The lies roll off the man's lips like music off Yo-Yo Ma's cello. Both are virtuosos - one a cellist, the other a liar.
A partial list.
Bush had nothing to do ...
Happy Friday.
The best from Political Humor‘s collection of the week’s late night political humor.
"Barack Obama supports same-sex marriage. Mitt Romney doesn't even support same-sex car pools." –David Letterman
"The head of ...
Republican Rep. Mike Coffman at a Saturday afternoon fundraiser in Colorado.
I don't know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don't know that. But I ...
Rand Paul:
Call me cynical, but I didn’t think his [Obama's] views on marriage could get any gayer.
We won't call Rand cynical. Ignorant, bigoted asshole is more fitting. An adult using ...
Happy Friday.
The best from Political Humor‘s collection of the week’s late night political humor.
"President Obama came out with approval of same-sex marriage. He said that over the years, he has ...
I've never understood Log Cabin Republicans - gay conservatives who give their support to a homophobic political party that derides their sexuality and refuses to grant them equal rights under ...
Finally.
“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own ...
Election roundup:
Indiana.
As polls forecast, the Tea Party's efforts to cleanse the GOP of any impure conservatives has Dick Lugar out and teabagger Richard Mourdock in. Mourdock is the new Republican ...
There are lies...and then there are lies.
My own view, by the way, was that the auto companies needed to go through bankruptcy before government help. And frankly, that’s finally what ...
From the papers captured last year at Osama bin Laden's Pakistani hideout comes this.
Like any public figures, bin Laden and his advisers were mindful of the media. Adam Gadahn, one ...
The best from Political Humor‘s collection of the week’s late night political humor. Happy Friday.
"Today Mitt Romney visited a firehouse here in New York City. Of course, he was disappointed ...
It happened to Kerry. Can it happen to Obama? Nope says Margaret Carlson.
Obama’s belief system -- in that hopey-changey business and the post-partisanship thing -- has been altered by reality. ...
Sullivan:
What do Republicans call a gay man with neoconservative passion, a committed relationship and personal courage?
A faggot.
Exactly right, but then could one expect anything different from a political party that ...
And they claim that atheists are immoral?
The ugly side of religion shows its face once again. The words below were spoken at a Sunday sermon by Sean Harris, a pastor ...
It's been fun watching conservatives and Romney twist themselves into pretzels trying to undo Mitt's past words on GM and bin Laden.
Romney, April 2007:
It’s not worth moving heaven and earth ...
In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, a couple of scholars from liberal and conservative think tanks, discuss the state of American politics.
We have been studying Washington politics and ...
Romney's VP-in-waiting, Marco Rubio, is perfecting the conservative sleaze play.
He has proposed his version of the Dream Act in which people who entered the country illegally as children will be ...
Beyond the rhetoric, the political BS, the lies - that is, the concerted effort by the right-wing noise machine to distort and misinform at every opportunity - is the very ...
It was never a matter of 'if'...only of 'when'.
Two constituencies that President Obama is holding onto about as strongly now as he did four years ago are voters under 30 ...
While you were munching away on Thanksgiving leftovers, I was putting together this little video and thinking of how Dems could not have done a better job of picking out a wackier bunch of political opponents than this gang of eight dysfunctional wingnuts. OK, Huntsman is only half a wingnut but a wingnut nonetheless.
Enjoy…and do yourself a favor and stay away from the stores if you can. I hear it’s not pretty out there.
John Cole on the freak show masquerading as the Republican primary.
At this point, Mitt Romney is like the ugly chick at the bar, totally willing to put out and do anything, winking and flirting as hard as she can with the GOP primary voters while yelling “I’m so wasted! I’m so wasted!”, but there are still a few hours left before closing time, so the voters are still weighing their options.
It’s a pathetic spectacle, really.
