Why is Newt Gingrich waging class warfare?

[hippifried]

Mitt's tithe is not deducted from his paycheck.

He doesn't get a paycheck. Nothing is deducted. He's not on salary or earning a wage. He doesn't even have a job. Every dime of his personal income is in some way called a capital gain, for which he pays a lower rate than someone who does have a job.

[Ben]

The stark difference between Gingrich and Paul:

[Ben]

How Citizens United Created Newt:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/01...ated-newt.html

[Ben]

Gingrich Attacked by Conservative Media:

[arnie666]

http://spectator.org/blog/2012/01/27...aught-misleadi

[arnie666]

http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/27/ma...richs-defense/

[trish]

Too bad Newt decided to take the looney route. I was hoping he'd be the GOP candidate. I think his appeal to independents is nil and he has way to much baggage (lobbyist, adulterer, professional obstructionist, ethics violator etc. etc. )The lunar base proposal was an entirely political move. He thought he was appealing to the laid-off NASA workers in Florida. Here what real space scientists think of Newt's Moon station.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cr...ent-moon-base/

[trish]

David Brooke reports that one of Newt’s “Big Ideas” is to light cities at night with sunlight reflected from orbiting mirror or perhaps an array of orbiting mirrors. Just because an idea is about big things (the Earth, a mirror with a one kilometer diameter, a 26000 mile orbital radius etc.) it doesn’t follow the idea itself is big or in any way substantial. The flux of solar electromagnetic radiation (not all visible) at Earth orbit is about 1300 Watts per square meter. A mirror one kilometer in diameter (if the light struck the surface orthogonally) could capture roughly 1 billion watts of incident light. Suppose, just for a concrete example, you wanted to light up Manhatten with the reflected light, an area of about 3 billion square meters. If the mirror is properly aimed, has the right curvature, reflects 100% of the incident light and no light gets lost or redirected as it passes through the atmosphere, those 1 billion Watts will get distributed over the 3 billion square meters delivering a flux of 0.33 Watts of power per square meter. For the photographers among you that’s about 30 lux. Accounting for the fact that no mirror reflects 100% of the incident light and the fact that the reflected light, just like direct sunlight, will be refracted, reflected and diffused by the atmosphere, Newt would be very lucky to get 3 lux of light out of the project. Hardly enough to find your keys. For those of you who aren’t photographers, daylight at noon has a brightness of 100 thousand lux, indoor lighting has a brightness that ranges from 100 to 500 lux.

Okay no, problem all we do is just use a bigger mirror or an array of big mirrors to direct more light down on Manhatten. Can’t cost that much, right? This has got to be the most expensive, most idiotically complicated urban lighting proposal ever dreamed up by any historically transformative personage.

Not only is this a lame-brain idea out of Newt’s science fiction, it’s an idea that is anathema to Newt’s current theme of “small government.” Wait a minute. Surely Newt envisions that the whole project should be undertaken by private enterprises. Yes, of course that’s what he thinks. But even if the mirrors are owned by private concerns, were built and launched by private concerns etc. this whole project effects a whole city full of people whether they like it or not. Surely Newt is not suggesting people live in perpetual daylight at the whim of some profit making private concern. No, the way this would work is the government will okay the project and pay the private concern to provide the nighttime sun. How else could it work? Say there’s a vote and 60% of the city dwellers are fine with paying the extra taxes to have a nighttime sun. Sill 40% of the populace will view it as an intrusion of government on their lives...and this is no small intrusion like saying you can’t carry a concealed firearm in a public school, this is a real intrusion. There will be no darkness. No stars. No nighttime. But hey I’m not complaining, nor am I worried. It's never going to happen. I’m just amazed that Newt’s small-government following aren’t complaining. Oh wait, they know it's never going to happen too. They're happy with Newt's demagoguing.

[Stavros]

http://spectator.org/blog/2012/01/27...aught-misleadi

I don't particularly care about Elliot Abrams re-writing Gingrich's speeches in order to reduce his appeal to Republican voters, what is interesting is the re-writing of history to rescue Ronald Reagan from the mess he made of the USA during his Presidency, and the more pertinent fact that by the time that he negotiated the INF treaty with Gorbachev, he had alienated his former allies from the 'Committee on the Present Danger', many of whom were brought into his staff, who accused Reagan of 'appeasement'.

Reagan was in a bind in the second half of his Presidency because of the worldwide unpopularity of the perception that the USA had cranked up a 'New Cold War' complete with new weapons -Cruise and Pershing- and the fantastical 'Strategic Defence Initiative', and the inability or unwillingness of Congress to approve the expenditure.

Popular resentment of this approach to war and peace, notably in Europe, then meshed with the emergence of Gorbachev to offer an alternative vision of the future, and Reagan became more pragmatic than the fanatics in his administration like Richard Perle, or Terry Dolan, the same corps of violent fanatics who re-emerged in 2000 to propel the USA into the trillion dollar madness of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thus, the article quotes Gingrich on the floor saying:
"The fact is that George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Irving Kristol, and Jeane Kirkpatrick are right in pointing out the enormous gap between President Reagan's strong rhetoric, which is adequate, and his administration's weak policies, which are inadequate and will ultimately fail."

In fact, the administration was weak and divided, but on the issue of real reductions in nuclear capability, it was Reagan who was perceived -by his own staff- to be weak. History has proven Gorbachev to have been the man who changed history, it was the one time that Reagan conceded that his own ideological fixation should take second place to reality, but it so angered his fanatical friends, that they re-defined Conservatism to put back the violence in a policy framework where patient negotation had been shown to succeed, although it was something Reagan never bothered to try with either Nicaragua, Turkey or Israel, to name but three of many failures on his record.

We live with the peaceful consequences of Gorbachev's vision; and suffer from the consequences of the neo-con's not-so-subtle concept of politics: if you don't hit it, it won't fall.

For an alternative interpretation try this:
http://bostonreview.net/BR25.2/wittner.html

[Ben]

Newt Gingrich Can't Identify a Smartphone: