Gingrich Set to Run, With Wife in Central Role [NYT]

Photo: The Inimitable Princess Sparkle Pony

Subhead of the Day: “The former California first lady has moved out after 25 years of marriage. Maria Shriver helped bolster Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign against charges that he groped women during his movie career.” [LAT]

As if any further proof were needed that electing GOP condidates to office is akin to putting the lunatics in charge of the asylum, word comes from Florida that Teabag Governor Rick Scott is set to sign a bill that is… well, I guess, sorta the GOP version of Health Care Reform. And what does this bill entail? The bill would prevent pediatricians from asking the parents of their patients whether they have guns at home, and whether said guns are properly secured from their children. I.shit.you.not: Read more »

Well, that didn’t take long:

Donald Trump has had one of the quickest rises and falls in the history of Presidential politics. Last month we found him leading the Republican field with 26%. In the space of just four weeks he’s dropped all the way down to 8%, putting him in a tie for fifth place with Ron Paul.

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NBC’s three-hour telecast — which saw Star Jones and LaToya Jackson fired and NeNe Leakes quitting — didn’t fare so well: Celebrity Apprentice (7 million total viewers, 2.4 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic) was the lowest-rated spring telecast for the franchise, dipping 23 percent.

So presidential teasing that was seen as a publicity stunt for a television show failed on both counts. But what do you expect from a guy who bankrupts casinos?

It boggles the mind to think that people like Alan Simpson are taken seriously as experts on the Federal budget and the measures that will have to be taken if we want future Federal revenues more closely match expenditures. The Huffington Post reports on a recent speech that Simpson gave to a Financial Industry group, in which he lambasted Social Security as a “ponzi scheme” and repeated a misleading statistic on life expectancy to justify the claim that the program was never meant to cover as many people as it does now, for as long as it does now:

Simpson argued that Social Security was originally intended more as a welfare program.

“It was never intended as a retirement program. It was set up in ‘37 and ‘38 to take care of people who were in distress — ditch diggers, wage earners — it was to give them 43 percent of the replacement rate of their wages. The [life expectancy] was 63. That’s why they set retirement age at 65” for Social Security, he said.

But Simpson’s assessment of the program’s genesis relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of the significance of average life expectancy in an era that was characterized by relatively high rates of infant mortality. Read more »

We will readily grant that this is not the kind of moment we would care to experience while locking our tray table in the upright position:

The passengers sat stunned as they watched a man walk quickly toward the front of American Airlines Flight 1561 as it was descending toward San Francisco. He was screaming and then began pounding on the cockpit door.

We will also credit the AP writers for not including the language being screamed in the lead. You might guess which it is — no, not Swedish — but anybody pounding on a cockpit door should be enough to get Dear Reader’s attention.

In fact, our valiant wire-service reporters are able to contain themselves until the fifth graf:

While [Rageh] Almurisi, 28, of Vallejo, Calif., has no clear or known ties to terrorism, authorities say, the incident underscored fears that extremists may try to mount attacks to retaliate for the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden last week.

We’ll give you a moment to parse that.

Read more »

It’s a Tesla. Best vanity plate ever: