Gingrich: "Curb free speech + internet to fight terror.

[wordspeak2]

Tell me about it - the number of my Democrat friends who are appearing able to be triggered back into the cognitive states of the 2008 'Yes We can' trance... well it seems to be 100%

They were discussing his CopyPasta 'State of the Union' wordsalad as if it was the Sermon on the Mount. Curiously, Ron Paul doesn't even seem to show on their radar.[/quote]


Yeah, same here. I almost puked all over Facebook yesterday morning. Just when I was hopeful that so many people I knew were seeing continuity of government for what it is- it looks like what right back at Hope And Change. The power of a good speech... totally mind-blowing.
I will say, though, that that was actually a good speech, and he clearly is a good speaker with good speechwriters. So was Hitler, of course. They're saying that "O" is stealing the "everyman" style from Newt. The winner line of the whole SOTUS was "People who don't see... that this country ison the rebound economically (whatever it was exactly)- *don't know what they're talking about.* I was like, whoah, that was atypical.

But where to even start with people?

[Nordic]

I can only attribute it to some kind of hypnosis at this point. Seriously.

The 24/7 "coverage" of the never-ending Repub debates seem to be what has caused this.

I don't remember there EVER being such nonstop "coverage" of these things, nor so many almost daily "debates". Am I remembering correctly?

I feel like I got vaccinated against all of it. And I'm watching everybody else turn into delusional drug addicts of some kind.

[Simulist]

I can only attribute it to some kind of hypnosis at this point. Seriously.

I think you're right, Nordic, but I also think that it's much worse than even that.

The human herd has been domesticated by rulers of some sort or another for so long now, it isn't like a pack of wild wolves has suddenly been trained to obey unquestionly by some esoteric means -- it's more like the trait to obey has actually been bred into us after multiple centuries.

"Sit. Roll over. Play dead."

It's little wonder that every breed of pooch -- Republican, Democrat, or whatever -- rushes to obey at the mere sound of Master's voice.

[Searcher08]

I can only attribute it to some kind of hypnosis at this point. Seriously.

The 24/7 "coverage" of the never-ending Repub debates seem to be what has caused this.

I don't remember there EVER being such nonstop "coverage" of these things, nor so many almost daily "debates". Am I remembering correctly?

I feel like I got vaccinated against all of it. And I'm watching everybody else turn into delusional drug addicts of some kind.

My lasting impressions of the previous American elections were that the Republicans seemed to be playing visually. The final McCain rallies looked like they were constructed like a frickin Leni Riefenstahl film. I detested the vacuous propaganda, FFS, but they were MASTERPIECES of the event space.

Obamalamadingdong OTOH seemed to be going down a more auditory route.
His speeches were a master class in using Ericksonian and NLP language patterns. He must have had some serious instruction in this (perhaps under the guise of 'platform skills coaching'??).
Bear in mind that Erickson was using these techniques in a therapeutic context, often with extremely resistant 'no hope' patients. Using them for covert political manipulation would have appalled Erickson.

[Wombaticus Rex]

I think it's important to pay attention to Newt Gingrich. As a spokesman, he's a bellwether for where the entrenched militarist right wing of the USA is at these days.

I also find him interesting because he's too clever for his own good. Like William Burroughs once noted- "Con men make good salespeople- up to a point. " There's nearly always a point in Gingrich's public interviews and speeches where the mask comes off, and the phoniness becomes transparent.

I heard a recent speech by him, a few days before the recent midterm national elections- at Johns Hopkins U., I think it was, broadcast on C-SPAN- and during the closing Q&A session, some young college-age kid, apparently bent on playing the role of the Liberal Avenger, attempted to put him on the spot about his role in the Clinton impeachment, bringing up some fairly well-known sordid details from Gingrich's personal life in the process. The attack was so clumsy and wide of the mark, and Gingrich's response so thick with pointedly partisan counterpoint, that it practically sounded rehearsed, and it crossed my mind that the questioner could possibly have been a plant.

