"There are a lot of bad republicans; there are no good democrats." Ann Coulter

Satan’s favorite republican pin up girl and the masturbation inspiration for thousand - well, probably hundreds - of deeply disturbed and camo-clad militia members across the country, Ann Coulter, had her nasty partisan potty-mouth screed bleeped by MSNBC yesterday because she called John McCain either a douchbag or a dickweed, it’s not clear which.  I want to stand up for her rights as a political commentator and say bleeping her was unforgivable and a terrible overreach by the politically correct, left-leaning MSNBC and host Joe Scarborough.  I think if the bony-assed skank wants to call McCain a douchbag, I will defend to the death her right to do that.  As one foul-mouthed political satirist to another, I say Huzzah! Annie.  Your pseudo-intellectual right wing blather is music to my ears.  And of course your relentless lashing out at liberals and lefties everywhere can be justified by the nasty things they say about you.

After all, Al Franken was less than flattering to you, calling you “the reigning diva of the hysterical right”, an accurate but mean spirited description that you worked hard to earn and which is well deserved.  Your clueless loyalty to George W. Bush, an equally clueless empty suit who was a real conservative like I’m a real astronaut, qualifies you for the Lazy Blowhard Journalist Hall of Fame.  Memo to Annie; sitting around the Ritz-Carlton in Georgetown drinking Mojitos is obviously keeping you from achieving the level of journalistic excellence you clearly think you’ve attained.  But that’s no reason to call you a parasitic bitch. 

I’ll bet you thought it was really cute to call Ted Kennedy “human pestilence”, although that begs the question; what does that make you?  A useless and neurotic bleach-blonde bulimic bimbo publicity whore?  And you calling Newt Gingrich a chubby dork, that was probably just good natured teasing between two like-minded republican foot soldiers girding for battle against the dark and evil forces of liberal extremism, atheism and homosexuality…and pot smoking…don’t forget pot smoking.  You confided in Laura Ingraham that you think Michele Bachman or Herman “Fingers” Cain would be better candidates that Newt would.  I have to say, Ann, that sounds an awful lot like one fake-academic gasbag being territorial in the face of a threat from another fake-academic gasbag.  After all, if you really think Bachman or Cain are able to find their way to the hotel bar by themselves, it calls into question your whole schtick as the learned voice of conservative wisdom and makes you look like an overcompensating, narcissistic slut-princess with Daddy issues.

But that’s just name calling and we’re above that, aren’t we Ann?  You once claimed to be “more of a man than any liberal” and had this to say about others of your sex…or at least the sex that you appear to be:

"If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women. It also makes the point, it is kind of embarrassing, the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that it has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it's the party of women and 'We'll pay for health care and tuition and day care -- and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?'"

Dang, girl; it’s no wonder real manly men think you’re hot – you know, open- carry, anti-immigrant, racist homophobic Timothy McVeigh types with two digit IQ’s.  Maybe you should take a testosterone supplement and just give up the pretense altogether.  Then you could get yourself a deer rifle and some Carhart overalls and join the other geniuses patrolling the Canadian border.  Protect and defend, eh? 
But seriously, Ann; I applaud you for your outspokenness and your forthright way of informing the body politic and furthering the political debate in this country.  Obscenity laced tirades and provocative and demeaning insults are as American as apple pie.  Please just keep on being you…you’re an inspiration.

Did Mad Max go to the mall?

Amid reports of increasingly violent and disturbing behavior by shoppers at traditional brick and mortar stores over the holiday weekend, sales statistics indicate more and more consumers eschewing what used to be a joyous and fun-filled tradition of post-turkey shopping for the comfort and simplicity of shopping online.   Little wonder.  Ominous, long lines of hyped up latte fueled customers desperate for a deal on just about anything make heading for the mall an unsettling prospect to many.  

Online retailers, on the other hand, offer an almost infinite selection of goods available at the push of a button, rain or shine.  You don’t have to play musical parking place in the mall parking lot and risk a fist fight before you even go inside.  Many online retailers offer free shipping so you don’t even have to take off your jammies.   These sales are reported to have increased over 25% on Friday and now represent nearly 20% of total sales with the numbers increasing every year.  It makes you wonder what will happen if this trend does indeed continue.  What would it look like if online sales represented 50% of total sales?  Think about how fundamentally that would change life in this consumer based society.

Many small towns have experienced something similar to this already in the “Walmart-ization” that has reduced many small community downtowns to a series of empty store fronts and dusty small businesses struggling desperately to survive.  It’s happened in my home town and only after a few years have the residents come to realize that they have paid an extremely steep price for minimum wage jobs with no benefits – downtown is two banks and two bars surrounded by dead and dying businesses and empty lots.  But what about bigger towns and cities? 

Downtown areas of cities like San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago and New York are unlikely to be impacted – there is too much going on and you can’t get a good meal online – at least not yet.  But I think of a city like San Jose, where I lived for 25 years.   A typically sprawling California city, San Jose has struggled for many years to try to revitalize its downtown with middling success.  Now as it sits nervously in the midst of Silicon Valley, it risks being destroyed by that which it cultivated and is most proud.   As much as a doubling of online sales will benefit Pay-Pal and EBay and Apple – local icons and powerhouse employers, it could devastate a downtown populated by old line furniture and shoe stores, boutiques and other small and vulnerable retailers.   It already has essentially closed down book and record stores all across the country.

What would it mean to a city to have a hollow core, devoid of any activity, abandoned much like Detroit is today?  How would it affect housing and development, taxes, city government, schools and public transit?  It could affect cities in profound and fundamental ways not seen since the development of electricity and the steam engine.   Is there any reason to think that this won’t happen, at least to some extent?   I wonder if anyone in government is thinking about this as they watch the stunningly stupid behavior of the hordes of bargain hunting shoppers. 

Would the decline of brick and mortar shopping serve to further isolate us from each other and exacerbate the already fraying fabric of unity that has always served this country well?   Now, with politicians seeming eager to emphasize and amplify our divisions and use them to partisan advantage, what will take the place of civilized interactions on bustling streets alive with commerce?  Are we going to devolve into a people who go from home to work and back again with time out to go to a mega-church on Sunday, who subsist by texting each other and updating our social media?  Will we eventually lose the power of speech?  Develop ultra-sensitive and specialized and versatile fingertips, enlarged ear openings to accommodate ever more sophisticated ear buds?   

