TWGB: Contempt!

 

Reporter: Are you going to testify?

Trump: I have a gag order. I’m not allowed to answer that question pic.twitter.com/ss1c9flfDL

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 6, 2024

Oh, he's allowed to answer the question. Donald Von Shitzinpantz can testify and talk about testifying, this has been well-established. What he can't do is denigrate the witnesses or the jurors. Now, maybe listening to this lying ass is a form of denigration to the jury--but it isn't prevented by the gag order. And for the nth time--a gag order isn't some brand-new fresh thing invented just to give Trump a hard time. It is a normal application of restraint for a defendant who is already liable to fuck with the witnesses or jury in a way detrimental to the pursuit of justice.

So if someone has a problem with Trump being under a gag order, go look at how Trump tries to fix or even rig things to his benefit. He loves the obstruction of justice because he is not a big fan of justice from Mueller to Merchan to his obviously delayed for all the fuckery reasons federal cases. 

He isn't even a big fan of the Constitution if it stands in his way. 

Kevin McCarthy Found Out

 

Ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy blames the Democrats for removing him from office. People in his own party abandoned him, and he expected the Democrats to save him? GFOH pic.twitter.com/EvazKYuAcT

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) October 3, 2023

This wasn't a slow news day, by any means. You know, Hunter Biden got arraigned on his BS gun charge and pled not guilty. Laphonza Butler got sworn in by Vice-President Kamala Harris, one former Black woman Senator of California swearing in another. And I wish her much success. And the former president seems to have gotten his mad wish to get a gag order imposed on him, because he didn't just savage the AG and the judge in his idiotic and rash diatribes but roped in the court clerk. What the entire hell? Calling this person Chuck Shumer's girlfriend. Promoting a low-count social media conspiracy theory. It's limited to court staff but I can easily imagine Trump fucking up and finding out. He isn't known for self-control. (He also dropped off the Forbes list. It's bad up in Trump's headspace you guys.) 

But the big news is Kevin McCarthy got the shove. The equivalent of Chekhov's gun was the Gaetz trigger. Kevin McCarthy accepted his Speakership with a sword dangling over his table. It got deployed because he made the foolish gesture of trying to be an adult in the room when too many of the children hated grown-ups. And he went on to malign the actual grown-ups in the room with him--Democrats. 

How About Trump Experiences Accountability for Once?

 

When I see the suggestion that to avoid a violent civil conflict, we have to entertain the idea that Trump gets away with an attempted insurrection and collecting national security documents for his own purposes as if we had no imagination whatsoever about what a "disgruntled former employee" would want to do with such material. I can't help but feel like "what in the whole fuck are you a human being in the world with the rest of us thinking about, give me an entire fucking break." 

Trump's little fan club believes in power. Trump doesn't have that much anymore--outside of his little fan club. You remember Cesar Sayoc and his mail bombs and maybe some dozen or so Trump fans who penetrated the veil between our tolerance of Trump's violence-fluffing and its actual conception. Well, after 1/6, and the deaths of some insurrectionists and LE officers alike, how are we pretending his rhetoric doesn't matter, and after the most recent breach of his faith to lawfully uphold our Constitutional government, we see once again he was inept and unfit to do it, why are we pretending it's okay to just not prosecute him for the damage he's done? 

Newt Gingrich is Saying What Republicans Think

 

I was just mentioning that Newt Gingrich is a huge part of the reason why you have to treat Republicans as potentially hostile, but Jonathan Chait explained Gingrich's influence on today's GOP more fully in response to Newt explaining to a fish-jawed Bartiromo that in the event of Republicans taking the House back, the January 6th Committee would be going to jail.

Jail? Is investigating a presidential administration's response and responsibilities regarding a terror attack (because the riot that day was, indeed, domestic terror), then why did nothing happen to House Benghazi investigators? Could it be that no random statute exists preventing Congress from investigating matters of government that concerns them? 

Gingrich knows that. He's also just trying to inflame public opinion against the committee and try to stop them from continuing their duty because he's partisan trash. He's creating that old "permission structure".  Republicans can have their riots, whether of the Brooks Brothers kind or the more army/navy surplus style one, but Democrats are barred from complaint. Democrats should be locked up.  Hillary Clinton, Ilhan Omar, Gretchen Whitmer, any of them.

