Gingrich fascinated by nameless, internet-capable phone

By Dan Brooks in Department of Irony? 4 Comments

newt-gingrich-iphone-650x0

“We’re really puzzled,” Newt Gingrich says. “Here at Gingrich Productions, we’ve spent weeks trying to figure out: what do you call this?” Then he holds up a smartphone. It appears to be an iPhone, but it’s definitely some kind of touch-screen, internet-capable personal communications device, known in circulars and strip malls across America as a smartphone. The term “smartphone” was first used by Ericsson in 1997, but Gingrich seems genuinely not to know it, spending three minutes in rapturous speculation on what such a device might be called. “If it’s taking pictures, it’s a not a cell phone,” he opines. “If it has a McDonald’s app to tell you where McDonald’s is based on your GPS location, that’s not a cell phone. If you can get Wikipedia or go to Google, that’s not a cell phone.” Props to Aaron Galbraith for the video, which is 2:53 of uncut dramatic irony that you can watch after the jump.

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Adelson gives $10 million to Romney Super PAC

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 2 Comments

But Mr. Hartounian said, "Don't be a putz—see the world. Me you've seen already."

This week, casino magnate Sheldon Anderson gave $10 million to the pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future. We could talk for a long time about how weird and creepy the name “Restore Our Future” is, but that’s time we could better spend returning our anticipation of the years to come to conformity with our previous expectations. That’s what Adelson is doing. So far, he’s given $35 million to Republican Super PACs this election, and he says he’s prepared to spend as much as $100 million. Twenty million already went to Newt Gingrich, who failed in his bid to become the nation’s first homunculus president. Now Adelson must settle for Romney, who is like the body without the homunculus inside.

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Finally, Shepard Smith is creeped out

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 4 Comments

httpv://youtu.be/YuF03PTNpp8

Years of cognitive dissonance seem finally to have broken through Shepard Smith’s head membrane at its weakest point, his mouth. For those of you who threw away your GOP primaries character chart, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney were enemies. Strangely, of all the obviously not true things Mitt Romney has said this year, “Ann and I are proud to call Newt and Callista friends” is somehow the most galling to me. Don’t lie about who your friends are. Just because the Republican Party has to form back into Voltron now doesn’t mean they all have to be friends; you can endorse someone politically without endorsing him personally. I don’t want to read too much into this, but the fact that Shepard Smith still has a job after this impromptu, on-air editorial regarding the fundamental nature of politics might tell us how psyched Fox News is about candidate Romney. I’m going to say roughly as psyched as Ann and Mitt are about Pictionary at the Gringriches’.

 

“We don’t know what we don’t know”

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 2 Comments

Thomas Nast's famous cartoon depicting the Tammany Ring

The foregoing quote comes from Ellen S. Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, speaking to the New York Times about Super PAC donors. Tuesday did not just give us the primary that sealed the Republican nomination; it was also the day that various super PACs disclosed their funding, sort of. America’s bold experiment in calling money speech has yielded roughly eleventy gajillion dollars for both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, although Romney seems to have netted slightly more. A lot of his donors are whom you’d expect:  a coal company, a lobbyist for Altria, Haley Barbour’s nephew. Others are a little trickier, including a quarter million dollars from a corporation “with a post office box for a headquarters and no known employees.” Thomas Jefferson must be rolling over in his slave grave.

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Gingrich level reduced to amber

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 5 Comments

*cough* Pussies!

The odds of a Gingrich presidency returned to safe levels last night with Mitt Romney’s decisive* victory in Florida. The former Speaker/Grand Inquisitor of the House has promised to continue his campaign into the summer, “unless Romney drops out sooner,” but that’s like the way Mr. Mxyzptlk threatens you as he’s getting sucked back to his home dimension. Perhaps Newt’s retreat will extend through the spring. Eventually, though, he must return to the mountains of Georgia to slumber and feed.

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