And most importantly, will Al Gore still take the credit?

Let's hear it for The Roots...!

Rush Gasbag and the conservative media are all up in arms about the disrespect shown Michele Bachman when she recently appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s late night talk show.   She was serenaded onstage by The Roots, playing a song called Lyin’ Ass Bitch and, somewhat predictably, when she discovered the name of the song, she and her campaign went ballistic.  Her outrage was echoed and amplified by other conservative voices desperate for an opportunity to slam the Hollywood liberal elite, etc., etc.  However this outcry misses the point entirely.

The truly unfortunate thing for Ms Bachman is that the song isn’t true; she isn’t a lyin’ ass bitch.  The garbled nonsense that she routinely spews is what she really believes to be true!  She truly believes that carbon dioxide is harmless and that The Lion King is gay propaganda.   In her heart of hearts she actually thinks that eliminating the minimum wage would create jobs and that “hundreds of scientists – some Nobel Prize winners” believe in intelligent design.   And that’s OK; at least you know where she’s coming from…or, at least where one of her personalities is coming from.  When she criticizes Obama she swings hard and puts both cheeks into it; no apologies, no mercy, no regrets.   But at least she doesn’t out and out lie and put words into his mouth like Rick “I think that’s what he said” Perry and Mitt Romney, who have both released campaign commercials recently taking public Obama speeches, deconstructing them and intentionally mashing them up into something completely false and utterly misleading.  In the voice over both parties solemnly and harshly accuse the president, distorting his position in a blatant bullshit shoveling session intended to confuse already confused low-information republican primary voters.

It’s one thing for dim-bulb Perry to accuse Obama of being a socialist; I would bet he doesn’t even know what that means and he’s a dead man walking anyway.  Erstwhile front-runner Romney, however, is another matter.  He may dodge and dissemble, flip and flop, equivocate and spend more time lying in the weeds than a garter snake but he isn’t the dumb-ass that Perry is; he can’t use that as an excuse.   His disingenuous use of doctored Obama speeches is reprehensible and pathetic.  Moreover, the fake speeches he creates by doing so are used to highlight "terrible" Obama policies like holding rational and adult conversations with our “enemies” and not supporting the half-crazed notion of bombing Iran back to the stone-age.  Romney is trying so hard to prove he has enough sack for the job that he appears – to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of foreign policy and diplomacy – completely unsuitable for the job and the naive and uninformed former governor of Massachusetts that he is.  What a clown…

Compare these two knuckleheads with Ron Paul, a man whose foreign policy is so sane and sensible he doesn't seem to be in the same party as the rest of the General Jack D. Ripper-wannabes.    How is it that a candidate who doesn't like the two extremely questionable wars in which we’re currently involved and who doesn't want to get involved in any more comes to represent the fringe of a major American political party, an outcast?  He’s usually treated like a nut, like the addled uncle who lives in the attic and only comes out at Christmas time.  He may be proudly outside the mainstream of American domestic policy – waaay too libertarian, even for the tax and government hating elements of the party, who are fine with shutting down NPR but who might balk at eliminating the Federal Reserve or punching holes to drill for oil down at the car wash.   But he and Jon Huntsman are the only two I’d trust with the red telephone and even then I’d be nervous.

So where’s the explanation for Newt Gingrich?  Gingrich has crashed and burned more times than Orr in Catch-22.   That may be the answer – his dirty laundry has been hanging on the line for a long time now and people are used to seeing it, disturbing as it might be.   At the same time, a new story line seems to be developing, one that suggests that the republican debates are exposing the American public to new ideas and that will be a tipping point in the general election because everyone is so dissatisfied with what Obama has done that they want something – anything- different.  Unfortunately for him, Newt doesn't have any new ideas.  But it might explain why polls indicate that Obama loses a match up with a hypothetical republican – the proverbial, “anybody” – by a few points but is 6-10 points ahead of any of the current specific candidates, including Mitt Romney, lying swine and current leader of the pack. 

The simple fact is, people are pissed, disappointed, angry and afraid and that’s poison for any incumbent, period.   All this carnival midway crap – Obama’s a Kenyan, he’s a Muslim, he’s a socialist – is a distraction for the weak-minded on their way to the big tent for the main show.   The muddled republican race is so confusing that it’s no surprise that the terrified residents of the village who are hiding in the basement from the zombies understandably embrace any “good guys” who show up with the flashlight to lead them to safety.  But as they quickly discover, they’re not the answer to the fundamental problem and at the end of the day, creepy things still want to eat them.   Mitt and Perry running blatantly misleading and untrue campaign ads is no shock.   What else have they got?  They’re the real Lyin’ Ass Bitches…

Reflection on a Thanksgiving weekend…(what a cliché…)

For a couple hundred years, Thanksgiving has been celebrated in American as a time of reflection and gratitude for the things we have and appreciation of family and friends.  Crisp fall days, the smell of burning leaves and roasting turkey, cheering crowds at football games and tossing back a few cocktails – these are the traditions associated with the holiday.  It’s traditionally had an inherent selflessness in its focus on giving thanks and generosity, both material and spiritual.  As such it was characterized by quiet nobility compared to the more garish American holidays like New Year’s Eve, the 4^th of July, Halloween and Christmas.  And for a child anxiously waiting, it marked the beginning of the glorious Christmas season, as surely as the first snow fall and carols on the car radio. 

Today Thanksgiving Day has been hijacked by commercial interests who start to cram Christmas down our throats November first and who continue relentlessly and mercilessly right up to New Year’s Day, leaving Thanksgiving as just that day in late November when we super-size our routine gluttony and steal ourselves for the chaos, fist-fights and greed-fuel excess of Black Friday.  I am not clear who thought that was an appropriate name for a surge of herd-like shopping, parking lot-rage and desultory interaction with exhausted retail slaves bleary-eyed from starting work at 1:00 AM but it certainly seems to reflect the situation nicely.

