Santorum Surge in Iowa Leads to Obama win in November...a roadmap.

The quote below is from Rick Santorum, who is “surging” in the latest polls in Iowa, largely as a result of frustrated evangelical voters who have worn out their bibles praying for someone to emerge for whom they can vote in good conscience.  Bachman is a bit too Joan-of-Arc crazy, Perry is a poser in Tony Lamas and has been exposed as a crook and not a savior, Cain is lying in the sun somewhere in the Virgin Islands trying to explain how he didn’t have a sexual relationship with Ginger White to his wife and Newt is in the church basement again after Saturday night mass explaining how his love for his country drove him to adultery but that he’s a changed man now because of Calista, his former mistress.   And Romney’s a mormon; he might as well be from Alpha Centauri. 

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. [Sex] is supposed to be within marriage. It’s supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal…but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen…This is special and it needs to be seen as special.”  Rick Santorum

Whew…I’m relieved Herr Santorum is on the case because I swear fornicators are going to be the ruin of this great country.   Rick is using his pre-Second Vatican Council denial of the modern world – his 19^th century ideas about sex, his old testament ideas about foreign policy, his home schooling of his seven kids – and turning from a Jon Huntsman-like also ran into a red hot contender and that tells me all I need to know about the relevance of the Iowa caucuses to anything approaching day to day reality in my world. 

Here’s a brief news flash for Rick and any other republican with Taliban-like ideas about sex in general and women in particular; significant numbers of the population are gay, period.  Talk to Marcus Bachman about it; that genie is out of the bottle and no amount of praying or hoping they go away is going to change that.  Moreover, they like being gay.  I know you probably think that in their heart of hearts, deep down inside they are praying for god to flip a switch and get them back on the straight and narrow but they’re not, Rick.  Really.

 And in case you missed the whole 60’s thing, people now have sex for fun…for FUN, Rick!  They do it because it feels good, not because god told them it was time to do their chores and have more children for his glory.  Perhaps you prefer to have each ejaculation result in a little fertilized egg-thing but that’s not normal.  Oh, and rape is real.  I know you probably think it’s the woman’s fault for wearing sexy clothes and cavorting around like she’s on I Dream of Jeannie but mostly it’s because a lot of men are assholes and bed wetters and torture kittens in the back yard and Rick, women don’t want to have babies from that particular ejaculation, so they take a pill or in extreme cases, have an abortion.  Which is legal, by the way – I know you’d prefer it not be but it is.  And that is one good reason you have absolutely no chance to win a nationwide election, at least in this country, in this century.  You couldn’t win even in a country where it’s common practice to bury a misbehaving woman up to her neck and stoning her to death. 

Ironically, you probably have some surprising people rooting for you.  Mitt Romney is one.  Mitt is an empty suit but he isn’t stupid.  I’m sure Mitt would be quite comfortable having you be his main competition heading into the spring, as he recognizes your neurotic delusions for what they are; a guarantee of victory for him at the convention.  Moreover, Mitt’s not the only one.

Leading up to the election in 1991, there were three candidates running nationally instead of two. George HW  Bush was the northeastern Rockefeller republican who had alienated a significant portion of the republicans by raising taxes and independents for lots of reasons, giving them cause to look for someone else to support.  The democrats ran Bill Clinton, a relative unknown southern governor who was saddled with the traditional brickbats the democrats have to dodge – soft on defense, tax & spend, socialist lover of homosexuals, blah, blah, blah.   But the lack of enthusiasm for an incumbent president drove the disaffected into the arms of Ross Perot, who ran a campaign largely based on not being either one of the other two.  And that seemed to be enough – he bled off enough votes so that Clinton won with 43%. 

Now picture a Rick Santorum on the evangelical end of the spectrum or an uninspiring Mitt Romney, who causes tea party true believers to run away with their fingers in their ears, winning the nomination while Ron Paul, with his deep well of support and very well oiled organization, is left sitting on the sidelines.  He runs as a third party candidate and drains off a significant portion of the republican small government, anti-tax but socially moderate vote, doing more damage to the republican nominee than Obama and you have a scenario where Obama can win with his current level of support – around 45%. 

Romney’s old guard party support essentially guarantees him the nomination absent his pissing all over himself somehow between now and March.  But a vigorously churning undercard will keep the support from coalescing and insure Mitt is weak as a fawn going into the summer.  Enter Ron Paul – or even a clownish Donald Trump – sensing weakness and seizing the opportunity.  For the 76 year old Paul, it may very well be a noble quest to push his ideas further into the mainstream.  For Trump it’s nothing like that; it’s simply his whorish need to be the center of attention so he can sell some time shares.  Whichever it is, it will be exactly what Obama needs  - so thanks Rick, and thanks, Iowa…

Pre-Iowa Caucus Thoughts on a Winter's Day...

Following closely on yesterday’s post – a short, brutal summary of the Bush family’s 30 years of foreign policy idiocy – and just as we are at the onset of that wonderfully American spasm of democracy in action – the Iowa primary – it seem appropriate to examine the foreign policy postures of the candidates and, moreover, their take on the power of the presidency in times of international crisis and upheaval.   Just remember, fear is your enemy and curling up in the fetal position and sucking your thumb with the blanket pulled over your head solves nothing.

Serving as the forward to this unsettling tale is the Associated Press story today, describing how the clearly nervous military leaders in Egypt have reacted to the new-found Arab Spring impulse for freedom in the country by kicking down doors and storming the offices of 10 human rights and pro-democracy groups yesterday, accusing them of “destabilizing the country by fomenting protests”.   This is only the latest example of desperate power elites and frightened, ignorant autocrats clinging to the last vestiges of empire – witness Syrian security forces blatantly shooting peaceful protestors right under the noses of wide-eyed Arab League monitors.   I guess seeing Ghadaffi  ritualistically sodomized and then summarily killed has given Assad nightmares and inspired him to out-brutalize his fellow tyrants, a strategy that will no doubt end badly.

With that unsettling diorama in our rear view mirror we can move on to the republican presidential candidates and explore the choices being offered to the good citizens of Iowa this winter, where the past is serving as eerie prelude and the 30 year republican trend of increasing the power of the president and his minions – as long as they aren’t some negro democrat – is well on its way to becoming right-wing conservative dogma rather than the usurpation of constitution power it actually is.  Witness, for example, the contempt for the Supreme Court and judiciary in general exhibited by all of the candidates, but particularly from Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, both of whom have proudly promised to ignore court orders with which they disagree and to eviscerate the constitution while they’re at it.  Newt has defiantly and proudly proclaimed that he would arrest judges who disagree with anything he feels strongly about; he might as well be wearing one of those funny armbands and goose-stepping at the same time. 

