Get Rapture Ready--New Date--The Week That Was

Harold Camping predicts that rapture will occur on October 21. He had miscalculated about the May date. He promises that the upheavel and the end of the world will be gentler this time.

The Republican fund-raising numbers have come in and they reveal some stark realities for some of the presidential candidates. Newt is now in debt for $1 million. Jon Huntsman is down to $2.2 million in the bank. Herman Cain, the new media sensation, only has $1 million in the bank. Michelle Bachmann may not even make it to Iowa. And Rick Santorum is registering on the cash register.

The big winners are Rick Perry, who exceeded Mitt Romney, in only a few weeks of fund-raising and has most of it in the bank. Mitt Romney's quarter totals reveal he is picking up Wall Street support but has very few small donors. Campaign analysts say his burn rate is not that bad but seems excessive when we are in the primaries yet. In comparison President Obama raised three times Romney's amount, with no primary opponent, and is close to 1 million small donors. He's added 250,000 new donors from this time in the 2008 campaign.

Jon Huntsman and now Herman Cain are vowing to boycott the Nevada debate because they claim that Romney rigged the primary calender by getting Nevada to push their date up. He's also done that with Michigan and rumors have Senator Marco Rubio weighing in with Florida to do the same.

The Republican establishment want to seal the deal with Romney before another candidate catches fire. But election observers have noted that this reminds them of the year the establishment got behind Bob Dole to be on the safe side, rather than risk a more right-wing candidate.

Governor Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island, a former Republican, made the observation this week that today's Mitt Romney is nothing like the alleged moderate in Massachusetts and that Mitt has really gone off the edge in his political positions.

What gives political observers pause is how few endorsements Republican establishment figures have made at this stage of the game. These are far behind all other presidential years, indicating a hesitation about Romney and also concern that the race is still fluid.

Rick Perry is not out of this as his fund-raising numbers show. Perry's wife had a tantrum this week saying that the Governor had been brutalized by the process because he is a Christian. Romney surrogates have been putting presssure on Perry to renounce the endorsement of the Southern Baptist Convention's leader because of his statements on Mormons. Perry isn't biting.

Perry released his job creation program this week. His plan to create over 1.5 million jobs was entirely based on stimulating the oil industry and opening all of America up to oil and gas drilling. What I found peculiar was his insistance to cut all government subsidies to alternative energy sources but increasing those for the oil industry.

House Republicans are playing along with this and as Amtrak finally is getting off the ground with increased passengers House Republicans want to cut its subsidies by 80%. The amazing animus to high speed rail and other rail projects is baffling to me. I guess it's aimed at Joe Biden, Mr. Acela. It's the same with global warming. The reason they oppose the science of global warming is because Al Gore is for it. It's gotten that petty and personal.

We are rapidly losing time on Congress doing anything the rest of the year. Both chambers did pass the long-delayed Free Trade Pacts, which also included worker retraining provisions favored by the unions. Outside of that, the House has spent its week on re-passing its anti-abortion bill that prohibits federal funding for abortions, which is already law anyway. I seriously doubt whether Congress will extend the employee payroll tax cuts or any other benefits for the unemployed.

This week had a showdown between John Boehner and President Obama over the President's public insistence that people ask the Republicans what their job creation plans were. Boehner claimed his little pamphlet issued at the beginning of the new Congress was the plan. There is no serious economist who has studied this who believes any jobs can be created by this nonsense. In fact, economists insist both the House and Senate Republican plans would plunge the United States back into recession.

Which reminds me. Remember the 2010 elections were fought around the national debt and deficits? Herman Cain's 9-9-9 program would generate $11 trillion additional debt in eight years. Mitt Romney's plan for increased defense spending would alone add $2 trillion, without his other economic plan. And, of course, Paul Ryan's Budget Plan would surpass Herman Cain in generating deficits and vastly increasing the national debt. So forget the Republicans on debt reduction. they are just not into it.

Speaking of Herman Cain, today's press revealed how close he is to the Koch Brothers and his role in Americans for Prosperity, their front group. Frankly, I do not see this hurting him in the least in the primaries. But I do believe his failure to campaign in early primary states and his total lack of an organizations basically doom his candidacy. My take is that he is on a long book tour for his newly released memoir.

Howard Dean was spookily optimistic about President Obama's re-election chances. Dean emphasized that the Republicans denouncing the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators ran flat against public opinion and their opposition to the President's job bill also was against 60% of the American public. His overall point was that the Republicans have defined themselves as solely defending the interests of the extremely wealthy and the large corporations but have abandoned the middle class. He claimed that President Obama's tour of the country fighting for his bill improved the president's ratings and has served to energize his supporters who wanted to see more fight.

I've made much of the GOP efforts over the past year to suppress the vote through Voter IDs and other restrictions. The first trials of the Wisconsin law have been a disaster. They ran mock elections that have been plagued by long lines and a whole bunch of people being denied the right to vote. But interestingly, in Wisconsin and many states, the GOP may have been too clever by half. National republicans are complaining that Republican voters may actually be at a disadvantage through these laws. Stay tuned. This great strategy may not be working out as planned.