Personally, I don’t think Rick Perry’s gaffe in last night’s debate was as major as people are making it out to be. Anyone can draw a blank under the spotlight. What he and others actually remembered to say was more embarrassing. I am not trying to defend Rick Perry’s intelligence, grasp of policy, or his debating skills. But what he was trying to say is that we should eliminate the Departments of Energy, Education, and Commerce. Maybe you could make an argument for eliminating the Energy and Commerce departments and rolling some of their responsibilities into other agencies, but what about Education?
Yes, it was cringe-worthy to watch Perry fumble around trying to recall some idiotic talking point his handlers had tried to imprint in his brain. But the talking point was the bigger sin. The only reason it didn’t seem like that is because the other candidates were all saying things that are just as idiotic.
As far as I am concerned, Republican debates are little more than 90-minute gaffes. Does anyone think anyone in the Republican field is capable of preventing Europe from bringing down our banking system again if it comes to that? If they can’t stand up to their base or challenge the myths they tell each other every day, how can they possibly avoid crashing this country back into the ditch where Bush and Cheney left it?
To listen to the Republicans talk, they would have let the U.S. auto industry just disappear, they would have let the financial sector collapse completely causing a global depression, and they wouldn’t have done one damn thing to help anyone who suffered as a result or one rational thing to fix the damage they’d caused. They talk such nonsense on such a consistent basis that there is no point in even debating them.
As we can see in places like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida, when they actually try to implement their ideas they don’t work and people hate them. How could they work? They’re based on fantasies.
Oh, I disagree. Perry is a fool, and his ridiculous showing proves it. The debates are supposed to show us what the candidates are like under pressure, to deliver their message clearly, and to convince us to vote for them.
If a guy can’t handle a softball debate forum, what the hell kind of world leader is he going to be? This isn’t a PTA meeting, it’s a debate for a future President.
He looks like a punk who just wants to goof around, aw-shucks his way through the debates, and keep his name on the list of candidates. I think his planned policies for cutting important government programs are obscene, and his performance was insulting and ridiculous.
I’m not laughing with this asshat. I’m embarrassed and angry for him.
I’m not sure how much you’re really disagreeing with me. I don’t dispute any of what you said, but I don’t think his gaffe was the scandal of the evening. In fact, it was one of least scandalous things that happened.
The fix is “the scandal.”
AG
It’s only minor if you accept the totally false premise that these so-called debates are actually about who will win the nomination on merit. However, once one accepts the idea that the whole system is rigged…that the media-enforced fix is, was, and will forever be in unless some valiant outsider breaks it down totally…then the media coverage of Perry’s various “gaffes” (and Palin’s and Cain’s and those of whomever else is running who is not a designated fix winner) are no more remarkable than was the coverage of Dean’s “AAAARGH!!!” moment when he was running against John “I am not a coward!!!” Kerry.
Why aren’t they “gaffing” Ron Paul? Because he doesn’t make these kinds of stupid mistakes. That makes him even more dangerous, and they have to try to ignore him instead.
Lissen up…I’m telling you here. Gingrich is the last remaining faux candidate that the media will be able to prop up and then shoot down in their ongoing effort to make Mitt Romney look like a statesman of some kind instead of just another empty suit. Ron Paul will win New Hampshire and then they will be forced to pay attention to him.
Watch.
I know New Englanders. They ain’t going for Romney’s suit and haircut. On the other hand Ron Paul looks like someone who’ll go out and shovel his own goddamned snow and then go help his neighbors get it done, too.
Watch.
Here’s the Paul game plan:
Iowa?
I dunno about Iowa. Too many pigs and too much corn, I’m thinkin’. But New Hampshire? Bet on it.
Watch.
It’s going to come down to Romney, Paul and the poll numbers. If the numbers cannot be moved by a massive non-personing and/or content attack by the media on Ron Paul…an effort which seems to be less and less effective with every passing day…the real powers-that-be in the RatPub Party may have to make a tough decision. A painful loss w/Romney…including lesser candidates who are depending on the weak coattails of his empty suit…or a possibly almost revolutionary turn w/Ron Paul.
The kicker?
The financial system absolutely, positively cannot let Ron Paul win. He will not be controlled, and he will force radical changes in this system. Structural changes, changes that will make the current financial kleptocracy unable to continue in its present, massively vicious form.
Hmmmm…
May you be born(e) into interesting times.
Indeed.
AG
Ron Paul will stick around and he can do better in the caucus states, so he may have a nice handful of delegates at the convention. The most likely outcome of that is that they’ll have some huge fights over the platform at the convention. It may cause some had headlines and make the party look like its in disarray, but the platform is totally meaningless.
However, he stands zero chance of winning in New Hampshire. He has a better chance in Iowa, where he actually won one county in 2008. I’m about ready to predict that Romney will win every state in the union.
Ya think?
It’s two more months until the NH primary, a little less until Iowa. Lots of time for the mainstream RatPubs to make themselves look ever more ridiculous both in the electioneering department and in Congress. Lots of time for winter weather to set in and get people more pissed off, too. Gas and fuel prices will continue to rise, as will food prices. Maybe the whole European financial system will tank as well…they’re surely workin’ on it.
You know…like alla the things that Ron Paul has been saying will happen?
You wanna talk about “debates?” Can you imagine what would happen in a one-to-one debate between Romney and Ron Paul if Paul took the gloves off? It would be a massacre!
Watch.
It’s all coming to a head.
Even the dummies are getting pissed off.
Watch.
AG
Like literally hundreds of commentators from Nouriel Roubini to Thom Hartmann have been saying will happen?
That’s like saying “Ron Paul said the Sun will rise in the East tomorrow, then set in the West. And he was right! The man is a fantastic predictor.”
I don’t know if AG watched the debates last night, but RP said that inflation is why we have high medical costs, high education costs, and other “inflated” costs. He has been saying we’re going to experience hyperinflation since the 1980’s, and it’s never happened.
Funny that he seems to believe that the price of gold constantly rises…even though it’s clearly an overinflated bubble that will collapse when the economy improves, just as it did in the 1980’s.
We have high medical costs because of how our health system is structured. Yesterday, I was considering writing a diary on this. I’m off work tomorrow. Maybe I’ll do it. Do you think anyone would read it?
Yeah, but none of them are running for the most powerful office in he world.
AG
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/ron-paul-elizabeth-warren-socialist-6552974?src=rss
Paul really is principled. I give him that. He believes his own bullshit.
His opinions on foreign policy aside, there’s not much daylight between him and other Republicans on economic policy. Calling Warren a socialist is just stupid.
I think you’ll just have to write him in the end.
Ya mean…she’s not?
Wikipedia:
I guess it all depends on which bullshit definition of a now nearly meaningless term you want to use, ishmael.
What do I mean by using the words “nearly meaningless?”
More from Wikipedia:
Surely you can find room for Elizabeth Warren’s brand of…call it what you will (“progressivism,” “liberalism,” “leftinessism,” “socialism”)…in that undecipherable screed above.
I personally believe…on a great deal of up-close experience…that the “socialist/social democratic” countries of Europe like those of Scandinavia and Holland have over the post-WW II years produced the most livable countries and societies in the world. But there’s always room for a better way. A more workable way.The US absolutely cannot/wlll not be nudged over into a more “socialist” approach, at least it cannot on all of the available past evidence of the last 65 years or so. Maybe the necessary movement…and some sort of movement must certainly occur or we will surely fall and fall very hard, very soon…must appear from the other side of the ongoing circle that really comprises “left” and “right.” The points of agreement between the dissatisfied Tea Party types and the equally dissatisfied OWS people are stronger than are their disagreements, and right now Ron Paul is the single nationally effective political figure who appears to be able to bridge the only two truly revolutionary forces that are presently at work in this country.
Further…you write:
What!!!???
You mean the other RatPubs also want to eliminate the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, stop bailing out the banks and go back to the gold standard?
Geez, I hadn’t noticed.
AG
Yes, I hear that crap every day from the Tea Party.
By all means, let’s go back to the 19th Century. Oh, wait, that had that awful 14th Amendment, not to mention the 13th Amendment. Dirty Socialists stole the Southern planters property without compensation. Better go back to the 18th. Oh, wait that had that Communist “Liberte, Equalite, Fraternite” nonsense. Better to restore the Divine Right of Kings, make it the 15th Century.
Oh. So getting rid of a financial system that doesn’t work will automatically bring back all the evils of the times before it was instituted and then egregiously misused?
Please.
Make some sense.
Oh. Wait. You’re a leftiness person.
Sorry.
Nevermind…
Yore friend,
Emily
So getting rid of a financial system that doesn’t work
Prior to Bretton Woods and the abandonment of the gold standard, this country averaged a depression – not a recession, a depression – every twenty years. Since, we have not had a single one.
But it’s the economic system that predominated from the 1930s to the 2000s that doesn’t work. Uh huh.
But Joe! It was “real growth” and not funny money fake bubble growth, and people saved more so they could weather the depressions! Besides, everyone knows that the Gilded Age marked the best time in American economic history for the average person (libertarians and Austrians say this last sentence word for word).
The Gilded Age, eh?
And what do we have now?
The Gelded Age.
So it goes.
No one is saying that we will…or ever should…return to that so-called “Gilded Age”, seabe. It’s an impossibility just on the numbers alone.
The population numbers.
Take say 1900 as the peak of that “‘end of the Civil War->beginning of WW I” period. (All from Wikipedia)
World population: 1,633,000,000
US population: 76,212,168
Now today’s numbers.
World population: Almost 7 billion
US population: 312,587,995
The US has about 4 times as many people in it and so does the world. With more coming every day.
“The Gilded Age marked the best time in American economic history for the average person?” Entirely possible. There was more to go around. More time. More room. More work. Ain’t gonna happen again, though, and a thorough examination of what Ron Paul is saying would show you that he is not trying to “go back in time;” he is simply trying to fix a horribly broken system the in the best way that he thinks it can be fixed. By decentralization.
And I agree with him.
You don’t?
So that goes as well. Come up with a better plan. One that does not include the participation of Barak Obama, who is quite plainly a centralization freak, one who has created a centralized surveillance apparatus that we may never be able to dismantle, an apparatus that watches everything that we say and do on the telephone, on the airwaves and on the web. Kinda hard to insurrect when you can’t say anything that isn’t overheard by the object of that insurrection, eh?
Until you or someone else does come up with a better plan, I’m going in Ron Paul’s direction. So far, he’s the best that we have available.
Bet on it.
I am.
Later…
AG
YOu have totally lost your mind. I had no idea that you were a racist moron like Paul. Fortunately, Paul has no chance. Even repukeliscum are not stupid enough to nominate this senile goldbug. Among other obvious problems with Paul that any fool can see, he is 76 years old. He is already senile, and probably will die in a year or two.
You are truly a stupid person, AG. And that’s the last word from me.
Your last word? Thank you. I am glad to hear it.
Here’s my last word.
“Senile?”
My God, man…this guy is outworking (and outthinking as well) men and women half his age. You should be so lucky. But then…you apparently have so much less brainpower to lose…
AG
Too bad he didn’t outwork and outthink the authors and editors of his newsletters.
A 76 YO racist lunatic who knows nothing about really much of anything stands less chance than even Huntsman.
Paul promotes raw milk. That’s really all you need to know. It means that he is not just a libertarian, he is a dangerous lunatic.
Y’know dataguy, I just love the way you argue.
I mean…so many facts!!!
So he “promotes raw milk,” eh?
I’m not sure that you have the aural comprehension to understand what he says in the following video, but…give it a try. A little exercise is always good for underutilized muscles.
Just in case you can’t get it, he says that “This is a freedom issue for me.” Ergo, he is not “promoting” raw milk, he is promoting the rights of individuals to put whatever it is that they think is best into their bodies. There are many, many people who believe that properly handled raw milk is extraordinarily good for you and that pasteurization ruins a great deal of milk’s health benefits. Are they right, or wrong? Who knows? It’s dangerous to eat a cantaloupe these days. If the FDA…which is supposed to control the flow of truly poisonous food into the population…cannot/will not/does not do a good job of preventing repeated massive food poisoning scares from happening, why should they be trusted to tell you what you cannot eat or drink?
Besides which…this guy is a fucking doctor, dataguy.. A very successful one, apparently. Now, I generally think hat the entire medical system in he U.S. is basically full of shit, but if yre gong to wail about “raw milk” then you seem to believe that the mainstream med thing is right on target here.
So…choose yer poison.
Which is it?
Do you believe a doctor who believes in freedom of choice or do you believe the FDA?
I’ll go with Dr, Paul on this, myself.
Thanks for another wonderful colloquy. I look forward to our little chats so much!!!
Have a wonderful day…
AG
P.S. On another note…
Does the person in this video any way resemble a “lunatic,”, dataguy?
Definition of LUNATIC
1a : affected with lunacy : insane
b : designed for the care of insane persons <lunatic asylum>
2: wildly foolish (a lunatic idea)
Synonyms: balmy, barmy [chiefly British], bats, batty, bedlam, bonkers, brainsick, bughouse [slang], certifiable, crackbrained, cracked, crackers, crackpot, cranky [dialect], crazed, crazy, cuckoo, daffy, daft, demented, deranged, fruity [slang], gaga, haywire, kooky (also kookie), loco [slang], loony (also looney), loony tunes (or looney tunes), insane, mad, maniacal (also maniac), mental, meshuga (or meshugge also meshugah or meshuggah), moonstruck, non compos mentis, nuts, nutty, psycho, psychotic, scatty [chiefly British], screwy, unbalanced, unhinged, unsound, wacko (also whacko), wacky (also whacky), wud [chiefly Scottish]
Good fer you!!! Ya see? It’s not lunacy, it’s just the truth. It only appears lunatic to you because…well, because you watch too much TV.
Sorry, bubba, but there it is.
Step away from the TV with your brains in the air and you’ll get better REAL FAST!!!
Bet on it.
Promoting raw milk should be a felony. We have known for 140 years that raw milk is dangerous. He is a lunatic, and anyone who is confused about this old senile racist and his stupidity is beyond confusion.
And, no, I didn’t watch the propaganda.
Arthur, you are a moron. The FDA is one of the most important agencies we have.
No offense to people who have doctorates, but anyone who refers to a Congressperson as “Doctor” as if that somehow legitimizes his opinions related to medicine over actual peer review — when this Congressperson hasn’t practiced medicine in three decades — should be ignored; it’s a symptom of cult and fetish behavior. It’s like AG has become everything he’s derided lol.
It should also be noted that Ron Paul also doesn’t believe in evolution.
he probably doesn’t believe in his own shadow.
That actually made me laugh out loud, thanks for that.
Ron Paul doesn’t believe in evolution? So? Neither do I. Not the way it’s taught in America today, I don’t. I am more in line with the idea that humans were created by genetic cloning as advanced in a series of “science fiction” novels by the 2007 Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing called Canopus in Argos. This series was in turn influenced by the Sufi teacher Idries Shah and also by the work of G. I. Gurdjieff. Now you can kneejerk guffaw at people who disbelieve in so-called “scientific fact” all you want just as long as you are willing to ignore the plain fact that almost every popularly accepted so-called scientific fact of the last several thousand years has in turn been supplanted by another one that thoroughly contradicts it. We have come from a flat earth as the center of the universe to multi-dimensional string theory in only about 500 years, and bet on it, there’s more still to come. Lots more.
But that all begs the real question here, which is your own adherence to the idea of religious freedom.
Do you or do you not believe in freedom of religion and freedom of belief? And if you say that you do, would you or would you not accept a president or other elected representative who does not believe in the same things that seem to you to be self evident?
Just askin’ is all…
I mean…if you’re not a Catholic would you accept a practicing Catholic as president? How about a real believer in Judaism? A Muslim, maybe? How about an atheist? Provided all of them would swear on a stack of their favorite holy books…much as Ron Paul did in the following video…that said beliefs would not affect the performance of their official duties. Could you handle that? Because if you couldn’t and you do not happen to be a practicing Protestant, neither could you accept any of the previous 44 presidents. (With the possible exception of JFK if you are a practicing Catholic.)
Here’s the vid that seems to be responsible for all of this bushwa.
