It's time for a change, a real change, a change we were promised four years ago. But it will not be coming from the two dominant parties in American politics.
First Sarah Palin alarmed then Michelle Bachmann terrified, now Herman "Koch" Cain has fallen by the wayside along with his similarly memory-lapsing colleague Rick Perry. That leaves one candidate standing -- assuming Willard Mittens Romney is too Mormon to be considered by conservative voters. Republican presidential candidate and former US House Speaker Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich, seen here speaking at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is worse than his predecessors. Once an academic and often one to pontificate, even after admitting to cheating on his wives, he does have a conservative flaw: He converted to Catholicism. And not since the CIA shot Kennedy has a Catholic been in the White House. What can we look forward to with a Gingrich [shortened pronunciation, "Grinch"] administration? More child labor, legalization of undocumented immigrants, a Brave New World Order with preaching on the side... What is the logic behind Gingrich's choice to use Hitler's hand gestures (e.g., at 1:04 and 1:07 sieg heil)? He is a seasoned politician, a Washington insider, and a public speaker, so it can hardly be a series of unconscious ticks.
(LA Times) Promising “extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America,” Newt Gingrich said Friday that he would fire school janitors and pay students to clean schools instead.
Shakespeare (aka Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford) explains the Newt's eye view:
Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.
SECOND WITCH:
Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.
THIRD WITCH:
Harpier cries, “’Tis time, ’tis time!”
FIRST WITCH:
Round about the cauldron go:
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
ALL:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
ALL:
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
SECOND WITCH:
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of NEWT, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
The witches' brew was a hocus-pocus spell, much imitated by spoof witches in comedies and hardly to be taken seriously. In Shakespeare's day the effect would have been rather different and he could have expected a significant proportion of the audience to have taken the magic potion storyline literally.
