Rigged.

Get a job, whiner!

I'm writing this in hopes that the OWS movement can have a better understanding of the hedge fund industry and the financial markets. With OWS being the zeitgeist of current politics, I think it's important to know how exactly the hedge funds, along with the financial markets are destroying the 99%.

Hedge funds. These guys are basically the vehicles of choice for ultra-rich people to get into the financial markets, besides family offices and private wealth managers. What are hedge funds? They are funds that have a 1-5 million deposit minimum, cater to the mega-rich, and can invest in anything without regulatory restrictions, use leverage to pump up their exposure by 15x, and pretty much eat up a vast majority of the industry's profits.

These guys invest in EVERYTHING. Instruments you've heard of - stocks, bonds, forwards, futures, currencies, and instruments that you, me, or anyone else have never even heard of, much less know anything about: commodity future swaptions, FRA/OIS swaps, CLOs, exotic future options, p-notes, index/commodity/equity exposures, and a huge array of OTC (over-the-counter) instruments that no regular investor would ever have access to.

Why I bring this up: the financial markets are rigged. 99% of the investing public has access to services such as basic brokerages, 401k/IRA's, mutual funds, pension plans, etc. Some of these services, especially pension funds, will invest into hedge funds, who take an additional 2 and 20 (meaning 2% of assets plus 20% of capital gains).

What this means is that if you go any of the traditional retail routes, you are utterly screwed facing off against the hedge funds.

Rick Perry: to not know stuff is to be human.

Awwww, people are picking on the poor little Secessionist.

Rick Perry sought to defend a recent gaffe in an interview Wednesday, but in the same appearance made another.

On Tuesday, the Republican presidential candidate incorrectly said the voting age in the U.S. is 21 instead of 18 and that the 2012 presidential election is on Nov. 12 instead of Nov. 6, mistakes Perry characterized as human error.

"Look I'm a human being … I'm going to make some mistakes from time to time in my remarks," Perry said on Fox News.

[...]

But in the same interview, in which Perry appeared from New Hampshire, the Texas governor incorrectly identified the state's early voting contest as "caucuses" instead of a "primary."

Idjut.

An open letter to Jeff Fecke.

Since Jeff Fecke links to my post in his "liberals are just as bad as Fox News" post, I feel the need to respond.

He writes,

Firedoglake began amplifying the message that Obama was selling out the left, that he was intentionally trying to undermine the public option in order to…something. It was never made clear exactly why Obama would work against a policy that he had specifically endorsed, other than that it meant Obama was in thrall to Big Business.

Fecke links to my post at FDL. Here's the first graf of that post:

We now know that the White House, in secret negotiations with industry lobbyists, quietly killed the public option in July 2009. But when the President gave a nationally-televised, joint address to Congress on September 9, 2009, he implied that the public option was still on the table.

You'll see that those links go to Think Progress, which cites Tom Daschle's book, and Obama's speech. There's nothing at all in there about "Obama intentionally trying to undermind" anything. The point is that a) Daschle admitted that the public option was sacrificed to AHIP as a bargaining chip; and b) Obama wasn't terribly honest about that.

(Side note: negotiating behind closed doors with industry lobbyists is something Obama expressly promised not to do when he campaigned for the presidency -- and specifically attacked Hillary Clinton for.)

We also know that Obama offered up the public option when he tried to get Chuck Grassley on board.

"If we do everything and resolve all the policy issues the way you want, with no public plan, do you think you'll be able to support the bill?"

Grassley looked away. "I don't know."

Fecke adds,

The public option was stripped from the bill for mundane reasons — it didn’t have enough support to get through the Senate. But that didn’t fit the FDL narrative, which is why they chose to believe and amplify information that came from dubious sources, because that information fit their narrative.

I don't know what this "FDL narrative" Fecke is talking about or these "dubious sources" -- the sourcing above is all excellent. But the facts are that the public option was negotiated away pretty early on by Obama and the White House, and he never publicly fought for it. He campaigned on it, but he didn't insist that it be in the final bill, probably because he didn't think it was that important, and he thought getting something, anything passed -- was the goal.