Santorum, whose appeal as a candidate seems to be based solely on his exhibitionistic religiosity and evangelical fervor, would amend the constitution so as to make it virtually unrecognizable as a document which protects the rights of the individual over those of the state, a position at odds with the traditional reverence for the document accorded by most conservatives.  And it is this very subjugation of the constitution that has caused him to rise in the Iowa polls, a fact perhaps even more disturbing than his Joan-of-Arc visions for a western version of theocracy by fiat. 

This misplaced lust for an all powerful presidency also manifests itself in the foreign policy positions of all of the candidates – with the exception of Ron Paul – and is a bitter tasting stew of christian righteousness mixed with a jingoistic hubris reminiscent of Joe McCarthy and the Cold warriors of the 50’s and 60’s.  Only now the incessant saber rattling is not grounded in any rational fear of a tangible enemy but in the kind of fear that one feels alone in the dark, unfamiliar woods surrounded by spooky noises, causing you to lash out blindly in all directions.  Santorum and the rest of these military-avoiding chicken hawks harp on Obama about the Iraqi troop withdrawal as if he has betrayed them personally and insist that, if they were president, Iran would be bombed back to the stone age or suffer some similar fate.  The entire republican establishment has conspired to marginalize Ron Paul for having the audacity to suggest that maybe a constant state of war isn’t really necessary and asking us to re-think the pseudo-imperialist impulses that have dominated our foreign policy since World War II. 

There is also an aggressively knee-jerk defense of Israel on the lips of all of the candidates and used as the rational for the absurd fist-shaking at Iran, a position that only encourages the hardliners there to dig in and push the boundaries of settlement ever farther into heretofore Palestinian territory, infuriating the entire middle east. 

It’s likely that some of the more irrational statements and positions being reported are a function of ignorance; I for one am not impressed with Rick “Where’s Iran again” Perry’s world view any more than I am impressed by the neurotic jabbering of the chubby Napoleon, Newt Gingrich.  I’d like to think that any sensible congress would provide a check on their most self-destructive impulses, for self preservation if not ideological disagreement.  But the universal contempt for the judiciary combined with the notion of an imperial presidency is truly a frightening prospect for anyone concerned about their liberty.   Even libertarian Ron Paul has questioned the need for a Voting Rights Act, something that should concern all of us, regardless of our particular skin tone. 

Imagine a country with a subservient and pliable judiciary under the thumb of an ego-driven little fascist wanna-be like Gingrich or a delusional religious fanatic like Santorum or even a robotic “businessman” like Romney, (think Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22), and the US quickly becomes some kind of bad sci-fi place patrolled by black-shirted thought police and ruled by a guy with a chest full of ostentatious medals wearing sunglasses at night – a totalitarian hybrid of Disneyland and Wal-Mart where we all sell out for a 50 inch flat screen and 3-D glasses.   History has shown that freedom and democracy can be frightening concepts to some and we would do well to remember that.

And Obama is not in the clear on this issue either.  His championing of the Defense Authorization Act, a slip on the slope of tyranny and oppression, is one of a number of disappointing and shameful sell outs of priniciple for which he is justifiable vilified by the left in this country and something which should only serve to awaken all of us to the dangerous possibilities inherent in an overly powerful chief executive.   His sad tough-guy posturing is a subject for another day.  But for today, in the pre-primary media overload and avalanche of breathless reporting sure to bury us this weekend, it would be wise to recall the words of Ron Paul himself,

“A dictator enjoys unrestrained power over the people. The legislative and judicial branches voluntarily cede this power or it’s taken by force. Most of the time, it’s given up easily, out of fear in time of war and civil disturbances, and with support from the people, although the dictator will also accumulate more power with the use of force.”

So I call upon the good citizens of Iowa to exercise your rights judiciously on Tuesday.  I don’t know who the hell to suggest you vote for but maybe if everyone stayed home and none of these chumps got any votes it might have an impact far beyond the quiet and humble mid-west and wake the rest of the country up like a bucket of cold swill dumped on a sleeping drunk can cure a hangover.  Or maybe we’ll all still have a headache, but at least we’ll be awake…

Post-Iraq Monday Morning Quarterbacking - Some Context...

Today as I read and thought about the Obama bashing by unapologetic neo-cons, republican chicken hawks and “big stick” foreign policy Monday morning quarterbacks over the recent spasm of tribal violence in Iraq I was struck by the extent to which the Bush family has been involved in some of the most disastrous and stupid military interventions and belligerent American forays into 19^th century imperialism of the last 30 years.  It’s a remarkable and largely ignored legacy of foreign policy blunders and missteps so blatant and clumsy that it’s easy to dismiss them as the terrible results of a Northeastern prep school dorm dick measuring contest but which, upon examination, are so noxious and sinister as to provide overwhelming evidence that this one family may constitute a criminal cabal to rival the Gambinos or Gottis or any 20th syndicate imaginable.  Now as faint but unmistakable voices can be heard whispering for Jeb Bush to emerge from under his sheltering rock and come to the rescue of a faltering republican president field, it is an unsettling thing to ponder another royalist Bush bringing his tiny penis and hyper-drive hubris to the White House.

For all his bookish Yale-via-Amherst affectations, George H. W. Bush had been director of the CIA during the dying days of the Ford administration and grabbed the spinning steering wheel as the agency was threatening to careen over a cliff after an in-depth congressional investigation into its dirty and largely illegal activities dating back to Nixon’s first term and the coup d’etat in Chile among other things. At the time Bush was Ambassador to the United Nations.  He decided to run for the republican nomination for president in 1979 but ran into the amiable dunce, Ronald Reagan, and in the end settled for the Vice Presidency, a move I always felt was orchestrated by behind the scenes power brokers scared shitless of Reagan’s addled but good natured somnabulance.  Bush became Reagan’s man behind the scenes and the quasi-legal and unethical fun began almost immediately.

First the Reagan/ Bush administration armed Saddam Hussein to the teeth in his war against the evil Iranians, treating him like a vicious pit-bull of a surrogate so as to punish the unruly mob of mullahs and fanatics still beating their collective chest over the capture of our embassy and the turning of Jimmy Carter into a drawling gelding.  Much of this arms trafficking was illegal at the time and in a deep and profound irony, was the wellspring of Saddam’s mustard gas weapons of mass destruction and surely he’s somewhere right now kicking himself for taking that phone call.  The notorious “slaughter of his own people” that was a high profile justification for turning him into Dr Evil with a mustache was a result of our supplying him with the means to do so, a disgusting bit of truth that was somehow ignored in the bellicose days leading up to both wars with Iraq to follow.

