Intelligence, Bluster and Bullshit (for Newt)

Newt Gingrich is the big intellectual history professor, right?  Well here's some stuff I bet he doesn't know.

In 1879, a year after he took office president Rutherford B. Hayes began a campaign to make slavery legal again.  His argument was based on what he called "an ever expanding population of unwanted Negroes."  Surprised?  Don't be, Hayes had friends. Carlisle C. Stevenson, a senator from Kentucky supported Hayes' position on slavery, as did 14 other southern senators.  And one from liberal Massachusetts - Henry Wentworth, who argued that slavery was "essential to the southern economy in recovering from the devastation caused by our tragic civil war."

Shocked? Are you? Huh? Don't be. I just made all that up. It took me about 6 minutes.  Sounds believable though, doesn't it?

So what does that prove? It proves how easy it is to make up believable crap and how willing we are to believe anything that is A. written semi-intelligently and B. on the internet.

All politicians engage in this sort of distortion and lying. But there's no doubt some of the shining stars in the Academy of Bullshit come from the right: Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity and, yes, Gingrich who is wrong and INaccurate about as often as he is accurate.

If you consider yourself an intelligent, thinking person, then prove it. Do some thinking and reading and stop believing everything you hear that "seems to make sense."