I used to think it was funny; the eight hours of madness involved in preparing the Thanksgiving meal for the family, including relatives normally kept at arm’s-length during the rest of the year but who – due to the basic decency of my mother – ended up camped in our living room chowing down on chips and assorted celery and carrots sticks, swilling beers and watching the Detroit Lions lose to someone.   So much energy and angst went into making sure the stuffing wasn’t too gooey and the turkey wasn’t too dry, setting the big table with both leafs inserted and keeping everyone happy that my mother was practically on the verge of a nervous breakdown by the time everyone gathered to actually eat.  Then, in a flurry of clanking silverware and grunting noises, this huge feast was consumed, as if by locusts, in twenty minutes – an orgy of gravy and corn bread, green beans and mashed potatoes.   Throw in a few glasses of wine and the immediate aftermath looked as if everyone had been drugged; push back the chair, loosen the belt, belch discretely and slump in a daze, hoping for coffee and fearing the pie that was sure to follow.  This part of the ceremony is largely unchanged.

What’s different now is, that instead of gathering around the fireplace after dinner for some stilted conversation and shared lethargy, we now have the spectacle of people leaving the Thanksgiving table, grabbing the tent from the garage and heading down to wait overnight in line at Best Buy to get a crack at a $200 flat screen.  I will admit that this is motivated, not simply by greed, but also by our tenuous economic circumstances; almost everyone can relate to saving a few bucks.  But the enthusiasm and excitement exhibited by those queuing up in front of Target makes me think there’s more going on here than the intrepid hunter / gatherer going out into the cold to provide for his family.  No, this is also clear evidence of the toxin of consumerism coursing through our collective veins – the 21^st century striving for an American Dream that has gradually become more and more difficult to achieve and which is beginning to be seen in the misty distance of memory more than in the reality of today.

These cheap consumer goods allow the illusion to persist a bit longer, enabled by the exploitation of workers who are far from America but who also strive for a dream of their own – who work for dollars a day in order to have an indoor toilet.  That’s to be expected and is admirable.  But when you have fistfights over two dollar waffle irons and people pepper-spraying line jumpers to get a deal on an X-Box the Thanksgiving Holiday has morphed into something surreal and dirty and noxious.   

The hyper-consumerism that fuels this weird behavior is a symptom of both an inevitable evolution towards a global economy and the dangers inherent in unfettered capitalism run amok.  Capitalism and democracy have been joined at the hip since WWII and in some sense continue to be thought of as an inevitable yin and yang.  This notion underlies – and undermines - contemporary American foreign policy.  The greed that not so obviously underlies it is the more destructive component – the poison in the system that leads an enormous and disheartening percentage of citizens to abandon the idea of us all being in this thing together for a self-centeredness that threatens to rend the fabric of the American psyche into pieces.  

If this is the inevitable result of the global economy, the wealthiest citizens watching in dismay as the rabble fights for the last scraps of leftovers, I think I want a turkey leg and a blanket and a quiet place to lie down.   Wake me up in January...

" There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible, and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge."

In a completely cynical play to the lowest common denominator in the republican party – AKA, the tea party – Mitt “The Twit” Romney is practically giving himself a hernia blasting the Newt-ster for his reasonable and somewhat thoughtful take on the immigration issue during the last debate.   This pitiful attempt to placate the mouth-breathers is a perfect illustration of the systemic dysfunction in the modern republican party and – I am sure – fills the Obama campaign with joy and gives them something for which to be thankful today.  The sight of Mitt feverishly trying to get both feet in his mouth is giblet gravy to the democrats anxious for anything that will turn the dialogue to what’s wrong with Obama’s opponents from what’s wrong with him.   The fact that Gingrich has a position which stops short of rounding up immigrants, tattooing them and shipping them out of the country in box cars makes him the subject of scorn and derision amongst the republican opinion makers, pseudo-intelligencia, and the other candidates.  

That knuckleheads like Bachman, Cain and Santorum are fixated on how big a fence to build across the US / Mexican border is no big surprise; they don’t have three sensible ideas between them.  But Mitt is counting on being seen as a moderate, electable reactionary and not some filthy unwashed down-in-the-dirt reactionary like them.   I guess he figures it worked when he beat Rick “Mexico is where again?” Perry over the head with his one sensible position on immigration so why not hammer away at Newt as well.  It shows how much of an original thinker Mitt is, as well as what a calculating hypocrite he is at the same time.   One of the many positions he has flipped-flopped on is his take on immigration and, more specifically, what to do about the millions of illegal immigrants already here.  Back before the drugs kicked in, he thought some kind of path to permanent residency, if not full citizenship was probably the answer.  Now he treats that idea as if it’s global warming, evolution or reasoned negotiations with other sovereign states or any of the other half-baked , crazy ideas that liberals float around out there.   

In the republican primary you can’t go too far wrong pandering to the so-called base and Mitt can pander with the best of them.  Say what you want about Bachman, Ron Paul, and Santorum: they might be crazy but at least they have convictions, the expression of which proves they’re crazy.  And malapropisms aside, Perry and Cain are just flat out meatheads so much of what they say can be forgiven as garbled gibberish that represents their best efforts at expressing themselves.  But Romney doesn’t really strongly believe anything apparently.  Well, maybe he strongly believes that it would be a cool thing to be president.  But I am convinced that if you held his feet to the fire he couldn’t give you an answer that would make you sleep soundly at night. 

His commander-in-chief chops are a bit suspect as well.  During the debate he continued his rope-a-dope strategy, staying on the sidelines lest he venture too far out onto the skinny branches and fall and hurt himself.   He’s smart enough to know what he doesn’t know, unlike Herman Cain, who is so out of his depth it’s almost embarrassing.   He spent the evening deferring to Huntsman, Santorum and Bachman, who have actual foreign policy experience, and Ron Paul, who also knows what he’s talking about.  He did know enough to refute Rick Perry’s ridiculous notion of a “no fly” zone in Syria, although the idea of intervention there was tossed around as if it were really an option – strictly a play to show how tough he wants to be in Middle East matters and a blatant suck-up to Israel.  But criticizing Obama for not doing what military commanders wanted him to do was an unsettling parallel with past foreign adventures that ended badly and Huntsman calling him out on it was a highlight.

Poor Mitt; he still is desperately trying to prove his dick is big enough for the job and that being a Mormon doesn’t mean he believes in impending alien space craft visits or that he will start passing out the rat poison jello shots the first time a comet comes around.  The surge in support for Newt represents the first real challenge to his front runner status and obviously makes him nervous.  Newt’s boisterous and indignant certainty about everything is in stark contrast to Mitt’s strategy of playing it safe and letting his opponents take turns hoisting themselves on their own ill-advised blather.  How he handles this home stretch leading up to Iowa will reveal a lot about the race to the finish next November.  But regardless, I suspect that Barack is enjoying his turkey today in a way he might not have envisioned a few short weeks ago.  Enjoy the sweet potato pie, Mr. President…

Red Herring caviar is best when served on white bread...but it still stinks...