In the meantime, in our own hemisphere, we had a decade of slaughter and genocide carried out by our latino surrogates in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala until the Sandinistas ruined everything by shipping our boy, Anastasio Somoza, to Miami and uniting Nicaragua into a socialist republic.  Thus began the foul saga of the Contras in Nicaragua and the collateral damage to all of Central America that followed our panicked and illegal intervention and determined attempt to get rid of them.  Bush was in this up to eyeballs, despite his subsequent pleading that he didn’t know anything about what Ollie North was doing in the basement of the White House for 6 years.   Calling the vicious Contras “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers” in an overheated blast of hyperbole intended to obscure their routine massacres of innocent civilians, Bush and the other beady-eyed fascists of the Reagan administration spent the 80’s futilely causing havoc and destruction on countries simply trying to get rid of medal-bedecked crackpot dictators and succeeding with the persistence only a home grown revolution can engender. 

Not content with illegal and strategically questionable intervention in our own hemisphere, the Reagan/Bush team also decided to send the marines into Lebanon where 241 of them died in a horrendous bomb blast that not only drove the marines out, it led to the subsequent invasion of Grenada, the single most illogical and pointless use of military force in the history of the Western Hemisphere and the worst movie Clint Eastwood ever made.  This cynical parlor trick of an intervention to ostensibly save a handful of college students was so clearly meant to distract the public from the Lebanese debacle that even the mainstream press alluded to it as sleight of hand.  Semper fi indeed…

As the decade came to a close and Bush began his own campaign for the presidency, his dirty little relationship with cartoonish thug, Manny Noriega began to receive the uncomfortable but typical media scrutiny of any presidential candidate.  As Wikipedia explains, “Although he worked with the Drug Enforcement Administration to restrict illegal drug shipments, he was known to accept a very significant amount of financial support from drug dealers themselves simultaneously,^[5] because he facilitated the laundering of drug money, and through him they received protection from DEA investigations due to Noriega's special relationship with the CIA.^[7]"

The inconvenient part of this was Manny’s refusal to promise to keep his mouth shut after a series of Iran-Contra connection exposes threatened to blow the lid off his role as fixer and bag man so he had to go.  Again, from Wikipedia…

"In 1988, Elliot Abrams and members of the Pentagon began pushing for U.S. invasion, but Reagan refused, due to Bush being tied to Noriega through his previous positions with the CIA and the Task Force on Drugs, and their negative impact on Bush's presidential campaign.  Pressure mounted on Bush, as the media labeled him a "wimp" for failing to aid Panama amidst his campaign rhetoric that called for a tough stand against known drug traffickers.^[5] Bush declared that the U.S. would not negotiate with a known drug-trafficker and denied having any knowledge of Noriega's involvement with the drug trade prior to his February 1988 indictment, although Bush met with Noriega while Director of the Central Intelligence, and was the Chair of the Task Force on Drugs while Vice President."

Somehow the media couldn’t or wouldn’t connect the dots and after a quick invasion Manny was surgically removed and ended up in the Miami county jail, spending the rest of days shouting in vain through the bars on his cell. 

How is it that the Bush family’s public lives have been to intertwined with a series of high profile dictators and clownish characters like Noriega, Somoza, and Saddam Hussein?  Arguably the high point of Bush senior’s presidency was the first Gulf War, on its face a noble undertaking meant to liberate Kuwait but in reality just another dance with the devil between Bush and Saddam, who didn’t like being pushed around by a pencil-neck like Bush and wouldn’t stay in line so he had to be slapped down by the 82^nd Airborne.  Inconvenient references to Bush’s role in providing Hussein with the capability we all now fear was again overlooked or shouted down by jingoistic cheers from the mainstream press.

This finally leads us to George the Dull and his completely illogical and trumped up invasion of Iraq. After the 9/11 bombings, in a petulant attempt to regain the family honor and a fruitless quest to find his father’s balls, George and the aging band of cold warriors itching for a chance to engage the forces of evil somehow, somewhere, decided to make an example of Saddam and simultaneously kick somebody’s ass.   Sadly, like the elusive WMD’s, the missing balls were never found.   Perhaps they were just a legend to begin with – maybe the Bush family saga is one where the balls never existed in the first place and their war-mongering and frat-boy hubris was just a natural outgrowth of their anger at the futility of the search. 

Whatever the case may be, republican bleating about Obama finally being able to extricate us from the Iraqi tar-pit should be taken in the context of 30 years of systematic and cynical republican foreign policy madness.  As history will no doubt confirm, we should all be celebrating this one tiny victory and thinking carefully about how we really want to conduct ourselves in the next 30 years.  And praying fervently that Jeb Bush stays on the sidelines…

Do or Die in Iowa or Doom in a Church Basement...

Well, here we are a week away from the Iowa caucus and the madcap bus tours through acres of semi-frozen corn fields have begun in earnest.  Soon, all across the state in musty church basements, damp and chilled citizens of Iowa, redolent with the odor of wet tweed, will be gathering – all 120,000 of them – and in a merciless but quick exercise in deranged democracy they will winnow the republican field by half in the course of 24 hours.  And as much as I loathe the republican candidates, this seems manifestly unfair. 

To think that the 5% or so of the citizens of a woebegone state like Iowa, who are crazy enough to drag themselves to the self-hypnosis of caucus meetings, will doom campaigns that have been in full flight since the day after Obama was sworn in is surreal in a Norman Rockwell on mushrooms kind of way.  The candidates clearly recognize that this is the first of a short series of “moments-of-truth” to occur over the next 30 days, after which anyone with a lick of sense not in the top three will be home nursing their wounds over a bottle of Patron and a handful of pharmaceuticals, so they are feverishly busing themselves around the state to hastily arranged meetings in doughnut shops and Applebees banquet rooms, begging for votes and trying to convince the shivering primary voters that they and they alone are the true conservative amongst the Gang of Six.  

