"Hold still, Pam, gotta see if they're real..."

Hello everyone! PW doing the late night shift again. How are you all tonight?

I was debating over what bit of news to feature for tonight’s Late Night installment. Do I go with the Sage Foundation survey of Chicago-area one-percenters that shows them to be anti-government “Chicago Boys” deficit-hawk dipwads who wouldn’t know the common good if it bit them on the ass and who tell themselves and others that private charity can replace government in all areas (in other words, exactly what we suspected them to be)? Do I mention the fact that the Robin Hood Tax might be what saves the capitalist system, if only the Ayn-Rand-soaked oncological capitalists that make up the one percent would realize this before they find themselves on tumbrels? Or do I mention how — in a development that has got to have Obama grinning from ear to ear — the Republican establishment, feverishly trying to get Mitt Romney nominated as he’s the only one in the GOP Clown Car with a prayer of beating Obama, may well find itself helpless to stop Gingrich’s ascendancy?

Then this bit of news greeted me in my inbox:

Newt Gingrich, addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition candidates’ forum Wednesday, threw out several red meat appeals targeted to his conservative, pro-Israel audience. [...]

“I would appoint John Bolton as my Secretary of State,” Gingrich said, to more thunderous applause.

Yes, folks, we’re talking about John Bolton, the PNAC Platooner, the Iraq War cheerleader, the lying scumbag, the man so nutty, hateful, and stupid that even the Republican-controlled Senate Bush enjoyed from 2003 to 2007 refused, twice, to confirm him as our United Nations ambassador (and the second time came after he’d had the gig for over a year due to a recess appointment).

Oh, and he’s the star of an increasingly (albeit unintentionally) hilarious interview given by Polythene Pam herself, Ms. Pamela Geller (formerly Mrs. Pamela Oshry), in which I’m not sure he ever quite makes eye contact with his buxom interviewer. As would be expected, Ms. Geller heartily approves of the announcement by Gingrich: “I love Gingrich for saying it but I would expect whomever the next president of the United States is, John Bolton would be appointed Secretary of State. Nobody even comes close. . . . This alone is reason enough to vote for [Gingrich].” In addition to pandering to the American branch of Likud, Gingrich no doubt was also trying to pander to Kathryn Jean Lopez of the conservative magazine National Review, who has backing Bolton for SecState as a “litmus test” for presidential candidates.

What’s amazing about the wet-thighed conservative worship of Bolton is that it’s being showered by people who claim to espouse “conservative family values” onto a guy like this (courtesy of Larry Flynt):

Court records concerning the divorce of John R. Bolton, the Bush administration’s nominee to become the next ambassador to the United Nations, show his first wife fled the couple’s marital home when he was traveling abroad in mid-August 1982. The records further show that she took most of the couple’s furniture.

Corroborated allegations that Mr. Bolton’s first wife, Christina Bolton, was forced to engage in group sex have not been refuted by the State Department despite inquires posed by Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt concerning the allegations. Mr. Flynt has obtained information from numerous sources that Mr. Bolton participated in paid visits to Plato’s Retreat, the popular swingers club that operated in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

[...]

Mr. Flynt has contacted the State Department asking that they confirm or deny the allegations of Mr. Bolton’s prior conduct concerning his wife and the alleged paid visits to Plato’s Retreat. He has also called upon the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to conduct an inquiry into the very serious evidence concerning his first wife’s fear of him.

Neither the State Department nor the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has yet responded to Mr. Flynt’s inquiries.

That passage is from a press release Larry Flynt released in May of 2006. Expect it to be revisited, should John Bolton’s name ever seriously be mentioned as a nominee for anything other than a long stretch in a Federal penitentiary.