Every one of the Republicans deserves five inches of fame on True Blue Liberal dot org, so here's the only video that can do justice to the man with the 9-9-9 plan:
And the only explanation I found that can even begin to make sense of this official video starring Herman Cain and his campaign manager, Mark Block, is the one that I read earlier today from Doug Mataconis at outsidethebeltway.com:
"I’m not at all sure what to say about this. Except to repeat the theory I came up with last night that the Herman Cain campaign is Sacha Baron Cohen’s big follow-up to Borat."
I can't wait for the movie, when "Herman Cain" pulls off the mask and we all have a big bellylaugh at the gullible GOP voters who have made "Herman" their current front runner.
John Harwood (NY Times/CNBC): You have this proposal to dramatically cut taxes for people at the top and you want to repeal Dodd-Frank, going back to the old system of regulation of Wall Street. How would you explain that to Occupy Wall Street? You think the previous regulation on Wall Street was adequate?
Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas): Yes, absolutely, I think it was adequate. We had a bunch of regulators that weren’t doing their job. Here's what I would tell those young people — the old Churchill saying, you’re a liberal in your heart when you’re 20, and you’re a conservative when you’re 40. I hope what they will see is that America’s a fabulous country and it gives them the opportunity to go say your piece, go protest on the street. But at the end of the day America’s about having the opportunity to take care of your family. [Emphasis Added]
I could show the full video that accompanied this interview snippet, but who wants to see another Republican with a Texas accent displaying his greed, stupidity, and ability to kowtow to the people who pay his campaign expenses? I'd rather show something more hopeful, a video of someone who was liberal (OK, maybe Communist) at 20 and is still more concerned with human rights than the bottom line today, at 92, as he joins the Occupy Wall Street crowd in New York City. Most of Pete Seeger's friends at Columbus Circle singing We Shall Overcome seem to be past their twenties as well (as am I).
Late last week he left the country and there were calls for Canada to arrest him when he was there. But they didn't. Last night he made a public appearance in his home state, and was... well, I had to search for the video evidence before I would believe it.
George W. Bush was cheered at a World Series game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers, not the people guarding the southern border, but the baseball team that helped to make him rich in a web of crony capitalism at its worst. A nation that not only harbors, but cheers its war criminals seems to be calling down karmic retribution on itself. Is it too late go give this occupied territory back to Mexico? Or would that be cruel to Mexico?
Here's the quote of the day, from the Republican debate of two nights ago:
"So we went to the company and we said: Look, you can't have any illegals working on our property. I'm running for office, for Pete's sake, I can't have illegals. It turns out that once again they hired someone who had falsified their documents, had documents, and therefore we fired them." -- Mitt Romney
Meaning of course that if (for Pete's sake) you happen to be a mere private citizen working for a group that buys and breaks up companies, and you find yourself with a few hundred acres of shaggy bluegrass, then illegal aliens are a very cost effective means for keeping that lawn as impeccably groomed as your classic 1962 Brylcreem hairdo. The video here is important, because it shows how Romney can be pushed into saying what he really means.
Without Rick Perry badgering him, Mitt never would have come out with the admission that he is only forced into following the letter of the immigration laws because he has political ambitions.
This isn't the first time that we've seen Mitt say something revealingly unscripted in the heat of the moment. I've commented on the "Corporations Are People, My Friend," video from the Iowa State Fair before, but note how the hecklers get him to reveal his deep love for abstract legal entities...
My favorite bit of absurdity in this clip now is the sentence, "Of course they are [people]. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people." Following that logic, crime syndicates making money for criminal people are people, savings accounts earning 0.001% interest for duped people are people, churches collecting money for priests are people, marijuana plants growing in your basement that can be converted to cash that ultimately goes to people are people, everything is, ultimately, people, for Pete's sake. But that doesn't mean everything should be allowed to vote or influence our electoral process based on its monetary power.
So what's the next question that will knock Mitt off script? I'd suggest a customized version of Clinton's famous 1994 MTV Question. In Mitt's case it would be: "Boxers? Briefs? Or Magic Underwear?"
The Canadian government probably doesn't have any more will to arrest America's most prominent war criminal than an Obama administration whose main concern is proving their bipartisanship (and continuing Bush's wars "with honor"), but the fact remains that both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have officially warned our neighbor to the north that a torturer and war criminal is on his way to Surrey, British Columbia tomorrow and should be arrested. If you're on Twitter or other Social Notworking sites, please send your support for Bush's arrest.
Anyone looking at the timeline in the right sidebar can tell at a glance that this blog has gone through long periods of inactivity since I started it in late 2004. For some reason I've been more active this month than I have been in a long time, so I felt a need to take stock. Here (courtesy of the great little tool at Wordle.com that I've used a few times before) is the current state of TrueBlueLiberal dot org at 9:30 am on 19 October 2011. I love some of the random juxtapositions of words, especially "Huxley's Vehemently Government Abortion Sing-A-Long" down in the lower left. I was surprised to see WAR get the prominent primary position on this cloud, but I'm glad it did. We need to remember every day that we are a nation at war. I think the rest of the world remembers it far better than we Americans do.
I needed to do something to partially purify my mind after watching a bunch of stuffed suit Republicans (and Michele Bachmann dressed like an admiral) clawing their way to the intellectual and moral depths at a CNN debate in Las Vegas tonight. What better antidote to their ugly visions of the world than the Jefferson Aiplane on a rooftop in midtown in 1968 playing "House at Pooneil Corners" courtesy of Jean-Luc Godard?
You and me we keep walking around and we see All the bullshit around us You try and keep your mind on what's going down Can't help but see the rhinoceros around us and you wonder what you can be and you do what you can to get balled & high...
When the dust settles from the debates and caucuses and primaries, we'll finally know which candidate the Republicans will be sending to face President Obama, but a larger question may remain. Which wedge issue will win? What phony peripheral concern will be the twenty twelve equivalent of twenty oh four's Swift-Boat idiocy? How will the GOP attempt to get millions of Americans to vote against their own economic self interest? 1. Birtherism?
2. Guns?
3. "In God We Trust"?
4. Flag Burning?
5. Evolution?
or 6. Abortion? or 7. Gay Marriage? or 8. "Illegal Aliens"? or 9. Dirty Filthy Hippies Occupying Wall Street (and elsewhere)? . . or something we haven't even been told we need to hate or be afraid about yet? Will Americans sacrifice Social Security and Medicare for assault weapons and prayer in the schools?
According to the results of free non-scientific online tests, TBL found that he was "Existentialist", "Communist", and "A Grammar God," i.e., if he were a short wall-eyed Frenchman rather than a 6'3" blond American, he would be constantly mistaken for Jean-Paul Sartre!