Michele Bachman, in a crazed and manic version of a 12^th century quest, is busing herself from one corner of the state to another, and at each stop she hops off the bus muttering the same applause lines about small government, the real America, God’s divine mission and usually anything else that pops into her addled brain.  Somehow she has been convinced – or has convinced herself – that traveling to all 99 Iowa counties – counties like Osceola, Audubon, Taylor, combined population under 20,000 people – is a better use of her time than being strategic and going where the people are.  Maybe there’s a point to be made about being “one of us” and understanding the common man.  But really – when you’re polling about 6% of expected voters it’s not a spiritual quest anymore; it’s a simple numbers game.  She has to try to convince enough people that she’s not nuts to grow that number to around 20% to have a chance of even having enough gas to get her tour bus to New Hampshire and she really has no chance there in any case.  I’ll miss her but I think she should lay in some lemons and salt and go home to the land of 10,000 lakes.

Rick “I know about corn, too” Perry is also desperately flogging a dying horse, peddling soft focus commercials where he speaks in the drawling and sincere voice of a child molester around a campfire, selling himself as some kind of outsider champion of average folks and trying hard to make people forget his dim-witted debate performances, semi-ethical exploitation of a Texas government pension loophole to “retire” and collect his pension while still in office as governor and at the same time billing the citizens of Texas a zillion dollars so his spur-wearing security detail can hit every Hooters between Des Moines and the Mississippi River with a stash of Cristal in the back of their shiny black secret agent Suburbans.  He is polling around 10% and looks like this may not be his last stand but he can definitely anticipate heading back to Austin to wade into the stinking graft suck hole he’s created over the last two terms and back to the business of influence peddling where he can use his meager skills most efficiently. 

The other Rick – social Taliban Rick Santorum – is also frantically swimming upstream even though he has earlier done the “every single county” tour, obviously to no avail, and increasingly finds himself standing forlornly in front of ever smaller crowds who seemed to have decided he smells like an “also ran” and would rather work on their knitting or update their Facebook page and wait for the next candidate than listen to him prattle on about gay marriage, his ability to conceive children and how his faith sustains him in his hatred and disdain for young women who would deem to have an abortion or even have sex before marriage.  This last comment inevitably causes smirking sidelong glances among small town residents who’ve known each other for years and probably spent their adolescence teaching each other naughty things in the hayloft of the barn out back. 

It is interesting that all three of these soon-to-be losers started out obviously trying hard to appeal to the then surging tea party rabble who had only recently been credited with the November 2010 mid-term massacre and looked to be the new power in the republican party – the Goldwater to the old line party elites’ Rockefeller.  But for now the tea party’s influence has waned and riding their coat tails is looking like a losing proposition rather than a limo ride to electoral Easy Street.  

No, it looks as if next Tuesday will be a watershed day in spite of the paucity of actually human activity.  In all likelihood, Newt and Mitt and probably Racist Ron Paul will come away from Iowa smelling only vaguely of barnyard waste while the other three will carry the reek of doom and abject failure.  I will miss them for their sheer inept insanity but am willing to sacrifice for the good of the republic.   Just as Newt committed adultery because he loved his country so very, very much, I will accept the loss of a portion of my comedic muses so that our children have a better life than ours. 

Democrats open their presents too early - Santa pissed...

The democrats spent the day yesterday embarrassing themselves by crowing endlessly about the republicans “backing down” by deciding they would go ahead and agree with the senate and allow an extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits for two months while both parties put their heads together and figure out what they want to do about these issues long term.  Hey democrats; this is the first time all year you’ve manage to win one of these pissing matches and you wouldn’t have won this one if the powers in the republican party hadn’t relentlessly body slammed Boner and Cantor until even they finally had to grasp the enormity of their misjudgment.

The simple truth is Boner and Cantor don’t fear the democrats any more than they fear an asteroid hitting the earth.  They have had you by the nuts for a year and only released their grip because they were so wrong even Newt Gingrich criticized them – at least until he changed his mind the next day.  Democrats should knock off the “Neener, neener, neeeener” crap and move on.   You’re still a long way from winning the hearts and minds of anyone so you should shut the hell up, have an egg nog or two and get back to work or the treacherous scum will drive you into the sea by the middle of February.

Very interesting news also announced today as the Justice Department has decided to block enforcement of the voter suppression legislation enacted by those zany rebels of South Carolina.  When Governor Nikki Haley’s head stopping revolving and she was finally able to produce coherent sentences she called the move “outrageous”, clearly missing the irony of a classic “pot, kettle, black” moment.  The blatant and unconstitutional attempt to disenfranchise minority and student voters as a part of the nationwide republican backdoor coup d’tat has been begging for a good grand jury investigation and Haley’s bleating claim of victimization is laughable.  She should consider herself lucky that she’s not in handcuffs.

The nasty, bitter truth about Iraq may be coming to the surface like a bloated drowning victim as today bombs went off across Baghdad killing nearly 70 people at first count.  It appears that it was not random acts of terrorism  – Maliki has spent the time since the last American troops crossed into Kuwait rounding up prominent Sunni members of the government and shattering the fragile notion of tribal cooperation as surely as if he drop-kicked his favorite crystal hookah across Liberation Square.   You can bet that each such spasms of horrible, tragic violence will be accompanied by a drumbeat of chicken hawk republican criticism of Obama for following through with the withdrawal of US troops. 

Ironically they seem to know that the public had long ago decided that Bush’s Folly was a really bad idea and the sooner we can get the hell out of there, the better.  And they also know that our agreement – so skillfully carved out by Dubbya and his cabal of Neo-con geniuses – calls for us to get out.  On some level I am sure they can do the math and figure out that a trillion dollars and 4,500 dead American soldiers was a high price to pay for digging Saddam out of his rat hole and leading him to the gallows.  Yet they can’t help themselves; if there is an opportunity to throw spit-balls from the back of class to make the other kids laugh at the teacher, they’re going to do it.  It’s the reflexive “soft on defense” argument they routinely trotted out and used to pummel peace-nik liberals since Nixon and since the country always seems to fall for it, here it comes again.  (Poor Harry Reid looks like someone has been routinely pummeling him since about 2005)  Given that a significant number of voters – and it’s almost embarrassing to say this – believe Obama is some kind of Muslim infiltrator from Africa by way of Illinois, democrats need to keep on message about it and stress the happy scenes of delirious relatives meeting exhausted troops coming home for Christmas and beyond and not let republicans hijack the narrative.