Obama was happy to put the screws to someone like Dennis Kucinich in crunch time, but did he visit Blanche Lincoln's and Evan Bayh's districts, telling them to get behind the public option? No, he didn't.

What's more, the final health care bill passed via reconciliation in the Senate, and there certainly were 51 votes for it in the end. But Obama did not insist that it be put back in (again, probably because he made the calculation that a health care bill without a public option is still better than no health care bill).

But here's where it gets dicey: Obama later weirdly denied that he even campaigned on the public option, which wasn't true -- an odd fact Fecke conveniently doesn't mention. Why? Because he wants to absolve Obama of any duplicity here and blame everything on liberals.

The liberal complaints about Obama and the public option are easy enough to understand. It was clearly sacrificed to get industry insiders and corporatist Democrats and Republicans on board -- despite the fact that polling showed it was overwhelmingly supported by the public. But in the end, the White House made a political calculation that passing something was better than passing nothing -- and they appear to have been wrong. This is probably because people hate their insurance companies and they think they're paying too much every year in health care bills -- and there's nothing in the bill they see that will provide them a way to lower their costs any time soon. A public option would've given people a chance to opt-out of the noxious cartel that currently controls the health care industry.

Fecke also doesn't acknowledge that the public option was already a compromise position for liberals, who agreed to abandon single payer in favor of Obama's version of RomneyCare. And as much as liberals have expressed frustration with Obama, Obama and the White House haven't exactly endeared themselves to the base with their endless, pointless hippie punching.

To assert, as Fecke has, that all liberal complaints about Obama are based on lies and delusions and completely illegitimate, I think, simply isn't fair.

Erick Erickson: only Democrats can get away with affairs.

Wingnuts perpetually see themselves as victims held to different standards than the rest of us.

His [Cain's] attorney’s statement reads like a non-denial denial, which would be fine for a Democrat, but after Bill Clinton the GOP tends to get held to a higher standard on these things, rightly or wrongly.

Let's see.

Larry Craig stayed in the Senate after getting caught soliciting BJs in a men's bathroom, David Vitter had sex with prostitutes and is still in the Senate, Newt had too many affairs and wives to count and is now the GOP front-runner -- and Anthony Weiner stepped down after some naughty texts.

Higher standard, my ass.

Conservatives: women are weak.

It's a common meme from them, but it's always especially odd when right-wing women do it.

Frank.

Bummer:

US Representative Barney Frank, the state’s highest-profile congressman and one of the nation’s leading liberal voices after being among its first openly gay elected officials, planned to announce today that he will not reelection next year.

Quoth the Putz:

If an entrenched incumbent like Barney Frank can’t win in Massachusetts, the Dems are in real trouble. Or maybe he’s just trying to lower his profile to avoid indictment or something . . . .

As for the "real trouble" bit -- erm, no.

And yes, can't wait for those indictments to drop any day now. As we all know, Barney Frank caused the financial crisis, so...

McArdle doesn't think 250K/year = "rich."

McMegan:

Mr. Livingston doesn't address this. He also attributes the "global savings glut" of the past decade to excessive wealth even though Asian central banks probably played a larger role than rich Americans and claims that the "Bush tax cuts" caused the housing bubble by leaving those over-saving rich with too much money to play with even though three-quarters of the lost tax revenues stayed in the hands of people making less than $250,000 a year—the de facto threshold for "rich" established by the Obama administration.

One, only about 2% of Americans make more than 250K/year, so yes, if you're making more than 98% the country -- you're rich.

Two, it's not a threshold for "rich" -- it's a marker for what the highest tax bracket should be.

And three, it was established by the Clinton administration.

Great job, Megan!

Rick Perry, chickenhawk.

It seems the Secessionist was very passionate about the Vietnam War.

When a small band of antiwar protesters took to the steps of the Memorial Student Center, a building dedicated to “Aggies who gave their lives for our country,” young Mr. Perry was incensed.

“I don’t want to use the word ‘long-haired hippie types,’ ” said John Sharp, a Perry classmate and chancellor of the Texas A&M University system, “but a person who did not look like they fit into A&M said some kind of Jane Fonda-type stuff, and I remember Perry got up in his face pretty quick over that. He took exception to it, shouted the guy down.”

But...

