In Case You Missed It, Colbert Recaps the Iowa Caucus

First, Romney's victory speech as he was moved by the moment, "but Rick Santorum proves that a man with a vision, a willingness to work hard and a laser-like homophobia can make a mark":

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Indecision 2012 - Iowa Caucus - Mitt Romney's Victory Speech & Rick Santorum's Coup
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Then, what goes around comes around, but "Romney denies coordinating with Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney super PAC responsible for a barrage of negative ads against Newt Gingrich":

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Indecision 2012 - Iowa Caucus - Not Mitt Romney's Super PAC
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

And for a little context regarding SuperPACs and to understand the irony of Newt's destruction, read The New York Times, Newt’s Shop of Horrors, which noted that:

"There must be a Greek tragedy, a Shakespeare play or a 'Daily Show' parody to explain the exquisite irony of Newt Gingrich being destroyed by the very forces he unleashed — a smack-down that sets up 2012 as the year the moneyed elite learn to use the limitless power granted them by the Supreme Court.

The deflated Newt balloon is pathetic, to use one of his favorite words. There he was, tired and bitter on election night, after getting carpet-bombed by advertisements painting him as a soulless hack tied to Washington like sea rust on the underside of a listing ship.

He complained about 'millionaire consultants' buying every television outlet to 'lie' about him. He whined about getting buried under 'an avalanche of negative ads' that left him 'drowning in negativity.' You get the picture: ugly, sudden death, the very life snuffed out of him by things he could not control.

And yet, of course, what killed Gingrich was in part his own creation, and not just because he himself is a millionaire consultant paid to destroy or inflate on demand. The Frankenstein’s monster emerged from his own shop of horrors.

Gingrich, for the last few years, has been partners in self-promotion with Citizens United, the group that prompted the worst Supreme Court decision of the nascent 21st century, the one that granted 'personhood' rights to corporations and green-lighted them to dominate American elections. More to the point, that 2010 case gave birth to shadowy super PACs that can annihilate a candidate, no holds barred, no responsibility to those pulling the strings.

If you live in Cedar Falls, and didn’t like seeing Iowa nice turned into the scene from 'Fargo' when a victim is ground up in the wood chipper, blame Citizens United, and the Supreme Court majority that Republicans can’t praise enough. Unlimited political filth by anonymous rich groups — this is John Roberts’s America."

Who is the Fixer/Spoiler for the GOP Establishment in 2012?

UPDATE II: Here are "two [other] hypothetical (and deliberately exaggerated) scenarios on how [and why] Mr. Perry’s decision came about:

Hypothetical Scenario A: Although most of Mr. Perry’s strategists were urging him to drop out of the race, he prayed on the decision, talked it over with his wife, and decided to ignore their advice. There was a strong emotional element to the decision: Mr. Perry felt embarrassed by his performance in Iowa and wanted the opportunity to redeem himself and go out on a better note.

Hypothetical Scenario B: Mr. Perry was prepared to drop out of the race, but his advisers saw a credible path to victory and urged otherwise. Moreover, he received a string of phone calls, text messages and e-mails from major donors, Republican elected officials and conservative activists who expressed their support and told him that he should press on. These party elites were concerned that Mr. Romney was going to waltz to the nomination, and they were either poorly disposed toward Rick Santorum or convinced that Mr. Santorum lacked the resources to seriously challenge Mr. Romney."

Read The New York Times, Perry, Perry, Quite Contrary.


UPDATE: Although Obamney may be the inevitable nominee, he must still vanquish the ironic post-Iowa anti-establishment alliance of Gingrich-Santorum. Read the Washington Post, Romney’s not-a-mandate.

And the Republi-con civil war continues.

In 2008, Romney was generally disliked by the other candidates and not the favored nominee of the Republican establishment.

You may remember that "after his victory in Iowa, Mike Huckabee handed to McCain, who was waiting in New Hampshire, the responsibility of blocking Romney’s path to the Republican nomination." Read the Washington Post, Romney and McCain bury the past.


So after spending about $364 per vote, compared to Santorum, who spent about 73 cents per vote, who is the GOP establishment's fixer/spoiler this year? Read the Washington Post, Rick Perry: 'Here we come, South Carolina!'

HWJRFO

"[I]n this Christian-leaning nation, there has to be something more politically powerful than the 'odor of mendacity' that has been emanating so strongly from the Iowa Caucuses? . . .

What I think we need is for 78 percent [of Americans who continue to identify themselves as Christians] to step up and say enough! – enough already of all this nattering about whether or not Jesus controls football results! What we as Christian-leaning Americans demand is that all presidential candidates …

1. Ask themselves this one simple question: If Jesus were running for president of the United States, what kind of campaign would He run?

2. Then, that they run that kind of campaigns."

Read the Washington Post, A truly ‘Christian’ candidate?

Eeny Meeny Miny Moe, Which Republi-CON, In Iowa They Still Don't Know

UPDATE IX: For the record, it now appears that Santorum edged Obamney "in the Iowa caucuses by 34 votes, but can’t be declared the winner because results from eight precincts are missing."

[Note: the post date was not changed for this update.]


UPDATE VIII: An 8-vote victory and from the Washington Post, Eight lessons the Iowa caucuses taught us:

A ties goes to the underdog . . .

Romney is still the favorite . . .

Negative ads work but . . .

Late entrants don’t work . . .

Frontrunners get tested . . .

Ron Paul is like 'Friday Night Lights' . . .

Organization still matters . . .

Republicans are divided . . ."

UPDATE VII: Romney accomplished two most important things in Iowa:

"First, Mr. Romney eliminated Rick Perry from the nomination contest. . .

Mr. Perry was the only candidate other than Mr. Romney to rack up a significant number of endorsements, a key measure of party support. He was the only candidate other than Mr. Romney to raise enough money to run a full 50-state campaign from the start. He had better public-sector credentials than Mr. Romney — the sitting three-term governor of a large state rather than the former one-term governor of a medium-sized state — and his signature accomplishment in office was a strong job-creation record rather than shepherding the passage of a health care bill that is substantively similar to President Obama’s. He had no misgivings about confronting Mr. Romney — something candidates from Tim Pawlenty to Michele Bachmann were strangely reluctant to do. He had a speaking style that seemed to be more in line with the mood of the Republican base. Mr. Perry had a lot going for him, but his campaign appears to be at an end.

Mr. Romney’s second major accomplishment was that he avoided being 'vetoed' by Iowa voters. This is not meant to condemn Mr. Romney with faint praise, although I am sure it will sound like it. Until real votes start rolling in, there is always some chance that a candidate just won’t take well to actual voters, and there were reasons to think that Mr. Romney might have been one of them: he had faded down the stretch in both Iowa and New Hampshire in 2008, and candidates with Mr. Romney’s pedigree have historically underperformed in the Iowa caucuses. When you’re the favorite to become the nominee, eliminating downside scenarios is the name of the game, especially in an unpredictable state like Iowa, and Mr. Romney eliminated some of them on Tuesday night."

