Remember Newt Gingrich, gentle reader? He ran for the Republican nomination last spring? If you were hoping he’d retired to his moon colony to write his memoirs, this doesn’t seem to be the case alas. He appeared on On the Record last night to reinforce the Republican campaign’s Fox News’ latest SlamObama talking point: that the Obama administration covered up reports that the attack on the US embassy in Libya was a planned strike by Al-Qaeda, not a spontaneous protest in response to a movie as they’d originally maintained. Which he discussed at length, interspersed with oh-horrors remarks about intellectual elites, guys dressed like pirates, Christ in a glass with urine, etc.
So, asked “liberal” Greta Van Susteren, repeating the party line as fervently as anyone else on the network: “Why does the Obama administration keep changing its tune [about the source of the embassy attacks]?" To Gingrich, the “why” was very clear. “[Obama] is an appeaser. …He comes out of the left wing of American politics where you always blame America first." And being the candidate of the Hollywood left, he rushes to condemn an Islamophobic movie when he won't condemn the "Piss Christ" art display. Obama, said Gingrich, cannot accept that “there's a radical Islamist faction that is totally incompatible with American values, and so he keeps looking for any other excuse, any other explanation. (Cue some footage of demonstrations in Benghazi - including an American flag-burning and, rather curiously, a sign that says "Thugs and killers don't represent Benghazi or Islam." Gee, that one doesn't fit Fox's message; how'd they let that get in?) The fact is, we are in a much deeper struggle. It has much greater implications. And nobody in our national establishment wants to have an honest conversation about how hard this is going to be and how long this is going to last.”
What would he be doing if he were President, Van Susteren asked. “Well, first of all, I think we should have a total reassessment of our entire strategy for the region. I think they should suspend all of the aid to Egypt right now…. I think we have to confront Iraq is not particularly working, Afghanistan is not particularly working. We have no strategy for Pakistan. Egypt is sliding away…" First thing he would do would be create an American energy policy that creates "North American energy independence in this decade.” (In other words, buy oil from Canada instead of Saudi Arabia.) Secondly, he said, he'd recognize, as Obama and Hillary Clinton have not, that the killing of the US ambassador in Libya was an act of war. “This isn't some mob being senseless, and none of our intellectual elites are willing to deal with this! … there are people on this planet who are Islamic supremacists… And these people want to defeat us. They know exactly what they're doing. They talk about it every day in their mosques.“
Finally he asked, as other Fox types have been asking, why Obama would rather chat with pirates and David Letterman than meet with Benjamin Netanyahu. (Van Susteren pointed out that the pirate picture was an old one, but Gingrich ignored that little inconvenience.) “This is the presidency as entertainment. It's not the presidency as leadership. It's not the presidency as commander-in-chief. And I'm not sure that entertainer-in-chief is a very comforting concept, given the level of danger we now see in the world.”
It appears we shall see more of Gingrich in the coming weeks. He’s holding a press conference at the National Press Club to lay out a strategy for the Middle East. And on Monday – get this! – he’s reportedly doing a fund raiser in St. Louis for Todd “legitimate rape” Akin. Can we do a fundraiser to send this guy to the moon? Please?
The Middle East story is likely to burn out as anything of interest by the time we get to the first debate, at which point it will be just another talking point for Hannity to repeat, in the same way that he regularly tries to bring up Jeremiah Wright and the way he tried to fan the flames of the non-issue of Joe Sestak.
If anything has been really surprising, it’s been the blatant pro-Romney, anti-Obama inset ads appearing on Greta’s show. She’s normally a bit more intelligent than that – those clipfests are borderline straight propaganda. One has to wonder why she is tolerating that on her show.
I read somewhere that he was deep in debt after his failed bid for the nomination. That may have something to do with the fact that all of a sudden, he’s everywhere.
I’m a news junkie who watches practically everything just to get different slants: FNC, Al Jazeera, CNN, French, Italian and UK, etc. You name, I’ve probably watched it). (One of these days, I’ll learn how to capture NPR; I know it can be done but haven’t really tried, yet.)
The image of Stevens is the same everywhere. He loved his job and he was damnedly good at it; he loved Libya and its people and he really talked “with” them (not “to” or “down at”); he was relaxed and serene, knowledgeable not suicidal. He probably died because he was all of that.
Two weeks ago I listened to NPR interview a Libyan friend of Stevens and he stated that Stevens was the best representative of America in the ME because he (Stevens) daily mixed with & spoke with Libyans in the street, in restaurants and on the beach (where he casually sunbathed in a chair). Stevens must have felt he was covered for any eventuality. Anyway his Libyan friend stated there was no doubt that Stevens loved the Libyan people and he was having Stevens over to his house for dinner on the Saturday following his death.
Murdoch’s already got a foot on the gangplank so his seat can be assigned to someone else.
Count me in, but only if the rocket can take a few hundred of these ranting ‘n’ raving lunatics.
Translation: bash’em, starve’e and wipe’em off the map (i.e. nuke-em).
With a bit of common sense, a career of watching NCIS (Ducky’s so cool), a rapid run-through the news stories on how governments all over the world reacted to the leaked emails between American embassies and Washington (Wikileaks), it’s pretty easy to get a reasoned, logical idea of what might have happened. It took several years to get all the facts on what happened prior to 9/11 and those investigations were being carried out inside the USA.
I don’t think Stevens was suicidal and yet there he was, in Benghazi with a light escort on the anniversary of 9/11. We won’t know for sure why until the investigation findings are made public (if ever, because spooks and secrecy are twinned). The constant screeching on FNC is nothing more nothing less than gossip-mongering for electoral purposes.
That’s pretty rich coming from them. I’ve been working with FNC as musak (less distracting than substantive news or even Fox Crime) and have noticed the following stream from the FNC rumor-mill:
1) Sept. 12: the movie was the cause, allowing the foxies to refer endlessly to the First Amendment
2) Sept 13: planned terrorist attack by Al Qaeda, in revenge for killing six months earlier of a Libyan (why not Osama bin Ladin, himself? Bemused mused)
3) Sept 15 (not sure): it was a former Libyan detainee released from Gitmo in 2007 (was that Obama’s watch? mused Bemused)
4) September 20 or thereabouts: Al Qaeda’s reaction to “victory laps” by Dems as from the Convention.
That’s more gossip than journalism (so, what else is not new at FNC?).
See, it’s like this, the ME is a problem becuase we haven’t invaded everything Muslem and stayed for a 1,000 year occupation. I’d inject 100 trillion dollars into our economy by geting the 47% to serve in the ME – the moonbase can wait! I rest my case!