Vietnam hung as a shadow over Mr. Perry’s service. As a young cadet, he mourned A&M graduates killed in battle. But with the war winding down, Mr. Perry did not see combat. Instead, he carried people and supplies (“trash hauling,” he and his buddies called it) around the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Guess the guy spouting Jane Fonda stuff was right.

The Palin dead-enders haven't given up.

Hey, she might as well get in -- it's only a matter of time before Newt's turn is up.

Job creators.

Krugman:

So should the 99.9 percent hate the 0.1 percent? No, not at all. But they should ignore all the propaganda about “job creators” and demand that the super-elite pay substantially more in taxes.

The Stupid Party, cont'd

Mark Steyn:

It’s a tribute to Mitt Romney’s soporific caution and Herman Cain’s blithe indifference to the bit on the map marked Rest of the World that Newt is now what passes for the GOP’s deep thinker.

So says the college dropout who dismisses global warming as a librul hoax.

A black thing.

The end of Newt's campaign.

Apparently, when the Secessionist dropped like a brick after he said something less than "we need to kick out all the brown people" -- Newt wasn't paying attention.

If you've been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grandkids, you've been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don't think we're going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out.

But...but...shamnesty!

ROMNEY: ...But to say that we're going to say to the people who have come here illegally that now you're all going to get to stay or some large number are going to get to stay and become permanent residents of the United States, that will only encourage more people to do the same thing.

Yeah, so. We are going to actually uproot 11 million people forcefully and kick them out. In a very small government way, of course.

Willard bags Thune.

Wonder if he's a veep candidate?

The next election will be the most important in generations. We can choose to continue on the same path with four more years of President Obama's failed policies or we can choose a leader who has the needed experience to lead an economic recovery. That leader is Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney has shown throughout his life in the private sector, as leader of the Olympics, as governor, and in this campaign that he will not back down from difficult challenges. His plans to revitalize the private sector and restore our country's fiscal health are drawn from his 25 year career as a conservative businessman. Washington could use these commonsense principles at such a critical time. I hope you'll join me and stand with Mitt today. Sincerely, John Thune

Failure is good.

Indeed.

“The people who want to say ‘no’ have more leverage,” Frank said in a telephone interview. “Every showdown until now, the right wing had more leverage. They tended to benefit more from gridlock. Now, thanks to sequestration and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, gridlock is bad for the right wing. So they are now going to be forced to deal.”

This sounds familiar.

(Ahem.)

UPDATE

And yes, I realize it's Tweety, but even a blind squirrel...

Where the Republican Party is, in two parts.

Part the First:

Newt Gingrich tops the list in the race for the GOP nomination, according to a new national survey.

Part the Second:

Look out budget wonks, Newt Gingrich is comin' for you.

The former Speaker of the House labeled the Congressional Budget Office a "reactionary socialist institution" during a speech on Social Security reform in New Hampshire on Monday.

But both sides are equally crazy!

[/Bainbridge]

Shorter Stephen Bainbridge: Democrats are crazy, too!

Reacting to David Frum's absolutely devastating beatdown on the GOP, Bainbridge writes,

If the leadership of the left consisted of people of moderate views, sound judgment, even temper, and good will, unilateral disarmament of the sort David seems to contemplate might make sense.

Leadership of the left: Obama, Biden, Clinton, Reid, Schumer, Kerry.
Leadership of the right: McConnell, DeMint, Boehner, Cantor, El Rushbo

Which side is more "moderate" and "even tempered"?

More idiocy from Douglas Schoen and Patrick Caddell.

These two losers are at it again.

President Obama should abandon his run for a second term and turn over the reins of the Democratic Party to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, two one-time Democratic pollsters wrote in Monday's Wall Street Journal, which appeared online Sunday. Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen argued that just as Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson decided not to pursue additional runs though they could have, Obama should do the same.

“He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president's accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,”Caddell and Schoen wrote.

Caddell, who worked as a pollster for President Jimmy Carter, and Schoen, who was a pollster for President Bill Clinton, argue that Obama will inevitably have to run a negative campaign in order to win reelection, the negative consequences of which will make it difficult for him to govern effectively.

Uh-huh. Reagan was unable to govern after he went negative on Carter -- just like George W. Bush was unable to govern after what he did to Kerry.