Read The New York Times, Winning Ugly, but Winning.


UPDATE VI: Eeny meeny miny moe, it is Obamney by less than a little toe!

"[H]is Iowa showing — finishing just eight votes ahead of former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) — highlighted the big problems that still dog Romney: suspicions about his avowed conservatism, struggles to connect with voters and an inability to rally more Republicans around his candidacy." Read the Washington Post, Romney leaves Iowa with same problems he had in 2008.


UPDATE V: "Predicting the outcome of the Iowa caucuses is challenging enough. Six different Republican candidates — Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney — have led at least one poll of the state at some point in this cycle. A seventh, Rick Santorum, is closing fast in the polls and has a realistic chance to win on Tuesday night.

What may be even more challenging is predicting how the results of the caucuses will reverberate throughout New Hampshire and the other states. As the political scientist Jonathan Bernstein notes, and as my research has found, performance relative to expectations can matter almost as much as the order of finish. The Iowa caucuses are a two-step process: first comes the voting, then comes the spinning."

Read The New York Times, In Iowa, Six Candidates Compete to Beat Expectations, which includes "an attempt to consider how each candidate’s range of possible outcomes might play out in terms of the post-caucus narrative . . . The figures associated with each candidate represent the 90 percent confidence intervals from the FiveThirtyEight forecast model.

Mitt Romney
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 22 percent
High end of forecast range: 32 percent
Low end of forecast range: 12 percent
. . .

Ron Paul
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 21 percent
High end of forecast range: 31 percent
Low end of forecast range: 11 percent
. . .

Rick Santorum
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 19 percent
High end of forecast range: 29 percent
Low end of forecast range: 10 percent
. . .

Newt Gingrich
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 15 percent
High end of forecast range: 24 percent
Low end of forecast range: 7 percent
. . .

Rick Perry
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 10 percent
High end of forecast range: 18 percent
Low end of forecast range: 4 percent
. . .

Michele Bachmann
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 8 percent
High end of forecast range: 15 percent
Low end of forecast range: 2 percent
. . .

Jon M. Huntsman Jr.
538 forecast (most likely outcome): 4 percent
High end of forecast range: 8 percent
Low end of forecast range: 0 percent"

The forecasts "are formulated from an average of recent surveys, with adjustments made to account for a polling firm's accuracy, freshness of a poll and each candidate's momentum. Although this improves accuracy, there is still considerable uncertainty in the forecast as is reflected in the range of possible vote totals for each candidate."


UPDATE IV: As I said in August (gosh I'm good), Republi-cons are searching for the ideal Republican candidate: conservative, interested, and electable. And "[i]n the final days before the Iowa caucuses, many voters who once hoped for [conservative AND electable are] realizing that they may not be able to have it all." Read the Washington Post, Romney and Santorum surge as Iowa caucuses near.

And re-read The New York Times, Pondering Perry’s Electability, which sums it up with a graph that shows Romney just on the outside edge of 'reliably conservative.'

(The graph doesn't show Santorum, who, according to current New York Times' Republican Primary Projections, won't win, place, or show in the early primaries (Iowa, NH, SC, and Florida) except in Iowa.)


UPDATE III: "The first-in-the-nation caucuses are only a few days away! Frankly, people, it will be the first big nonevent of 2012." Read The New York Times, Feel Free to Ignore Iowa.

Except if Ron Paul wins. "A penchant for conspiracy theories has been a constant throughout his political career," and a win would reflect poorly on the party. Read The New Yirk Times, Campaign Stops: Ron Paul’s World.

But "[n]o matter what happens in Iowa, Mitt Romney has a safety net in New Hampshire." Read the Washington Post, New Hampshire looks like Romney’s granite fortress.

As noted two months ago, he's the inevitable nominee.

Then, as also noted two months ago: what goes around comes around.

"[Obama will] have hundreds of millions of dollars, the bully pulpit, Air Force One and high-profile supporters from Warren Buffet to Lady Gaga behind him. But President Obama’s chances of re-election could come down to a single strategic question: To what degree can the history of 2004 be repeated in 2012? . . .

The Obama team, he said, 'wants to make Mitt Romney into the Republican version of John Kerry.'"

UPDATE II: "One more thing to keep in mind with one week to go before Iowa: everyone in the system has strong incentives to exaggerate how volatile the presidential nomination contest is and how uncertain the outcome. Matt Glassman has a timely reminder of that today; he argues that even Mitt Romney may find it in his interest to pretend the race is wide open." Read the Washington Post, Prediction for Iowa: hype.


UPDATE: "Two new surveys show that Republicans are either dissatisfied with the field of candidates or have little commitment toward any one candidate." Read The New York Times, The Caucus: Polls Find G.O.P. Electorate in Flux.

"The contenders for the G.O.P. nomination – seven of them now that Herman Cain self-immolated – have given speeches, schmoozed diners at diners, and run TV ads. They’ve also participated in thousands of debates, which— like last night’s season finale— have amply demonstrated that no one on stage with a remote chance of winning is remotely suited to leading this country. . .

[This article tries is to] sort out the choices based on what Republican caucus goers might be looking for."

Read The New York Times, Beyond Eeny Meeny Miny Moe: Sorting Out the G.O.P. Field.

NoBullU Battle Cry, Time to Refresh Liberty and Siege D.C.!

This is an urgent battle cry for all NoBullU readers and listeners: Time to unite Tea Party members and Occupy movements to fight corrupt crony capitalism.

The plan is to lay siege to the federal government, a figurative siege that is, of calls, and faxes, and emails, and letters, and demand that the government protect the treasury of our country from further looting.

The next siege will commence on a date in January to be announced, with one volley, at noon EST.

The specific objective is the White House.

The coordinates are:

Address for letters: The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500

Phone Numbers:

Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461

Email form: click here.

Tell them that we're not gonna take it and you want the government to protect the treasury.

I'm going to tell them: "Stop crony capitalism! Protect the treasury NOW from further looting."

Prepare for the siege by watching this video:



This is our banner:





















Now is time to prepare. Recruit fellow taxpayers, family, and friends.


Check back for further details.

CAUTION: Be careful, and don't do anything stupid.

2011 In Review

What Government Institution is 3 Times Less Popular than Lawyers?

See the other 10 "charts that do the best job of explaining the political and economic scene in 2011, at the Washington Post, 2011 in 11 charts.

How About Maverick @ NoBullU.com for President

"For all the roller-coaster tumultuousness of the primary season, the general election promises another strange jolt: the likely presence on the ballot in all 50 states of a third-party nominee — identity, and ideology, to be determined.

This political wild card for the Internet age is Americans Elect, which just secured a spot in California, meaning it has now qualified for the ballot in 13 states and collected signatures in the 17 others that allow signature-gathering the year before the election."

