Sarah Palin:The avoidable gamble

"Life is full of unavoidable gambles - this surely was an avoidable gamble".

That quote was from one of our favorite men of letters: conservative columnist, George Will, summing up a conversation about Sarah Palin. The video clip is from "The Green Room" segment which follows the round table group after the taping of This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Quite a group was assembled this morning, George Will, Newt Gingrich, Steven Pearlstein and Robert Reich who all spoke to the bailout, the first debate and Palin. Watch it, it's worth seeing Gingrich pathetically defend Palin and then get laughed at. Is it me or is Gingrich looking more and more like Benny Hill these days?

And Speaking of Palin, we just launched The Sarah Palin Superstore complete with your favorite Cerebral Itch Sarah Palin e-card humor now plastered on t-shirts, mugs, etc. - get over there and buy something before that walking punchline is kicked off the ticket.

Newt Gingrich: Champion of the voices in his head as long as they're English speaking voices

This morning on This Week with George Stephanopoulos was all quite even-keeled. Senator John Kerry gave a surprisingly impassioned (and succinct - I know, shocking) defense of his endorsement for Barack Obama. The round table discussion with George Will and peers wasn't necessarily thrilling (at least Donna Brazile wasn't there) but lodged in between those two segments was Former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, who came on to opine about New Hampshire upsets, the presidential race in general and sell his new book.

As usual, Newt tried to cast himself as the arbiter of progress between the two parties and the masses he apparently knows so well. All well and good, but when you blow the first question given to you on how to foment change with such stupidity and disconnect you have to wonder whether or not a CAT scan is in order. It was an answer so ludicrous I had to hear it again; that is after my spit take. So I put down the cereal, grabbed the remote and rewound the DVR to see if I heard this arrogant douchebag right (read the whole thing - the setup is priceless considering the answer he gives):

George: Mr. Speaker what kind of change are you talking about there that you're calling on the president to enact?

Newt: Look, I think there are dramatic changes we need in this country, The votes in both Iowa and New Hampshire were overwhelming endorsements of change in both parties and I think a State of the Union that got up and said here are 10 or 12 or 15 things that we could do together in the next 90 days and challenge...after all you've got Senator McCain, Senator Obama, Senator Clinton; it would be useful to challenge both parties in the House and Senate to respond to the American people.

George: To do what?

Newt: Well, we produced a platform of {sic} the American people at American Solutions (editor's note: American Solutions is the conservative think-tank Newt runs) and it's at the back of our book, Real Change and it's also on americansolutions.com. Every single item on the list has the majority of democrats, majority of republicans and majority of independents favoring. The easiest one is making English the official language of government.

Yep, after a pragmatic populist intro and a somewhat clumsy plug for his book/foundation he lets loose with a verbal pair of deuces: making English the official language of government. Forget a looming recession (as George pointed out in the following question), the war, the environment, education, even a freakin' trip to Mars! But to pander to the anti-immigrant base and what, fight the good fight saving printing costs on bilingual government forms?

So the political calculus we're left with surrounding Mr. Gingrich is this: he holds no political office, fancies himself a "kingmaker", his supporters are out of touch angry males sharing the same ethnic yet considerably less socio-economic makeup as he and his fat ass gets yanked out of his Barcolounger every time the media wants an "authority" who does nothing more than rest on his laurels to sell his own brand...Holy Crap! Newt Gingrich is the white Al Sharpton!