Ron Paul says quite plainly here that he considers evolution to be a theory, further that he does not personally accept that theory and even further that it’s a minor mater compared with the real problems that are at hand in this country.
And I believe him.
You don’t, I guess.
So it goes.
That’s what make horseraces.
“AND THEYRE OFF!!!”
I wonder who’s gonna win…
Which is where I came in here.
Wondering at the mechanisms of our broken republic.
Thanks for the lessons.
I’ll remember them.
Bet on it.
Later…
AG
As a person who tells doctors how to do research, there is a huge difference between a quack, a physician and a physician researcher. Paul is a quack. He doesn’t believe in evolution. He supports drinking raw milk. Next, he will be revealed as opposing vaccines. He is a fraud and a fake physician.
The rule for physicians is “First, do no harm”. Paul’s advocating raw milk is a total violation of that dictum.
Yep, Paul is a quack. At least his medical advice doesn’t have as much reach as “America’s Doctor” in Dr. Oz.
Yeah.
The FDA really works well!!!
That’s why almost every week there is news about a major drug that has been approved for a decade or so “suddenly” being found to be either totally ineffective and/or possessing such dangerous side effects that it has to be taken off of the market.
That’s why there are massive food poisoning scares week in and week out. Great inspection system, eh?
Gimme a break.
The FDA is a farce. It’s incompetence is only surpassed in the federal inspection system by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and only then because there is more money to be made bribing and otherwise infiltrating the SEC than there is to be made doing the same thing to the FDA.
Wake up. The whole system is rotten, up and down the line. I would have loved to have heard a major leftist politician attack this system the way Ron Paul is attacking it, but I have never seen it happen.
We simply can’t wait any longer. Sorry. It’s all gonna fall down if we don’t take steps now to right the boat. Desperate measures are needed, and Ron Paul is laying some out.
So it goes.
Deal wid it.
The left done failed.
Next?
Obama?
You jest.
AG
The FDA really works well!!!
I wonder if Arthur knows where the term “snake oil salesman” comes from.
That was sarcasm, Joe. Didja get it?
If you did, then who’s selling the snake oil according to you?
Ron Paul or the drug companies and the FDA that supposedly “polices” them?
You tell me.
AG
AG, you don’t know anything about the FDA, do you? Do you understand anything of the drug approval process? Do you know what an IND is? What does the term “off label” mean? Understand the difference between a superiority trial, inferiority trial and equivalence trial?
Ignorant bozos like you, AG, who don’t understand the FDA and the approval process spread stupidity and misinformation. Next you will be telling us that the FDA is the “number 1 job killer”, like your idol Newtie used to say.
Since you are an obvious ignoramus, I suggest that you review the history of thalidomide. This terrible drug, prescribed for morning sickness, caused many thousands of birth defects. But not many in the US, because the FDA refused to allow the marketing of the medication.
Stop spreading lies, AG.
Have you paid any attention whatsoever to the career of David Graham?
You should.
Here is some good info about the how the FDA really operates from someone who has worked there for over 20 years.
Check it out.
There’s more.
Lots more. Just like there is more about the SEC, the defense industry, the banking industry, the CIA and the whole rest of this rotted-out system. Look under any federal rock and this sort of thing is what you will find. Huge amounts of corporate money buying preferential treatment at the expense of the American people.
Wake the fuck up.
What? Do you work for the FDA?
C’mon…you can smell the rot in this system any day or night just by looking at the headlines.
Please.
AG
Shorter Arthur: sometimes, the FDA allows things to happen that I would allow to happen all the time, so therefore it’s bad.
It is truly beyond amazement that I find that the moron Paul wants a free market regulatory apparatus. This is beyond insane. We have a pretty good system, which could be better with more money. The food system has problems – antibiotics in animals is one. However, this must be done through congress, which has refused to allow any number of practices. The only way to stop antibiotics in meat would be to make it illegal. Good luck with that.
No.
The “only way to stop antibiotics in meat”…the only real way…would be to inform the American public about the dangerous food that they are eating and encourage them to stop buying it.
You say:
On the evidence of the last 60 years or so, “more money” would only travel in one direction…from the corporations to the supposed regulators.