Read the Washington Post, Americans Elect: A wild card for the Internet age.

If nominated, I'll ask Sarah to be my running mate.

Local School Makes the National News for Teaching Religion

"Despite Supreme Court rulings in 1962 and ’63, open prayer and Christian symbols have never really disappeared from some schools." Read The New York Times, Battling Anew Over the Place of Religion in Public School, which mentions the ACLU court case regarding "Pace High School near Pensacola, Fla. [where] teachers cited the Bible as fact in class and one teacher preached to students with a bullhorn as they arrived at school."

Explaining the Election Hype

"One more thing to keep in mind with one week to go before Iowa: everyone in the system has strong incentives to exaggerate how volatile the presidential nomination contest is and how uncertain the outcome. Matt Glassman has a timely reminder of that today; he argues that even Mitt Romney may find it in his interest to pretend the race is wide open." Read the Washington Post, Prediction for Iowa: hype.

Just in Time for Christmas

UPDATE II: FYI, before you buy me one of the gifts below, you should know that a "gift’s price matters more to the giver than to the recipient, and people like getting cash or something on their gift registry more than a surprise gift."

Read The New York Times, In Pursuit of the Perfect Gift? It’s a Lot Closer Than You Think.


UPDATE: Of course, there is also "a $420,000 tour of European flower shows on a private jet and waysa $250,000 handcrafted mahogany speedboat." Or even a $1 million home fountain. See the Washington Post, Get your $1 million dancing fountain! Neiman Marcus unveils latest extravagant Christmas ideas.

Get me "the 2012 Ferrari FF . . . priced at $395,000, [it] jumps from 0 to 60 in less than 3.7 seconds and reaches top speeds of over 200 mph."

"Kohler’s Numi toilet comes with a heated seat, music, a lid that automatically raises and lowers, a remote control and more, all for $6,400." Read The New York Times, Bells and Whistles Descend Upon the Throne.

The Republi-CON Zombie Myth That the Government Forced the Banks to Make Bad Loans

UPDATE II: How does the Big Lie, "that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started the housing crisis," work? Read The New York Times, The Big Lie.


UPDATE: The 'Big Truth' is that the financial crisi was caused when "Congress allowed Wall Street to self-regulate, and the Fed the turned a blind eye to bank abuses." Read the Washington Post, What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral.

Those Republi-con zombie myths live on. But it is not true that the government forced banks to make bad loans. The vast majority of subprime loans were made by independent lenders not covered by government banking regulations. Read:

Businessweek, Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with subprime crisis,

New America Foundation, It's Still Not CRA,

Economist’s View, Yet Again, It Wasn't the Community Reinvestment Act. . .,

The American Prospect, Did Liberals Cause the Sub-Prime Crisis? (Conservatives blame the housing crisis on a 1977 law that helps-low income people get mortgages. It's a useful story for them, but it isn't true.), and

Rortybomb, Bloomberg’s Awful Comment; What Can We Say For Certain Regarding the GSEs?, which notes:

Highly respected analysts who have looked at these data in much greater detail than Wallison, Pinto, or myself, including the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission majority, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and virtually all academics, including the University of North Carolina, Glaeser et al at Harvard, and the St. Louis Federal Reserve, have all rejected the Wallison/Pinto argument that federal affordable housing policies were responsible for the proliferation of actual high-risk mortgages over the past decade.

You might also re-read earlier posts regarding this old but tired Republi-con myth:

More Proof That Republi-cons are at Fault for the Economic Mess,

Republi-Con Myth Busters, and

Problem, Causes and Professor NoBull's Solution for the Economic Mess.

Class Today at NoBullU on WEBY, Special Holiday Edition

Listen to the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- no political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- Just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

NoBullU will broadcast today from 4:05 to 6:00 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY and on line.

Topics:

Local Business/Event Shout-Out: TBD;


Follow-up: see below;


Fact-free fantasies of the shrieking hatemongers of right-wing rhetoric and partisan hackery: all part of the fundamentalist subculture of ignorance that embraces 'discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas'

And America's preference for rhetorical fairy tales to unpleasant realities

One was gays in the military, funny thing, the world's still turning, not even a hurricane, earthquake or an oil well

Speaking of gays in the military, on December 21, 2011, a "Navy tradition caught up with the repeal of the U.S. military's 'don't ask, don't tell' rule . . . when two women sailors became the first to share the coveted 'first kiss' on the pier after one of them returned from 80 days at sea." Read the Washington Post, Two women kiss at Navy ship's return

And don't be duped by the Birthers, including our very own Pastor Dred Scott (you may remember the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which asserted that African Americans were "beings of an inferior order" who "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." That ruling declared that African Americans could never be U.S. citizens and therefore could never be President),

See The Fogbow, "your best resource for debunking the lies of the 'birther' movement and discussing the birther antics" and WhatsYourEvidence.com, there is even a Birther Case Scorecard, 0-80 for the birthers;


Local and regional: TBD;


National and international: I'm waiting, where's the balanced budget, don't hold you breath because the Republi-CONs Con the Tea Party, there'll be no $100 billion budget cut, and let's admit the obvious, the Republi-CONs are not serious about deficits, and who's responsible for the debt

To balance the budget, do nothing

One way to reduce the deficit

Still no sign of those 'invisible [Republi-CON] bond vigilantes'

Did Obama con the Republi-CONs?

The Republi-CON zombie myth that the government forced the banks to make bad loans

The myth of expansionary austerity

Pity the 1%, they control only 43% of the country's wealth

Republi-CONs in their Delusion-land

The Great Stagnation' and our broken political system


Happy Shopmas!

Did you know, polyester is a sin


And the Republi-CON race cont., to find America’s Not-Mitt

Eeny meeny miny moe, which Republi-CON, in Iowa they still don't know

Still searching for the ideal Republican candidate: conservative, interested, electable

Iowan Republi-Con religious conservative hypocrisy

Cain isn't able, except maybe to grope

Gingrich the Republi-CON, Gingrich is soft on crime, Gingrich supports child labor, Newtenstein, What goes around comes around

Obama in 2012?, Lookin better for Obama all the time

Déjà vu all over again, what to expect if it is Obama v. Romney

Save Us, Sarah, Save Us!


Health Care Lawsuit Update

After reading two of the appellate opinions, it doesn't look good for the Republi-CONs

OMG, Republi-CON are ready to endorse ObamaCare

Republi-CON 'it's not Judicial activism, it's judicial engagement' hypocrisy


Does Palin have a point about the corrupt crony capitalism

Corrupt crony capitalism and Congress


and

Is the can at the end of the road?, an update and was it worth it

The myth of voter fraud

Watch Hedgehog News, be dumber than the dumb


Fun stuff: Just in time for Christmas,

'Twas the Night Before Christmas with Peanut and Jeff Dunham

A Very TSA Christmas

Now why didn't we think of this: urine-controlled video games


and


Donate to a good cause: TBD.

