At last, attaturk, you have become the first to realize that Newt is just a pale imitation of Jon Stewart and Colbert, a humorist with political overtones. (The campaign was a big joke from the beginning.)

Newt has surged negative 6 points in the Florida polls since the Fred Thompson endorsement.
about 6 hours ago via TweetDeck
Retweeted by 76 people

fivethirtyeight
Nate Silver

Insanity Chips?

Do they leave greasy red residue on your fingers?

Surely going to give you chippie breath too.

Don’t the rich already have space travel at their finger tips?

Newt for next man-on-the-moon.

Yuk! Chippie breath.

No wonder they can’t talk to each other longer than two seconds!

Hear-Hear!

Call up Virgin Space Trips and book his flight. Let’s get him on the next one.

Please don’t tell me they have a helmet to fit the swollen heads?

Thank Sheldom for the critical Fred (Metamucil) Thompson endorsement.

Hazmat suits.

Rmoney will subsidize his ticket if he gets a tax deduction for it. (Love your comment at my post, welfare queen indeed.)

Right stuff, there. Probably lycra.

morning all,

These clowns are sure putting on a show and for10 more months no less.

Show not worth the price of the ticket though.

It’s good for popcorn sales, anyway.

Will this moonbase be built by American workers, or by slaves in sweatshops?

Oh yeah, he will definitely subsidize it. If it would get rid of him and others though, I won’t mind paying for the next 20 years.

I also love your spelling for the money men. “Rmoney” Ha-Ha! Good one.

Slave in sweatshops. Good Lord, Man! Doncha know the last thing repugs want right now is for Americans to have jobs?

Wish I had invented that one, but I’m adopting it, not sure who first used it here.

Laffer:

USRealityCheckUS Reality Check

Exclusive: LaHood’s son barred from leaving Egypt: Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s son is among the … http://bit.ly/zGUKlK p #P2

4 minutes ago

Good morning, pups. Mr. Kristof is flying solo since Ms. Collins is off today. Mr. Kristof explains “How Pimps Use the Web to Sell Girls.” He says pimps are turning to the Internet instead of street corners for the sex trafficking of minors. He looks at the case of a teenage girl in Brooklyn.

Here he is.

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready and I’ve got banana pancakes for breakfast. I think we’ll be voting for Pig Newton in the Georgia primary. It’s fun living in an open primary state where you can go and try to throw a monkey wrench into the gears of the other party. The only downside is having people think you actually might be a Republican… Have a great day.

– 1995, “Honeymoons in space will be the vogue by 2020.”

While Gingrich is indeed a sad joke of a human being I’m afraid your concept of what is “SF” is somewhat dated. No offense meant… it happens to all of us sooner or later.

In reality the first commercial space stations are scheduled to have been on line for years by 2020. Station launches are planned as early as 2015 and this includes current designs and hardware from Energia/Orbital Tech, Excalibur Almaz and the 900 lb gorilla in the arena Bigelow Aerospace… which already has a couple of test modules currently in orbit.

While expensive, a honeymoon in space will have happened by 2020 and not at the price Roscosmos currently extorts for ISS trips.

I’d tell you about the commercial moonbase projects but you might get depressed :)

Thanks, Marion, fun with open primaries is the word! A vote for Newt is taking a chance I probably wouldn’t, though, there are too many crazees out there for me.

snicker

Marion, don’t worry about it. Here in SC, everybody thinks everyone is a Gooper.

Sure is good that we have so much free money for spaceballs, while the bridges fall down back on earth.

In other tweet deck news, Europe sanctions on Iran have caused Iran to retailiate by cutting off oil supplies to them.

So Mr. Fiscal Conservative is going to dedicate hundreds of billions of dollars to build and populate a moon base? Riiiiiiight! And where will that money come from because it won’t be a raise in rich people taxes or cuts in “defense”. This shameless pander ought to show anybody with two healthy brain cells what a charlatan and used car salesman Newtie is.

True to precedent, the Newt campaign promises are skyrocketing in costs projected as future deficits, now over $300 BN.

TWOOPH!

Besides, how much tax revenue does he think he is gonna get from kids cleaning bathrooms?

When by complying with their ideology, the displaced janitors whose unemployment funds run out then starting their own businesses, and tax cuts to ‘job creators’ at last produce actual jobs, the tax returns will be boundless. See?

There are simply no adequate words any longer to describe American politics. None exist. The next 4 years are down to Obama, Romney, or Gingrich. There are no words that exist to explain this to future generations.

Newt is looking for a base on the moon. Didn’t somebody ask what those poor defense contractors were going to do without Iraq and Afganistan?

I’d love to finance a moonbase. But I gotta fix things on earth first.

Boxturtle (He can find money for a moonbase, but can’t find money to fix bridges. Hrrumph)

LMAO! That’s Republican Rube Goldberg logic for ya.

The desire to start blowing crap up over there is becoming astronomically high.

Oh my.

That could really put the screws to Greece and Italy. Have we accused the Iranians of economic terrorism yet?

Boxturtle (What we’re doing to them isn’t terrorism. Dunno why, but Barry says so!)

Like a Blind Man.

Insanity Chips indeed.

Did I leave out the schools will no longer need to be funded, as they will form coops of the janitorialized kids and farm them out to corporate welfare queens?

You left it out but it’s inferred. Damn public education living off the government tit. Defund public education and finance something really important. Willard pays far too much at 13.9 percent!

Commercial space.

Hint: new businesses need to be encouraged, regulated and taxed.

Yeah, as usual Newt has the idea right but the execution ass-backwards. We Earthlings will probably have some sort of permanent base on the moon by 2020 but (1) there’s no particular reason it will be US-only; (2) there’s no particular reason it will be human-inhabited; (3) it’ll be mostly looking at moon rocks, so everybody will be bored with it but selenologists.

Kind of like what’s happening with Mars. It’s both really cool, in a nerdy way, and really dull.

Who gets to be janitor at the new moon base sites?

Oh, goodie, more spaceball potential;

‘Researchers have “cloaked” a three-dimensional object, making it invisible from all angles, for the first time.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16726609

I want to vote on who and what we get to disappear.

Yep, and the taxes need to go back into the safety net, as well as into funding new enterprises and cleaning up the mess. A few enterprises work, most don’t. That’s what the safety net is for. Somewhere along the line that’s been forgotten.

The Son of Ham.

Hmmm. Can they make one big enough to cover DC?

Roomba the Robot will be the janitor. :-P

But the Pentagon is on the other side of the river from D.C.

They can have the moon. I’ll take Venus.

Oh, Man! Turbo Tax Free Timmeh is gonna be in Charlotte today.

Not sure he will get a warm welcome. Taxes going up there for everything on the little people.

There’s supposed to be a zone of habitable temp and pressure in the Venusian upper atmosphere where dirigible colonies could float… if you don’t mind the sulfuric acid-laced rains…

Gee, what troubled bank do we know that has it’s HQ in Charlotte?

Boxturtle (*cough* BOFA *cough*)

if you don’t mind the sulfuric acid-laced rains

Is it any worse that our acid rain from power plant emissions? :-)

Boxturtle (I’ve read a couple of not-so-ridiculus discussions of terraforming Venus)

Tomorrow is Friday, so no doubt he’s positioning for the bank takeover.

Ah, come on now. Timmeh is in charge of pointing out banks that are in trouble. Remember, he sees none, er nothing, uh not one that is a systemic risk.

You gotta believe him cause things are looking up.
America is all about human dignity and freedom.
The American dream is there for anybody that wants it.
We work and play fair in America.
We don’t torture.

Believe it!

Zap,

That rain surely can’t be anymore toxic than the water in PA.

Oh… just noticed that Gingrich’s proposal has his corporate welfare state of a moonbase become an actual state: the 51st state. (Sorry, Puerto Ricans, you just tend to be too brown to be a real ‘murikan state I guess.)

Of course such an act by the U.S. in regards to the Moon would be highly illegal, a violation of ratified international treaty and a de facto act of war against the rest of the planet…

… oh.

