woman who wandered away from her nursing home. This is not to belittle the snow-burdened people of the...what the fuck are you? The beaver state? The Show Me state? Live Free or Suck a Dick?...whatever...but, surely, a real newspaper would report on more than randomly lost old people and how super-great right-wingers are.

Granite state, right? Yeah, that's it. Anyways...

Also today, in a way-too-symbolic article, the paper talks about an "invasion" of feral swine in the state, which dovetails nicely with its endorsement of Newt Gingrich for president.

In its editorial supporting the former Speaker of the House, the Union-Leader says, "The pigs are between 100 and 300 pounds with rough hair, tusks and rapier-sharp teeth...They are difficult to hunt, wily, and 'ornery animals you don’t want to fool with,'" and "'We are concerned about their presence' primarily for ecological reasons."

Actually, that makes more sense in discussing Gingrich than what the editors actually wrote: "A lot of candidates say they're going to improve Washington. Newt Gingrich has actually done that." That's like saying that Godzilla was responsible for a great deal of urban renewal in Tokyo. Gingrich is one of the primary reasons that Washington sucks so hard and that Congress has become a worthless clusterfuck that actually works against the good of the nation. He teed it all up.

In October 1995, Gingrich told an audience at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University that if Democrats and the President don't agree to his budget plan, "fine, they won't have any money to run the parts of the Government they like, and we'll see what happens." He wanted Medicare to "wither on the vine." He blamed liberals for everything from Columbine to Susan Smith's drowning of her children. The fucking government shut down because of him. But, hey, sure, yeah, he improved the place.

Have fun, supposedly rational, realistic conservatives who are thrilled at the Gingrich surge. Not only is he an amoral, corrupt, faux-intellectual who windbags his way around the nation, but he also believes in science and technology. He wanted more government spending on medical technology for information-sharing. He actually think science education based on, you know, science is a good thing.

When, now, he hedges on whether or not he believes in evolution, it'll be awesome when Michele Bachmann trots out this 2006 quote from a Discover magazine interview: "Evolution certainly seems to express the closest understanding we can now have [about how we came to be]." Or this one: "I believe evolution should be taught as science, and intelligent design should be taught as philosophy." Or, on another hot-button topic, "I would not seek to ban research on stem cells in fertility clinics." Or "Unlike right-wingers who would say, 'Since we don't know 100 percent for sure, we can keep carbon loading,' I'd say there is enough evidence that it's reasonable to try to move toward renewables, to try to move toward conservation, to try to move toward a hydrogen economy."

Sure, he says the opposite now. But have fun convincing the Iowa and South Carolina and, yes, New Hampshire yahoos that Gingrich is on their side.

By the way, the wild boars are not native to New Hampshire. But hunters so want to hunt them that they've been illegally imported from Tennessee and Georgia and elsewhere. The problem is that once the Southern pigs get in, they multiply and destroy everything they can get their tusks on.