But in lieu of jailing people for assisting the January 6th Committee, there is possibly, firing them: 

The top staff investigator on the House committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has been fired by the state’s new Republican attorney general from his position as the top lawyer for the University of Virginia, from which he was on leave while working on the congressional inquiry. 

The office of the Virginia attorney general, Jason S. Miyares, said the firing of the investigator, Timothy J. Heaphy, was not related to the Jan. 6 investigation, but the move prompted an outcry from Democrats in the state, who accused him of taking the highly unusual action as a partisan move to further former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to undermine the committee’s work.

See, Virginia just came under new management, and now they are clearly doing things differently there.  Like, banning mask mandates (even though masks apparently help!) and setting up a hotline to snitch on teachers who might be teaching thoughtcrimes.  So why wouldn't the Virginia AG get rid of a troublesome lawyer? It's probably what Ron DeSantis would have done in his fiefdom state. DeSantis has created a climate of fear, and it really shows. 

Republicans talk a fun game about free speech, but hate being talked about. They still want to be McCarthyites and treat dissenters (even Republicans who disagree with them, who are RINOS) as somehow "un-American".  

I won't call Republicans un-American, though. Staging coups and voter suppression are as American as Red Scares and cherry pie. I am just saying they are wrong and there is never any good reason to support Republicans ever. Their policies are bad and their tactics are bad, and I can't even chicken and egg which part came first. 

This isn't a case of Newt Gingrich losing it--this is who he is and what he represents.  And others of his party in the "comment section" of life say worse all the time. 

We Don't Live in Bipartisan Times

Sen. @ewarren is 25 minutes into a fiery speech on the Senate floor about voting rights and the filibuster. Go watch.

“Today’s filibuster doesn’t encourage debate, it promotes cowardice.” pic.twitter.com/Nn3RbA68Yr

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) January 19, 2022

Professor Warren explains the truth--cowards can hide behind the rationale that "We can't get to 60, so what does taking a stand matter." That's what infuriates me about Manchin and Sinema right now. They are pretending that they are standing up for a principle of bipartisanship and not making the divide between Republicans and Democrats worse, but what they are really doing is failing to make a stand. Absent the filibuster, the votes fall where they may. 

We all know we'd be hard-pressed to find a Republican right now putting their vote on limiting state legislatures' ability to suppress voting because they are going to talk about federal power grabs and states' rights, and if that doesn't sound familiar! I'd love to make the Republican party expound at length on that subject so we could tell exactly where they stood. 

Please, have them defend everything from restrictions to mail-in voting to DeSantis' possible vote cops (I imagine crackers with bullet heads and necks exceeding their jawlines carrying blackjacks and being prone to saying shit like "You don't look like you're from around here" and "Who all is your people?"). In lieu of that, though, just based on our current composition in the Senate, I'd like Sinema and Manchin to put their vote where their ideals are supposed to be, let VP Harris settle the matter, and go forward with voter rights better protected.

Where we are now is at a stupid state where Senator Romney pretends it is a darn shame President Biden didn't reach out to him. If Senator Romney was so moved to think voting rights needed to be protected, he could have reached out his damn self. Senator Murkowski might be persuaded--but is she not a grown woman who understands politics? Ditto all GOP senators. If they have an opinion, fuck it, put it on the damn table, like grown people. But also, explain voter purges, and defend poll places miles from where some voters live, and long lines, and how unequal access impacts outcomes. And if that wasn't even the intent of such voter suppression laws in the first place. They need to be put on notice that they can't bitch about being called racist for supporting those "states' rights" bills if they can't defend the obvious demographic choices that made them what they are.  Put the GOP on the spot for what they have come to stand for, after the Voter Rights bill had been so universally approved-of not so long before. 

How Do Demogogues See the World?

Through demogoggles! But what range--from "rule of law" to "deep state"--and all that had to change was which party was in the WH!


Addition: I don't know why anyone would act surprised, either.

So, Did John Boehner Push to Keep the Benghazi Cmte Alive?

Recent gavel-renunciator John Boehner is quite possibly the guy who turned the Benghazi Select Committee on to Clinton-emails-all-the-time. I personally always thought there was a partisan quality to the Select Committee, but I didn't see out to how it would get to be about trapping Hillary Clinton out loud until pretty recently. But in light of the sort of information that had been out there, I think it was becoming increasingly clear that there wasn't new information about what happened then that even was being looked for.

But why would Boehner push to have a committee about the deaths of four US persons in Libya be about Hillary Clinton's emails? Because of the Infinite Football-Pull. Politically, Hillary Clinton was the most likely candidate for the Democratic nomination, so by wrecking her, he could break out of the "always-losing" scenario by having someone in the Oval Office--a Republican--who would give the House GOP militants at least some of what they wanted some of the time--and really do him a favor by not being a Dem at all.

The idea that Boehner threatened to walk off the Speaker position knowing full well no one in their right mind would want it while still pumping for the Committee's validity, kind of suggests he wanted to stay on but with a stronger hand? It makes some sense.  But since the game is more or less given away--does this mean he really leaves--or is he further caught in a hell of his own making? (Enquiring minds might like to know with the CR up and the debt ceiling also.)

If so, Trey Gowdy isn't alone in being under fire for the Benghazi Committee becoming (even more) overtly partisan. Boehner assisted.  Does this mean he also should be looking at an ethics issue? Probably not--we are far removed from the day when Newt Gingrich stepped down from his speakership partly for ethics reasons by a GOP committee. But he still might just like to, you know. Go away.

(All this backstory is, in part, why I found the idea of Newt Gingrich in the running for a shot at Speaker so amusing when it got floated. The partisan witch hunt that Gingrich lived and politically died by--the current GOP learned it by watching him!)

Climate Sunday: Weapons of Mass Distraction

I have to give Secretary of State John Kerry credit for giving climate change its proper due in his recent speech in Jakarta, even though the language he used seems to have rankled some nerves.

By comparing climate change to weapons of mass destruction or terrorism and criticizing climate change denialists, he received quick responses from the likes of Newt Gingrich, who suggested that Kerry should resign over the comments, and Senator John McCain, who expressed surprise that this was a major concern of Sec. Kerry's while other things were going on in the world.

To tackle the obvious first--seriously, John Kerry should resign for a somewhat different opinion from one held by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who was for doing something about climate change before he was against it? That seems awfully severe, doesn't it? And really, the rest of his complaint is pretty much similar to Sen. McCain's--isn't there other things the US should concern itself with?

To answer the first question--I am not sure why Newt Gingrich doesn't think global climate change is of sufficient seriousness to merit exactly that kind of speech, but that is on him. We've already begun to experience severe weather events, which are coming more frequently. Climate change will affect the availability of water in some areas (see how drought affects Texas and California today) and the ability to grow food to feed ourselves, raising the prices of everything.  Economies of nations will suffer and collapse. Climate refugees will flood the areas that remain temperate enough to still have opportunities for survival. If this scenario plays out--that is deadly damn serious and affects our whole global civilization. (You know, the one where humans are the dominant species on this planet.) Avoiding it would be preferable, dealing with the unavoidable bits would be nice. You might think a person as interested in saving western civilization as Gingrich purports to be could get behind saving this place, Earth, where we are having it.

Countdown to Shutdown

You know, I for the life of me don't understand how the GOP House leadership got themselves in this predicament, except for the bits I do get. The whole moderate/Tea Party kerfuffle about whether a clean CR can be done might just look like a shitfight in the monkeyhouse, but it really isn't anything so natural. There aren't even enough GOP moderates, apparently, to make a shitfight worthwhile. And I think we all know that the government shutdown is the precious.  Why is that? Because if you fuck up the government children, you can get back to the garden. Except, like, the GOP idea of the garden is where someone actually paves paradise and puts up a parking lot, so I don't even know what they are nostalgic for--the promises of Goodman Gingrich and his Contract for America Travelling Circus? Prophet Norquist's scorched earth future where the government baby is drowned in the bathtub of state?

It's weird that they are resting their shallow hopes for relevance on destruction, as if no one would notice. As if the GOP wouldn't get blamed, especially after telegraphing and even proclaiming it was what they wanted. And that is why I know how they got here. After demonizing the ACA in fundraising letter after fundraising letter--how could they back down now? They went and compared it to every horrifying travesty under the sun. But a shutdown will cost a buttload of money and do the economy no favors. It will remind every person of what the government is--the thing we kind of voted for. And, not being repealed or delayed, the enrollment for the ACA exchanges will go on regardless, and people who might not have been able to afford health care, might finally be able to set themselves up with a plan. Is it perfect? No. But seeing any doctor is better than seeing none. It will make a difference in people's lives.

This dumb, futile nonsense is actually a bit of theater, isn't it? A show put on for the Tea Party twits who believe fundraising letters and think the jobless or under-employed souls with shitty health care prospects are simply less-than and want them to remain so--because that belief somehow acts as a talisman against their own fears of less-than care. They don't even want to know that the ACA might even do them any favors--it must favor some different, slack-jaw, greedy "them".  And maybe it's an old rite that Sen. Ted Cruz is putting on, challenging, with the promise of killing and eating, the current House Leadership so that he can, although a freshman Senator, become something of a Big Deal by acquiring their leadership powers. Sounds primitive, but makes a weird kind of political sense, no? In the kind of "better to be feared than loved" way?

Anyhow, I think they are grandiosely fucking up according to their recognizable pathologies, and despite the pain a government shutdown would inflict, well, at least if they play with that shiny object, they might forget to not pass a debt limit bill.

(Although they have given me about zero confidence on that score. You know, the zero confidence credit rating institutions might also be feeling about now. Like the stock market might be feeling about now.)

What I'm saying is--The Tea Party that brought us these spoiled ignorant cave people can not die fast enough. And I surely hope the Democrats take the House in the next go-round or our economy will never have a proper recovery.

This Week Rep. Louie Gohmert Selected Newt Gingrich For Speaker of the House.

I think it salutory, for the purposes of enumerating the symptoms of the Republican party as it currently stands, to occasionally visit with Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, demon-hunter,  terror-baby historian,  and all-around Right-Wing Whackadoodle. This week, he did indeed nominate former House Speaker as well as recent GOP primary candidate for President Newt Gingrich to once again be Speaker of the House. 

This time, however, I entirely get where he's coming from. Newt Gingrich, if you were politically aware in the mid-90's, was the guy who got the government shut down. As the last debt ceiling foo-raw-raw indicated, I think Louie Gohmert would like very much for this to happen.  If current Speaker of the House John Boehner shows continued committment to trying to actually continue this sinful thing called US government by means of negotiating with a Muslim Comsymp like Obama, obviously, true patriots like Gingrich stand in the wings to shut it down like a, a, shut-downable thing.

I think. It's kind of hard to stay in the Gohmert-zone without wanting oxygen and maybe a stuffed toy to cling to.

Mr. Newt's Wild Ride Comes to An End

Instead of linking to Newt Gingrich's rambling farewell speech, in which he thanked many people, and um, said many things (including a digression on his lifetime achievements) and, um, didn't really support Mitt Romney so much as state that any Republican was better than Obama (inspirational!), I think I'm just going to concentrate on Newton Leroy Gingrich's real contribution to this campaign.

For one thing, there's the negging he did earlier in the primary to make the Romney campaign really want to hook him up with support from their donor list to help in retiring his massive campaign debt.  You know, like these comments right here:



And then there's this marvelous and accurate statement from Fox News' own honest fellow, Shep Smith, who comments on Gingrich's parting words and Team Romney's response to them:



"Politics is weird....and creepy, and now I know lacks even the loosest attachment to anything like reality."

I would make that into a needlepoint to hang over my bed if I could do needlepoint, I tell you what.

This moment is bittersweet for me. I don't think there's much of a political future for Newt Gingrich and actually, I suspect that his campaign may have even harmed his reputation by calling attention to the rare batshit flavor of what has generally been assumed to be his scholarly, historical, and technological Big Ideas. Viewing him in the light of 2012 casts a pall over the earlier version that once loomed large in my political imagination--the 1994-1999 Gingrich whose Contract With America and whose leadership in the House led to such...nonsense. The government shutdown. The impeachment of President Clinton.

I don't think you could blame me for seeing the echoes of that time in the 2010 mid-term elections that swept in a mess of GOP freshmen armed with hard-core partisan ideals, or for wondering if someone like Eric Cantor or (more probably) Paul Ryan might have Gingrich-like influence as Speaker themselves one day by following in his creative-destructive footsteps (no fear of Boehner--he's useless).  Yet seeing the curtain swept back on the Great and Powerful Oz to reveal a little con man is kind of satisfying, in a way. Did he give brains, a heart, courage, a home, to arch-conservatism? Or were they merely tokens?

