Pizza Dude Indeed

Not to be crude about it, but Herman Cain is full of shit. His 9-9-9 plan is idiotic, simplistic and, frankly, naive. Of course, those words could be used to describe his campaign, as well as those who support him. Whoever those 100 or so people are.
I am thrilled daily by watching this GOP group of contenders go up and down, in and out. It's kinda like "Groundhog Day." Every morning I wake up and Barrack Obama is the president. Each day, a GOP candidate does something different to become the "front-runner." Then, I wake up the next day and Barrack Obama is the president and a GOP candidate does something different to become the "front-runner" but everyone else is exactly the same.
Just this past week, Shecky Palin, Rudy "a noun, a verb and 9/11" Giuliani and Chris "Michelin Man" Christie all decided not to run. Now, if someone could tell Sir I Do of Newt, Mormon #2 Jon Huntsman, Michele "Batshit" Bachmann, crazy Senator Rand Paul's crazier Congressman father Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Buddy Roemer  and Rick "you belong in a" Santorum how foolish a way they're spending their time.
That leaves Mormon #1 Mitt Romney and the Rev. Gov. Rick Perry. Oooh, I'm scared. Simply put, Romney has a "religious" problem and Perry has an obliviousness problem.
Again, "ooh, we're so scared."
The late, great Molly Ivins, the official patron saint of this blog, used to write at length about the weak powers held by the governor of Texas. Essentially, the governor of Texas is much like the Queen of England. For example, in Texas, the lieutenant governor puts forth the state budget.
Still, the Rev. Gov. Perry has been able to put his footprints all over the great nation of Texas. He's been governor since Shrub (thanks again, Molly) resigned to accept a Supreme Court appointment to the presidency. Under the Rev. Gov. Perry, Texas has the largest percentage of children uninsured, the state has created the largest amount of jobs in the country over the past 2 years, but most of those are either government jobs or jobs paying at or below the minimum wage.
"Governor Good-Hair," from Molly again, in many ways is George Bush, if he was Texan. Calling George W. Bush Texan is about like calling David Ortis a Yankee. Perry wants a Constitutional Amendment for social issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion. He has joked around with the concept of succession and calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Perry also disputes global warming. After Texas set a record in 2011 for the hottest summer anywhere, ever, in the lower 48 states, Perry said that comments by President Obama that linked the resulting wildfires to climate change were "outrageous."
As for Romney, he never met a side he couldn't support. He used money from the federal government that he would have to return if not used to create the model for the Barrack Obama healthcare reform. He's against it now. He's been pro-choice but now he's pro-life. He initially opposed same-sex marriage as governor of Massachusetts but later advocated for equal benefits.
And, there's the Mormon question. True, the Church of Jesus Christ does accept the Bible as one of their sacred texts. The other is of course The Book of Mormon. It presented itself in a language no one has ever heard of on gold plates that no one else has ever seen. Joseph Smith and then Brigham Young kept trying to find a Utopia. They wound up in Utah, in what is as close to a religious state as any in the country.
I want to know what Romney believes. I'm not one that generally gives a whit about the religiosity of the President. Unless he's a member of a cult and I haven't heard anything yet about the Mormon Church that makes me think it's not a cult.

GOP to non-rich: Drop Dead!

By invoking the 60-40 rule that only they seem to have the ability to do, the U.S. Senate Republicans essentially killed President Obama's jobs bill tonight. Democratic Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jon Tester of Montana, both facing difficult re-election campaigns next year, joined the GOP.

So, just in case you're not keeping count of all the things the GOP is officially against, as demonstrated by the candidates and responses given at the 300+ and counting GOP debates and by their rejection of the jobs bill, here's a reminder of some positions the Grand Old Party has:

• Let the uninsured die. After all, it is their own fault.
• Kill the guilty, or at least those found to be guilty, and don't give it a second thought.
• Don't support Planned Parenthood, despite the fact that contraception makes up for 35% of their services and abortions only 3%.
• It's okay to boo a member of the U.S. military.
• If you're unemployed and/or not rich, that's also your fault.
• If two Democrats play golf with two Republicans, they're the, uh, three? stooges.
• The Obama Administration, which has been hamstrung at every turn by a recalcitrant GOP that refuses, on some kind of bizarre principle, to vote in favor of anything he is in favor of, is a worse tragedy than the 9/11 attacks that killed 2,752 people.
• We need to take the country back, they say, from big business, except when it comes to accepting big checks from big bidness, then in that case not so much.
• Arab Spring protesters are fighting to overthrow oppressive dictators. Occupy Wall Street protesters are an angry mob, advocating anarchy and class warfare and are actually participating in "Obama demonstrations."
• Old, wealthy white people dressed like Benjamin Franklin and wearing teabags, holding misspelled signs and racist Photoshopped pictures of President Obama are patriots.
• Extraordinary rendition and enhanced interrogation techniques led to the capturing of Osama bin Laden. Except they didn't. It was FBI interrogators putting the pieces together. (The CIA in fact knew that the money man for the 9/11 attacks was in the country prior to the attack but didn't share that info with anybody.)
• AND, the occupy Wall Street protestors have no cause. In fact, those of us on the left understand completely what Bill'O the Clown and Rush "Me More Drugs" Limbaugh and their ick don't: the difference between the haves and the have nots in the this country has never been broader. 1% of the population controls a disproportionate amount of wealth, are taxed at an inordinately low rate and, perhaps most importantly, Wall Street firms and banks received billions in bailouts to survive after a series of actions, unfettered by regulation, almost broke the world economy. And then, as soon as they got our money, it was back to obscene bonuses and sitting on the money instead of making legitimate loans. My favorite quote from the idiocracy on the right: The pizza dude, admitting he didn't "have facts" to back up his accusation, nonetheless expressed his belief that Occupation Wall Street was “planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama Administration."