I'll discuss anything, but expect a no mercy take-down if you are a shrieking hatemonger of right-wing rhetoric and partisan hackery, pandering to fear, anger and hatred, because the truth sure makes it hard out there for the party pimps.

So tune-in, call-in, but only if you can handle the truth and some ass kickin' discussion of politics and current events.

Ron Paul's Not-So-Wacky Foreign Policy

So, you'd vote for Ron Paul if it weren't for his wacky foreign policy? Mom & Pop Tammy suggests that you watch:

Now Why Didn't We Think of This: Urine-Controlled Video Games

"Going to the loo has never been more fun, after the world's first urine-controlled video game is installed in a London bar:"

Newtenstein

"Many politicians are full of themselves. Gingrich is overstuffed." Read The New York Times, Self-Adoration Reaches Newt Heights.

But not everyone is so full of Newt.

"Some Republicans are going public with their worry that Newt Gingrich would be a weak general election candidate and a drag on the party’s fortunes." Read The New York Times, As Gingrich’s Star Rises, So Do His Party’s Concerns.

The Republi-con establishment has no one to blame but itself.

"It is one of the true delights of a bizarrely entertaining Republican presidential contest to watch the apoplectic fear and loathing of so many GOP establishmentarians toward Newt Gingrich. They treat him as an alien body whose approach to politics they have always rejected.

In fact, Gingrich’s rise is the revenge of a Republican base that takes seriously the intense hostility to President Obama, the incendiary accusations against liberals and the Manichaean division of the world between an “us” and a “them” that his party has been peddling in the interest of electoral success.

The right-wing faithful knows Gingrich pioneered this style of politics, and they laugh at efforts to cast the former House speaker as something other than a “true conservative.” They know better.

The establishment was happy to use Gingrich’s tactics to win elections, but it never expected to lose control of the party to the voters it rallied with such grandiose negativity. Now, the joke is on those who manipulated the base. The base is striking back, and Newt is their weapon."

Read the Washington Post, Newt Gingrich and the revenge of the base.

Iowan Republi-Con Religious Conservative Hypocrisy

UPDATE III: The winners after last night's debate: "Romney (who might have revived his frontrunner status) and Bachmann. And the rest of us, who don’t have to wade through any more debates [Republi-CON lies] — until 2012." [The tautology, Republi-CON lies, added by editor.] Read the Washington Post, Romney wins, Gingrich and Paul falter in Sioux City and Fact checking the Fox News debate in Iowa.


UPDATE II: Tonight's the night, the sweet sixteen of the Republi-con debate-a-thon, the last debate before the Iowa caucuses. Read The New York Times, Final Debate of 2011 Poses Danger for Hopefuls and the Washington Post, GOP debates, both interesting and important, score in TV ratings.


UPDATE: Speaking of Iowa, "[t]he race for the Republican nomination may be coming down to Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, but in the contest for the Iowa caucuses, their high-profile battle might still turn out to be a sideshow. The national party has spent the last two weeks resigning itself to a choice between the former speaker and the former Massachusetts governor. But Iowa Republicans may end up choosing between Gingrich and Representative Ron Paul. . .

Should Iowa really come down to Paul versus Gingrich, the clash will make for a fascinating contrast. Physically, neither man resembles a classic presidential candidate (especially compared to Romney and Perry) but for completely different reasons. Paul is all bone and sinew and nervous energy – an Ichabod Crane or a Jack Sprat, hunched and herky-jerky in too-large suits. Gingrich is broad and self-assured and faintly decadent, with a Cheshire Cat’s face and a body that looks like it’s ready for its toga.

Neither man talks like a typical presidential candidate, either: They’re more verbose, less sound bite-ridden, more digressive and less embarrassed about displaying erudition. But again, their specific rhetorical styles are worlds apart. It’s useful to imagine both of them as the kind of eccentric uncle who talks your ear off at a Christmas party. Uncle Newt has an easygoing and expansive mien, the latest gadget on his belt, and a remarkably persuasive five-point case for why you should invest in his new business venture. Uncle Ron just wants to hector you about the evils of the Trilateral Commission.

Most important, they represent two very different endpoints for the Tea Party movement. Paul, for all his crankishness, is the kind of conservative that Tea Partiers want to believe themselves to be: Deeply principled, impressively consistent, a foe of big government in nearly all its forms (the Department of Defense very much included), a man of ideas rather than of party.

Gingrich, on the other hand, is the kind of conservative that liberals believe most Tea Partiers to be – not a genuine “don’t tread on me” libertarian, but a partisan Republican whose unstinting support for George W. Bush’s deficit spending morphed into hand-wringing horror of “socialism” once a Democrat captured the Oval Office."

Read The New York Times, Ron Paul Rising.

"The latest polls show a surging Newt Gingrich winning substantial support among white evangelical voters, the key voting bloc in the upcoming Iowa Caucuses. Those same voters, who comprise the core of the religious right movement, powered former minister Mike Huckabee to a Corn State upset in 2008. Huckabee’s decision to not run this election cycle created an opening for the rest of the GOP field to now court their support.

Yet Gingrich may seem unlikely as their choice for leader.

The thrice-married Gingrich has acknowledged infidelities and other personal failings, and a recent Public Religion Research poll finds religious conservatives in overwhelming agreement that marital infidelity is a disqualifier for public office. . .

[But] Gingrich's checkered past, along with his failure to build a grassroots organization, defies the conventional wisdom about how to win Iowa. But this year, religious conservatives everywhere appear to be looking for a different kind of faith: They want a conservative GOP leader whose message makes them believe that he can make Obama a one-term president."

Read the Washington Post, Newt Gingrich and religious conservatives: A marriage of convenience.

Gingrich is Soft on Crime

UPDATE: Maybe the title of the post should be Gingrich the hypocrite. Read Sentencing Law and Policy, "Newt Gingrich A Hypocrite For Supporting Death Penalty For Marijuana Smugglers, Gary Johnson Says".

But he is a Republi-CON so you should already know that he is a hypocrite.

The Tea Party has failed the test of 'limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility,' but they may finally have a soft on crime candidate. Read Sentencing Law and Policy, When might media (or GOP opponents) discuss Newt Gingrich's "Right on Crime" positions?

The Republi-CON 'We're Against the Redistribution of Income' Myth

"We take billions from high-income blue states like New York and California, and ship them via federal benefits and subsidies for farming and oil to poor red states like Alabama and Oklahoma. We do this even though the recipient states mostly vote Republican and moan endlessly about getting Uncle Sam off their backs.

We give a hefty housing subsidy via the mortgage-interest deduction to Bill Gates — while Gates’s maid, assuming she rents, gets no housing subsidy at all.

