Oh Great, More Shining Objects

If you want to see Weiner's weiner,you can see the Breibart leaked penis shot at Gawker.com.

Howard Stern says he wants to have sex with Rachel Maddow.

Rachel Maddow thinks David Vitter, the Republican Senator from Lousiana should resign because he was a frequent customer of madams in D.C. and New Orleans. What Ms Maddow doesn't realize is that Vitter has the winning charm of wearing beautiful lingerie, according to the madam in New Orleans. This counters his habit of weaing diapers in D.C. And should give him a by.


And those are the high points of the week.

I'm curious to know whether any statements by Republicans vying in the Presidential primaries will be used against them in the general election. Maybe it's just the summer silly season but there have been some real corkers. Is the winning strategy of people like Romney and Huntsman just to be pummelled by the crazies so they look moderate and sane for the general election?

Romney was in Michigan for fund-raising. He was rightly attacked by local Republicans and former Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm for telling "Detroit To Drop Dead" in his statements against the bailout of the auto industry.

But he was also blasted for his statements saying that humans contributed to climate change. Rush Limbaugh said Romney's position on climate change means,"By,By Nomination."

Jon Huntsman has been blasted in video ads on RINOS for his role as a Western governor in forming an alliance with other governors, including The Arnold, to promote alternative energy sources to combat climate change. The religious Right is also attacking him on his support for civil unions for gay partners.

But we have some wingdings.

Herman Cain says he won't sign a bill over 3 pages long. That's great. What would that do to the defense appropriations bill. Cain wants loyalty tests for Muslims and will hire gays because they won't support Sharia Law. His solution to illegal immigration is to build the equvalent of the great Wall of China and have a moat filled with alligators on the border with Mexico. Cain also will join Joey Lieberman at Glenn Beck's "Restore Courage" rally in Jerusalem. Cain is also noted for not knowing what the right to return is but he did say,"You mess with Israel, you mess with America." He currently is tracking at about 10% in the polls.

Frothy Mix Santorum will outlaw gay marriage by insisting on a constitutional amendment outlawing same sex marriage. He also denounced the exceptions for a woman's health on abortion bills as ludicrous. And he denounced climate change as "junk science".

Rudy Guiliani, according to Bill Kristol, will throw his Yankee camp in the ring and run for the nomination. Rudy has been tough on Romney the last two weeks and has been in New Hampshire regularly.


South Carolina lawmakers are now making the pilgrimage to New Jersey to court Chris Chrissie for a run for the nomination. The Governor seems to making the appropriate moves. He's introduced anti-labor legislation so he can don the Scott Walker crown and he has succumbed to the Koch Brothers' pressure and moved away from the state's alternative energy program, which had been successful.

The Magical Mystery Tour is soon to begin. Six Republican contenders (?) will be travelling the country together on a bus. Included in this strange adventure will be Newt, Michelle Bachmann and Greg Johnson. I think Ringo Starr should join them. Unfortunately, the way things are going, Ringo would soon be the odds-on favorite for the nomination.

The Tea Party Patriots, claiming to represent 3,000 affiliated groups, is against the Tea Party Express' endorsement of Mitt Romney. The Patriots' co-founder Jenny Beth Martin said there is no grass-roots support for Mitt and that they do not believe they should automatically endorse the Republican nomination.

Newt's campaign has collapsed. Senior strategists and key aides--the high command--have quit en masse because the direction of the campaign wasn't compatible with Newt's vision.

Wisconsin is not only running fake Democrats against the Republicans in the recall elections, they are redistricting Paul Ryan's district so that it will be even redder because they worry he will be seriously challenged this year.

Polls show that Americans are split on raising the debt ceiling limit. The problem is that they do not know what it is and actually believe it is a license to increase deficit spending, which will happen anyway. Americans are also unaware of how much the Bush tax cuts contributed to the debt problem but are accurately aware of the cost of the wars and the Medicare Plan D. Talk Progress celebrated yesterday's 10th anniversary of the Bush tax cuts by listing all the programs that could have been funded if we still had the $2.5 trillion they cost the government.

By now, most Americans realize that Paul Ryan is not an economist and knows nothing about Medicare. But is there no political price one pays for flat out lying about the debt ceiling. Ryan really did say that defaulting on our debt would be a good thing. There is no known economist or economic policy type on the Right, Middle or Left who believes this in the least. Ryan's statements were not just bluster or gaming the negotiations with the President on cuts, they were flat out ignorance. The very scary news is that House Republicans really, really believe this nonsense. This goes beyond Thomas Frank's analysis of the Wrecking Crew. This is the Demolition Team.

Is the current Republican insanity just based on their animus against President Obama or are they simply doubling down on a failed ideology without regard to its consequences?

If you are Center-right in inclination, you have to be in a panic when you read Tim Pawlenty's economic program or Newt's more modest calls for the eradication of parts of the government. Pawlenty's program as I wrote yesterday will be Bush on steroids, plunging America to a point where it really could never recover. These are not debatable statements. This is reality-based conclusions. Pawlenty is more radical than Ryan--both plans plunging America into a century of enormous debt and destroying what fig leaves are left of our social welfare net.

If you hold these views, I think you owe an explanation to the public about what happens after you have dismantled local, state and federal government and public education, how does your plan actually create wealth and jobs? No one on any side believes that tax cuts have created any jobs and enhanced the economy of the country. So, besides despising this country, what possible benefits--and to whom--are these crazy programs?

Contrary to leftwing critics of these zany programs, I seriously believe none of these programs benefit the real, productive private sector. Companies do not want to locate in areas with poor educational systems and a deteriorating infrastructure. Nor do they want to recruit a labor force from a population scrambling around to pay their bills day after day. Even companies in the Third World require massive government breaks and tax holidays to accept this degree of risk in their investment. This includes the extraction industries as well. Then you throw on top of this the government's possible default on its debt, just because that is your ideology, then you have a recipe for real capital flight.

The heat must be getting to me but it's alarming to see MSNBC say we have to treat the Michelle Bachmann candidacy seriously. What's serious about it? The candidate is not a serious person with serious views. Is the seriousness in it because she might win?

Let's look at today's litmus tests for the 2012 Republican nomination. You must be absolutely anti-abortion--and now we are inching toward anti-birth control. You must be anti-climate change--even if you don't propose to do anything about it. You must be anti-alternative energy sources and devoted only to fossil fuels. You must be anti-public education. You must be anti-immigrant. You must be anti-woman. You must be anti-minorities. You must be anti-union. You must be anti-Medicare. And, inching its way back, you might have to become anti-social security. You must be anti-evolution and pro-creationist. And you have to be absolutely against taxes.

With only 35% of Americans believing the country is heading in the right direction, Reuters has Obama at 50% approval rating and he leads all Republican rivals by double digits, even Romney by 13%. The leading Republicans are Palin at 22%, Romney at 20% and Ron Paul and Herman Cain are tied at 7%.

James Carville, who has never been a fan of President Obama, says that if the economy creates jobs on the average of the last three months, minus the disasterous number of last month, Obama wins. But Carville said something else, which didn't get much coverage. He believes there is rage building up n this country, which will lead to social unrest and upheaval. I think of the decades leading up to the election of FDR, where America is torn by violent labor strife and repression. It was 100 years ago but it feels similar to today.

The new Gallup poll reports that 45% of Americans now identify themselves as Democrats, while only 39% are Republicans. This is the largest gap since October 2009, when Democrats led Republicans by 7 percentage points. Does this reflect the cost of the GOP entertaining truly suicidal ideas? Or is this just temporary?