These are the brain-dead idiots who wrote back in April 2010:

To turn a corner, Democrats need to start embracing an agenda that speaks to the broad concerns of the American electorate. It should be somewhat familiar: It is the agenda that is driving the Tea Party movement and one that has the capacity to motivate a broadly based segment of the electorate.

They [Democrats] must adopt an agenda aimed at reducing the debt, with an emphasis on tax cuts, while implementing carefully crafted initiatives to stimulate and encourage job creation. This is the agenda that largely motivated the Clinton administration from 1995 through 2000 and that led to a balanced budget and welfare reform.

Reducing the debt through tax cuts! Yeah, that's the way to save the Democratic Party -- govern like a Teabagger.

Seriously, these two are the biggest concern trolls on the planet -- and should be mocked, not ignored.

Delusional

Michael Walsh, lamenting Romney's inevitability:

Say what you will about Sarah Palin, but she would have brought a super-energized base of productive taxpaying citizens with her that might have competed favorably with the Obamabots. But she broke their hearts — and damaged herself — by teasing and then not running, leaving the GOP bereft of a candidate who could match BHO II’s charisma.

And ignoring, as wingnuts do, reality:

The former Alaska governor’s numbers are astonishingly upside-down, according to a new Bloomberg poll showing a 32 percentage point spread between those who have an unfavorable rating of Palin and those who view her favorably.

Of the 60 percent in the poll who have an unfavorable opinion of Palin, more than half of them – 38 percent among the whole survey – said they have a “very” unfavorable view of Palin.

Her “very” unfavorable rating is higher than the total favorability ratings of Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump and Chris Christie.

Booing the First Lady is very patriotic!

Wingnuts are such assholes.

J. Edgar

Saw it this afternoon. Could have been better -- he lived an amazing life -- but a pretty decent biopic. Solid B.

(Pictured: the totally-not-gay J. Edgar, with his totally not-gay-lifelong companion, Clyde Tolson.)

The Stupid Party

Kathleen Parker writes yet another "Why is my party so damn stupid?" column, and adds this:

Republicans aren’t really stupid, of course, and Begala acknowledges this. But, as he also pointed out, the conservative brain trust once led by William F. Buckley has been supplanted by talk radio hosts who love to quote Buckley (and boast of his friendship) but who do not share the man’s pedigree or his nimble mind. Moreover, where Buckley tried to rid the GOP of fringe elements, notably the John Birch Society, today’s conservatives have let them back in. The 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference was co-sponsored by the Birchers.

But Buckley famously said he'd rather be governed by random people in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty. The Republican voter is just putting that into practice -- hence Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, Joe the Plumber, Christine O'Donnell, etc.

And no mention of Buckley should fail to include this.

Nice pedigree, Kathleen.

Repealing the 20th century.

Right-wingers used to dream about toppling the Great Society and New Deal -- but these days, they want the whole enchilada.

Guess it depends on what the definition of "gaffe" is.

Sez Michele:

BACHMANN: I haven't had a gaffe or something that I've done that has caused me to fall in the polls.

Erm,

"But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. ... I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly -- men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."

Um,

"I will tell you that I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Florida, after the debate. She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter."

No.

"Before we get started, let's all say 'Happy Birthday' to Elvis Presley today."

Sarah Palin's ghostwriter back on the job.

I love that wingnuts keep publishing articles like this -- while at the same time insisting that OWS is a bunch of whiners trying to destroy America.

Love it or leave it, bitchez!

Because to Republicans, the two are mutually exclusive.

Ayn Reynolds

This comment by Putz really encapsulates, nicely, the Randian/glibertarian economic philosophy.

Nations reach a point of no return when the number of people mooching off government exceeds the number of people producing.

So says the employee of a public university.

Truly, the biggest problem with this country is that old people and the poor have it too goddamn easy.

Stay classy, Texas Republicans.

Lovely.

Uh, I believe that would be the Constitution.

Dumbass.

Last night, former Bush official Karl Rove appeared at Johns Hopkins University to speak as a part of the annual Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium. Rove soon discovered that he wasn’t going to deliver his right-wing rhetoric unopposed, as a cry of “Mic Check!” rang out among the audience.