Bitch McConnell is a funny guy.  Of course, he doesn’t intend to be but inadvertent comedy is no less funny than a polished stand up routine.  And I have to give him credit for having absolutely no shame.  It takes a certain kind of balls to stand up on the floor of the senate, as the man who publicly proclaimed his number one legislative goal in 2008 to be the defeat of Obama in 2012, and accuse Obama of wanting the Super Red Herring Committee to fail – and for partisan reasons.  Wow… that devious bastard!  How dare he?!?!   Never mind that if we simply let the Bush tax cuts expire and get the hell out of Afghanistan and Iraq there would be no deficit.  But those things are near and dear to your heart, right, Bitch?  So there really is no other option than to lop a few hundred billion from discretionary spending programs, barricade ourselves in our houses and hope the bad guys don’t find the gasoline, eh?   But the whole idea of Obama hoping the Red Herring Committee fails gives you and the raggedy-ass pack of geniuses running against him a huge opportunity to come up with a solution all by your little selves so why don’t you just see this as the chance of a life time and trot out your best ideas and let your freak flag fly?  Oh, that’s right – after cutting taxes for rich people and corporations you guys are out of ideas, huh?  Well, if anything changes, let us know.

 Twit Romney is equally funny and he did a routine in New Hampshire yesterday that was a classic. 

Describing Obama’s lack of engagement in the dealings of the Super Red Herring Committee – a congressional committee specifically designed to work together as a bi-partisan, bi-cameral group of problem solving brainiacs sequestered and empowered to hammer together a solution to this vexing but pointless “problem” without any interference from the White House – Twit loudly proclaimed this to be “another failure of leadership” on his part.   Harsh words from a man with no spine, who can’t decide where he stands on any significant issue other than that rich guys are cool.  I think the last original idea Twit had was when he was on his Mormon mission in France and decided to stop telling the locals that drinking wine was sinful.  You’d think a guy who lost the republican nomination in 2008 largely because McCain lied about his positions over and over again would be less inclined to sling bullshit nonsense around quite so liberally.  But it is politics…

And I keep coming back to Paul Krugman’s quote about Newt Gingrich on Sunday; that he is a stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.   If I was on the republican national committee I think I would rent one of those buildings on Times Square and put that up in big neon letters 5 stories high – assuming they actually want to win, that is.  I’m not sure they do.  There is a line of thinking that goes something like, “the economy is a complete mess, everyone says we need to cut to the bone, the world is going to suck until at least 2020 so why fuck up our reputations being president and being responsible for it.  Better to lay back and throw things in the spokes for a few years so that when we finally do win we can be hailed as the triumphant conquering emperors we’re destined to be.”  

Or something like that…Newt has a reputation for being a smart guy.  This is a profoundly incorrect notion but kind of an urban legend that he has been doing his best to prove or disprove lately, depending on your point of view.  But his hilariously wrongheaded idea that child labor laws are stupid and should be repealed, particularly in poor neighborhoods, (translation; black / brown), so that poor 13 years olds can go to work for rich smart guys, (like himself, left unsaid but clearly intimated), and learn first- hand what exploitation feels like by picking up dog shit in the local park.  Sheesh, Newt; you’re such a preposterously stupid idiot.

But I am saving the best for last; the latest blast of unapologetic racism from Rush Blowhard in response to the knuckle-dragging inbred pea-brains at a NASCAR event lustily booing Michele Obama and Jill Biden and, tangentially, the military family chosen to be honored as a symbol of all of our troops in service.  The fat drug addict defends the booing as coming from intelligent and sensitive types who resent her wanting people to eat healthy food and hate her husband because…well, because he’s black primarily.  Clearly Rush resents the whole healthy food imperative – he’s a blob-like flatulent fat ass and big mouth publicity whore who might as well put on a KKK hood and wear it when he tries to sneak into his doctor’s office for more “diet” pills and other exotic pharmaceuticals.  He called her uppity – he might as well call her a nigger and I am sure that’s how the idiot thinks of her and her husband.  Normally I just laugh at him but this is kind of beyond the pale and if I was Rush I think I would stay out of certain parts of Miami or he may end up laying in a pool of his own vomit with David Carruso staring balefully down at him over the top of his ridiculous aviator sun glasses.  

It must make the 21^st century republicans proud to have these kinds of traitors as their public face – Bitch and Rush are an embarrassment to the body politic.  Gingrich and Twit Romney are a couple of clowns but they aren’t toxically treasonous like these guys are.   The two of them should thank their lucky stars they live in the country they routinely betray…

Turkey leg, anyone...? Thank you, Super Committee, for our blessings this year...Now go home!.

It’s Thanksgiving week and so the clock is ticking down, leaving little time for the Justice League of America to…wait, I mean, the Super Committee, to craft a miraculous solution to the issue of the ongoing budget deficit, thus causing the earth to be torn asunder…er… I mean causing automatic across the board cuts to go into effect, (in over a year), and raising a major shit-storm from sea to shining sea.  Media types and the punditocracy are particularly worked up about this and will likely be frothing at the mouth and having convulsions by Friday of this week. 

                                        

Like the trumped up issue of the debt ceiling itself this summer, this is a solution searching desperately for a problem.  Once John Boner was unable to convince his unruly army of god-fearing anti-tax zealots that the deal he had coerced out of Obama was more than they could have reasonable hoped for, the fix was in and no semi-imaginary Super Committee of republicans and democrats was every going to be able to bridge the gaping crevasse separating them.  This was a politically convenient fiction providing temporary cover for both sides while the republicans tried in vain to winnow the ridiculous herd of candidates and Obama and the democrats feverishly tried to figure out how to get people to like them. 

Regardless of the public angst, this is another non-issue and only serves to distract people from far more important things, like ending the wars, cutting the defense budget, and getting money out of politics.   I know; that ship has largely sailed and it may be naïve.   But there was an article on The Huffington Post recently about how 15 freshmen members of the house have raked in millions of dollars this year from corporations allowed to be treated like people and from shadowy PAC’s  who don’t answer to anyone headed by whores like Eric Cantor running around the country doing essentially nothing but collecting contributions to his PAC and promising sleeve jobs to anyone giving him $500 buck.  Hey, Eric, if you just let the Bush tax cuts expire the deficit disappears in 5 years. 