Meh. Ding dong, the career is dead.


(X-posted at Rumproast.)

More Notes From Gingrich's Last Stand

Sometimes a vast sea creature will beach itself on one of our shores, and its ponderous bulk will resist all attempts to slip it back into the depths from which it came. It will die there, on land, and of course, it will rot.

As it rots, it will smell, and gather insects about it.  Out of concern for public health and safety, the corpses of these large beasts are occasionally exploded for quick removal.

Newt Gingrich is just about there. He commented today regarding President Obama's comments in response to a question about the killing of Trayvon Martin with the following:

"Newt Gingrich called Obama's remarks about Trayvon Martin "disgraceful" in an interview with Sean Hannity, according to CBS/National Journal. 

“It’s not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background," Gingrich said. "Is the President suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot that would be ok because it didn’t look like him?" 

Earlier in the day Gingrich told reporters that he thought the case should be investigated and suggested the shooter was at fault. 

"That’s just nonsense dividing this country up. It is a tragedy this young man was shot," Gingrich continued on Hannity's show. "It would have been a tragedy if he had been Puerto Rican or Cuban or if he had been white or if he had been Asian-American of if he’d been a Native American. At some point we ought to talk about being Americans. When things go wrong to an American. It is sad for all Americans. Trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. I really find it appalling.”

Someone asked the President a question. He answered it as a parent would. The man who killed Trayvon Martin used a racial slur and had a history of alarmism about black people.  No one's "trying to turn it into a racial issue"--it is one because even if it wasn't one, many, many, people besides the president believe it is, and grown adults who are trying to lead a country pay attention to how other people feel and react. Tired old grifters who have one big trick left pull out the whistle and blow. We aren't horrified because the victim was black. We're horrified because the shooter walked. Because he wasn't arrested. Because the boy lay in the morgue three days while his phone had his parents' number in it, and they weren't called. Gingrich may ignore how race may have impacted the treatment of this case, but he does so ignorantly if he doesn't realize that people will feel something about that and now won't let it be ignored.

There are differences among people in this country. There is a big difference between Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich. It shows.

Notes on the Winding Down of A Long Con

There is no shark-jumping moment for the career of one Newton Leroy Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and would-be presidential nominee, because Speaker Gingrich has long operated with the Great White clearly in view between his water-skis. A White House bid after 20 years of green-room exile may strike some as a romantic fantasy or vanity project, but I prefer to think of it as the "fuck-you" exploit that caps an extraordinary grifting career. Maybe not in the sense of a man solely in it for the money--although money surely has come into it, but for status and attention as well. I think my interpretation gives the man some dignity as a player in the world of players. Every day he's hustling. You can understand a man like that.

Maybe not like him.

But I think the end is near, the money's drying up and the time has come to settle in, write a new book, or maybe even spend more time with his families. Witness the following bid for attention:

(Whoa! Halt everything! I recommend taking a medium-sized drink of the beverage of your choice, so that you might spit it out at the appropriate interval. Pro-tip: Away from your keyboard.)

Newt Gingrich is incensed about a joke by actor Robert DeNiro at a fundraiser attended by Michelle Obama for the president’s re-election, in which the Academy Award-winning star used the word “white” to describe the Republican field’s spouses.
"Callista Gingrich. Karen Santorum. Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?" DeNiro said. "Too soon, right?"
...
"What DeNiro said last night was inexcusable and the president should apologize for him. It was at an Obama fundraiser, it is exactly wrong, it divides the country," [Gingrich] said. "If people on the left want to talk about talk show hosts, then everybody in the country should hold the president accountable when someone at his event says something that is utterly and terribly unacceptable as what Robert DeNiro said." 

No word yet on whether Gingrich thinks Obama should apologize for Little Fockers.

Toujours l'audace, M. Gingrich.  Who I believe in recent memory called Obama a "food-stamp president" and bemoaned his "Kenyan, anti-colonialist" ways.

A White House spokesperson called the remarks "inappropriate", thereby sucking the oxygen out of Gingrich's attempt at rhetorical arson. Some days it hardly pays to put on one's best poutrage face. Sniff. But that was a just a tidbit.  He was scarcely as invested in that, as he is in the $2.50 gas idea.

