So Far Behind

Sorry for the lack of blogging. I’ve got a million excuses but it boils down to “I’m just too busy” and whining about it won’t catch me up or entertain/educate you.

The Iraq War is over. This won’t look good on the history pages. Our credibility has been damaged on a massive scale. We’ll try to weasel out of taking care of the wounded in less than a decade and we will be shocked -- shocked -- that the Iraqis don’t forget about their hundreds of thousands of dead in a generation. We have brought shame on ourselves.

I’m not sure we are done. Hopefully you noticed that everyone is unloading on Newt Gingrich. Terry Gross of Fresh Air is the best interviewer I know of. But even she was having a hard time maintaining her impartiality in this interview about Newt.

I’m going to give you a couple of excerpts and then leave. I still don’t have any time.

”TUMULTY: Jim Wright had written a book that was then being sold at events where he was speaking. And so there was a question of whether interest groups were buying this book just to essentially line Jim Wright's pockets. And it was interesting, too, because then Newt Gingrich himself had a very controversial book deal almost at the outset of his speakership.

GROSS: This was a $4.5 million book deal with a publishing house that was owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns - now owns Fox News.

TUMULTY: That's right, and it was, you know, it was a book deal that was brought together after he won the speakership. So it looked, very much, like somebody was trying to, you know, essentially pay him off.”

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”GROSS: So two of people who - at least two of the people who were in on the coup, Dick Armey and John Boehner, are still, like, very powerful in politics now. Dick Armey runs one of the groups that funds the Tea Party, and John Boehner is the House speaker. So would you expect that they would be working against Newt Gingrich now?

TUMULTY: It is really interesting, because I have found so many people who were in Congress at the time are very uneasy about this surge that they are seeing on Newt Gingrich's part. I think that people in Washington who saw him in action are generally pretty uneasy.”

Yeah, Tom Delay (aka “The Hammer”) is mentioned too. In case you forgot, he’s in jail. You may also remember he tried to get the FAA to track down a plane load of Texas Democrats so he could force a vote on a redistricting plan.

There are no shortage of sordid stories to attach to Newt.

But there’s somebody I’m forgetting. I remember seeing a picture...

Don Brown
December 15, 2011