This brings me back to Newt, the historian.  In typical Newtonian over-the-top fashion, he blasted Obama at the same time he was not so subtly blowing his own horn, spouting  off that, rather than being a liability as some suggest, his intimate knowledge of Washington would be valuable because “we tried amateur ignorance and it hasn’t worked out too well”, or words to that effect.   Gingrich’s “amateur ignorance” comment is particularly ironic as he both promotes his working knowledge of how Washington functions at the same time as he touts his outsider credentials, (code for his being smarter than everyone else in the district), and then insists that he has never been a lobbyist.   The inconsistency of these positions doesn’t seem to bother him and the short term memory loss of republican primary voters facilitates this nicely.   But anyone paying attention knows that this guy is for sale to the highest bidder and that’s not a particularly attractive quality in a president.  Even Peggy Noonan called him out this morning.

George Will scoffed at the notion that Newt was hired by anyone to be a historian, much less by Freddie Mac, who needs the puffed up pseudo-academic blather of an out-of-work historian like a fish needs a bicycle.  It is kind of funny to hear Will accuse Newt Gingrich – or anyone – of “absurd rhetorical grandiosity”.  This from a man who defines semantic masturbation and loves the sound of his own voice more than anyone in modern political life.   But it is telling.  For Gingrich, when the majority of the republican punditry turns on you, you have a problem, whether you are the flavor of the month or not. 

Mitt  Romney, the one candidate who is unapologetically all about the Benjamins,  continued to play rope-a-dope on the issues while 6 of his rivals sat around a table singing kum ba yah, each trying to out-emote the others while sharing their personal relationship with Jesus.  It’s not entirely clear why this is so important in a secular country but they all seem to feel it is.  Romney is a guy who looks more and more as if he has George Bush syndrome – he wants like hell to be president but doesn’t seem to have a clue why or what he would do if he were actually elected.  Maybe just getting the nomination would give he enough of a woody that he wouldn’t have to actually win to get off.   But when you come down to it, he’s a guy who has made a living for over 25 years screwing people in the name of improving efficiency and productivity, sort of like Stalin did.  You know, dig more coal or no gruel for you.  Bain Capital probably took away more jobs in its normal course of business than Mitt every “created” as governor of Massachusetts.  That’s what they do.  That’s what they are good at.  He is an uber capitalist Randian who is running at the behest of and with the permission of big business interests because he’s one of them. 

I’d like to suggest to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, if they’re awake, and to you too, Barack; stop kissing the asses of the party that wants nothing more than to see you fail.  Tell them to suck on it when they want to talk about the deficit, and go to work overturning the Citizens United decision; the most damaging Supreme Court decision of the last 50 years.  That would be doing something.

Triturus vulgaris…or Newt’s just another slimy amphibian.

Interesting that the scientific name for the common newt contains the species designation, “vulgaris”, as newly designated front runner Newt Gingrich has a well deserved reputation as a back-bench bomb thrower prone to overheated and ill-advised partisan rhetoric that often seems to be more of a self-serving attempt to show off his professorial vocabulary and penchant for clever analogies than anything else.   Barely concealed contempt for his political enemies and a tendency towards bloviation characterizes much of what Gingrich spews and the rest is a virtual case study in verbal gymnastics intended to obfuscate what he said last week or last month or last year. 

Yesterday it was widely publicized that he had essentially been on the payroll of the much reviled and tea party-favored punching bag Freddie Mac for years, earning upwards of 1.5 million dollars in his post-speaker role as a lobbyist or, as he prefers, an historian.  Of course this begs the question, why on earth would Freddie Mac need an historian.  It is an agency that had grown from a useful and, some would say, necessary part of the government’s attempt to foist the American dream of home ownership on the public, to become an obscenely bloated bureaucracy kneeling at the public trough and acting for all the world as if the banquet was never ending and no one would ever dream of closing the buffet. 

No, clearly the recently departed speaker of the house, who ignominiously resigned after 4 long years of spectacularly failed leadership - repeatedly hitting on 17 - was selling access and influence to the highest bidder, small government principles be damned.  Still, his attempt at an explanation was revealing in itself; he was advising Freddie Mac on their “strategies” for dealing with congress.  This explanation is akin to putting too much mustard on the ham sandwich; the strategies thus offered and accepted only led to one of the largest financial collapses in history and a sucking wound that continues to fester in the body politic unhealed and bleeding money.   Nice work, Dr. History. 

This is only the most recent in a series of spectacular blunders, position changes and inconsistencies that are glaring to anyone interested in examining the record but which republican sheep…uh, I mean lemmings…er, I mean primary voters apparently are willing to ignore.  Or they don’t remember.  Or they can’t follow.  

For someone who claims to worship the original intent of the founders – as seems to be de rigure for all the candidates sucking up to the tea party – the Newt-ster has some weird notions about the constitution.   In trying to prove what a tough little amphibian he is, he has said he would ignore the constitution and the Supreme Court when it came to matters of national security, a particularly chilling glimpse of the barely concealed fascism and the megalomania that underlies much of his public persona. 

His insistence on flaunting his academic credentials and demeaning adversaries makes it hard to reconcile the religiosity that he and his wife exhibit in public proclamations and in the book they’ve produced, Rediscovering God in America.  His interpretation of the founding fathers’ intentions in the constitution - their insistence on the separation of church and state – flies in the face of the prevailing republican dogma of “original intent”, insisting that, rather than a government functioning outside of religious parameters, the founders wanted us all to gather in the town square and praise god together like one big happy family on bended knees. 

Of course, this religiosity seems to have eluded him in the romantic arena; the lord apparently had a hard time directing Newt to that one correct woman so he’s had to work his way through three. 

His close relations with god, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have also failed to staunch the chubby little would be dictator’s good old boy Georgia racism either.   He sounds like he’d roll back key provisions of the voting rights act so that people would have to stand on one leg and recite the declaration of independence backwards in order to vote.  He was recently heard sniping at Obama for various things using subtly charged language, the meaning of which might elude his dimmer constituents but which was perfectly clear to anyone paying attention. 