In the end, they’ll have no choice but to take Romney home, plaster on makeup, buy a wardrobe of expensive clothes and then walk to the bedroom with eyes closed and nose pinched, ready to convince themselves and an entire nation that the political whore they’re stuck with is indeed the fairest lady in the land.
Newt Gingrich does it. Ron Paul does it. Running for president in order to raise expense money isn’t news. But Herman Cain has adopted an entirely new strategy for converting campaign contributions to other uses. Cain’s tactic is a way to convert campaign contributions directly into personal cash — sell your product to yourself.
Bloomberg reports that the Cain campaign spent $36,511 on books and $64,000 on other expenses to a company named “THE New Voice, Inc.” THE New Voice, Inc. is solely owned by Herman and Gloria Cain.
Of course it’s not quite that simple. Herman Cain’s corporation (that exists to promote Herman Cain) is selling Herman Cain’s books (that were written to promote Herman Cain) to Herman Cain’s campaign (which some argue was created to promote Herman Cain’s books.) Sheesh! No wonder this guy speaks in the third person so much.
“They are buying my books and my pamphlets,” one Herman Cain told Bloomberg of another Herman Cain. Is his use of “they” an indication of something to hide? Are we to believe no Herman Cain had anything to do with the insider deal? C’mon, Herman Cain’s. Seriously?
Unraveling the nature of this money laundering scheme (which might turn out to be sort of – but not entirely – legal) requires some understanding of the book publishing industry, a little knowledge about the Federal Elections Commission, a look inside Cain’s company, “THE New Voice, Inc.,” and at least a dab of inference, since Herman Cain won’t speak candidly about what he bought from Herman Cain.
Why wouldn’t Herman Cain buy discounted author-distribution copies directly from his publisher? In traditional publishing, a publishing house can’t sell directly to bookstores – the big giants like Borders and the late Barnes and Noble don’t allow it, and the cost of servicing small independents is just too high. So publishers sell through book wholesalers, one of the largest being Ingram Book Company. Ingram buys books for 35-40% of the cover price, marks them up 15-20% and order-fulfills them to bookstores. Cain’s publisher, Simon and Schuster, has its own wholesale division — with roughly comparable wholesale pricing.
Here’s why this matters: Every author’s contract specifies a price for buying author-distributed copies. It falls somewhere between the distributor cost and the bookstore cost — 35-60 percent of the cover price. In the case of “This is Herman Cain” he can buy copies of the $25 book for somewhere between $8.75 and $15, probably closer to the lower amount since Amazon currently retails it for $15.
Cain’s company offers the book for the cover price of $25 on its website. If Cain’s campaign paid more than Cain’s company, paid inflated shipping, or paid a handling charge, he violated campaign finance law.
Is Herman Cain breaking the law? Bloomberg asked Bill Allison, of the electoral watchdog group the Sunlight, Foundation, if the transactions deserve further investigation. “All candidates publish books and they offer them as premiums to donors, but most candidates aren’t buying them from their own companies,” he said. “It raises the question of his campaign contributions ending up in his own pocket.” Making a profit from your campaign is a no-no.
I can’t remember a recent case where the candidate was so brazenly putting money directly in his own pocket. Even that dipsy-doodle Christine O’Donnell was using it to pay her rent. Cain deliberately created a strategy to turn donations into cash. Diverting campaign donations directly into one’s bank accounts represents a whole new level of audaciousness.
Is Herman Cain unaware of the law? And what happened to that resident agent guy? THE New Voice, Inc. has always listed only two corporate officers, Herman and Gloria Cain. But since its founding in 2004 and up until 2011, it listed Stefan Passantino as its resident agent. Passantino is the Washington, DC Partner for McKenna, Long and Aldridge, the firm that filed THE New Voice Inc.’s original incorporation. And yes, it’s unusual for a large-firm partner to be anyone’s resident agent.