“Karl Rove is the architect of Occupy Iraq, the architect of Occupy Afghanistan!” yelled the demonstrators. Occupy Baltimore had infiltrated the crowd and began chanting against Rove. “Who gave you the right to occupy America?” asked Rove to the protesters, apparently unaware of the Bill of Rights.

And they wonder why their primary field is a clown car.

K-Lo:

Litmus test for GOP nominee? John Bolton as secretary of State.

Whatever happened to Bolton's presidential run?

Ponnuru vs. Reynolds.

Putz, who spent 2006-2009 telling us the GOP lost both elections because it was insufficiently wingnutty, will not like this:

In 2006 and 2008, voters inflicted on Republicans the worst back-to-back electoral drubbing any party has received since the Great Depression, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt all but destroyed the Party of Hoover. Republicans quickly reached a consensus about why they lost so badly: They had failed to be sufficiently Republican.

This consensus still moves the party -- and since it is false, it moves them to make mistakes.

Toldya, Allah.

No, there's nothing Cain can say or do to discredit him with the base.

Herman Cain's "In what respect, Charlie?" moment.

Allahpundit loses it.

His [Cain's] candidacy’s now basically an experiment to see if there’s anything he could say about policy that grassroots conservatives wouldn’t ignore/forgive in the name of nominating a candidate who’s “authentic” instead of some slick RINO Beltway insider phony (many of whom at least oppose collective bargaining for PEUs). Is there anything?

No.

The definition of "irony."

Muslim-hater Jennifer Rubin accusing Herman Cain of "bigotry."

Feel the Newtmentum!

Once again: Republican voters really, really, really, really don't want Willard to be their nominee.

Love this '90s-vintage Newt gem.

"The mother killing her two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we have to have change. I think people want to change and the only way you get change is to vote Republican."

Rick Perry, welfare queen.

It appears that the national media is starting to notice that the Secessionist is all hat and no cattle.

Frank Miller, Teabagger.

If Tbogg hadn't linked to this post, I would've thought it was brilliant parody.

Newt for president!

Two years ago, that sounded completely crazy -- but crazy is where the GOP is right now.

Rare prescience from POLITICO.

Published on 8/30.

Crazy begets crazy.

A wingnut blogger is shocked, shocked that the GOP field is such a mess.

Clearly Newt is "Not Romney" this month. God knows there more than enough ammunition in his past to shoot him with. With about 7 weeks until Iowa, maybe he's timed it just right. As much as I'm ant-Romney and pro-Gingrich now, I'm not sure if that would be a good or a bad thing.

It's simply amazing this is the spot we are in. Simply amazing.

No, it's not "amazing" -- it's the result of a couple decades of enabling and elevating every crazy person in your party, all while the right-wing media empire wrapped the cocoon ever tighter. This all culminated in the nomination of a half-smart grifter as the Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States and once the Teabaggers were unleashed, that was the end of the GOP as a serious governing party.

I mean, Joe The Fucking Plumber is running for Congress as a Republican. So don't be surprised when your presidential field is a clown car, dude.

Hanson.

As many Instaputz readers know, this blog used to follow Hanson pretty regularly. But like Kevin Drum, we eventually lost interest because the crazy got too potent to parody.

Blaming the welfare state.

Krugman:

The assertion that Europe’s crisis proves that the welfare state doesn’t work comes from many Republicans. For example, Mitt Romney has accused President Obama of taking his inspiration from European “socialist democrats” and asserted that “Europe isn’t working in Europe.” The idea, presumably, is that the crisis countries are in trouble because they’re groaning under the burden of high government spending. But the facts say otherwise.

Objectively pro-child rape.

Wow.

Paul Howard, 24, an aerospace engineering student, jeered the police.

“Of course we’re going to riot,” he said. “What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o’clock that they fired our football coach?”

Nice perspective there, Paul.

Hehindeedy.

Forgetting stuff isn't as bad as making shit up.

The Secessionist's brain fart is another reminder of how broken the media and political establishment is. It's being treated as a disqualifying moment -- but calling for secession and insisting that Social Security is criminal fraud wasn't.

