Letters to the Editor
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Katharine Mieszkowski
How about actually researching your topic before you do a puff piece helping Newt sell disingenuous books?
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Newt:
"No, our current campaign style is so dysfunctional that I'm not sure how you could create a leadership position from within a campaign. You almost have to create the leadership position before you run."
That's "dysfuntional" thanks, in huge part, to you, weasel. You made it your business to politicize everything, and you're still claiming that those who have led the way in honestly addressing the environment are doing it for partisan reasons. Bull. Something is happening that's potentially terrible for all of us - way beyond the millenial American political slugfest that you helped usher in. If your Frankenstein Republican party didn't snicker and bait about it, they could be part of the solution, just like in the old days when civil discourse was civil - like, before you.
I'll reach out to you and anybody who takes the problem seriously and looks for a shared solution. And I'm glad to see you feel the same way. Let's do it.
But I'll reach out without an itch to bitch-slap you if you start giving Al Gore and other "partisans" their due. They'be been creating their leadership positions honestly and with great compassion, and it ain't about tax-and-spend, or any other junk-phrase you bandy about.
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Newtie's (Continued) Pathetic Attempt to Get into the White House
Please just spare us all having to suffer Newt's nonsense any longer.
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Beloved?
I don't think so, not that vile little jerkoff.
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Capitalism + good intentions = 0
Not necessarily a reflection on Gingrich, John and Teresa Heinz Kerry recently came out with a book called 'This Moment on Earth'. It's great that influential people are sounding the environmental alarm, but in the Kerry's instance, we're talking about people with five personal residences, not to mention the carbon footprint every one of their stocks has. As far as I'm concerned, their message may ring true, but delivered by them it rings hollow.
Capitalism is killing the environment. To riff on something Bill Clinton once said: "it's the economy, stupid".
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Great title... I needed the laugh...
Pretty pathetic attempt at a come back... At least it's good for a chuckle
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PUH-FUCKING-LEEZE!!!!!!!!!
Yesterday Salon treated us to Mike Huckabee, today it's Newt Gingrich.
Why the fuckity FUCK are you wasting space on these cretins?!
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Oh boy
And wealth has been a key factor in the rise of the conservation movement. It was wealthy Americans who founded the New York Zoological Society to save the bison. It was wealthy Americans who founded the Audubon Society to save birds. I think that poor people tend to eat the organisms around them. It takes pretty wealthy people to decide that they can afford national parks.
It gets to the point where I don't even want to waste the energy to form a rebuttal. The pursuit of wealth benefits the environment. Poor people who eat food destroy it. Fine, Newt, fine. Go away, would you please?
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Newt:
Seriously, you and Al Gore should get together and come up with something. A movie, a book, a manifesto, an epic poem, whatever. Sure, you both may dislike each other, but you've both seen The Defiant Ones. Get over yourselves, and it'll be great.
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Well, now ...
So far, nine responses, all negative, none addressing any of Gingrich's proposals. Maybe Cass Sunstein has a point about this echo chamber thing.
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Give Newt a chance?
No. Not right now, possibly not for a long time.
You broke the trust of a lot of us a long time ago when riding high. You and your friends called us fools and traitors for over a decade, "bipartisanship is date rape" remember? Your friends concept of compromise is getting all they want and calling us weak in the bargain; even today.
Did you think the words fell on deaf ears?
Did you think the insults were not felt? the threats not heeded?
Do you think we don't remember what your friends did to Kerry? with their swift boats and purple heart band aids?
When we said that invading Iraq was a mistake before it happened? where were you? Sure you saw the what was happening before many of your friends did, but did you rebuke them? Did you leave the party? or hold on to what shreds of power you though you had?
Were you willing to leave them because what they were doing was wrong? Was the future with power too heady?
More important than your wife Jackie, who you left alone, after cancer? With out alimony? So her church had to take up a collection plate?[1]
You have a history of.... principled reluctance.... Like Cassandra of Troy, wise enough to see the future, but not able to muster the strength to make your friends see it. To their eventual demise. To be a useful fool to your friends is to still be a fool.
Now Gore, who you seem to be trying to imitate right now, is what a true "see-er" is. He took his faith in the environment through thick and through thin. Through sickness and in health. can you say the same for your feelings? Still being a Republican even now?
You seem anxious, like your friends you cleaved so close to are about to fall. Like an interview for a job that you are a bit to desperate to get, and so soon after an election that went badly for your friends again too... I wonder.
You have much to learn of humility, and the strength of self that comes from it.
your advice is not wanted here right now.
go.
[1] http://www.salon.com/news/1998/08/28news.html
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@marktgarten
And here I thought my weary dismissal of Newt's underlying thesis re wealth was a way of addressing his proposals. I'll be more clear. I don't believe Newt Gingrich advocates a reward system so that business will pursue pro-environmental policies, so the details of the reward systems don't matter. I believe he's after deregulation as an end in itself.
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Marktgarten:
Feel free to start the ball rolling with Newt's great ideas. I'm for most of them, same as when other people suggested them first. Happy to hear he's on the team.
In the meantime:
"There are 35,000 McDonald's around the world, about half in the U.S., and half overseas. That's because people voluntarily decided it was a better product."
Does anyone want to fact check this one with some third world countries?