Passantino, however, is not your ordinary business lawyer. It turns out he’s the “head of McKenna Long & Aldridge’s Political Law Team.” According to the company website, he specializes in “state and federal election law, campaign finance, pay-to-play and lobbying laws, and ethics issues.” Not your typical resident agent. So why, after serving Cain’s company for six years, did he disappear from corporate filings just before Cain started running for office? Did this election law expert see something that caused concern? Certainly, insider dealing would raise red flags, wouldn’t it?
I smell a RICO case, you crazy Herman Cain’s. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. All of you.
The hottest candidate in the field is Herman Cain, a fast-food tycoon who never heard of neoconservatism, has never held office, has no foreign policy and a three-digit number for a domestic policy, and likes to joke about electrocuting illegal immigrants. By contrast, Jon Huntsman, governor, ambassador, the man who in a normal political environment would be the most qualified and formidable candidate in the race, wasn’t even on the stage.
A system that rejects a Jon Huntsman in favor of a Herman Cain isn’t a primary process. It is a primal scream.
Romney necessarily spends most of his debates playing a character type only loosely related to the actual Romney. He had one delicious, authentic moment when Perry assailed him for employing illegal immigrants. Romney claimed that he had fired them, and described his thinking at the time like so: “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals!” I am totally convinced this was what Romney was really thinking. With everything else he says, you’re always peeling away the layers of the onion to figure out what the true Romney thinks. Perry, characteristically, was too dim to notice this, but his handlers will probably train him to quote it at the next debate, by which point Romney will have a slick response that leaves Perry flustered.
Perry is confronted with a tough problem, and is taking a sensible way out. The tough problem is that doing policy in the GOP nomination contest is almost impossible. What motivates Tea Partiers and other enthusiastic primary voters? A lot of it is mythical, such as the immanent Obamcrackdown on fracking seen here, or Obama’s apology tour, or Obama’s plans to seize everyone’s guns, or all those IRS agents that Jon Huntsman was complaining about in last week’s debate. Others are internally contradictory; good luck proposing a budget that eliminates the deficit, cuts taxes, and doesn’t cut spending on the military or current Medicare or SS payments. Still others are massively unpopular general election positions; that part is normal in all presidential nomination contests, but particularly an issue this time around. And hanging over all of it is the possibility that something on the approved list today could be the mark of a RINO tomorrow (see: Mitt Romney, health care reform). Not to mention that there are a half dozen or so “candidates” who are prone to making up stuff intended to ingratiate themselves to the crazies (well, it’s really mainly three — Newt, Bachmann, Cain).
[...]
It’s not Rick Perry and Mitt Romney who aren’t serious; it’s the party they’re trying to lead.
Take some Tylenol before you read the transcript of the Republican debate in Las Vegas last night, filled as it is with gobbledygook about Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan, Mitt Romney’s hiring of illegal aliens, Cain’s plan to electrocute people crossing the US border, Michele Bachmann’s fulminations about “anchor babies,” and Rick Perry’s musing on whether or not Mormonism is a cult. Woody Allen said it best: the scariest thing is that these people might actually be the GOP’s Best and Brightest.
Like Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Santorum is not lacking for raw political talent — you need some of it (as Mr. Santorum likes to remind us) to get elected as a staunch conservative in a swing state like Pennsylvania. Still, if Mr. Santorum’s execution was strong again on Tuesday, he hasn’t really found a way to shift the debate back to social issues, his major competitive advantage over the rest of the field.
Rep. Ron Paul is definitely the only Republican candidate who has displayed a degree of sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street protesters, and last night he proved it on a national stage by addressing resident Republican crazy man (one of many), Herman Cain.
Cain has suggested that OWS is anti-American and that they have only themselves to blame for their troubles—not Wall Street nor the government whom they have been petitioning for a grievance.
Cain stated in the debate, “They’re directing their anger at the wrong place. Wall Street didn’t put in failed economic policies… Wall Street isn’t going around the country trying to sell another $450 billion. They should be standing in front of the White House.”
Well, Sir, they are, in fact, standing as close to the White House as they can and everywhere else across the country.