Chubby history professor Newt Gingrich failed to qualify for the Virginia primary, a natural outgrowth of the mass defection of his campaign staff a couple of months ago when it appeared that he was more interested in canoodling with Calista than actually running for president, a worthy fate for the self-proclaimed man of big ideas.  Instead of flaunting his historical perspective like a flasher yanking open his raincoat maybe Newt ought to concentrate on the little things; like getting enough signatures to get on the ballot.  Of course he blamed “the system” for excluding him and fellow republican bright light Rick “Where’s Virginia again?” Perry, who also couldn’t come up with the 10,000 legitimate signatures required.  Never mind that the requirement has been there since Thomas Jefferson was running in Virginia – Newt and his campaign staff of middle school volunteers was still taken by surprise and unable to fulfill the requirement despite numerous car washes and bake sales held throughout the state.   And Perry was last seen going door to door through the Orlando area in Florida with the South Carolina petition in hand, scaring the shit out of blue-haired Floridians already suffering from near terminal confusion.  His staff released a statement from the South Carolina capitol, saying “We were confident that Governor Perry would qualify but unfortunately he lost count when he got to 3,800 and never recovered.”

Finally, my last post before Christmas wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t thank Santa in advance for what appears to be his gift of my fondest wish.  Yes, it seems possible that both Sarah Palin and Donald Trump will barge back into the country’s political consciousness in the new year since both have been seen circling the stumbling herd of current republican candidates like vultures around a dried up water hole.  Trump can’t keep his disturbing mug out of the news and surprised Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and many other black political leaders this week by saying he’s always had “good luck with the blacks”, a typical grandiose Trump statement that manages to be insulting and completely incomprehensible at the same time.  

At the same time as Trump was humiliating himself on cable, publicity whore Palin kept popping up on Faux News as if she is some kind of republican Yoda, stammering her usual garbled political strategy and philosophy and hinting – the little flirt – that “there’s still time; anyone could get in the race – you never know”.   Media types starving for something interesting sifted through that and came up with, “Palin may still enter race!!!!” , causing joyous celebration at Jon Stewart’s house and filling my own heart with joy and the fleeting thought that “maybe this whole baby Jesus thing is legit…”

From my side of the fence, I would like to wish everyone who may stumble across this site a happy holiday season, Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Blessed Kwanza etc., and may the druids dance naked across your lawn and frighten your children in celebration of the solstice.  See you on the other side…

"God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen let..." Wait, what? Really...? Oh, well never mind...

John Boner, Eric “Boy Wonder” Cantor and the rest of the republican House tea-heads yesterday rejected an 89-10 Senate compromise on extending the pay roll tax holiday, an extension of unemployment benefits and medicare payments and in doing so looked like nothing so much as the 6 year old amped up on sugar throwing a tantrum at the mall.  They want what they want even if it ends up hurting everyone around them.   Now Boner can stand sad-faced in front of a cluster of microphones and act as if he and his frothing band of knuckleheads are the really responsible ones and they just want to finish their work like good boys and girls so they can all go home and sing carols around the fire with a clear conscience. 

It was funny yesterday to hear Eric Cantor on the floor of the house exhorting his enthusiastic tea party friends in a high-pitched squeal that sounded like the pimple-faced 15 year old president of the robotics club giving his first speech at a high school assembly.   You could practically hear him verbally pushing his taped-up glasses back onto the bridge of his nose in triumph, like Robert Caradine in Revenge of the Nerds.  But the reality seems to be that Boner has lost control of the unruly children again and had to try to put the best face on a move that even the Wall Street Journal characterizes as putting the gun to your own head, spinning the chamber and hoping for the best when you pull the trigger. 

And once again we cringe at the sight of Obama in front of the cameras looking like the world-weary assistant principal who would really like to lock the bastards in the basement with that one crazy janitor and not let them out until February.   For once I would love to have him drop the overly-patient, dutiful negotiator pose and get pissed off and tell them what time it is.  This is a golden opportunity.  There are people in the senate who are pissed – republicans – who probably feel like they went out onto the skinny branches on the assumption that regardless of how they ultimately feel about the efficacy of the policy itself, it was politically the right move.  It’s Christmas…And from the sound of it, Boner led them to believe that the House would go along and every one could air-kiss under the mistletoe and go home for some drinks.   Instead they end up looking like Boner’s Chumps and adding a few oil-soaked Yule logs to the fire of voter contempt for the whole lot of them.  Smooth move, John. 

How hard is it to go on TV and say, “The republican House is insisting that we add provisions to the bill that would require the unemployed to be drug tested, that exempted some of the worst polluters in the country from Clean Air Act regulations, and jams pay cuts for government employees down Congress’ throats, all while continuing to defend the privileges of the “job creators”, to use Boner’s absurd description?  Why can’t Obama simply lay it out and say,” Is that what you want?”  Instead we end up in a thicket of obfuscation and pink-tie double talk with Obama and the utterly uninspiring Harry Reid lamely parroting the same tired talking points – “fair share” and my favorite go-to phrase, “the right thing for the American people”, as if someone might think they’re talking about Canadians. 

The fact is, the republicans can’t offer a single sensible reason why they aren’t on board to extend the status quo for a couple of months and give sensible people on both sides time to hammer out something more permanent.  It’s laughable to hear them trying to bury the tree in tinsel so no one can see that it’s half dead.  Hey, take the god damn thing out onto the front lawn and set it on fire.  No, instead we get video of Reid looking like someone just woke him up, dusted him off and said, “Over there Mr. Havecamp…”  I swear to god, between him and Pelosi it’s hard to understand how they ever get anyone to do their dry cleaning, let alone aggressively push their agenda through the flaming snake pit that is the current congress.  They need to lay off the valium for a few days.

It was good that the WSJ chose to highlight again McConnell’s statement that his primary goal in congress was to see to it that Obama was not re-elected when it offered up its criticism of this ridiculous semi-filibuster – it’s important that voters remember that treasonous pledge.   Nothing explains Obama’s difficulty in getting anything accomplished more succinctly than that.  Sure, he’s been a more of a pussy than I expected and hoped for and much of his flailing around can be laid squarely on his own loafers.  But this tawdry little episode should be enough for any wavering Obama voters to recognize the fundamental obstructionism rampant in Washington for the last two years – the petty, “Nyah, nyah, na nyah na”, childishness that permeates even the simplest and least controversial attempts to move forward.   These guys would filibuster a change in the House cafeteria hours if it was something the democrats wanted. 

So John, thanks for that.  You and Eric and Bitch McConnell are becoming invaluable to the Obama re-election campaign.   Now if Santa will just bring you some new ties…

Wait, who's in the lead? No, no no;get me a bowl of hot water and a catcher's mitt.

