"Technical Arrogance"

“I felt it myself, the glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it’s there in your hands. To release the energy that fuels the stars. To let it do your bidding. And to perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky, it is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is in some ways responsible for all our troubles, I would say, this what you might call ‘technical arrogance’ that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.”

Freeman Dyson
Nuclear scientist

Newt Gingrich: No Alien To Controversy

Does anybody really respect Newt Gingrich? He is a low point in conservative intellectualism. He's Karl Rove witha GED and Dick Cheney without dog pee on his leg. But hey, the future looks grim for Republican fairy tales when the only three chords left in the GOP songbook are Gingrich, Cheney and Rove. Maybe they should fade to white...

"She (Nancy Pelosi) really disqualified herself to be the speaker. She has a unique responsibility for national security. … She made this allegation that smears everyone who's trying to defend her. What she said … was a stunning dishonest statement about a major American institution that has a key role in our survival. I think the Democrats should get a new speaker."

Newt Gingrich
Former Republican Speaker of The House

"Right now there are two RNCs here in Washington, side by side. The contrast is instructive.

One, the Republican National Committee, is a clueless self-parody. The other, the (R)ush-(N)ewt-(C)heney tag team, is providing the real muscle as the Republican right begins to build traction in taking on President Obama and the Democrats.

The official RNC just spent the last two days wasting time and inviting ridicule—listening to a listless, empty speech by its chairman, Michael Steele, and debating the grand idea of calling the Democrats "socialists." Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh hammers away at the Democrats and the president on radio every day; Newt Gingrich sarcastically attacks Nancy Pelosi on The Daily Show (and gets laughs for doing so); and Dick Cheney continues his high-profile, Iraq-star media tour..."

Howard Fineman
US News & World Report




Gingrich's Voice of Experience:

"...In the summer of 1997, a few House Republicans had come to see Gingrich's public image as a liability and attempted to replace him as Speaker. According to Time, the replacement was engineered by several Republican backbenchers, including Steve Largent of Oklahoma, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mark Souder of Indiana. They soon gained the support of the four Republicans who ranked directly below Gingrich in the House leadership Dick Armey, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, Republican conference chairman John Boehner of Ohio, and Republican leadership chairman Bill Paxon of New York.

On July 9, DeLay, Boehner and Paxon had the first of several secret meetings to discuss the rebellion. The next night, DeLay met with 20 of the plotters in Largent's office, and appeared to assure them that the leadership was with them.

Under the plan, Armey, DeLay, Boehner and Paxon were to present Gingrich with an ultimatum - resign or be voted out. Combined with the votes of the Democrats, there appeared to be enough votes to vacate the chair. However, the rebels decided that they wanted Paxon to be the new Speaker. At that point, Armey backed out, and told his chief of staff to warn Gingrich about the coup.

In response, Gingrich forced Paxon to resign his post, but backed off initial plans to force a vote of confidence in the rest of the Republican leadership.

By 1998, Gingrich had become a highly visible and polarizing figure in the public's eye, making him an easy target for Democratic congressional candidates across the nation. In 1997 a strong majority of Americans believed Gingrich should have been replaced as Speaker of the House, and he held an all-time low job approval rating of 28%[36] although his approval later rose to 45% by April 1998...."

Click here for more on the Republican's Richard Nixon of the 2012 Predisential race.

Republican Blowhard Back

"Thanks Rush. Rush listen, I voted Republican and I really didn't want to see Obama get in office. But you know Rush, you're one reason to blame for this election, for the Republicans losing. First of all, you kept harping about voting for Hillary. The second big issue was the torture issue. I'm a veteran. We're not supposed to be torturing these people. This is not Nazi Germany, Red China, North Korea. There's other ways of interrogating people, and you just kept harping about, it's okay, or it's not really torture. And it was just more than waterboarding. Some of these prisoners will killed under torture.