Some hostile questioners of speakers actually are that sincerely inept at cross-examination, so that's a tough call. But it's plain stupid for any liberal or Democrat to bring up the Clinton impeachment proceedings as partisan ammunition against Republicans. The Republicans will always have a valid defense that they were standing on principle against a miscreant who lied under oath. And that can't be gainsayed. Who knows, perhaps one day most of the Clinton defenders (don't look at me) will have the perpispacity to realize that...

Anyway, pay close attention to Newt Gingrich. He's one of the foremost fire and brimstone preacher-pimps out there for this new hard-line "Generation of War, Global Showdown" phantasm- and always associating it with a crackdown on civil liberties, a perpetual war footing, the whole nine yards. That what passes for "futurism" with the old Idea Man these days. Chicken Hawk #1...

Whenever I hear either Newt or Rush Limbaugh talking, I always imagine them playing summer stock theatre as Harold Hill, the fast-talking scammer in The Music Man. Only with the ending changed, so Hill simply absconds with the loot...

AMEN. Great riff. Gingrich is one of my favorite technocrats.

[Allegro]

.
, Phil Plait!

The Gingrich Who Stole the News Cycle
— Bad Astronomy | January 27th, 2012 11:38 AM
— several links in original; highlights mine

Because I was on the road Wednesday night, I missed the first few hours of reaction to Newt Gingrich’s speech in Florida, when he said he wants to have a permanent station on the Moon "by the end of my second term". It wasn’t until Thursday morning that I opened up my web browser and saw that every blog, every news site, everyone, was talking about it. I must have had dozens of tweets and emails telling me about it and asking my opinion.

So I found a video of the speech and watched it. The only reason I didn’t laugh out loud at the nonsense unfolding from Mr. Gingrich’s mouth was that I already had seen the reaction online.

In Discover Magazine’s Crux blog I wrote a dissection of his speech and why he’s so vastly and profoundly wrong: The Newt-onian Mechanics of Building a Permanent Moon Base. You’ll get all the details there of why I think Gingrich’s plan is the worst possible way to go about trying to go to the Moon: in a hurry, with the wrong source of funding, and maybe because there’s a threat from those dirty communists.

Don’t get me wrong: I want a Moon base. I’ve written about that many times here on the blog, and for my Geek-A-Week card I asked Len Peralta to draw me as Commander Koenig from "Space:1999", for criminy’s sake. I stand second to no one in advocating exploring space, and our own satellite in particular. But it has to be done right, and Gingrich’s plan would be the worst way to do it.

In the post for The Crux I was blunt, but held back my tongue a bit because that isn’t necessarily the venue for me to do otherwise. But here, on my blog, I’ll say this: Gingrich’s words were both transparent and hollow. I knew right away what he was claiming was simply not possible, either financially, technologically, or politically. Take your pick. And it was also clear to me that no matter how you slice it, NASA would get screwed royally if his Moon base plan were implemented, since it would mean billions of dollars moved away from NASA projects to finance this. I started digging deeper to see if my first reaction was wrong, and all I found showed I was righter than I first thought. Every way you try to do it, his plan would destroy NASA. And I’m not exaggerating; the amount of money we’re talking about taking away from NASA projects to fund a base his way would leave everything else in NASA facing cancellation. It’s really that simple.

I was actually pretty stunned that people in Florida would support this idea. Obviously, they would have a vested interest in hearing big ideas about space exploration, but with just a little thought it’s clear that while Gingrich’s idea may be big, it’s only because it’s been stretched out way larger than it can handle. Its density is zero.

On the surface, it seems like Gingrich is a friend of space and science, but don’t be fooled: he’s just as likely to pander to the antiscience base as any other candidate, and his history shows he will attack science when he gets the chance. So while you might be inclined to like the idea of a candidate talking about promoting space exploration under any circumstances, have a care. Because once you get beneath that surface, you might find there’s nothing there.

Image credit: Gage Skidmore, caption added by me.

[Simulist]

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said [b]a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

Well, presumably, "terrorists" use air, too, to spread their message. (It's so hard nowadays to "spread a message" of any kind without it...)

So let's devise "a different set of rules" on air use.

Cut off that unauthorized air first, and they won't even be able to use the internet to spread their evil ways...