It’s been fascinating to watch the melting away of support for Newt Gingrich in the face of a concentrated and unprecedented – in my memory - attack by the republican establishment.  It appears more and more likely that, whatever the result of the Iowa caucus and the other early primaries, Mitt will be able to continue in the race as the party elites’ candidate of choice among the current crop of hopefuls and ultimately win the nomination.   That doesn’t mean they actually want him as the nominee if offered other choices.  But unless  the pale white underbelly of the party conspires to talk somebody currently haunting the sidelines into jumping in, Mitt is going to be the man for the simple reason that the rest of these clowns scare the shit out of everyone, including – and maybe especially – the conservative punditocracy and intelligencia. 

Virtually every one of the most prominent conservative commentators and talking heads have body slammed Gingrich for the last two weeks, with a withering flurry of insults and name calling that’s made even Ann Coulter blush demurely. 

George Will, the horn-rimmed glasses and bow tie wearing master of overly verbose and “look-at-how-smart-I-am” commentary lashed out at Newt, calling him repugnant among other less than flattering descriptions, in an overheated blast not seen since he skewered Harriet Miers’ nomination to the Supreme Court.  Will replaced William Safire as my favorite conservative long ago and, to give him credit, he’s been pretty outspoken about some of the stupider manifestations of conservatism exhibited by the Grand Old Party.   He was pretty tough on Sarah Palin as McCain’s choice for VP as well.  But Gingrich must have pissed on his loafers in the Capital men’s room or something because he has a ripping hard-on about Newt. 

Actually Coulter herself has been consistently critical of Gingrich as well, writing about his time as speaker, “To the contrary, his pointless bloviating about orphanages and child janitors harmed the chances for welfare reform, despite the fact that the American people, the Republican Congress and the Democratic president (publicly, at least), supported it.

“Pointless bloviating” has a nice ring to it.  Newt’s Washington Insider credentials have pissed off tea party true believers like Rand Paul – to be fair, his dad is also running so it may be a little reverse nepotism – and he represents the hard line tea party, small government, quasi-libertarian wing of the party to go along with having pissed off much of the Eastern party establishment with his acid-tongued and ill-considered lashing out in all directions in an apparent attempt to make the cool kids stop making fun of him.  He has, of course, revisited this “child janitor” brilliance this year, impressing no one and causing derisive laughter from the left and the right.

 His foreign policy is downright scary, but that’s true of most of this herd with the exception of Rand’s dad, Ron Paul.   Newt called for a “no fly” zone over Lybia but when Obama moved to enforce just that, Newt said he “wouldn’t have intervened”.   Left unexplained was how you have a no fly zone without intervening.   He wants to apparently air drop iPhones to the Iranian dissidents so they can OMG each other without the Mulahs interfering and thinks the basis of our Cuba policy should be to somehow equip every Cuban with a radio so they can listen to Rush and Laura Ingraham and learn about America. 

But the bigger point is, this year when there isn’t a candidate who is inspiring lasting commitment and excitement and when the completely dull and predictable Romney has spent the summer wandering listlessly near the front of the pack and generating a collective, “Whatever…” from voters desperately turning over rocks looking for the “Oh my god, anyone but Obama” candidate, Gingrich’s sudden bolt to the front of the pack has caused a backlash from every direction of the political compass.   And the funniest part is, he probably doesn’t really give a shit, ultimately.  He’s getting tons of pub for all of the insipid nonsense he has written since the mid-nineties and he’s getting to binge on ego-gratifying attention while giving the finger to the Wills and Krauthammers of the world. 

It’s almost as if he is playing everyone, although he has seemed surprised when his ship sailed so quickly.  In Iowa, evangelical christians are among the “second thoughts” crowd diving overboard this week, leaving Newt sputtering and leaking oil after his heroic charge to the front.   So tallying up the score, his haters now include the republican party elite, the most prominent conservative journalists and commentators, the tea party hard asses and the evangelical christian community.  I’m not sure that leaves anyone and it certainly doesn’t leave enough support to win the nomination, with or without the endorsement of the Manchester Union Leader. 

Mitt has been gathering endorsements left and right – so to speak – over the last few days, as if those people doing the endorsing have been getting late night phone calls or finding bloody horse heads in the garage or something.   It’s clearly been decided that he is the only electable candidate running and so he’s been chosen by default and as the anti-Newt candidate, a delicious irony given that the summer was spent looking for the anti-Romney candidate.  Apparently finding out that that candidate was Newt was a bridge too far and another in a long line of “be careful what you wish for” moments.   No sir, Mitt has been chosen, his hair is good, he’s ready for his close up and if he screws it up it will be the shock of the 21^st century so far.  It’s been fun though, Newt…

A (Political) Christmas Carol, by Mr. B Labrador...

Today we get the cheery holiday news that Obama the Sack-less and Harry Reid the Spine-less have hurriedly back peddled and capitulated once again in the face of standard republican opposition to any whiff of tax increases on income over $1,000,000 – the legendary “job creators” of myth and legend.   If it wasn’t such an obvious pile of horseshit and a virtually indefensible position for the republicans, I might understand better a little compromise in the interest of smooth governance.  But Boner and the Bastards don’t care a thing about smooth governance – only making Obama look bad.  And he continues to let them off the hook.   Barack, they don’t appreciate it when you untie one hand; they just use it to stab you again.  When are you going to learn that?

I also have been struck by the virtual silence from the republicans regarding the formal end of the Iraq War, an occasion sure to have been overflowing with jingoist, blustery rhetoric had they been in the White House when it happened.  As it is, only the semi-deranged John McCain had anything to say about it and he got into positions usually seen only at Cirque du Soleil when trying to comment for the record today.  All the treasonous chicken hawks of the party who are usually the first ones to belligerently posture and threaten had nothing to say for fear that it might be seen as inadvertently bolstering Obama and they can’t bring themselves to croak out any words that might imply that he did something with which they actually agree.  No, McCain and those conservative who do dare to open their yaps about Iraq inevitably start with hand-wringing, brow-furrowed, tight-lipped statements about how we’ll rue the day we abandoned “the Iraqi people” as if they give a shit about them, and bemoaning our leaving a void that will be filled by extremists and people who hate us – mostly swarthy, foreign looking men with evil thoughts and hatred of our freedom and also of One Hour Martinizing and two-story Toyota dealerships. 

Never mind that the Iraqis want us to get the hell out and leave them alone, mostly.  These guys are too busy trying to figure out how to continue to jam the square peg of capitalist democracy into the round hole of 1,000 years of tribalism, KFC franchises be damned.  You know John, it’s pretty likely that things will get a bit dicey from time to time over there and they may have some rough moments, (I give you American history from 1860-1865; ask Newt about it).  But at some point it’s none of our god damn business anymore and we just have to give them the keys, say a little prayer and go have a cocktail. 

