Update: Ever notice that Mitt Romney is the only candidate who sings the national anthem, along with the performers? And — get this — Callista Gingrich, a music major who sings these days in her Washington, D.C. Catholic church, stood silent with a stern look, as if she was bored by the ritualistic singing of the anthem, which is cherished by Americans, no matter their political views.

8pm ET on CNN – Live Stream
Location: University of North Florida in Jacksonville, FL
Sponsor: CNN, CNN en Español, The Hispanic Leadership Network (“a center-right advocacy group” – CNN) and The Republican Party of Florida
Participants: Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, Paul
Moderator: Wolf Blitzer

What’s the date of the Florida primary? January 31st. Next Tuesday. That’s just five days from now, depending on how you count days. Read the rest

I love Monkey Bread!

Do you know what Monkey Bread is?  I’d never heard of it until last year, then my wife brought home a box of Monkey Bread that you can pop into the microwave and four minutes later enjoy a little taste of Heaven!  Mmmmm… Monkey Bread!

It’s just a big pull-apart cinnamon roll, comprised of little balls of cinnamon bread stuck together in a ring with a gooey cinnamon-sugar glaze over the top.  I smother the glaze with crushed pecans before I break off a piece for my wife, while I devour the rest.  Oink!

And herein lies my point.  She couldn’t eat half of it, and I could eat it all, and on a couple of occasions I’ve done just that!  Given that the “loaf” is made of balls of bread about the size of a mouthful, I can’t just break off an exact fraction of the whole.  But when I break off a chunk for her share, it’s often very difficult to find that line between half and two-thirds.  One or two bread balls can make all the difference.

“How is this relevant on a political blog?” you are asking yourself. Read the rest

He’s melting. The avalanche has started. Newt Gingrich is setting himself on fire. The list is long and will grow in the coming days.

Remember Newt’s indignant put down of John King for having the audacity to ask about his 2nd ex-wife’s charge that Newt wanted an open marriage. Well, King ain’t letting him get away with his false claim that his campaign offered up bunches of people to rebut poor Marianne:

Gingrich wrong? Gee, how could that be.

Then there is Newt’s crazy effort to dress himself up as a “Reagan Conservative.” Gingrich, channeling his inner Al Gore, takes credit for helping Ronald Reagan bring down the Soviet Union. Seriously, Newt? The Soviets tanked in 1990. You didn’t become Speaker until 1994. But, as I will show below, Newt trashed Reagan for the very policies that helped bring the Soviets down. Here’s a dandy clip of Newt advising George H.W. Bush to steer clear of being a Reagan Republican: Read the rest

This is a snippet. Below, see the full contract for Newt's $25K/month influence peddling for Freddie Mac.

Republican voters’ fantasies are skipping the primaries and fast-forwarding to the mano a mano battles next fall. Their testosterone-fueled “wet dreams” come with their highly-anticipated fantasies envisioned in the “finger lickin’ good” possibility of debate clashes between mental muscle orator Newt “The History Hunk” Gingrich and Barack “Bazinga” Obama. More and more GOP voters are convinced that, in the debates, Gingrich would demolish Obama (and worry that Romney won’t).

That said, the GOP voters forget that Obama is one cool customer. And they don’t factor in that Obama’s team knows all about Gingrich’s oral prowess, and is already gearing up to prep the practice sessions and Obama. They also forget that Gingrich’s rhetoric will need a hasty overhaul if he makes it to the general, since at present, claims the Wall Street Journal, he’s attacking Romney “primarily from the left and in language indistinguishable from the Obama campaign’s.”

Important: No presidential debate is determinative. Read the rest

John Kiriakou is in a world of trouble for allegedly exposing the name of an undercover CIA officer and the name of a separate CIA officer, who was not undercover but was working on a classified project. He was indicted this week by Pat Fitzgerald and faces some serious jail time. The right wing, who found every excuse in the world to justify the exposure of Valerie Plame are now in their full self-righteous hypocrisy, decrying venal act of Kiraikou.

