WASHINGTON - Newt Gingrich earned at least $1.5 million in consulting fees from mortgage giant Freddie Mac....
At the GOP debate last week in Michigan, Gingrich was asked about his work for Freddie Mac in 2006. He said that he advised the embattled firm as a historian. At the debate, it was reported he earned $300,000 for his role, but a Bloomberg story yesterday increased that sum to $1.6 million to $1.8 million between 1999 to 2007.
And just wait a day; I'm sure it will grow some more.
Gingrich yesterday insisted that he wasn’t lobbying for Freddie Mac - he was simply offering “strategic advice.’’
(Blog editor snorts at the semantics)
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"Gingrich says firm took funds; Asserts he didn’t pocket payment from Freddie Mac" November 19, 2011|By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, surging in recent polls, distanced himself last night from payments that his consulting firm collected from mortgage giant Freddie Mac, which he has blasted on the campaign trail for its role in the national housing crisis.
As if that makes a difference!
“I didn’t take it,’’ Gingrich said after an event at Harvard University when asked about reports that he collected nearly $2 million from the agency....
Now we are up to $2 million, huh?
This guy isn't anywhere near the nomination yet and he's already setting the pattern for a Gingrich administration. Think he'll be fudging those deficit numbers?
Gingrich addressed reporters after a screening of a documentary that he produced with his wife, Callista, called “A City Upon a Hill,’’ which promotes American exceptionalism.
I think I'm going to be sick.
He said that he has been stunned by his recent spike in polling, which has placed him near the top of the field with Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts.
Yeah, everyone has. It has me believing that the agenda-pushing AmeriKan media simply MAKES UP the POLL NUMBERS!
“I have to tell you that it is almost disorienting,’’ he said. “I’m now, I think, probably with Romney, we’re probably the two front-runners for the moment.’’
During a question-and-answer session with students after the film, one student from Bavaria asked Gingrich why the documentary painted Europe as far less democratic than the United States.
Even though they have proportional representations in their parliamentary systems?
Gingrich said that while a rigid class system exists in Europe, the United States has “the most open-to-talent system on the planet. That’s just an objective fact… . Europe tends to be run by oligarchies who love cartels and who love avoiding the public’’ through bureaucracies.
This guy is really turning the world on its head, huh?
Why do you think there are protesters in the streets, Newt? Even the AmeriKan media has caught on to the ECONOMIC INEQUALITY MESSAGE!!
Gingrich was greeted by hecklers before the screening, who shouted in unison, “We love you, Newt! Thank you for standing up for corporations!’’
:-)
As security was called to remove the demonstrators, they shouted, “We are the 99 percent,’’ the clarion cry of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Though one attendee told the hecklers to “get back in your tents,’’ Gingrich appealed to a sense of national unity.
“I think we are 100 percent,’’ Gingrich said. “I think we are all Americans.’’
That line drew a sustained applause.
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And it turns out the media has lied all along about Newt and his wife?
"Story about Gingrich’s divorce from ailing wife called distorted; Daughter among those disputing parts of account" November 20, 2011|By Paul Farhi, Washington Post
WASHINGTON - For almost as long as Newt Gingrich has been in public life, an unflattering story has shadowed him: That as a rising young Republican congressman from Georgia, Gingrich ended his first marriage by serving his wife with divorce papers while she lay in a hospital bed dying of cancer.
The story has been trumpeted by Gingrich’s political opponents, endlessly recycled by the news media, and repeated even by would-be allies, including social conservatives, who have long had doubts about the thrice-married former House speaker.
As candidate Gingrich has risen to the top of some polls in the past few weeks, the story has surfaced again. Variations have turned up on MSNBC and in National Journal, various columns and blogs and two British newspapers in just the past week.
While the thrust of the story about his first divorce is not in dispute - Gingrich’s first wife, Jackie Battley, has said previously that the couple discussed their divorce while she was in the hospital in 1980 - other aspects of it appear to have been distorted through constant retelling.
It's JUST LIKE READING A NEWSPAPER!!!
And I'll BET YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT the FREDDIE MAC STORY, 'eh?
Most significantly, Battley wasn’t dying at the time of the hospital visit; she is alive today. Nor was the divorce discussion in the hospital “a surprise’’ to her. She had requested a divorce months earlier, according to Jackie Gingrich Cushman, the couple’s second daughter. Further, Gingrich did not serve his wife with divorce papers on the day of his visit (unlike a subpoena, divorce papers aren’t typically “served’’).
How can the MEDIA have gotten it SO WRONG, huh?