My guess would be that the desperate republican voters will take a sip of Newt, swish him around for a short while and then spit him out faster than a marijuana brownie.  He is a pompous, arrogant pipsqueak with a Napoleon complex who fancies himself the smartest guy in the room, lives high on the hog with his trophy wife and is questionably popular among his own party power brokers.  Yeah, they want to win. But they may be thinking twice about this guy being their ticket to the Oval office.  John Boner in particular may be sitting up at night drinking at the prospect of the man whose downfall and removal he orchestrated in 1998 being the one calling him in for conferences around the big fireplace at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave; of having to deal on a daily basis with a man obsessed with the infidelity of Clinton only to leave his dying wife in her cancer ward for the woman with whom he had been having an affair.   There is an element of repugnant hypocrisy that I think will turn off all but the most willfully ignorant voters so we need to prepare ourselves for the rise of the next in line, be it Rick Santorum or Gary Snider or the improbable Buddy Roemer.   It just won’t be Newt’s moment much longer…and really; would we respect ourselves if we elected a guy named Newt?

"Self reliance means, if anyone will not work, neither should he eat." M. Bachman

It appears there are two currents in play when looking at the republican presidential candidates; the “electability” contingent, who favor Mitt Romney, even as he attracts disdain and contempt from many of the party’s king-makers, and those who, in a determined fury of self destruction, have doubled down on crazy again after being seduced, first by Michele Bachman, then Rick “Is that leather thing the saddle?” Perry and most recently by Herman “Hey, nice tits” Cain.  Now after another bracing debate, overflowing with empty rhetorical flourishes and idiotic policy statements, it appears that Newt Gingrich is on deck and ready for his turn in the spotlight. 

Preparing for the next debate, which will focus on foreign policy, Mitt Romney spent some time this week sharpening his pencil and trying to prove how big his dick is, lambasting Obama for molly-coddling Iran and thus betraying our only friend in the region, Israel.  Mitt then revealed his preferred policy towards Iran, which was composed of “tougher sanctions” - in concert with allies if possible but unilateral if necessary - and parking an aircraft carrier in the Red Sea or Eastern Mediterranean.  Bold talk, for sure.  And we all know that Ahmandinejad is a total push over for saber rattling, posturing and empty threats so that just might work.  But since our exports to Iran in 2011 have a year-to-date value of 167 million dollars and our imports $700,000, the unilateral sanctions thing may not be that scary.  As a matter of fact, ironically our chief imports from Iran are fruits and nuts and since we seem to have a current surplus, I am thinking these would not be missed.

Maybe he’s thinking if we cut them off from the goods we are shipping to them, they’ll come around to our way of thinking and stop trying to build those nasty nukes in which they seem so interested.  Possibly…but; U.S. exports to Iran — including brassieres, bull semen, cosmetics and possibly even weapons — grew more than tenfold during President Bush's years in office even as he accused Iran of nuclear ambitions and helping terrorists. America sent more cigarettes to Iran, at least $158 million worth under Bush, than any other products.  (Current TV)

Hmmmm…brassieres, bull semen and cigarettes…I can see Ahmandinejad and his merry band of mullahs sitting around the conference table in a stinking, smoke-filled room debating whether or not nicely filled out burkas and Marlboros are worth more than developing the bomb.   Not sure we can make that work, Mitt.   You know what pussies the Frenchies are with those sissy god damn Gauloises.  And lingerie – I mean they would be all over that too.  No, I’ve always thought that the best way to make peace is to give everyone the chance to buy over-priced blue jeans and snowmobiles so the whole “tougher sanctions” thing may be an illusion.

Of course starting wars is something the republicans seem to favor and be good at; not as good at finishing them for some reason though.   George the Elder and George the Lesser both thought arming Iran to the teeth was a swell idea in the past, even while calling them evil swine and making weird faces at them.   Now running for office against a president who has decided a little calm and thoughtful conversation would be a welcome alternative, Romney and the rest of these clowns – and Santorum in particular – are relentlessly taking shots at him for being a softy and a bleeding heart, weak and ineffective and a sissy bitch.  You’d think ten years of grim death and horror in Iraq would resonate with these people but instead we get another dick measuring contest, with all of them trying to out-tough the other until it sounds like November 15, 2012 will be fucking doomsday and make Bachman happy after all. 

The state of the world and the Mid-East in particular has rarely been more complex; revolution roils the entire region leaving countries with virtually no tradition of democracy struggling to find their footing and move forward out of the 16^th century and into the 21^st in the course of 6 months.  Israel meanwhile continues to do its damnedest to undermine any peaceful resolution of the Palestinian issue with willy-nilly settlement construction and a general belligerence as their prevailing diplomatic posture.  And our newly liberated vassal state of Iraq will doubtlessly struggle to hold together any semblance of unity after ten years of bitter occupation preceded by a thousand years of tribal hatred.  Oh, and then there’s China…

Know-it-all chumps like Romney haven’t gotten their hair mussed up doing anything remotely as complicated and dangerous as directing US foreign policy and yet they stand in front of adoring but ignorant crowds mouthing platitudes and blather, looking for all the world as if they could solve everything if we’ll just give them a chance and get rid of that awful, awful negro. 

Santorum wants to start bombing Iran his first day in office.  Bachman is waiting for Jesus to come back so she doesn’t give a shit what happens.  Gingrich is half as smart as he appears to think he is but is a blowhard at heart and would spend the entire four years trying to get someone to return his phone calls.  Perry is a dumb ass who thinks Texas is already a country because they play country music.  The only one who makes any sense is Ron Paul but he also wants the government to be reduced to a bunch of guys who get together for drinks a couple times a year and play rock, paper, and scissors to decide who’s in charge. 

The next debate will be interesting only in so far as it will reveal who is most naïve about our place in the world and not coincidentally, least qualified to lead us there.  Stay tuned and make sure your helmet is strapped on tight.

Panic in Detroit or another day; another debate debacle...

I can’t figure out why the republican party continues to embarrass itself through the never-ending series of candidates’ debates that are ending up as the political equivalent of self immolation and, in case they missed it, that usually ends badly.  Rick “Wait…uh…” Perry’s inability to back up his tough talk about cutting entire government departments by naming those he’s targeting may have finally – mercifully – ended his campaign in the same dense fog that seems to be between his ears.  You could hear the sound of potential campaign donors muttering, “Oh fuck…” and tearing up their checks before he finally was able to wander off the stage.   He later gave a statement that was heroically understated; “I may not be the slickest candidate…”  If by that he means he’s the dumbest candidate ever than he deserves some credit for candor, if nothing else. 