I can think of 3 words. Rots from within.

From a 1957 Robert Heinlein short story: “‘—All You Zombies—’” chronicles a young man (later revealed to be intersex) taken back in time and tricked into impregnating his younger, female self (before he underwent a sex change); he thus turns out to be the offspring of that union, with the paradoxical result that he is his own mother and father. As the story unfolds, all the major characters are revealed to be the same person, at different stages of her/his life.

We are truly living the dream nightmare of futures past.

At 4.00 per/gallon x 383,400,000 g/p/d = $1.53 Billion p/d

1.53 billion x 365 days = $558.45 Billion x .075(ICEE) = $418.8 billion. $418,000,000,000 x 5 years= $2,090,000,000,000

This is the amount of economic value, the dollar amount America will blow and waste out the tailpipe, two trillion 90 billion dollars, in five years. This is just gasoline.

Hey Newt!!!! With value like this, America ain’t going nowhere! Not even the moon!

Did someone warn Gingrich that The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?

Gentlemen, Be Seated. Newt certainly has the cheek for it.

Moonbase Gingrich, courtesy twolf.

Attaturk, you’re on to something by invoking Heinlein. Perhaps Newt harbors a very specific plan…

“The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” about a lunar colony’s revolt against rule from Earth. Underground colonies scattered across the Moon, of whom most inhabitants (called “Loonies”) are criminals, political exiles, or descendants thereof. The total population is about three million. Although Earth’s Protector of the Lunar Colonies (called the ‘Warden’) holds power, in practice there is little intervention in the loose Lunar society.

Something about sowing and reaping and such.

True, but even the heroine of that Libertarian dream world acknowledges that government has a place.

In real life the Gingrich version of lunar life would start out as a clone of the world of THX-1138 as drawn by Norman Rockwell before inevitably devolving to Somalia In Space.

I bow to your refined analysis, zapkitty, but I do take issue with one part of it.

In real life the Gingrich version of lunar life

BwaHaHAhaHaw! That’s a good one.

… true, dat :)

What’s wrong with a permanent base on the Moon? We were promised that fifty years ago.

We jumped straight to the Moon without building the needed infrastructure of space stations and orbital fuel depots first.

And we did it in a few years.

That turned what would have been an expensive but doable endeavor into one that was impossible to sustain. JFK had already lost interest in the program when the bills for this extreme leapfrogging started rolling in.

And after that it was impossible to get the political traction to redo the job properly and, worse still, NASA sat astride all space efforts and their culture never really recovered from the dual blow of unlimited funding to get to the Moon first followed by suddenly being dumped by the side of the road by congress.

Commercial space could and should have taken up the slack but by then NASA regarded any non-NASA spaceflight as competition for scarce funds… and stomped it flat.

NASA’s ancestor, NACA, helped commercial aviation advance into the behemoth that it is today,

NASA and commercial spaceflight… not so much.

The potential energy / economic value squandered in America in the past fifty years, has precluded Moon base Alpha from becoming a reality? We don’t have the money the reach escape velocity. The money, warmed the planet?

With an artificial intelligence, named Mike, who has a sense of humor. That’s more than you can say for the average conservative human mind.

“Starship Troopers” LOLOL You just reminded me of what Gingrich reminds me of. He must be “some kind of brain bug.”

Edit for greater accuracy: “some kind of big fat smart bug”

All the Heinlein books in my house are to be found on my hub’s side of the bed, so my R. H. knowledge is actually secondary. But, that being said:

“Why is a laser beam like a goldfish?”
“Because neither one can whistle.”

(groan here)

Sounds like the 1%’rs want to get their ultimate secure gated community off the ground, so to speak. On our dime, of course. Imagine how secure they will be on the moon or in space from the rabble down here.

Hell, I’ll chip in a few bucks, as long as it’s one way

” Have we accused the Iranians of economic terrorism yet?”

Have we accused the banksters of economic terrorism yet?

[hysterical fat robot] DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!!! [/hysterical fat robot] :)