(Not to mention the pass given to the parade of non-stop series of lies, distortions and outright falsehoods from all the candidates that is the GOP debates.)

So long, Rick.

The war on Christmas starts early this year.

Right-wingers are such idiots.

Republican family values.

Strikes again.

OWS Nation

This is going to be a problem for the GOP next November.

More than six in 10 Americans see a widening gap between the wealthy and the less well-off in this country, and about as many want the federal government to try to shrink the divide, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Democrats and independents largely support government policies to reduce the wealth gap, while most Republicans oppose such action. The issue cuts even more sharply along a new political fault line, with tea party supporters and those backing the fledgling Occupy Wall Street movement on opposite sides of the question.

The Cain clown show: pitting wingnut against wingnut.

The entirely predictable and farcical spectacle that is the Herman Cain presidential campaign is ripping Wingnuttia apart.

Here's Ace of Spades tearing El Rushbo a new one.

Here's what I believe: Any idiot who kneejerkedly takes a position directly contrary to what they think the media is saying is just as much a prisoner of the media's mind-wash as the most goosestepping liberal.

If you always take a position contrary to what Mr. Media says -- if Mr. Media says x, so you decide "anti-x" -- then Mr. Media still controls your brain. Because by saying x they dictate you will, without a moment's thought, brainlessly parrot back "anti-x!"

Whether Herman Cain is innocent or guilty of what he is alleged to have done is wholly independent of whether the media "wants" him to be guilty.

Wow.

Ater years of "Al Gore is fat" jokes, after Putz spent the better part of a decade insisting we must be "winning" in Iraq because the media reported that we were losing, after the GOP compared Mitt Romney's health care plan to the Holocaust when Obama proposed it -- after all that, Ace is just now realizing that the entire conservative movement kneejerkedly takes positions based on what liberals and the media are saying? Seriously?

today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today: updated daily.

Yep, and it's been that way for a long time. Ace hasn't been paying attention.

The Republican clown car, skidding off the road.

Not exactly the party of Dwight D. Eisenhower anymore.



(Then again, he did pick a psychopath as his vice president.)

The virus has taken over the host.

Sure, they held their noses and pulled the lever for McCain in '08. But after the rise of the Teabaggers -- it's going to be harder for Willard to get the wingnuts to fall in.

His reputation precedes him.

A guest in comments (below) writes a pretty good summary of Putzy's place these days:

CHANGE: Something to do with Obama has gone badly. Heh.
ON AMAZON: Dickheads at half-price.
THEY SAID IF I VOTED MCAIN: In which I criticize Obama fro doing something McCain would have done, while still pretending that Obama is a "socialist"
ON AMAZON: Ball-gags for Teabaggers at 25% reduction.

Hehindeedy.

John Boehner thinks 66% of the country is "very unfair."

Boehner:

House Speaker John Boehner disputes the notion that Republicans are “servants of the rich.” “That's very unfair,” Boehner said in an interview aired Sunday on ABC's "This Week." “Listen, I come from a family of 12. My dad owned a bar. I've got brothers and sisters on every rung of the economic ladder.”

No one cares about your personal life, dude.

Two in three Americans say they believe Republicans in Congress favor the rich. Nine percent say they favor the middle class, while 2 percent say they favor the poor. Fifteen percent say Republicans in Congress treat all classes equally.

Glenn Reynolds, bigot.

The University of Tennessee must be so proud.

UPDATE: Video: New Cain Ad: High-Tech Lynching. Brilliantly casting the likes of Cornel West and Harry Belafonte in the roles of Uncle-Tom facilitators. Or maybe House Negroes on the Democratic Plantation?

Dropping racist BS like this -- to defend Herman Cain?!

Keep it classy, Putz.

And then depression set in.

Riehl:

Having experienced the Reagan Revolution, I had high hopes going into 2012. They're all but gone now.

And,

This isn't a serious political movement right now, it's a clown show, one with which I'm coming to resent being affiliated.

So delicious.

Memo to Dan: it's been a clown show for many years. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

This is what they call being "off message."

Cain's in trouble! William Jacobson to the rescue!

Cornell Putz, who was last seen lashing out at right-wing critics of The Quitter, also wants people to stop saying mean things about The Pizza Guy.