The continuing spectacle of Herman Cain rushing out of the room trying to pull his pants up isn’t helping to sway more independent voters, who hold the key to the 2012 election.  His brain dead supporters can be admired for their loyalty – if not for their intelligence – but 25% of the republican primary voters aren’t nearly enough to carry the day if he wins the nomination and every thinking person can see that.  Obama’s advisors are practically volunteering to go door-to-door for the guy, hoping he’ll be the nominee.  Poor Herman; every time he opens his mouth now people hear him like 13 year old boys; “Hee hee…He said “stiff” penalty…hee hee”.

There has been a surge of support lately for Newt Gingrich but his “sell by” date was 1998 and you get a sense that he’d just as soon be doing something else than trying to distinguish himself from Banana and the Bunch in these disjointed and dizzying debates.   Ironically he has benefitted from the dimwittedness of the aforementioned Perry and the sausage- pizza-left-under-the-couch stench around Cain but is that enough to resonate with swing voters who yesterday seemed to show signs of being sick and tired of partisan horseshit and watching the two parties slap fight over every issue?  Probably not.  Newt is anything but post-partisan and I can’t see him striding in triumph to the nomination, at least not on this planet.

The others are irrelevant for the moment at least.  Santorum and Bachman are nuts, each in their own inimitable ways.  She thinks that the way to solving the problem of inadequate revenue being available for us to pay for everything we want is to make sure that the 47% of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes have to throw in “two Happy Meals worth” of contributions to the national treasury.  This is an idea striking only in that is so pointless and insipid.  Let’s assume that’s 40 million tax payers at 10 bucks each – you get 400 million, not enough to buy on F-35 fighter plane.  Good thinking though Michele – outside the box.  Now go home.

Santorum is the hard working but angry catholic boy, a type with whom we are all too familiar.  He's probably in some Motel 6 in Dubuque right now pissed off that the senate judiciary committee voted to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and working on a stump speech vilifying queers for wanting to destroy the sanctity of marriage and cause the end of life as we know it.  Of course this is a guy who wants to nuke Iran too so it’s a little bit hard to take him seriously and, as he’s finding out, almost no one does.

Ron Paul is 75 and could easily get elected as National Grandfather, assuming he can tell a good story, but he’s going through the motions for the sake of exposing his ideas to the public, not an altogether irrational thing and what else does he have to do, really, except maybe talk to Rand about where polar bears come from.   Ron seems to understand fundamentally that he far outside the mainstream of national political thought; Rand does not.  It’s a teaching moment. 

And finally there is poor Jon Huntsman, who could probably be in line behind you buying groceries and neither you nor anyone else would know who the hell he is and for some reason – probably because he is not a crazy asshole – he can’t get any traction.  Two words for you, Jon – third party.

In a final attempt to ignite the gasoline in which they’ve soaked themselves, republican congressional leaders have made a laughable attempt at tarnishing Obama’s leadership abilities by citing his distance from the “Super-Committee’s” deliberations, only serving to highlight their own selfish and destructive stance and reinforce the growing perception by the public that these guys are a bunch of conscious-less sluts serving only those rich enough to pay top dollar for their services.  Not to put too fine a point on it, fellas, but most whores don’t live happily ever after either.   As they watch the Faux News highlights of the debates these guys are probably hitting the gin over Frank Sinatra singing It Was a Very Good Year and wishing they could start over from the 2010 mid-terms. 

Even front running Mitt Romney has problems stemming from his constant but ill-advised attempt to portray himself as a tough guy.  Ruben Navarette, a well spoken conservative national columnist and influential voice in the Latino community, wrote a syndicated piece recently saying that Romney is essentially dead to Latinos for coming off like a Jan Brewer wanna-be on immigration and generally acting like a hypocritical dick.  If you can’t attract some Latino votes in this country anymore, you’re dead on arrival. 

So it’s no surprise given this sad-sack group of candidates that Karl Rove and other influential republicans are concentrating their efforts of exploiting the Citizens United ruling and pumping zillions of dollars into super PACs, concentrating on buying votes and propaganda rather than supporting any one these donkeys.  Of course they’ll eventually pick one…and that makes me laugh out loud…

Election score card for November 2011...

Every day seems to bring a new story about how cities, states and individuals are feeling the effects of policies either put in place by republican governments or trumpeted by the republican candidates for president.   Election night is a good time to reflect on the impact of these policies after having them in place – for the most part – since the 2010 mid-term elections just one year ago…

                                                                                     

·         A small town in middle America has had to resort to taking out street lights to save money and close a 5 million dollar budget shortfall.   Variations on this theme are everywhere across the country.  Parks are closing, police departments are being consolidated, libraries are closed as much as they’re open, class sizes balloon and millions of college students – unable to get financial aid any more – are slammed with potentially crushing debt in order to complete their education at the same time as classes are cut and their job prospects suck.

·         The tough immigration law in Alabama has had the effect of scaring the hell out of farm workers who normally line up to work the sweet potato harvest but who now have left the crops to rot in the fields rather than risk the heavy handed “stop & frisk” law enforcement enabled by the new law. 

·         As a result of deep cuts in revenues, government employment is at an historic low, leading to sever cut backs in services as well as playing hell with local economies, as private employers continue to wait before hiring. Republican orthodoxy aside, government workers go to the super market and the shoe store and the Chevy dealer and buy things.  Sure, maybe we don't need multiple deputy sub-committee vice chairmen regulating the county fair pig races.  But government jobs are actual jobs and support actual families.

·         Mississippi is attempting to pass a law that says that “person-hood” begins at the very moment of conception, calling into question all manner of birth control methods in addition to curtailing a woman’s control over her own body and potentially criminalizing 14 year old boys jerking off in the upstairs bathroom.  Or is it just the female zygotes that are in peril?  Hey, I have an idea; why don’t you idiots figure out a way to get your state off the bottom of the list of minimum wage jobs and people on food stamps instead of getting yourselves all worked up about zygotes?

