I like Newt, at least if here weren't playing for the red team.
If only the otherwise mild-mannered Knut had taken a bite of that fetid old blimp.
For many reasons, it's not like Knut would have had to worry about doing a long stretch in prison.
I have only gotten to the first photo. Get Newt away from Knut! That photo is sullying his memory.
Goddammit! Gingrich has got to drop out soon. I'm confusing these posts with LB's.
I did, too. My mind went to Khan Academy.
I basically can't think of the Newtster without thinking of this priceless review of his 1945.
7: The review's snark is good, but the reviewer makes a few howlers of his own. Such as: "This [Germany declaring war on the US] is inexplicable only if you don't know about the Berlin-Tokyo Axis, and the mutual defense treaty between Germany and Japan requiring each to declare war on any nation that declared war on the other." While that treaty would indeed have required Germany to declare war if the US had attacked Japan, it didn't require them to do anything if Japan was the attacker. Which is why, despite Germany having been at war with the USSR for six months at the time of Pearl Harbor, Japan was able to stay neutral with respect to the USSR until the latter attacked at the very end of the war.
Also, Hitler wasn't particularly scrupulous about observing any treaties he later found inconvenient, in any case. For example, the non-aggression pact he had with Stalin prior to June, 1941. If you're going to slam Newt and his co-author for being bad historians by overlooking a treaty, you might want to check that your own interpretation of the treaty isn't blatantly contradicted by such major facts from the actual war. It's easy enough to slam them for being bad writers without claiming that they also committed historical malpractice.
It's good snark, but they would be on stronger ground being snarky about historical accuracy if they didn't claim Rommel "ran out of gas in France in 1941". Really? Which campaign would that have been? Wasn't he already in North Africa by then?
8. Depends how legalistic the Japanese and Germans were being (that sounds weird, but if you're looking for excuses to get involved in/stay out of a war, it might make some sense). Roosevelt actually asked Congress formally to declare war on Japan, who may or may not have issued a retroactive declaration of war on the US after the attack. It seems a bit over-punctilious, but no doubt he had his reasons. So in theory, Hitler was obliged to declare war on the US under the terms of his treaty. The USSR never declared war on Germany and I'm pretty sure Germany didn't bother formally declaring war on them. So Japan had a loophole to stay out.
I have no knowledge of Axis treaty obligations, but Hitler saved FDR a fair bit of domestic political trouble by declaring war on the U.S. I don't think that if Germany wouldn't have declared war on the U.S., the U.S. would have stayed out of the European war. But, I do think it would have taken longer for the U.S. to get involved. There was a very large, isolationist contingent in the U.S. and they would have been perfectly happy to fight only Japan.
3: And Knut got away clean when he bit the German Minister of the Environment in the leg.
I miss that adorable little unstoppable killing machine of the snowy waste.
copyediting and proofreading weren't this book's highpoints, though I still have to give the copy editor points for making it through the book at all. The poor bugger needed a machete.
This is excellent.
5, 6: I have to admit, when I online-nicknamed my son, it never occurred to me that there was any risk at all that Gingrich would become politically important again.
It rather looks like the language was ambiguous - assuming the Tripartite Pact is the relevant text, its condition for joining in war was "if one of the Contracting Powers is attacked by a Power at present not involved in the European War or in the Japanese-Chinese conflict." Does response to attack by a Contracting Power count? I don't know.
What's up with the OP? Is there something weird about Gingrich taking many opportunities to be with exotic animals? It seems to me pretty understandable, and among the most innocent ways one might exploit one's fame.
15: I wouldn't think so; "is attacked by" is pretty clear to me (though I assume this is an English translation of the original text). However, looking at the full text of the treaty, there is an article 5 that explicitly says the above doesn't apply to the Soviet Union, so the USSR isn't as great a counter-example as I thought.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who was confused by the Newt notation.
5, 6: I have to admit, when I online-nicknamed my son, it never occurred to me that there was any risk at all that Gingrich would become politically important again.
Yeah! He's been a full-time motivation speaker/con man, never holding any real job, since what, 1997?
5, 6: I have to admit, when I online-nicknamed my son, it never occurred to me that there was any risk at all that Gingrich would become politically important again.
Yeah! He's been a full-time motivation speaker/con man, never holding any real job, since what, 1997?
This is like if the Democratic front-runner was Chuck Robb. Boy, remember the days when he was out there pointing out that Reagan and Bush Jr. were wrong about stuff? He's so smart.