And it was crazy for you to go on and on like Levin and Hannity and Hewitt. It's like you're all brainwashed. And my last comment is, no matter what Obama does, you will still criticize him because I believe you are brainwashed. You're just -- and I hate to say it -- but I think you're a brainwashed Nazi. Anyone who can believe in torture has got to be -- there has got to be something wrong with them."

Chicago Caller On Limbaugh's Show

What's In A Name: Childish

I'm starting to think the Republican Party is embracing creation science more and more as it de-evolves into ever increasing ignorance and stupidity. As the GOP hunches into ape-like ignorance and more proficiently drags its knuckles, it becomes more obvious that it stoops to stupidity to keep its base. Obviously it will end up with its base being the Dixiecrats who rejected the Democratic Party after the the civil rights movement. No doubt that was socialism too...I guess we are seeing a case of the GOP unable to rebrand itself so they are focusing on the Democrats.

Seeing Neo-Red

"I don't think that left to its own devices, capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: If you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody's got to look over the shoulder of that child."

Radio Opinionator

"...Every dollar spent by government is one less dollar spent by taxpayers. Money comes from somewhere -- taxes, borrowing (taxes on layaway) or printing, which, if not offset by productivity, causes inflation, a stealth tax on everyone. Who can spend, save or invest more efficiently and humanely, you or some tenured bureaucrat in D.C. who's never run so much as a hot dog stand or lent himself out as a United Way volunteer?

Private enterprise is the most proficient job- and wealth-creating "system" ever designed. But many, if not most, Americans think only government can and should build and run "infrastructure" and that government "investment" creates jobs of which the private sector is incapable of creating. Really?

...Obama's anti-capitalist, Big Government, command-and-control economic vision exceeds mere "childishness." It is dangerous. After 100-plus days, the jury reached its verdict.

Obama is a neo-Marxist."

Larry Elder
Columnist

Edler's archives

(You'd think Mr. Elder would paint his pictures with broader strokes of reality and history...)

>

Investigate Obama's "career path toward a neo-marxist presidency.

She's No Harriet Meirs!

I wonder what the uproar would be, if President Obama nominated Jesus to be the next US Supreme Court justice? Of course, not being and of northern European descent and being somewhat olive complexion, he would definitely be a another "token judge." I supposed we are witnessing the parlor game that partisan politics has degenerated into. Actually, taking history into account, political business as usually is more like it.

Personally, I'm for more diversity on the Supreme Court bench. I'm for moving towards a day when we don't worry about "tokenism." But alas, the fortress of white-male power is slowly but surely crumbing into the history. When it does, American just might be a better place for it.

You go girl!

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Sonia Sotomayor
Supreme Court nominee
from a 2001 speech

In Los Angeles on March 29, hit and run drivers killed two pedestrians: an 18-year-old female college student and, hours later, a 55-year-old Guatemalan American construction worker. As is not unusual, according to the Los Angeles Times, the LAPD went into massive "overdrive" to find the woman's killer but handed the other homicide off to "a lone detective with little more to go on than hope."

On April 25, in Washington, D.C., the murder of a black teenager was reported in two sentences of that day's Washington Post while nearly 10 times the space was devoted to the colonoscopy of a panda at the city's National Zoo.



"Let's hope that the key conferences aren't when she's menstruating or something, or just before she's going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then."

G. Gordon Liddy

"Someone pinch me. I must be dreaming. Some of the same Republicans who have wielded the hot blade of racial divisiveness for years, are now calling Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee, a racist. Oh, the hypocrisy!

The same Newt Gingrich who once said that bilingual education was like teaching “the language of living in a ghetto” tweeted that Sotomayor is a “Latina woman racist.” The same Rush Limbaugh who once told a black caller to “take that bone out of your nose and call me back” called Sotomayor a “reverse racist.” The same Tom Tancredo, a former congressman, who once called Miami, which has a mostly Hispanic population, “a third world country” said that Sotomayor “appears to be a racist....”

Charles M. Blow
Read more of Rogues, Robes and Racists at the NY Times