Here is the link to the complaint. I do not excuse what Kiriakou did. But it is outrageous that his effort to expose criminal activity inside the CIA leaves him being punished while those who committed those acts get to walk.

Kiriakou made two fatal mistakes. First, he did pass the name of an undercover officer to a member of the press and did not insist on keeping that name private. No excuse for that. Second, he lied to the FBI. When you are questioned by the FBI you must do one of two things–either be completely candid and admit your guilt or state that you don’t recall. What did Kiriakou do (allegedly)? He denied doing sending the names of CIA officers to the NY Times reporter and yet sent emails with the info he claimed not to have.

What do you do when you hold Top Secret clearances and witness wrong doing? Read the rest

Okay, I can hear you saying under your breath, “if his lips are moving he must be lying.” Welcome to State of the Union 2012.

Consider this a night of fantasy and delusion. This is Washington, DC’s version of Las Vegas. There is gambling, lying, fantasies (and sex in the congressional offices with staffers). Only one little problem–it ain’t entertaining. It is disgusting.

Obama takes an undeserved victory lap for finally ordering the hit on Osama Bin Laden. That is bullshit number one. He only agreed to do the strike after Leon Panetta, with the backing of Hillary Clinton and Bob Gates, vowed to report to Congress that Bin Laden had been located. Panetta wanted to do the strike in January 2011. Because of Obama’s waffling, he did not greenlight the strike until April.

Then there is the economy. Read the rest

Just when you thought Canadians didn’t have a fiesty sense of humor. Or, are they serious?
Read the rest

This ain’t a matter of if, but when. Newt Gingrich will metaphorically shoot himself in the head with a 50 caliber sniper rifle. And when it happens it will dirty up the rest of the Republican field. Most Americans despise Newt Gingrich. He mistakes his grandiosity for brilliance. He thinks that talking equals action. But the evidence of the toxicity of Gingrich is clear:

I don’t have a problem with Newt whoring around. Other Presidents have done so. But Newt moralized like an old testament prophet against the sins of Bill Clinton. If you are blasting Bill Clinton for getting his knob polished in the Oval Office while nailing one of your female staffers in your wife’s bed, that’s not just a lapse in judgement. That is not, as Newt claimed, a weakness created by working too hard on behalf of the United States. It is audacity in its purest form. Read the rest

NOTICES: Join us here tonight in a live blogging thread to discuss, mock, cheer, and cringe during the latest GOP presidential nominee debate. The four-candidate debate in Tampa, Florida airs at 9pm ET/8pm CT and 9pm PT on NBC (FYI: NBC, I’m told, failed to update its programming schedule so you may not see the debate in your cable/satellite schedule. Be assured the debate will air on NBC TV’s channels nationwide.) Read more debate details below.

Below you’ll see what I’ve just now transcribed from Mitt Romney’s Q&A session this morning in Tampa, Florida, live on CNN. Later, CNN returns to Q&A, and goes on to raise concerns that if Gingrich were the GOP nominee, who knows how many “October surprises” there will be, perhaps as many as one a day. As for calling Gingrich a lobbyist, Romney quipped, “If it walks like a duck, acts like a duck. …” More: Gingrich now calls for dismantling the federal Dept. of Education yet, says Romney, Gingrich was instrumental in creating the federal education agency. Then there’s that very recently, Gingrich raved about Romney’s Massachusetts health plan, yet only now attacks it. Gingrich, observed Romney, is like a pinball, bouncing all over the place.

CNN HOST: [Romney] is taking questions right now in Tampa, Florida, addressing Gingrich and the charges that Gingrich has made against him and his leadership.

MITT ROMNEY: … The policies of Freddie Mac as well as the policies of government. I didn’t hear that nationally.

I didn’t hear [Gingrich] making those warnings to the nation. He should have. He was working inside this industry, providing counsel to them. He should have provided that advice to them and communicated that to the nation. Read the rest

Newt is trying to do to Romney what Obama did to Hillary. Pretend to be something he ain’t and tap into the anger of his political base. Obama portrayed himself as a man of principle who was not a warmonger like Hillary. Obama was such a stand up guy, unlike that duplicitous, establishment bitch Hillary, that he was going to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 9 months of taking office and was going to close down Guantanamo. Bush Derangement Syndrome was rampant among the Democrat faithful. They viewed Hillary as part of the Washington insiders club. Barack? An outsider who would bring reform.

We now know how completely full of shit Barack was. Rather than deliver on his promise to get out of Iraq in 9 months he followed the Bush timetable. Guantanamo? Open for business. Detaining anyone, including Americans, suspected of terrorism and holding them without access to a lawyer or a judge? Ditto.

Jump ahead four years. Republicans are fed up, hell, many are livid, over the economic policies of Barack Obama and his vision of putting the government in control of health care. Riled up by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levine, Michael Savage and Sean Hannity, the conservative faithful deeply believe that Obama is a socialist bent on destroying America. The desire to be rid of Obama is equal to the passion of the left in 2008 to be rid of Bush.

Well, passion ain’t thinking. Blinded by their hatred of Bush, the Democrat base and leadership shoved Hillary aside and cast their lot with Obama. How did that work out? Obama, true to form, was an inept Washington politician and presided over the Democrat loss of the house. Read the rest

“We can go in two directions, one is for less opportunity and less fairness…I am going to lay out a blueprint…homegrown and alternative energy sources…getting people the skills they need…a return to American values…how we do it… “ (See video below.)

POTUS Obama presents the fog of the campaign early in order to give time for his team to build an alternative narrative that argues a vote for the GOP is a vote for plutocracy.

This infers that a vote for Obama is a vote for democracy. Simple, goofy, paint-by-numbers rhetoric.

The general rules say that the incumbent gets to name the game. The game is Pirates of the GOP. Can the GOP nominee Mitt Romney present American capitalism in some fashion other than as piracy? Read the rest

It’s nearly time for the results to come in, so … Read the rest

Conservatives have lost their minds. Some on the left would assert that conservatives never had a brain, but that’s a topic for a different time. By rallying around Newt Gingrich and embracing the fantasy that he is a true-blue conservative then conservatives expose themselves as simpletons and rubes. Although I am getting old I have not forgotten the conservative vitriol spewed at Bill Clinton for his outrageous sexual behavior. For conservatives it was the simple fact that Clinton was using his position to get laid. It was “unbecoming” and tarnished the holy office of the President. OH JESUS SAVE US.

But thank God (and Allah) that we had righteous souls like Newt Gingrich to lead the charge in attacking Bill Clinton for his immoral, anti-family behavior. But now we know the truth–Newt was as busy fucking around as Bill Clinton. Unlike Bill Clinton, who remained married to his first and only wife, Newt was going thru wives like a menstruating woman thru tampons. He used them and discarded them.

I understand the fury of many Americans and the skewed, duplicitous press. It is in effect just another high school clique for cool kids and, whether it is FOX or CNN or MSNBC or the New York Times or the Washington Post, the media decides what is and is not worthy of being considered important.

But the conservatives in South Carolina the other night, when Newt went medieval on John King’s ass, displayed a level of mindless emotionalism. We have seen this kind of emotional embrace of a gifted orator before–just watch some of Leni Riefenstahl’s, Triumph of the Will. What are conservatives thinking? Read the rest

The dueling ad buys between the Koch Brothers (Karl Rove) Americans for Prosperity and the Obama re-elect (see the video below the fold) ignite the 2012 presidential campaign with a Napoleonic crescendo.

The facts about Solyndra are trite, tawdry and most unflattering to the Obama White House. Read the rest

I realize that most of the media coverage is focused on Newt Gingrich’s faux outrage over being asked about his ex-wife’s claims, but the most important nugget from last night’s debate came in this exchange between Newt and Rick Santorum:

Newt is not cogent, he is crazy. Read the rest