Probably the least helpful thing is to treat an extremely important, expensive, ghastly-stupid bit of foreign policy like some cheap political weapon and not take it for the profound teaching moment it should surely be.  Now that I mention it though, maybe that is the natural way of things with you guys in this day and age; everything is fodder for the canon of political expediency and a bludgeon to use against the other party.  There was a day when there was a loyal opposition in this country but that ship has sailed and is over the horizon.  We can only hope it doesn’t fall off the edge of the earth that – consistent with your party’s world view – is believed to lie straight ahead.  It’s right there by the edge of Adam and Eve’s place, you know, where Noah had to take that long detour to get all the animals to the Peking Zoo.

As I write this, the frenzied elephant heard is gathered nervously on a brightly lit stage somewhere, answering another stream of inane questions and pontificating incoherently while the whole world watches to see if The Nutty Professor can stifle his normal impulse to lash out at anyone who criticizes him or implies that they’re smarter than him or questions him on any of his myriad inconsistencies.  Newt has a problem analogous to the pretty shooting stars one often see flaming across the night sky in a dramatic and ultimately short lived bit of theater.   He has made a lot of noise and he has accomplished the rather unremarkable feat of appearing to be sensible and intelligent amongst the nimrods and delusional fauna around him, attracting a lot of empty headed media attention in the way they are wont to do.  But when the most prominent conservative voices in the country - voices who, while just as delusional on some level, are widely respected and even admired grudgingly by the left – when they almost universally treat you with contempt and disdain and insult you on national television, you probably should be able to recognize that you have issues that go beyond your hyper-inflated ego and multiple marriages.  Hell, Newt, I thought Mitt was the Mormon. 

But like most things that are superficially attractive – like Kim Kardashian, for example – it doesn’t take too long to figure out that, while it may sound like fun to be hitting that, after a couple of times your mind wanders and you find yourself thinking about your new car and ask for the ring back.  From your blowhard-in-chief demeanor and haughty attitude of unironic conceit, to your wacky ideas about living on the moon or on the ocean floor, you’re scary, flat out.   Throw in what appears to be your ignorant contempt for 200 years of constitutional governance and it’s really no surprise that your star is flaming out as fast as it ascended. 

The scariest part is the marriage of your wounded Napoleon complex to matters of national security.   

"I would instruct the national security officials in a Gingrich administration to ignore the recent decisions of the Supreme Court on national security matters," he said, citing actions President Franklin Roosevelt took against German "saboteurs."

This gives rise to vision of the Weimar Republic, and not in a good way.  What other judicial decisions would you choose to ignore?  Roe v Wade, perhaps…maybe the Voting Rights Act…?  Sorry bud but a pompous blowhard with delusions of grandeur is not really a winning formula for running the country right now.  On the bright side for you, I am sure this whole experience will sell some books – you have, like, 30 of them, right?  And it will make for scintillating pillow talk for you and Calista, right?  Start the fire, get a pitcher of kamkazis and revisit the glory days of 2011 while you rub her back…?  C’mon now…

“I knew all along that Cain was a meathead.” 

“Oh, Newtie…(sigh)”                                                                 

Yeah, that sounds about right.  You can be sure that your flaming out will disappoint the Obama team, who are probably still trying to get over their good fortune so far and giggling about the Hobsons’s Choice you guys are giving republican voters. 

“Mitt…”  “Hahahahahahahah…”
“No, Newt….”   “Ahahahahahahahahah”
“(Snort)…Bachman…”  Ahahahahahahahahaah…stop it man, you’re killing me…”

I admit I’ll tune in tomorrow to see who the pundits favor and wait for the inevitable wave of garbled opinion about winners and losers.  Turns out that you’re all losers…that’s the best part of all. 
Merry Christmas,
Mr. B. Labrador…

“...patient and persistent lying is the only path to the presidency.” Or, Shit Politicians Say...

Which brings us to Karl “Turd Blossom” Rove, minister of propaganda for the noxious right wing power elites who prefer to remain in the political shadows but love the shameless little Pekinese doing their dirty work for them.   The Barking Labrador would like to power hump the little bitch until it wets itself...but I digress...Poor Karl is still feverishly trying to psychically get back at all the jocks who pushed him into lockers and gave him wedgies in junior high school by demonstrating what a devious prick he can be.

How is it that this little insect can be trotted out by the media and treated as the grand high exalted wizard of campaign strategy when all he has ever done is lie and cheat and lie some more?  The latest example is the ads reflecting the hard-on he has about Elizabeth Warren, a democrat who is running for the senate in New Jersey.   Even though her opponent, republican Scott Brown, has the enthusiastic backing of the K Street hyenas and the big money on Wall Street, she is pulling away from him in the polls and Roves hysterical and repugnant ads against her must be seen as a measure of both their desperation to try to protect the seat and, by extension, rotund republican golden boy, Governor Chris Christie, and the extent to which Brown is seen as a tool. 

Rove's Super PAC, Crossroads GPS, (which I believe stands for Gaseous Pompous Scum), has been running an ad which brazenly misrepresents Ms Warren in too many ways to enumerate; to wit:  “Crossroads GPS attacked Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School who has long advocated for financial reforms, last month for being too close to the Occupy Wall Street movement, directly contradicting the group's most recent ad suggesting that she is too close to Wall Street.”  (Huffington Post)

Apparently Turb Blossom is relying on the short attention span of low information voters – or maybe hoping subliminal messages really do work – in order to get away with something this blatantly...well, not only false, but incoherent.   The best part is the carpet bombing strategy has not only not damaged Ms Warren; it has served to raise her name recognition and probably helped her polling numbers. Good work, Karl.  

Karl has also been seen lately throwing bombs at Romney, most likely because Romney personifies the good looking cool guy who got all the chicks while Karl was left in his room with an old copy of Cosmopolitan for a companion.  Bitterness is not becoming, Karl.  But the best and funniest throw down of the week has been between Karl and super-massive black hole, Donald Trump, and his combination game show / debate scheduled for a couple of days after Christmas.  Rove thinks – and rightly so – that it is nothing but an ego-driven freak show created by The Donald so he can get his surly mug in front of the TV cameras just a little more – as if the American political process will wither if not for his sage counsel. 

