Newt's Moon Base! — Making It Up As He Goes Along

Reader Wanooski requested that I post on Newt Gingrich's plans for colonizing the Solar System. I am happy to oblige.

A colony on the moon? Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich floated the idea before a massive audience on Florida's space coast. Thousands lost jobs there when the space shuttle quit flying, so what he told them was music to their ears — the promise of jobs once again, another space race.

Gingrich offered his vision of an ambitious new space program. "By the end of my second term," Gingrich said, "we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American." The crowd erupted in applause.

 

OK, which part of this is funniest?

1. floated the idea before a massive audience on Florida's space coast (incredible pandering)
2. by the end of my second term (psychosis, grandiosity)
3. the crowd erupted in applause (there's a sucker born every minute)

And then there are America's intrepid journalists, those with a real Nose For News, asking Newt about the Moon Base and the Mars Shuttle, as though any of this were real. It is fitting that this took place in Florida, the home of Disney's Magic Kingdom, the Fantasy Capital of the World.

My colleague Bill Hicks of the Downward Spiral recently wrote a post about Newt which is worth reading. In December I wrote a post about Newt called Equal Time Bashing — Little Neuter. The main conclusion of that post, which Wanooski and everyone else should bear in mind, is that when little Newt talks, he's simply making it up as he goes along. Anything he says need not bear any relationship to Reality. The Moon Base is a case in point.

In short, Newt is The Quintessential American Politician, A Man For Our Times. If we can't fix our problems here on Earth, and here in America, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that we can not, we'll simply colonize the Solar System and create some new unsolvable problems elsewhere. But of course there will never be a Moon Base or a shuttle to Mars for reasons too numerous to list here.

Thus Newt's Moon Base is the perfect microcosm exemplifying the entire 2012 presidential campaign.

Bonus Video — The Best Moon Base Simulator. Although everything I said in this post is true, all of the above was merely an elaborate excuse which allowed me to play this video, which sums up the Moon Base idea very nicely.

 

Comments

[Usman A.]

HAHA. I can't stop laughing!

[Diogenes]

Phil Rockstroh captured Newt nicely this week:

"...in what way is it attractive, healthy, or even interesting to willingly submit to the dictates of a culture that has conjured from the zeitgeist the likes of Gingrich--a high chair tyrant of the lowest order--a grotesque man-brat banging on the sides of his elevated seat, insisting that all the things of the world he sees are, "MINE!”

"Why did the zeitgeist regurgitate Gingrich into our midst? Newt embodies the misappropriated libido and attendant, oceanic sense of entitlement of the corporate consumer state i.e., modes of being conjured by the dark magicians of advertising and finance to enslave the 99%, as, all the while, the system's rapacious verities and doomed vectors serve as the lodestar and raison d’être of the 1%."

Rockstroh's piece also relates - on several levels - to your previous "What would Joe Bageant do?" post:

"Ask yourself and those around you Rainer Maria Rilke's deceptively simple question: How shall I spend my days?"

Full Article:

http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1-/10769-negotiating-a-landscape-of-hypocrisy-and-hungry-ghosts.html

Oh, Dave...here's a quick remedy for you. Your recent Fahey tune took me way back smiling to this guy - it had been a while:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqCCDB3ZxPU#t=15m09s

Regards

[Bill Hicks]

In fairness to the Newtster, he's been babbling moonbase-type nonsense ever since he was still Speaker. He was certainly pandering in this instance, but I think he may actually believe this claptrap.

I've been waiting for just one MSM reporter to ask him how he plans to PAY for his grandiose space plans given that the country is already running trillion-and-a-half dollar annual deficits. But I guess it is too much to expect the media to be a part of the "reality based" community.

[Dave Cohen]

Well, Bill

Newt was making it up as he went along when he was Speaker of the House, too. At best his fantasies have remained consistent over the years. Psychotic mental patients display the same symptom.

-- Dave

[Wanooski]

Thanks Dave, I suppose that is what it really boils down to for Salamander, nothing but pandering to the now adrift folks of the "space" coast.

[J.M.]

I found point 2 ("second term") to be funny. I found the other two points to be a sad commentary on American politics where a candidate panders to a crowd with hyperbolic promises which can never be fulfilled (lies to them) and they applaud him for it. I believe that goes for GOP *and* Dems.

Then again, when candidates tell the truth, it seems that few people vote for them. And it seems that MSM who pose hard questions to candidates don't get invited to the White House if that candidate wins.

Rats go where the cheese is, even if death awaits ... and too many humans act like rats too much of the time.

[Honest]

Exclamation point! Exclamation point! Exclamation point! Exclamation point! So we fuck it up more.

ROFL!