Then there’s Medicare’s secret. Few people realize that Medicare spends wildly different amounts per senior depending on where the senior happens to live. The most famous example, from research by John Wennberg, found that Medicare spends 2.5 times more per senior in Miami than in Minneapolis (even after adjusting for regional differences in input costs, such as for office rents). Yet there’s no difference in quality or health outcomes associated with this extra spending.

In other words, Medicare redistributes billions from regions where doctors practice cost effectively to regions where the local Medical Industrial Complex pads its income with excess services and procedures. . .

When Paul O’Neill was Treasury secretary under George W. Bush I asked him about all this. 'If we want to have a conversation about equities, then we ought to have a complete conversation,' O’Neill told me. 'It should not be about health care. It shouldn’t be about education. It should be a broader conversation about how much resources should be provided from those who have something to those who have less or nothing.

'That’s the clean conversation,' he added. 'It’s about purchasing power for the things one needs to lead a decent and civil life. That’s the question.'

That’s my kind of Republican. But I’d bet a million bucks that today’s GOP wouldn’t agree to a Lincoln-Douglas debate on this question. The president ought to challenge them to one and see."

Read the Washington Post, Real Americans redistribute: The payroll tax debate’s dirty secret.

Never Forget to 'Think Outside of the Box'

From an email:

You are driving down the road in your car on a wild, stormy night, when you pass by a bus stop and you see three people waiting for the bus:

1. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.

2. An old friend who once saved your life.

3. The perfect partner you have been dreaming about.

What would you do, knowing that there could only be one passenger in your car? Think before you continue reading.

This is a moral/ethical dilemma that was allegedly once actually used as part of a job application. You could pick up the old lady, because she is going to die, and thus you should save her first. Or you could take the old friend because he once saved your life, and this would be the perfect chance to pay him back. However, you may never be able to find your perfect mate again.

The candidate who was hired (out of 200 applicants) had no trouble coming up with his answer.

For his answer, see the comments.

Oxymorons

An oxymoron is a "a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect."

From an email:

1. Is it good if a vacuum really sucks?

2. Why is the third hand On the watch Called the second hand?

3. If a word is misspelled In the dictionary, How would we ever know?

4. If Webster wrote the first dictionary, Where did he find the words?

5. Why do we say something is out of whack? What is a whack?

6. Why does "slow down" and "slow up" mean the same thing?

7.. Why does "fat chance" and "slim chance" Mean the same thing?

8. Why do "tug" boats push their barges?

9. Why do we sing "Take me out to the ball game" When we are already there?

10. Why are they called " stands" When they are made for sitting?

11. Why is it called "after dark" When it really is "after light"?

12.. Doesn't "expecting the unexpected" Make the unexpected expected?

13.. Why are a "wise man" and A "wise guy" opposites?

14. Why do "overlook" and "oversee" Mean opposite things?

15. Why is "phonics" Not spelled The way it sounds?

16. If work is so terrific, Why do they have to pay you to do it?

17. If all the world is a stage, Where is the audience sitting?

18. If love is blind, Why is lingerie so popular?

19. If you are cross-eyed And have dyslexia, Can you read all right?

20. Why is bra singular And panties plural?

21.. Why do you press harder On the buttons of a remote control When you know the batteries are dead?

22. Why do we put suits in garment bags And garments in a suitcase?

23. How come abbreviated Is such a long word?

24. Why do we wash bath towels? Aren't we clean when we use them?

25.. Why doesn't glue Stick to the inside of the bottle?

26. Why do they call it a TV set When you only have one?

27. Christmas - What other time of the year Do you sit in front of a dead tree And eat candy out of your socks?

28. Why do we drive on a parkway And park on a driveway?

The Republi-CON 'Taxes and Regulations Are Killing Business' Myth

UPDATE X: Some much for that Republi-con myth.

"[T]he net percentage of companies that say they have already increased their employment in the last three months — that is, the percent saying they increased their staff minus the percent saying they decreased it — was positive for the first time in nearly four years."

Read The New York Times, Small Businesses Plan to Increase Hiring.


UPDATE IX: You "may not like President Obama’s regulations, but they are not stealing jobs or crushing our economy." Read The New York Times, The Wonky Liberal.


UPDATE VIII: "For the last nine years, the World Bank has been grading countries on 10 measures of business regulation: getting electricity, enforcing contracts, protecting investors, dealing with construction permits, trading across borders, registering property, resolving insolvency, paying taxes, getting credit and starting a business.

Based on these criteria . . . The United States comes in fourth."

Read The New York Times, Is Overregulation Driving U.S. Companies Offshore?


UPDATE VII: Another brilliant take-down by Colbert, this time the Republi-con myth regarding "the EPA's job-murdering environmental regulations." Watch the Colbert Report, Indecision 2012 - Job-Killing EPA:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

But if you think life is so much better in other countries, Colbert notes that in China, "thanks to mercury poisoning and factory suicides, positions are opening up all the time."


UPDATE VI: "If people are willing to do a job, no matter how dangerous, pointless or dehumanizing, the government has no business stopping them." Watch The Colbert Report, Look out for the Little Guy, which notes the efforts by Florida Republi-con Ritch Workman to repeal 'job-killing' laws against dwarf tossing:

The Colbert Report
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Why not allow baby-juggling also?

What a fine society we will have when Republi-cons next rule.


UPDATE V: "[R]egulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community year in and year out. In other words, it is a simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment." Read The New York Times, Misrepresentations, Regulations and Jobs, which references several surveys and includes this table:




UPDATE IV: "[C]oncerns over sales, rather than concerns over regulations or taxes, are what have really changed in recent years" Read the Washington Post, Regulations aren’t to blame for the 'uncovery', which references Economic Policy Institute, Regulatory uncertainty: A phony explanation for our jobs problem.


UPDATE III: "Despite what Republican presidential candidates are saying, regulation and taxes are not responsible for America’s weak job growth." Read The New York Times, Phony Fear Factor.


UPDATE II: For more on taxes, regulations and the Republi-con "confidence fairy's effect on the American economy," watch The Colbert Report, Barack Obama's American Jobs Act - Paul Krugman:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

UPDATE: Imagine a world without government regulation, where businesses invite more foreign 'guest workers' to take American jobs for piece-rate wages.

No need to imagine, businesses are allowed to do so now.

Read The New York Times, La. Business Owners Sue Over New Rules for Guest Workers.

"Politicians and business groups often blame excessive regulation and fear of higher taxes for tepid hiring in the economy. However, little evidence of that emerged when McClatchy canvassed a random sample of small business owners across the nation.

'Government regulations are not 'choking' our business, the hospitality business,' Bernard Wolfson, the president of Hospitality Operations in Miami, told The Miami Herald. 'In order to do business in today's environment, government regulations are necessary and we must deal with them. The health and safety of our guests depend on regulations. It is the government regulations that help keep things in order.'"

Read McClatchy Newspapers, Regulations, taxes aren't killing small business, owners say.