Imagine what would happen…and I wouldn’t put it past him, not in the slightest…if a President Ron Paul made a speech in which he, (a highly qualified and experienced medical doctor) opined that antibiotic-laden meat is dangerous to the health of those that eat it and that any sane person would stop doing so immediately if not sooner.
Imagine what would happen if a President Ron Paul told the CIA to keep their cotton pickin’ hands offa the media. If he stood up one day after being elected and told the American pubic who really controls the news and why. He knows,too…he’s been a victim of the scam for over 20 years.
But NOOOOoooo…instead we have Obama serving roasted antibiotics on a stick to every royal Tom Dick and Harry who makes it to a White House dinner and pumping the media full of total bullshit info about things like the drone strikes and the killing of bin Laden.
C’mon. The FDA is a corporate tool…so is the rest of the federal government, for that matter… and if you don’t know it you’re dumber than most of the dummies at Tea Party meetups.
Get real.
AG
Well, GOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEE, what a SUPER DUPER idea, AG!!! Gosh, you appear to have really come up with a good idea here. And WHEN do you think people have actually known about this?
Well, google is your friend, AG. Have you ever heard of google? Using google, I found a VAST LITERATURE about this. Here’s the money quote:
So, this has been known since 1984. 1984!!! And you think you invented this super duper idea??
Why is it that in 28 years this has not been banned? Could it be (just a wild guess, mind you) that the billions and billions of bucks that Big Pharma gets from animal feed companies has anything to do with it, corporations that help out Paul and the other Repukeliscum?
You just discovered this? WAKE UP!! SMELL THE FUCKING COFFEE!!!! TURN OFF THE TV, AG!!!
Yes, Arthur, I got it. That’s why I was making fun of you for it.
Tell me, when you saw my quip about the snake oil salesmen, did you feel a whooshing sensation on your scalp?
Here, let me walk you through this:
“Snake-oil salesman” didn’t used to be a metaphor. There used to be people all over the US who would, literally, sell poisons as medicines, like oils containing snake venom. People were sickened and died from these products on a regular basis.
I guess the answer to my question is, No, Arthur doesn’t know where the term “snake-oil salesman” comes from.
Nobody could have predicted that a libertarian would be utterly ignorant about the conditions that predominated in the absence of a regulatory state.
This is the exact point. The FDA was created in response to abuse from the private sector. While not perfect, it has created a regulatory environment in which medications are evaluated according to rules, in which good medications are usually found, and in which the medication system generally functions well.
So what do the libertarians say? They say, “We have a safe medication system, and don’t need regulation”.
Libertarians are, almost without exception, either really stupid or genuinely corrupt. They are far more dangerous than conservatives, except for the fact the even conservatives realize that libertarian ideas are generally insane.
This is my point about raw milk. In 1871, Pasteur invented pasteurization. Why did he do this? Simple. Raw milk is an extremely dangerous substance. It is a natural bacterial culture, and often bacteria grow in raw milk.
So idiots like Paul say “We should have the freedom to drink raw milk.” No, no, no, a thousand times NO. This is a dangerous substance, and people are TOO STUPID and CREDULOUS to be allowed to drink raw milk.
I stress raw milk, because it is a test case – if you advocate raw milk, you should be in prison. I’m serious – it is advocating the consumption of a dangerous substance. It’s exactly the same as advocating eating raw chicken.
Paul is a dangerous moron. He is stupid, but he attracts other people who are also stupid, and look for easy answers. The problem with the world today is that there are no easy answers. Morons like AG want easy answers because they are lazy and cannot handle complexity. That is the attraction of libertarianism – easy answers for lazy stupid people.
Libertarians are morons.
One other point: Medications are regulated, but dietary supplements are not. In fact, with dietary supplements (vitamins, minerals, etc), you can make all kinds of claims that are simply false, and no one can stop you. That is the libertarian world, of course. The manufacturer can make a claim, and there is no evidence pro or con. In fact, many dietary supplements are dangerous and should be banned, but we cannot do that.
Why not? Orin Hatch is why not. The FDA was going to regulate dietary supplements, but Hatch stopped them about 10 years ago. People die in many cases due to crap in dietary supplements, but due to republicans like Hatch and Paul, we cannot fix this problems.