Gimmicks. Alas. Alack. A duh.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez talks about the Food Stamp President--SNAP!

This is a wonderful, factual rebuttal to former Speaker Gingrich's lazy dog-whistle about the so-called "Food Stamp President".  It  turns out, Obama is not the only president to care whether Americans were going hungry. No President should be "satisfied" with the idea of people going hungry in this country. Not all SNAP recipients (children and the elderly) can look for paychecks to sort out their needs. I think it's a pity that the GOP candidate choses to use poor people and their basic need to eat as a political statement in favor of callousness, and am glad that we have a history in this country of trying to meet the basic needs of our citizens--that is nothing to be ashamed of.

Herman Cain Endorses Newt Gingrich for President

You knew, I knew, we all knew it was meant to be.

"I hereby officially and enthusiastically endorse Newt Gingrich for president of the United States," Cain said, after appearing as a "surprise guest" at a Lincoln Day Dinner held by the Palm Beach County Republican Party.



"There are several reasons, many reasons, as to why I have reached this public decision. I had it in my heart and mind a long time ago," Cain said. "I know that Speaker Gingrich is a patriot, Speaker Gingrich is not afraid of bold ideas."


"And I also know that Speaker Gingrich is running for president, and going through this sausage grinder -- I know what this sausage grinder is all about," Cain said, because "he cares about the future of the United States of America. We all do."

I don't know if this will give Gingrich a boost in Florida, where Romney is apparently ahead. I just wanted the chance to use that graphic again.  Also, heh heh heh, he said "sausage".

Wow. Another state, another winner.

So, it turns out that Rick Santorum actually won Iowa, Romney did win New Hampshire, and now Newt Gingrich has decidedly won South Carolina.

That would be two so far that the expected, inevitable Mitt Romney hasn't won.  I covered the possibility that Romney might not be so inevitable as even I thought here, but I think it's worth revisiting how a Gingrich win will effect the GOP--

I don't think it's good for them.  

In a way, I kind of welcome the idea of Newt Gingrich facing Barack Obama. There might be a desire for the hardcore right to see a culture warrior smear Obama about his Alinsky tactics and food stamp presidency; they might yearn to see someone paint the president of the United States as an Other and an alien, maintaining that he's both a Kenyan anti-colonialist and a Euro-centric socialist, or whatever string of ultimately meaningless adjectives and nouns the 1990's counter-culturalist bomb-thrower wants to paint my president as.

It was Santorum.

Rick Santorum actually beat Mitt Romney in Iowa by 34 votes.

That Santorum-mentum was apparently a real thing--maybe this news, combined with the news that one of Newt Gingrich's exes has just given ABC a possibly devastating interview, will make things interesting--

Or not.

Shut up! I paid attention to this Debate in the South on Fox News This One Time, and I Weren't Nearly as Drank as What I Needed To Be!

Okay, one of the things I need to point out about the debate I just half-assed paid attention to whilst watching other shit on tv and following Twitter and drinking some beer and putting some sheets in the wash is that Rick Perry really does think that the fellows who peed on some dead Taliban were just boys being boys. I guess Rick Perry was a boy once, and young. Unfortunately, I can't actually vouch for his ever having grown up.  I want a grown-up as president, and luckily, I think we have a grown-up as president in Barack Obama.  He isn't disappointed in these young men in order to show "disdain" for the military. He's actually appreciative of all the military does, and what can be actually undone by a moment of dumbfuckery. Also, desecrating corpses really is against military law.  I don't know why Rick Perry doesn't understand this.

But we don't actually worry about Rick Perry becoming POTUS at this point, do we?  Oh, no.

Let's talk about Mitt Romney. I don't think he was expecting to still have to debate tonight. Let's look at this clip with Santorum going after him about of all things, voting rights for ex-cons.



I don't know if the endorsement by those 150 evangelicals or whatever gave Santorum extra confidence, but he was kind of on the right side of the question (what?) and took it to Romney. I don't care for Rick Santorum because he's basically a virulent homophobe and a religiously-foolish misogynist, and also I'm still working out where he stands on "Blah" people, because I've always focused on the first two issues and never noticed the casual race bigotry he evokes that much before, but in at least that instance, he made Romney look like a clueless boob.