Trump is currently lashing out at Rove, as he is wont to do to anyone who has the audacity to defy him.  The two of them verbally sparring is like watching a mud-wrestling match between two fat guys; disturbing and nightmarish but fascinating all the same.

But Trump is also swinging wildly at those candidates who clearly see this as a ridiculous idea with no good outcome and every possibility of it being a sucking wound where everyone loses their dignity except Trump, who has none.  (Is it my eye sight or has he taken to combing his eyebrows up into a pompadour / comb- over?)  He has taken every opportunity – and, sadly, there are a lot of them – to slam those who have declined his invitation, while at the same time inflating his importance to the nation at large to hilarious extremes.  It’s like he’s the Bullwinkle balloon in the Macys Thanksgiving Day parade.

Even the hopelessly crazy Michele Bachman turned him down, whereupon he went national with a helping of self-serving blather about how she had come crawling to him for wisdom and advice and now she was pissing on his shoes.  Bitch...

"Trump said Thursday that Romney lacked the "courage" to participate in the debate. 'I'm disappointed that he didn't seem to -- I don't want to use the word courage -- but he didn't seem to have the courage to do the debate,' he said on CNN.”  Geez, Mr. Trump – you don’t want to use the word but somehow it came out anyway.  You can’t go 30 seconds without saying something you think is flattering about yourself or dissing someone for not recognizing how great you are.  I really hope you decide to take the plunge and run yourself; I think a good strong dose of humiliation would be good for you. 

Finally, in keeping with the theme of this post, we have another hilarious blast of amplified hyperbole from wanna-be porn star, Anne Coulter, who seems obsessed with sexuality in general and homosexuality specifically.   For some reason she offered some fresh raw meat to the right wing recently; “she believes 'liberal yuppies' will start aborting their unborn gay children once scientists discover a gene for homosexuality.”- this from someone who inexplicably refers to herself as the “Judy Garland of the right wing”.  What the hell does that mean?  Does she hallucinate about Munchkins having gay sex with Marcus Bachman?  Does she know that Garland is a gay icon?  Is all that crossing and uncrossing of her legs whenever she’s interviewed some kind of “lipstick lesbian” signal...?  Thankfully for Michele Bachman, Coulter kindly concludes that Marcus isn’t gay, “just effete”.  Gosh, I’ll be that makes Michele want to go right home and jump on the poor guy and ride him like the wrath of god...(*shudder...*)

It's my party and I'll run if I want to...

The Michele Bachman Madness Tour continues to generate both laughs and jaw-dropping idiocy even as her odds of winning the Iowa caucus are only slightly better than Herman Cain’s, and as we all know, his odds aren’t too good at this point.  Bachman’s half-crazy determination is admirable until you consider that it may derive from too much absinthe or a Peyote sweat-lodge ritual she shared with Marcus many years ago when they were hitchhiking through New Mexico.   In any case, her line of thinking this week has been typically non-linear and random, with a healthy dose of fundamental ignorance thrown in for good measure.

First she wants to close the American embassy in Tehran, a building that was long ago turned into a combination hookah dealership and Kentucky Fried Chicken.  It is slightly disturbing that someone who has such strong and strident views on dealing with the pesky Iranians – like, say, bombing them like we bombed Dresden – would not know that we haven’t had an embassy there for over 30 years.  Oh, and she already is a member of congress...

She has been hyper-critical of Obama's Middle East policy in general and his handling of the Arab Spring in particular because of her intense interest in defending Israel.  Support for Israel is standard foreign policy and hers shouldn't be a surprise until you realize that it springs from the same impulse that drove Richard the Lionheart, and Newt the historian will help us recall that wasn’t ultimately successful as a way of bringing peace to the middle east.  It's Old Testament all the way, with all of the disturbing repercussions that implies.

Today she hit the talk show circuit to try also to provide voters with some distinctions between her and newly crowned Non-Romney, Newt Gingrich, by proposing to deport all 12 million suspected illegal aliens in the country, a strategy other well known reactionary fascists could admire.  Setting aside for the moment a logistical challenge that would dwarf Noah gathering animals two by two, she seems to be forgetting the whole “government interference in our day to day lives” that is allegedly the cornerstone philosophy of the tea party voters she covets. 

Of course there is some inherent conflict between the nativist racism that fuels much of the anti-immigrant anger of the tea party folks and their chirping about "limited government" and that apparently trumps any concerns about civil liberties, rail cars to the border and tattoos so it’s hard to know if her strategy will ultimately attract voters.  The funniest part of her confused rant was this:  "What about deportation? I believe we should uphold the laws of the land, which does include deportation. How do we pay for it? The American taxpayer."  This begs the question; as tax payers would you rather pay for more cops, affordable health care for everyone, alternative energy and cancer research or rounding up 12 million illegals?

She also appears to be fighting with Ron Paul over the loyalty of Cain’s supporters now that he has decided that it’s a lot less work to just pretend to run some kind of ersatz 21^st century conservative think tank than actually run for president. The puzzling thing about this weird tug of war is the idea that the tea party votes will be enough to win the day in a general election.  Sure, there is an undeniable “Anyone but Obama” sentiment in the country and he has a lot of work to do to solidify his support among progressives and independents alike.  But being unbalanced enough to appeal to the hard core, tea party Cain backers, who – let’s face it – have to be plenty crazy themselves to think pizza-boy was the answer, isn’t going to win many independent voters, let alone any wavering Obama people.  Who is the strategic genius running her campaign, Carrot-top?

Finally this week, she went off on one of her favorite topics, gay marriage, inexplicably telling a group of high school kids trying their best to understand modern politics, that, contrary to reports, she would allow gay people to get married.  No problem; the only caveat is that they would have to marry people of the opposite sex.   She elaborated on that view this morning, saying that the people of Iowa – where a gay marriage ban was overturned by the Iowa Supreme Court – don’t support gay marriage and citing as evidence the fact that three of those judges were voted out of office subsequent to that decision.   The problem for Michele is that she again seems to lack a basic understanding of…well, reality, but specifically constitutional government, because she said, “The people of Iowa are sick and tired of the judges tell them what their laws are.”   Hmmm…check me if I’m wrong, Michele, but I think that’s pretty much exactly what they’re supposed to do.  

Luckily for all of us, she will never be in a position to achieve her aim; “As president of the United States, I will only appoint judges that will apply the strict construction or the original intent of the Constitution of the United States”, since she seems to have no idea what that is – only that it’s what she thinks that it is.  Given the evidence of her thinking that has been on display for several months now, that should make it easier for all of us to sleep at night.