For all the delight we have taken in observing Newt Gingrich’s recent self-immolation, one of the more pleasurable developments of the one-time Speaker of the House’s train-wreck is the laughable reaction it triggered in Gingrich press secretary Rick Tyler. Here’s Tyler’s statement, a harried, defensive and ultimately counter-productive explosion of purple prose, delivered to a reporter for The Huffington Post not long after Gingrich’s now notorious Meet The Press interview:

The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding, Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.

The pen is, as they say, mightier than the sword, but this statement reminds us of nothing so much as that scene in The Bourne Identity where Matt Damon’s character fights off an assassin with a ballpoint pen… except imagine that rather than disabling the assassin with a well placed jab to the neck, the scene had ended with Damon’s caracter stabbing himself in the eye. Shadenfreude is never so enjoyable as when the victim is a pompous ass.

Reading this delightful tract brought back fond memories of other great moments in right-wing literary hackery, and so we invite you to take a trip down memory lane and relive the best bad writing by right-wing luminaries of the last several decades… Read more »

Our guest columnist, on this, the third anniversary of Our Glorious Ascension Above the Timestamp, is “Samantha Jake”.

Dwarf hamsters
learn about these beautiful ‘pocket pets’

I know you love them, now learn more about them

• The different hamster species and the characteristics and typical behaviors of each — so you’ll know right away which type of hamster is right for you!
• A quick and easy way to tell the sex of a hamster — you’ll be amazed at how easy this is to do when you follow this simple tip!
• The right type of diet to start your baby hamster out on — not doing this can cause digestive and nutritional problems later in life!
• A full chapter on how to select the right hamster for your home — including a complete checklist of things to look for when choosing a hamster!

Read more »

“The woman who went on ‘Good Morning America,’ claiming she injected her 8-year-old daughter with Botox, now swears under oath … she made the entire story up for a few hundred bucks.” Sheena Upton, née Kerry Campbell, is now trying to get her daughter back from the child-protection folks. [TMZ]

[MinnPost]

Our guest columnist is the General Services Administration.

One lot to consist of hoodie and sunglasses. Kaczynski used different methods to disguise his identity when he traveled to commit Unabom crimes. He maintained several different pairs of sunglasses. Included among the sunglasses were these, strongly resembling those believed to have been worn by Kaczynski when he was seen in February of 1987 in Salt Lake City as he committed yet another Unabom crime. A subsequent artist drawing based on the memory of the witness resulted in the infamous sketch the mysterious Unabomber wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and aviator sunglasses. This was the only time during all of the Unabom crimes that the subject was ever seen. The artist drawing became a universal symbol of the hunt for the Unabomber and has been circulated worldwide.

This item is being sold “As Is, Where Is” with no attestation as to the accuracy of the description and the condition. No refunds will be issued.

Hoodie and Sunglasses [GSA Auctions]

Bidding Underway As Feds Auction Off The Unabomber’s Stuff [TPM]

We don’t spend much time on the Eschatology Beat, so we’re not familiar with the Scriptural underpinnings of Saturday’s Endapalooza. But we’re not surprised to discover that, like many things, the Rapture isn’t mentioned as such in the Bible itself.

Instead, it’s an All-American creation of Increase and Cotton Mather, who got hung up on this passage:

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

That would be 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, the standard source for Rapturiana. It’s also a standard source for Biblical Zombies, since the “dead in Christ” are presumed to be bodies rising from their graves.

And who’s behind 1 Thessalonians? None other than our favorite Biblical fraud: Paul.

Read more »

“More than 550 health professionals and organizations have signed a letter to McDonald’s Corp. asking the maker of Happy Meals to stop marketing junk food to kids and retire Ronald McDonald.” [WSJ]