As discussed in the past, Republi-CON zombie ideas live on.

So many lies, so little time to refudiate.

The Republi-CON Wealthy 'Job Creators' Myth

"In getting to the truth about those wealthy 'job creators' the Republicans aim to protect, the ’80s film 'Wall Street' seems more relevant than ever." Read The New York Times, All the G.O.P.’s Gekkos.

Did You Know, Polyester is a Sin

I didn't know that.

Read Leviticus 19:19.

I learned that at Time, Top 10 Protest Signs, Silent Bob Strikes Back.

What Goes Around Comes Around

"Kevin Drum of Mother Jones recently dug up a 1978 Gingrich quotation lamenting that ‘one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty.’

Thanks to Gingrich, this is no longer a problem, in either party. Embracing Newtonian Nastiness, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) called Gingrich ‘too erratic,’ ‘too self-centered’ and lacking ‘the capacity to control himself.’ Former congressman Guy Molinari (R-N.Y.) called Gingrich ‘evil’ and the prospect of him becoming president ‘appalling.’

Then came the Romney-hosted teleconference.

Gingrich ‘says outrageous things that come from nowhere, and he has a tendency to say them at exactly the time when they most undermine the conservative agenda,’ Talent reported.

Gingrich ‘is more concerned about Newt Gingrich than he is about conservative principle,’ Sununu contributed. The ‘off-the-cuff thinking . . . is not what you want in the commander in chief.’

Now, Gingrich said he doesn’t want to be ‘the attack dog in the Republican Party.’ But it’s a bit late for purity. He’s Newt Gingrich, and he approved this message."

Read the Washington Post, Newt’s nastiness comes back to haunt him.

The Candidate Doth Protest Too Much

UPDATE IX: "You understand, of course, that Herman Cain is never going to go away.

'Me, a womanizer? I would never have thought they’d come up with that one,' Cain wrote to his supporters this week in an essay promising to — yes! — keep talking.

Where do you think he’ll pop up next? As the newest Fox commentator? On 'Dancing With the Stars?' As Donald Trump’s guest judge on 'Celebrity Apprentice' As a contestant on 'Celebrity Apprentice?'

We’ll know all too soon. The only part of his last chapter that remains sort of fascinating is Ginger White, the accuser who has been given credit in some corners for bringing the Cain campaign down. All things considered, that couldn’t have been much of a strain. ('Rumors of Extramarital Affair End Campaign of Presidential Candidate Who Didn’t Know China Has Nuclear Weapons,' read a headline in The Onion.)" [Link added.]

Read The New York Times, The Last Herman Cain Column.


UPDATE VIII: BTW, I can't wait to hear our Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins) defend Cain on Friday.

But expect the Pastor to avoid the subject and enlighten us with his wisdom on God's wrath, or delusional birther lies, WMDs in Iraq, or even mythical missiles over LA.


UPDATE VII: His modus operandi seems to be economically vulnerable women. Read the Washington Post, Ginger White accuses Herman Cain of long affair.

So much for that NoBullU prediction.


UPDATE IX: At the CNBC in Michigan, Cain "offer[ed] a rather strange defense, saying, 'For every one person that comes forward with a false accusation, there are probably thousands who will say that none of that sort of activity ever came from Herman Cain.'

While having the majority of women you've met not accuse you of sexual harassment might seem like a low bar for a human being, let alone a presidential candidate, the debate audience cheered enthusiastically."

Read Mother Jones, Herman Cain: Not Every Woman I Know Has Accused Me Of Sexual Harassment.


UPDATE VIII: For a timeline of "the unfolding allegations and Cain's responses," read the Washington Post, Cain’s response to accusations.


UPDATE VII: Add to the Cain defenses that Republi-con tried-and-true technique: appear on Hedgehog News and make stuff up. Read Politico, Fox will correct Block claim on air.


UPDATE VI: "Cain, like those before him, was a politician, standing behind a microphone, surrounded by the clicking of cameras. He wagged fingers and denied. From his spot on the dais, Cain employed the tried-and-true techniques so often trotted out by politicians in the headlights of a scandal. And what struck us was his range: he didn’t just pick one tactic, he used them all. . .

Deny . . .

Split hairs . . .

Trash-talk the accuser . . .

Blame the media . . .

Play the victim . . .

Blame political enemies . . .

Invoke the wife . . .

Sneak in a commercial . . .

Read the Washington Post, Cain’s defense: a script we’ve heard before.


UPDATE V: Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for the Washington Post, "offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective,' and she writes in her column, Herman Cain discredits himself:

"There’s really no way to adequately describe how downright weird Herman Cain’s news conference was today. There was Cain referring to 'Herman Cain,' a throwback to Bob Dole’s frequent use of self-referential third person. There was the part where he told us that there may be other allegations --- but those will be false. Memorable, too, was his insistence that the claimants are all anonymous, when in fact two women have been identified by name. Then there was the ranting and raving about the media, although Sharon Bialek came forth with no media filter. I sorta liked the part where he conceded that there was no 'definitive' — definitive in the sense of “any” — proof that he was the victim of a conspiracy.

In a way, this was a fitting downfall: The slick ex-talk show host undone by his own rambling. He was no longer charming. He was desperate and entirely unbelievable. Forget the presidency. Forget becoming a conservative icon. Cain succeeded only in leaving the impression that he may be a bit off his rocker. . .

Who is to be believed: Cain or the women? Certainly Cain has managed to discredit himself as much, or more, than any of them have.

What about those bloggers and talk show hosts who went to the ramparts defending him and pushed the narrative that this was all a racist plot? One only hopes that readers and listeners will take their future utterances with a large helping of salt. These 'genuine' conservatives who pretend to talk for an entire political mvement, it seems, have rather poor judgment. Good thing the GOP electorate as a whole is blessed with a good deal more common sense. . ."

UPDATE IV: "If true, the experience related by Sharon Bialek, a former employee of the National Restaurant Association’s educational foundation, was more than a joke. Allegedly, on the pretense of showing Bialek the restaurant association’s offices, Cain parked the car and essentially assaulted Bialek, slipping his hand under her skirt and trying to bring her head toward his lap.

Not a very presidential image that.

When Bialek protested, reminding Cain that she had a boyfriend, he allegedly said, 'You want a job, right?'

Corroborating testimony via written statements from two other individuals, whom Bialek had told about the incident at the time, including her then-boyfriend, further reduces Cain’s wiggle room.

Read the Washington Post, Herman Cain and the parked car.

It's the audacity of grope:




UPDATE III: Did you hear Grace Vuoto rip Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins) a new one on Friday? Loved it!


UPDATE II: 9-9-9 has more than one meaing to Cain. Read Politico, Herman Cain accuser attorney: Settlement dated 9/99, Kilgore signed.

Coincidentally, Cain "resigned as president of the NRA effective June 30, 1999, before his three-year term was up, yet these board members say they were never fully informed as to why."

UPDATE: "Herman Cain, the long-shot Republican presidential candidate turned frontrunner, has done just about everything wrong since news broke Sunday night that his former employer had paid two women to settle sexual harassment complaints against him.

Cain denied it. He said the women didn’t understand his humor. He said his accusers fabricated the charges. He said he couldn’t remember the details, then suddenly he could. He said he had no knowledge of the settlement, then suddenly recalled some details, which turned out to be vastly understated. He publicly predicted more allegations would surface. He blamed his opponents, he howled about racism, and he accused the media and the entire city of Washington of trying to do him in.

On Wednesday morning, he raised the paranoia dial another notch. 'There are factions trying to destroy me personally, and this campaign,' he announced, revealing this conspiracy to a group of technology executives at the Ritz-Carlton in Tyson’s Corner."

Read the Washington Post, The Herman Cain crack-up.

Cain "might have a real problem on his hands" with the sexual harassment allegations. Read The New York times, Harassment Allegations Could Cut at Core of Cain’s Appeal, which notes that "blaming the messenger, if it can be an invaluable first line of defense, can also be a strategy with a short shelf life."

And his campaign stonewalled too long, the 'pushback' should have included all "mitigating and qualifying information at the outset, for the initial story." Read the Washington Post, Herman Cain and the penalties for stonewalling.

Test Your News IQ

Find out how your score compares with other Americans who took the Pew Research Center's The News IQ Quiz.

Gingrich Supports Child Labor

"It is a rare day when Al Sharpton emerges as the voice of sagacity, but when Newt Gingrich has the microphone, all things are possible.

Just four weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, Gingrich — swinging like a trapeze artist over the heads of his fellow Republican contenders — has done what everyone knew he would, said something mind-blowingly wrong. Not just wrong as in incorrect but off-the-charts insensitive, insulting and, most important, Out. Of. Touch.

He might as well have wrapped his remarks in a Tiffany box and handed them to Mitt Romney, who could exhale for a moment. Or to Sharpton, who finally had a justifiable excuse for outrage on his MSNBC show and scorched the earth beneath Gingrich’s feet.

Gingrich’s big idea was that kids from poor neighborhoods should work janitorial jobs at school in order to learn a work ethic."

Read the Washington Post, Gingrich’s poor excuse for a big idea.

All Puns Intended

From an email:

1. Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.

2. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

3. Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.

4. A dyslexic man walked into a bra.

5. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm, and says: "A beer please, and one for the road."

6. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"

7. "Doc, I can't stop singing The Green, Green Grass of Home." "That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome." "Is it common?" "Well, It's Not Unusual."

8. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, "I was artificially inseminated this morning." "I don't believe you," says Dolly. "It's true; no bull!" exclaims Daisy.

9. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

10. Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.

11. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day, but I couldn't find any.

12. A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, "Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!" The doctor replied, "I know, I amputated your arms!"

13. I went to a seafood disco last week...And pulled a mussel.

14. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

15. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, "Dam!"

16. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Not surprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

17. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel, and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories.

After about an hour, the manager came out of the office, and asked them to disperse. "But why," they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said. "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

18. A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt , and is named 'Ahmal.' The other goes to a family in Spain ; they name him 'Juan.' Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

19. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (oh, man, this is so bad, it's good)...A super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

20. A dwarf, who was a mystic, escaped from jail. The call went out that there was a small medium at large.

21. And finally, there was the person who sent twenty different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least ten of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Did Obama Con the Republi-CONs?

As noted before, to balance the budget, do nothing, and now more than ever.

"In August, Republicans scored what they thought was a big win by persuading Democrats to accept a trigger that consisted only of spending cuts. The price they paid was 1) concentrating the cuts on the Pentagon while exempting Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare beneficiaries, and 2) delaying the cuts until January 1, 2013. That was, they figured, a win, as it eschewed taxes. Grover Norquist's pledge remained unbroken.

But 12 years earlier, George W. Bush had set a trigger of his own. In order to pass his tax cuts using the 51-vote budget reconciliation process, he had agreed to let them sunset in 2010. A last-minute deal extended them until the end of 2012.

So now there are two triggers. One is an extremely progressive spending trigger worth $1.2 trillion that goes off on January 1, 2013. The other is an extremely progressive tax trigger worth $3.8 trillion that goes off on...January 1, 2013. If you count reduced interest payments, the two policies alone would reduce future deficits by about $6 trillion. That's far more than anything the supercommittee came close to discussing. It's distributed far more progressively than anything the Democrats have even considered proposing. And all that needs to happen for it to pass is, well, nothing."

Read the Washington Post, The GOP's dual-trigger nightmare.

Also read the Washington Post, The GOP’s dual trigger nightmare in one graph, which notes, "[t]o get a sense of how progressive, here’s a graph comparing the spending cuts and tax increases in all of the major deficit-reduction packages proposed thus far":

A NoBullU Prediction: Romney-Cain in 2012

UPDATE VII: So much for this prediction. Read the Washington Post, Ginger White accuses Herman Cain of long affair.


UPDATE VI: "The Republican Party’s inevitable decision to nominate Mitt Romney for president is starting to look evitable after all.

That’s certainly not a consensus view among the Washington cognoscenti, who tend to see the yet-to-come primaries and caucuses as mere formalities. . .

But I’m less and less convinced. It’s hard for me to see how any of the other candidates can win the nomination — but it’s hard for me to see how Romney wins it, either.

Polls have told a consistent story: Between 20 percent and 30 percent of Republican voters support Romney, and the rest support somebody else. Actually, not somebody, anybody.

It was bad enough when Romney’s main challenger was Michele Bachmann, whose views are so extreme that she favored allowing the nation to go into default — thus triggering the possible collapse of the global financial system — rather than to raise the debt ceiling. It was bad enough when Rick Perry entered the race and vaulted into the lead, sight unseen. It was bad enough when Republicans, having actually made Perry’s acquaintance, practically offered New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie the nomination, along with a dog and pony, if he’d just say yes.

But the whole Herman Cain infatuation is much worse, from Romney’s point of view. Here’s a man with no experience in public office, no knowledge of international affairs and, from the evidence of his '9-9-9' tax plan, bizarre ideas about how arithmetic works. Yet before allegations of sexual harassment threatened to derail the Cain Train, he was leading in many polls.

It is safe to conclude that most Republicans are looking for an alternative. Clearly, they don’t see Romney as the inevitable nominee — and they’re the deciders."

Read the Washington Post, Is Romney really the GOP’s choice?

BTW, evitable (first sentence above) means possible to avoid.


UPDATE V: Of course not everyone is happy with The Inevitable Candidate.

One long time conservative columnist thinks "Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate. Republican successes down the ticket will depend on the energies of the Tea Party and other conservatives, who will be deflated by a nominee whose blurry profile in caution communicates only calculated trimming."

