Gingrich pollutes Maine

Stirring the wingnuts


Richly deserved

Newt is on a marketing tour, promoting the Bush agenda of war and destruction of our social fabric for the benefit of right-wing Republican elites, like those at the despicable Maine Heritage Policy Center.

The headline for Newt's Wednesday appearance in South Portland, Maine was picked up by AP and sent far and wide around the world:

Gingrich Urges US: Get Tough with Iran

SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says it's time for the United States to get tough with Iran's Islamic theocracy.

Speaking before a conservative public policy group Wednesday, Gingrich said Americans should take Iranian leaders' threats seriously, before they acquire nuclear weapons.

``We have real enemies and they would like to kill us,'' said Gingrich, the Georgia Republican who engineered a GOP congressional takeover in 1994.

Gingrich, attending the Maine Heritage Center Policy Center's annual luncheon, said it's time for Americans to ``profoundly rethink'' their position on Iran and be prepared to take all necessary steps to safeguard the United States.

He said the United States is paying for former President Clinton's foreign policies, which he said gave Americans ``eight years of appeasing the world and provided an opportunity for Osama bin Laden to bomb two U.S. embassies and the USS Cole.''

``You don't appease your enemies - you defeat them,'' Gingrich said. ``We have to take this seriously because the next time we won't just lose a building or an airplane - we will potentially lose a city.''

Does he mean that just to be safe, we ought to nuke Iran to oblivion? Where do you draw the line below which the form of aggression chosen against your perceived enemy amounts to appeasement?

How about the recent ``truce with the Taliban'' declared in the Waziristan region of Pakistan? Are the spate of briefings we used to get on Pakistani government ``hot pursuit'' of terrorists in this region over? Now what's happening there is called an ``integrated civilian military-political approach'' in order ``to try to work with them''. I don't know, after Newt's speech, sure does sound like appeasement to me.

While in Maine, Gingrich couldn't resist taking a shot at my state-supported health care plan that I pay a lot of money to purchase. He called it ``a car with three flat tires,'' and ``a failed program''.

Obviously, all the years of federal health care Gingrich received at taxpayer expense did not improve his ability to care or be sympathetic to people under fire from out-of-control private insurance companies.

MSNBC host Keith Olberman yesterday gave Gingrich the perfect award for his muddy manner and inconsistent logic--Worst Person of the World.

OLBERMANN:...our winner, Newt Gingrich. The disgraced former speaker of the House, not only lying about finding 700 new weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but telling a TV audience that it's, quote, "not an insult[]" to compare those who criticize the war in Iraq or even the president to the appeasers who enabled Hitler. I don't want to be an alarmist or anything, but I'm beginning to think the radical right has issued a new set of talking points. Newt Gingrich, today's "Worst Person in the World."