·         Governor Jan “Adolph” Brewer of Arizona, apparently not content with Arizona republicans controlling both house of the legislature, pulls a down and dirty Nixonian hit on an independent head of the redistricting commission, appointed by the legislature, when her and some of her would be Black Shirts objected to the drawing of districts seeming to favor Latinos.  Now she has the Justice Department checking under her desk and going through her dumpsters.  Her explanation was a fine example of someone caught red handed doing something both stupid and borderline illegal; “Well she acted, uh, inappropriately. Well it was very, pretty much obvious that she in communications, and doing things, uh, not in the public, and the people of Arizona deserve that...", at which point she was interrupted by a sympathetic radio host who was probably embarrassed for her. 

·         Ohio voters soundly rejected Governor John Kasich’s pet union -busting and probably unconstitutional bid to prohibit government workers access to collective bargaining and to make them the scapegoats for economic problems brought about largely by policies championed by republicans at the national level.   John, you may want to contact Faux News about getting your old job back.

·         A respected republican-appointed and well known conservative judge in the District of Columbia refused to rule unconstitutional a major component of Obama’s health care reform legislation – the public mandate – handing Obama a victory as the US Supreme Court gets ready to hear a case of its own on a similar issue.  The ruling by Judge Lawrence Silberman – apparently a close confidant of Clarence “Mumbles” Thomas – is expected to be influential to the thinking of the Supremes as they consider a similar case.

·         In a surreal “Through the Looking Glass” moment today, Bitch McConnell accused the democrats on the so-called Super Committee of wanting it to fail, citing as evidence comments made by Chuck Schumer, who observed – quite justifiably – that the committee will probably fail because republicans refuse to consider any new taxes.  McConnell, probably the single most hyper-partisan human being to ever walk the planet and a sour-faced prat, accused Schumer of being partisan and the democrats in general of wanting the committee to fail.  Whoa…pot, kettle, black there, Bitch.  How’s that feel?  

·         Herman “Touch that right there, honey” Cain continues to deny – not just groping or harassing any women – but of not remembering a dang thing about the women, the situation, the groping, their names, their bra size…wait, strike that.  Anyway, the point is, Herman has shifted his blame from the politically questionable target of Rick “Where’d he touch her again?” Perry to unnamed yet well known “liberals” - those evil bastards responsible for most of what is wrong in America today.  I am sure he’s grateful to have Rush Windbag in his corner helping him as well.  The fat-assed drug addict is busy these days blustering about Cain’s latest accuser and, more specifically, her son, who he compared to nazi brownshirts for encouraging his mom to go public.  Nice, Douchbag.   Pick on a 13 year old defending his mom. ..what a righteous and admirable tough guy you are…dick.

Actually tonight had a whiff of republican desperation and despair as the election result rolled in.  As I was writing this it was declared that Mississippi voters had wisely declined to consider unfertilized eggs to be people.   Lucky for them; their state is too broke to pay their unemployment as they wait for a friendly sperm to swim by.   No, today for the first time in a long while, the net/net of the news didn’t make me want to throw anything at the TV or hurl my lap top out of my car window.  I’ll count that as a win.

Standin' Around Crying...

Herman Cain once again has demonstrated you can never go wrong blaming your problems on the media, as he called out “dishonest” and “nitpicky” members of the media for making him try to explain his virtual ass-grabbing while he was head of the National Restaurant Association.  He had about as much luck successfully doing so as he has had trying to explain why he didn’t know China has nuclear weapons or how the 9-9-9 plan will make taxes fairer for everyone.  The man is a colossal meathead, vacuous and willfully ignorant on the issues but capable of the occasional rhetorical flourish and skilled at giving the tea party crowds what they want to hear, whether it makes any sense or not.  His hand-holding date with his pal, Newt Gingrich the other night gave him an opportunity to spread this swill to a large audience – ironically right in Rick “Hey, he’s a black guy” Perry’s back yard in Houston – out tea-partying Rick to his face, both of them pissing in his corral while debating who was more likely to slash social programs with the most cold-blooded vigor.

That Cain can get a standing ovation from a tea party crowd is not so surprising; what is surreal and very much a Chauncey Gardiner moment was his invocation of Ronald Reagan and his notion of American as that “great city on a hill” at the end of the debate, to stomping cheers and whoops from the mostly white crowd, apparently forgetting a few details like Reagan’s record of relentlessly increasing government spending like there was no tomorrow, to help dig the country out of the oil embargo recession that got him elected. 

Neither of them apparently grasps the irony of complaining about members of the media who are dishonest, as the stiff-haired cheerleaders of Faux News regularly distort and dissemble on their behalf and that of the other brain damaged dwarves on the campaign trail.  I guess it's just a matter of telling the right lies, right Herman?

In a rare exhibition of political guts, Jon Huntsman called Herman out for his garbled explanations and denials, telling him to get his dirty laundry out, sort the colors from the whites and get it cleaned before the filth brings all of the candidates down.

Ron Paul, as is his wont, called a spade a spade, saying the whole thing is blown out of proportion and, more importantly, completely misses the point and obscures the obvious fact of Cain’s lack of basic competence and qualification for the job for which he is running and currently the leading candidate.  

But now today when a fourth woman has come forward – publicly – it looks less and less likely that blaming the media, denying any wrong doing and, finally, refusing to discuss it, will be the most successful long term strategy, no matter how much love you keep getting from the far right. 

I agree with Ron Paul; it is a distraction.  I wish someone would ask Cain for his opinion on the fact that one out of a hundred Americans is in jail.  Or how he reconciles John Boner standing straight faced and saying there’s no money to try to provide jobs or aid to the states for education and cops but plenty of money for the Pentagon – more than they really want - and massive tax cuts for the biggest and richest corporations and the wealthy.

 I’d like to ask him how he feels about the republicans’ systematic attempt to disenfranchise whole blocks of voters to try to limit the votes they think will go against them and steal the 2012 election like some two bit dictator in a banana republic.  And speaking of two bit dictators, how would he handle Hugo Chavez, leader of the most hostile country in the hemisphere but one which provides the US with about the same amount of oil as Saudi Arabia.

The thing is, he’s been asked questions like that and answered them sounding like what he is; a personable man who is completely out of his depth and hasn’t a clue really about most anything.

His continuing appeal to the far right of the republican party is a true mystery but maybe it’s the same reason America embraced The Cosby Show; here is a non-threatening black guy who smiles a lot and makes them laugh and feel comfortable.  It’s like it’s a relief that he’s not sporting a big fro and he’s not pissed off at them for being white.  But seriously; president?  First Bachman, then Perry, now Cain...who’s next?  Carrot Top...?  Somewhere Jon Huntsman is smiling...