Read the Washington Post, Mitt Romney, the pretzel candidate.


UPDATE IV: For further proof that Romney has the eelction wrapped up, read the Washington Post, Perry goes into the fever swamp; Birtherism and secession and Rick Perry’s birther Parade, which notes that "political professionals expect more from a mainstream candidate such as Perry. After Perry’s birther Parade, strategist Karl Rove lectured his one-time friend Monday in a Fox News appearance. 'You associate yourself with a nutty view like that and you damage yourself,' he said. Rove added that the pandering to Trump 'starts to marginalize you in the minds of some of the people whom you need in order to get the election.'"


UPDATE III: After last week's blunder on abortion, Cain might not be the Republi-con VP nominee, but have no doubt, Romney's got it wrapped up.

"FOR the next three months, the political press will engage in an extended masquerade, designed to persuade credulous readers and excitable viewers that the Republican presidential nomination is actually up for grabs.

Last week the big story was Herman Cain’s rise to the top of the polls, and then Rick Perry’s combativeness at the Las Vegas debate. Next week, perhaps, it will be Newt Gingrich’s surprising resilience or Ron Paul’s potential strength in the early caucuses or the appeal of Perry’s flat-tax plan. Then there will come a debate in which Mitt Romney looks shabby instead of smooth, a poll that shows one of his rivals surging, a moment when all his many weaknesses are on every pundit’s lips.

Please do not listen to any of them. Ignore the Politico daily briefings, the Rasmussen tracking polls, the angst from conservative activists over Romney’s past deviations and present-day dishonesties. Please ignore me as well, should campaign fever inspire a column about the Santorum surge or the Huntsman scenario. Because barring an unprecedented suspension of the laws of American politics, Mitt Romney has this thing wrapped up."

Read The New York Times, The Inevitable Nominee.


UPDATE II: Though he's a teabagger Republi-con favorite, he's really a political insider.

"From 1996, when he left the pizza company, until 1999, Mr. Cain ran the National Restaurant Association, a once-sleepy trade group that he transformed into a lobbying powerhouse. He allied himself closely with cigarette makers fighting restaurant smoking bans, spoke out against lowering blood-alcohol limits as a way to prevent drunken driving, fought an increase in the minimum wage and opposed a patients’ bill of rights — all in keeping with the interests of the industry he represented." Read The New York Times, Cain, Now Running as Outsider, Came to Washington as Lobbyist.


UPDATE: Or Cain-Romney. Read the Washington Post, Herman Cain surges to front of GOP pack in new poll.

Tea Party supporters and conservatives prefer Cain by a 2-to-1 margin.

A Romney-Cain ticket would quiet Not-Mitt Republic-cons, and appeal to the base.

BTW, did you know that in "February 2008, Herman Cain used his syndicated column to endorse a candidate in the Republican primary." Read The Atlantic, When Herman Cain Endorsed Mitt Romney for President.

Will the Tea Party Debate Pass the Test of 'Limited Government, Free Markets, and Fiscal Responsibility'

UPDATE IV: It's been almost three months since the questions was first posed, but Ron Paul finally said it: "the federal war on drugs is a total failure . . . it undermines our civil liberties, it magnifies our problems on the borders -- we spent like over the last 40 years a trillion dollars on this war and, believe me, the kids can still get the drugs. It just hasn't worked." Read Sentencing Law and Policy, GOP candidate Ron Paul assails Obama pot policy and garners applause calling federal drug war "a total failure".


UPDATE III: You might also ask about the federalization of law enforcement.

"For centuries, a bedrock principle of criminal law has held that people must know they are doing something wrong before they can be found guilty. The concept is known as mens rea, Latin for a 'guilty mind.'

This legal protection is now being eroded as the U.S. federal criminal code dramatically swells. In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent. Today not only are there thousands more criminal laws than before, but it is easier to fall afoul of them.

As a result, what once might have been considered simply a mistake is now sometimes punishable by jail time."

Read the Wall Street Journal, As Federal Crime List Grows, Threshold of Guilt Declines.


UPDATE II: Another GOP debate, another chance to ask questions "about incarceration policies and the drug war:

Instead of putting our tax dollars into prisons, why not put them into rehabilitation centers for those who get caught with drug possessions?

America has the largest prison population per capita of any country in the world. Do you believe that we are arresting too many people?

Would you back a law to make prison time mandatory for anyone that employs illegal aliens, no exceptions?

The Federal Government spends $500 per second on the war on drugs, adding to the 90% of federal prisoners incarcerated for non-violent crimes. This is overshadowed by the cost of The War on Terror. As President, would you let these costly wars go on?

What will it take to end, in a timely decisive manner, the Global Drug War; a scheme of American Prohibition and world-wide U.S. Imperialism, that funds not only domestic violence and international terrorism, but also the Prison-Industrial Complex?

I am not especially confident that any of these questions will get posed tonight or at any of the forthcoming GOP debates, but I will continue hoping these issues might eventually get some attention at some point in this political/election cycle."

Read Sentencing Law and Policy, Hoping (perhaps foolishly, yet again) latest GOP debate addresses crime and punishment.


UPDATE: Something to remember as you watch the debates:

"The tea party was described as the new kid on the block of American politics, when in fact it was the extension of forces long at work in the political system.

It was described by some of its grass-roots organizers as a movement driven by principle whose members swore no allegiance to either party. That, too, has been shown to be wrong as its roots in the Republican Party have become more evident."

Read the Washington Post, What the tea party is — and isn’t.

Interesting questions and commentary from Sentencing Law and Policy:

"[A]nyone with a truly serious and sustained commitment to 'limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility' must start asking a number of tough questions about huge federal and state government spending on the drug war and mass incarceration. Here, as just a couple of examples, is how these tough questions might find expression in the tonight's Tea Party Debate:

Do you support the bill introduced by Ron Paul and Barney Frank to get the federal government out of the marijuana regulation business (basics here)? Would you sign or veto such a bill as president if it came to your desk?

Do you consider the modern 'War on Drugs' — a federal government program started by Richard Nixon and increasingly funded at the federal level by every President since — to be a classic example of a failed big government program or a notable example of big government success?

According to a Pew Center report in 2009, state criminal correction spending has quadrupled in the past two decades, outpacing budget growth in education and transportation (basics here). Meanwhile, the Justice Department recently wrote to the US Sentencing Commission about federal prison spending and overcrowing (basics here). Does this data concern you and what do you think this nation's president can or should do about the pure economic costs to taxpayers of modern mass incarceration?

Though I would love to hear the GOP candidates' response to all of these questions, I will be pleasantly surprised if even a single question about the drug war or big-government criminal justice spending comes up tonight. If there are not any such questions during the Tea Party Debate, I will continue to [wonder] if the 'core principles and values of the tea party movement' really are 'limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility.'"