Um, and the last thing I have to say is: Newt Gingrich is a major jackass.  His nonsense about Obama as Food-stamp President and his nonsense about child labor might get some claps from hard-core fans and bigots, but the long-term problems regarding poverty in the US as involves food scarcity ends up coming down to the following:

Does Newt Gingrich think that if the economy collapsed, Barack Obama shouldn't need to or want to see to it we had our fellow Americans FED? Wouldn't Newt prefer even our poorest people were at least fed, if we had the resources to feed our hungry countrymen?  And doesn't he understand why children are treated different than adults? That they have a certain right to preferential treatment because they are the future and insisting that they pay for the privileges of their education is so much fuckery?

Meh--so glad I was mostly washing sheets and drinking. Else I might have developed a much greater dislike for these handful of remaining GOP candidates than I already have from the preceding eleventy-billion debates.

Did I mention I can not stand these people anymore?  Because that is important.  I can't.

The Little Wingnut that Could Comes in Number 2 in Iowa

GOP front-runner Mitt Romney only beat Rick Santorum in the Iowa caucus by eight votes. That's a pretty big deal for the un-Google-able sweater-vest afficionado, and I have to admit, I'm pretty happy with that result. My former Senator is a big favorite of this blog because he's a great snark target. He makes fresh awful all the time, whether it's vowing to annul the marriages of same-sex partners, or saying states should have the right to ban birth control, or just dozens and dozens of other horrible-sounding things.

Despite being awful in what he says and believes, Iowa has given him the gift of viability, just as surely as the campaigns of Michele Bachmann (who I thought might actually come in ahead of Perry, whose campaign has been marred by his opening his mouth and letting words come out) and Rick Perry (who will be going on the South Carolina)have basically been given the hard way to go. And since Bachmann and Perry were the other theocrat candidates, I'm guessing a lot of their supporters might just go Santorum's way, keeping his campaign going despite being low on donations and interest at first.

Also, I think he might benefit from a volatile Newt Gingrich who looks to be raring to go negative on Romney. Gingrich has a knack for the negative, and this can not help Romney's favorables.

Of course, the Santorum surge could just have been because he was the last "Not-Mitt" standing right before the caucus, so no negative attention was yet drawn to him, but I still think this makes the race interesting if only because Romney isn't going to coast to an easy nomination.

(Sorry about the horserace stuff. It's just....I don't follow sports, you know?)

Virginia may actually be doing something right, here.

Out of the GOP Clown Car of 2012 Presidential contestants, only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul managed to get on to the VA GOP primary ballot.  I'm willing to view this as a feature of the strict ballot rules in VA, not a bug.

I've long (as in, since he announced) been of the opinion that Newt Gingrich, for one, was not a serious candidate just because the office of the Presidency doesn't offer him anything better than the long con he's been running since leaving the House throughout his political career. Sure, there might be some gossip that Gingrich left his first wife expressly because she wasn't young and pretty enough to be First Lady,  but considering that actually taking office, regardless of what Gingrich might have wanted in the past, would entail not lobbying, or gathering big ol' speaking fees for speeches, suggests that Leader of the Free World might be a step down from "Teacher of the Rules of Civilization, and sometimes Science Fiction Writer".  Did I mention that Gingrich lives in Virginia, the state where he is not on the ballot because....duh? Because that is important. He's not on the ballot in the state where he lives--when Mitt Romney and Ron Paul figured it out without living there. This is not Pearl Harbor, people. This is just piss-poor planning. Because he never looked ahead and thought he'd still be here? Dunno. But he won't be the GOP candidate, will he? (I dunno, will he?)

Perry has not been impressive at all since he entered the race. I think he may have wanted it, but it was still a vain and impulsive decision on his part.

As for the others who couldn't figure it out--well, it's either that, or they just aren't as popular as they thought they were. So there.

Leaving Romney and Paul. There's a choice for you, without the possibility of write-in.  The way I see it, eliminating protest votes and throw-away votes may make the exercize more meaningful. You are voting for someone who may actually be the nominee. No protest vote.  No sympathy vote.

They have a point; I don't think it will make the VA vote meaningless.  The shallow ballot means Virginians are more likely to be voting on who will actually be the nominee.