As Gingrich prepared to run for president last spring, Cushman offered her take for the first time. In a syndicated column, “Setting the Record Straight,’’ she criticized media coverage of the episode, saying it contained “untruths’’ and “misstatement of facts.’’
In AmeriKa?
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And speaking of getting things wrong:
"A poll out yesterday from USA Today and Gallup found Gingrich and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney tied for the lead among GOP presidential nominees, with Gingrich at 19 percent and Romney at 20 percent among Republicans nationwide....
Umm, the LAST TIME I CHECKED 19 was NOT 20!
Either they are NOT TIED or this is simply SLOPPY "journalism."
What is with the AmeriKan media these days? No wonder their industry is dying.
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Related: AmeriKan Media Searching For Any Alternative to Ron Paul
And then Newt blew it:
"Republican debate heats up on limits of US security; Gingrich takes immigration stance" by Matt Viser and Tracy Jan | Globe Staff, November 22, 2011
WASHINGTON - The Republican presidential candidates clashed last night - at times vigorously - over their visions for American security, whether Muslims should be targeted for extra screenings at airports, and how precipitously the US military should pull out from Afghanistan.
Several candidates argued forcefully that the Patriot Act, which made it easier for authorities to track Internet traffic and tap phones in the United States, should not only remain in place, but be strengthened. If preventing future attacks means occasionally infringing on civil liberties, they said, so be it....
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, wading into controversial territory, also portrayed himself as a “compassionate conservative’’ by saying that he believes illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for more than a generation should not be separated from their families by deportation.
“I don’t see how the - the party that says it’s the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter-century,’’ Gingrich said, after reminding the crowd that Albert Einstein was an immigrant. “And I’m prepared to take the heat for saying, let’s be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families.’’
“In order to bring people in legally we’ve got to stop illegal immigration,’’ Romney said. “That means turning off the magnets of amnesty, in-state tuition for illegal aliens, employers that knowingly hire people that have come here illegally.’’
Related:
"illegal immigrants, who mow the lawns, trim the hedges, clean the swimming pools, park the cars, serve the hors d'oeuvres, tidy up the mansions, and do many of the other things that make life so enjoyable for the rich"
Didn't Mitt hire them to do his lawn here in Massachusetts?
Gingrich’s position puts him closer to that of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who signed a law granting illegal immigrants access to in-state tuition. Perry said at an earlier debate that those who disagreed with his position “don’t have a heart,’’ a comment that caused conservative voters to question his candidacy and contributed to his downturn in the polls....
He's done, too. The debate performance doomed him.
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Notice how the media has CHANGED the SUBJECT away from the FREDDIE MAC FLEECING?
"Gingrich’s immigrant proposal draws fire; Conservative backlash over support for ‘red card’" November 24, 2011|By Matt Viser and Michael Levenson, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON - Influential conservatives in early-voting states sharply criticized Newt Gingrich yesterday for declaring that some illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country legally, a stance that could imperil his new position atop national polls and as a chief alternative to Mitt Romney.
Some conservatives predicted that Gingrich’s break from Republican orthodoxy could derail his campaign, much as it did for Rick Perry, who sank in the polls after he faced a conservative backlash over his positions on illegal immigration.
I'm just wondering WHY WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THIS when there are SO MANY OTHER ISSUES of CONCERN?
“This is a very dangerous area for him to be headed into with only 40 days to go,’’ said Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Iowa Republican Party. “Yeah, he was on his rise, but this is something that could take the air out of his balloon.’’
Others, however, said Gingrich showed courage by offering a plan that would give illegal immigrants who have been in the country for a generation a chance to work here legally, without becoming citizens.
President Reagan “would’ve supported probably the Newt Gingrich position on immigration,’’ Reagan’s son, Michael, said yesterday on Fox News. “My father never would have broken up a family to try and make, in fact, a point on immigration. And so he would have applauded Newt Gingrich on that.’’
The polarized reaction illustrated some of the divisions in the Republican Party, which is split between business-minded Republicans who want to give the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants a pathway to legalization, and Tea Party activists and hard-line conservatives, who favor deportation.
The globalist wing of the Republican Party, and one of the reasons the world is in such s***ty shape.
In a debate on Tuesday night, Gingrich wandered right into that highly charged divide. Portraying himself as a “compassionate conservative,’’ he said illegal immigrants who have deep roots in the United States should not be deported.
“I’m prepared to take the heat for saying, let’s be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families,’’ Gingrich said.
Gingrich promoted a “red card’’ proposal developed by the Vernon K. Krieble Foundation, a conservative think tank in Denver.
The plan seeks to break the political deadlock over whether to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants by splitting them into two groups....
I'm tired of division.
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