Paul defended the protesters by stating, “Mr. Cain has blamed the victims. There are a lot of people who are victims of this business cycle.”
Paul, of course, traces a lot of the economic problems back to the Federal Reserve, the fractional banking apparatus of which Herman Cain was a member (of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank), and which allowed a number of banks and investors to make risky investments with criminal financial instruments (the credit-default swap), knowing full well that the Federal Reserve and the federal government would have no choice but to bail them out if toxic mortgage securities began to implode.
“[The Federal Reserve] creates the financial bubbles,” said Paul. “Who got stuck? The middle class got stuck. They lost their jobs and they lost their houses.”
And Paul said what so many politicians are unwilling to say, “We have to blame the business cycle and the economic polices that led to this disaster.”
I also loved Paul’s honesty regarding Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair. The man definitely has his moments.
Michael Medved, on the other hand, didn’t take too kindly to Paul speaking ill of a “conservative saint”.
After a seemingly endless series of eight prior candidate encounters, one of the GOP presidential contenders finally came up with an ingenious debate strategy that counts as fearless, distinctive and utterly original: attacking Ronald Reagan over the arms-for-hostages deals during Iran-Contra.
Near the conclusion of a deeply damaging slugfest that weakened every candidate on stage, Congressman Ron (“Dr. Demento”) Paul outrageously trashed the Gipper’s memory in response to pre-debate Herman Cain comments about trading Guantanamo terrorists for a hypothetically kidnapped American soldier. Newt Gingrich shouldered his way into the discussion and seized the opportunity to defend Reagan’s legacy (and to plug a documentary the former Speaker co-produced with his wife Callista) by reminding the audience that the most popular Republican of the last 50 years actually regretted sending weapons to Iran in return for American captives.
When a big CNN debate that’s supposed to focus on America’s future concludes with an utterly irrelevant dispute about a 25-year-old scandal that tarnished the reputation of a conservative saint, then you know it was a terrible night for the party. One of the savviest political observers I know (who’s been working for Republicans since the Nixon era) sent a terse text message offering an appropriate reaction to the Destruction Derby: “GOP, RIP.”
“Terrible night” for the party? Try a terrible decade for the party…and it’s only going to get worse.
In a few lines, Chris Cillizza perfectly sums up the Republican primary.
Since the start of the Republican race, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has been regarded as the frontrunner — if a somewhat weak one.
Conservatives — particularly those aligned with the tea party movement — have spent much of the year looking for an alternative to Romney, a nomadic journey that has led them to latch on to reality TV star Donald Trump, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and, most recently, businessman Herman Cain.
Each of those anti-Romneys have proven to be something less than advertised — with the possible exception of Trump who performed roughly equivalent to the lowest possible expectations that people had for him.
That’s where it stands and most likely will remain. Christie did the smart thing by bowing out of the race. Once the vetting began, he knew he’d be hit hard in much the same way that Perry was. The Romney camp would have been all over Christie for his stand on illegal immigration. Christie has stated in the past that, “[The President and Congress] have to put forward a commonsense path to citizenship for people” and “Being in this country without proper documentation is not a crime.”
Those are definitely not the words that the base wants to hear from the ONE who will slay the Obama dragon/anti-Christ beast thingy, monster, Hitler-like, socialist, communist , black guy. What is a crime in Republican circles is any hint of being soft on illegal immigration. The base likes their leaders rough, tough and mean and besides, everyone knows that the only reasonable solution to illegal immigration is to build a mile high, electrified, “dang” fence surrounded by a mile wide moat filled with man-eating crocs bred to favor Latino blood.
With Bush Perry quickly fading and Cain basking in his 15 minutes of delusional glory, it’s Romney’s again to lose. Five dollars and my Johnny Cueto 2008 Topps Rookie card says it’s going to be a Romney/Rubio ticket. Christian conservatives are not going to like it but the time for Republicans to start loving the one they’re with is quickly approaching.
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