Compared To What?

The next person who refers to Newt Gingrich as an "intellectual" should get smacked in the mouth with a Susan Sontag book.

Newt Gingrich is an intellectual like Justin Bieber is a headliner at the Gathering of the Juggalos.

Has a person ever become so willfully stupid that their PhD was voided?  I'm imagining a guy from Tulane showing up at Gingrich's office, removing the sheepskin from its frame, stamping a giant black VOID across it, and handing it back to him.


END OF RANT

Richard Nixon, Big Fan Of The Kennedys

The Nixon Tapes are just full of gems, including this timely one (highlighted by the AP) in which Nixon discusses his motives for offering Secret Service protection to Ted Kennedy:

"You understand what the problem is," Nixon told Haldeman and Ehrlichman on Sept. 7, 1972. "If the (SOB) gets shot they'll say we didn't furnish it (protection). So you just buy his insurance.

"After the election, he doesn't get a ... thing. If he gets shot, it's too damn bad. Do it under the basis, though, that we pick the Secret Service men.

"Understand what I'm talking about?"

As the additional quotes in the AP story make clear, what Nixon was talking about was recruiting Secret Service agents for the Kennedy detail that would be willing to dish any dirt they uncovered back to the White House. That's some evil genius s**t right there.

Pumpkinhead

I'm glad I never liked Smashing Pumpkins, so I don't have to feel disappointed by this. The most important sentence of this article is the P.S. at the bottom.

Will the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger create a company that's "too big to fail"?