I hate libertarians. I have an active and visceral dislike for them. They are actively stupid.
i don’t understand why everyone is focusing on perry’s memory lapse and not that awesome line by cain that for every women he met complaining of harassment there are a thousand women he didn’t harass. and cain’s line wasn’t a gaffe, it was apparently a prepared line, showing the caliber of intellect we’re dealing with here.
(i can’t wait until the next time i defend someone who is fired for stealing. “but your honor, for every time that my client stole, think of the thousands of goods he regularly walks past and doesn’t steal!” that’s sure to get him his job back, right?)
or, “your honor, there are literally thousands of children who have benefitted from my charity who I haven’t raped even a single time.”
The world population just hit 7 billion. About half are women: 3.5 billion.
For each accuser, there’s 1000 he didn’t harass.
That means that Cain can be accused of harassment by (roughly) 3.5 million women. What a busy boy!
Smoke? Fire!
I was having the exact same thought as your page was loading. And after watching a video of Bentsen destroy Quayle. I even had the crazy conspiracy idea that Perry did it intentionally to take the heat off Cain. 😉
Anyway, as in all these blunders, the real embarrassment is the content of their ideas.
Perry said that his brain fart would “humanize him” in people’s eyes.
Hey, it worked for his folksy fellow Texan, George Bush. Why shouldn’t it work for Perry, too?
I don’t agree. Major gaff. He volunteered the “three departments” Nobody asked him “Which 3”. He volunteered. He posed the question, and then could not answer his own fucking question.
The guy is a retard, honestly. I just have no idea how someone as fucking stupid as this has done as well as he has. Being a pol has little to do with smarts, true. But Perry is the test case – does he have ANYTHING between his ears?
It’s serious, BooMan, because it confirms and advances a pre-existing narrative about his weaknesses.
Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich could have just pulled a funny face and laughed it off. Perry can’t.
CNN says Perry will stay in because he has a large chunk of cash just waiting to be spent. And that’s it, isn’t it?
We have candidates who can’t string together a coherent sentence, have the morality of a loose cannon, have no idea what consequential thinking is beyond attacking the messenger and yet they have money so they are in play.
From the applause and the polling one can only think that their constituents judge by monied talking points and nothing else.
I may have this all wrong, because I don’t watch this kind of garbage. But I heard that the “debate” was supposed to be about economic issues. And I’ve heard comments that the candidates didn’t really attack each other that much last night. If this is all true, then they might have been colluding a bit because I suspect they know how vulnerable they are with regard to their positions on the economy. And of course the moderator is going to challenge them on their ridiculous positions.
His gaffe won’t sway his supporters but also help him gain additional ones. In the scheme of things it’s not a big deal. I did enoy seeing him look like a fool though.
Should be “Won’t help him gain new ones”. Sigh.
i think you may have been right the first time…
what i found most bizarre was his channeling ronald reagan in his explanation, the same goofy-head smile and ‘ well central casting gave me the looks for the gig, so…’
it’s morning in america!
for 25% of the electorate stupid is reassuring.
it means you can have a beer with the guy and not feel he’ll say something elitist. you need to feel america is equal opportunity, so why not elect idiots?
almost worked for palin!
what’s truly terrifying is the audience and their reactions, as well as the thought any of these assclowns get anywhere near the white house…
paul has 2 good ideas, the rest is cornpone libertarian BS. he’s right about the Fed and the WOD, not even the most liberal dems have the wits to suggest those changes.
I was amazed this morning at work when I was laughing about Cain and Perry. Even Democrats defended Perry and the Tea Party rabidly defended Cain. Even to the point that the payoffs were blackmail payments against false accusations against their new god. I’d like to shove their heads into Cain’s lap.
I think one thing Perry’s performance in the debate harms him is if he had any real wish to be considered for VP. Forget Perry vs Obama in a debate Perry vs Biden would be funny as hell. Can you imagine Rick Perry debating Joe Biden??? Joe Biden would run rings around Perry.
Elmer Fudd would run rings around Perry.
Perry vs Biden? Who wins? The one with under a hundred gaffes?