Maybe actual facts will come out proving that Cain did something wrong, but those facts are not out now.

Insisting on actual facts before a major conservative politician is taken down is not “selling out our minds.”

Cain has seriously messed up the situation and his campaign with an inconsistent response and a blame game, but does this justify the gloating and pure happiness being exhibited at the media feeding frenzy?

We really are our own worst enemies.

I love how the problem is "gloating" -- and not the fact that Herman Cain is considered a "major conservative politician."

Rod Dreher notices the Republican Party has gone crazy.

Dreher:

It’s really quite an indictment on the unseriousness of our country, or at least the conservative electorate, that Cain is at the top of the polls now. [...]

Expertise does not guarantee wisdom. But that doesn’t mean the amateurism puts us on the side of the angels, either. You wouldn’t trust an amateur to spay your cat or to give you sound investment advice for your 401(K) — yet there are millions of Republians who think an avuncular amateur like Herman Cain would do a great job as president of the United States, or at least a better job than Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, or anybody else on offer who has actually worked in politics. I’m not thrilled with these choices either, but come on, what is wrong with us?

Uh, Rod? Pat Robertson finished second in the Iowa Caucuses in 1988 and Pat Buchanan got 3 million votes in the '92 primary. The 2000 GOP primary field included notable crazies Alan Keyes, Gary Bauer and Buchanan -- to go with Steve Forbes. The Republicans almost got Sarah Palin in the White House in 2008. Then all hell broke loose with the Teabillies: Christine O'Donnell, Allen West, Joe Miller, Rand Paul. Not to mention legacy nutjobs like Steve King, Paul Broun and Jim DeMint, among others.

The GOP crazy train has been running for a while -- it's just picking up steam now.

Really stupid tweets.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we're passed the "vetting" stage for Obama. Just the way Democrats are. Nothing like the vetting Republicans gave Bush/Cheney in '03-'04.

Oh wait.

Texas Republican judge beats the shit out of his disabled daughter.

Absolutely horrifying.

Lazy, dirty freeloaders, errrrr, fat cats.

It's amusing that wingnuts are still trying to frame OWS.

NEW CLASS INFIGHTING: “Lower Elites” vs. “Upper Elites,” cont’d: NYC arrest records: Many Occupy Wall Street protesters live in luxury. “Among addresses for which information is available, single-family homes listed on those police intake forms have a median value of $305,000 — a far higher number than the $185,400 median value of owner-occupied housing units in the United States. Some of the homes where ‘Occupy’ arrestees reside, viewed through Google Maps and the Multiple Listing Service real estate database, are the definition of opulence.”

I can't keep up.

But apparently, just like you can't own an iPhone and be angry at Wall Street, you also can't be against the bailouts and corporate malfeasance and own a house.

Another whiny Republican.

Geez.

"There are factions that are trying to destroy me personally as well as this campaign," Cain said Wednesday morning before the Consumer Electronics Association.

Yes, and these "factions" are called your political opponents. And recall that the Secessionist also cried and whined that people were saying lots of mean things about him.

Politics is a contact sport, gentlemen. Man up.

"Our blacks."

There's that phrase again.

Did I mention Herman Cain is done?

Someone's (cough!Rovecough!) not taking any chances.

Looking bad in Europe.

Krugman:

At this point I’d guess soaring rates on Italian debt leading to a gigantic bank run, both because of solvency fears about Italian banks given a default and because of fear that Italy will end up leaving the euro. This then leads to emergency bank closing, and once that happens, a decision to drop the euro and install the new lira. Next stop, France.

It all sounds apocalyptic and unreal. But how is this situation supposed to resolve itself? The only route I see to avoid something like this involves the ECB totally changing its spots, fast.

Why does Ehud Barak hate the Jews?

Goldstone:

THE Palestinian Authority’s request for full United Nations membership has put hope for any two-state solution under increasing pressure. The need for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians has never been greater. So it is important to separate legitimate criticism of Israel from assaults that aim to isolate, demonize and delegitimize it.

One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues “apartheid” policies.

Barak:

“The simple truth is, if there is one state” including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, “it will have to be either binational or undemocratic. . . . if this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”