I'm With Hitch: Secret Scripts and 3D Glasses are Kooky and I Don't Want a President Who Believes In Them

If Rick Perry had any brains, he'd have said as much:

[W]e are fully entitled to ask Mitt Romney about the forces that influenced his political formation and—since he comes from a dynasty of his church, and spent much of his boyhood and manhood first as a missionary and then as a senior lay official—it is safe to assume that the influence is not small. Unless he is to succeed in his dreary plan to borrow from the playbook of his pain-in-the-ass predecessor Michael Dukakis, and make this an election about "competence not ideology," he should be asked to defend and explain himself, and his voluntary membership in one of the most egregious groups operating on American soil.

Read the whole thing here from Christopher Hitchens.

Newt Gingrich Admits Romney Got Idea of Individual Mandate for Massachusetts from Newt and The Heritage Foundation Conservative Think Tank

Story here at The New Republic.

It's episodes like this which just prove how few genuine conservatives exist in today's Republican Party.

But go ahead, sign up with Heritage anyway, you mind-numbed robots of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

That's just one of the big reasons Rush has worked so hard to co-opt the Tea Party and prevent a third party challenge from developing.

Rush is thick as thieves with the enemy. 

Herman Cain Is The Loose Cannon On His Own Ship

Seen here in a story about his latest abortion answers:

“It seems that Cain is either constantly misunderstanding questions posed to him on what should be easy, fundamental issues, or he admits to having misspoke after it is pointed out that the position he has stated is not that of a conservative,” the Iowa Republican’s Craig Robinson wrote. “Herman Cain has been campaigning for over a year now, and with only about two months until people start voting in caucuses and primaries, I’m more confused about where Herman Cain stands than ever before.” 

Herman Cain's TARP Comments Now and Then Reveal That He Has No Clearly Defined Objection to Government Ownership of 'Private' Industry

In June 2011, here:

I studied the financial meltdown and concluded on my own that we needed to do something drastic, yes. When the concept of TARP was first presented to the public, I was willing to go along with it. But then when the administration started to implement it on a discretionary basis, picking winners and losers and also directing funds to General Motors and others that had nothing to do with the financial system, that's where I totally disagreed. 

We should -- the government should not be selecting winners and losers, and I don't believe in this concept of too big to fail. If they fail, the free market will figure out who's going to pick the up the pieces.

In October 2011 here:

CAIN: I have said before that we were in a crisis at the end of 2008 with this potential financial meltdown. I supported the concept of TARP, but then, when this administration used discretion and did a whole lot of things that the American people didn't like, I was then against it. So yes, and I'm owning up to that. 

Now, getting back to the gentleman's question in terms of what we need to do, we need to get government out of the way. It starts with making sure that we can boost this economy and then reform Dodd-Frank and reform a lot of these other regulations that have gotten in the way -- 

COOPER: Time. 

CAIN: -- and let the market do it just like Mitt has talked about.

So Herman's story now is that he is upset that winners and losers were picked under TARP by the Obama regime. Bailing out banks was OK. GM? Not so much.

To Herman, however, picking winners and losers just among the banks doesn't seem to matter, where TARP obviously was used to pick winners and losers in that industry. Just ask all the sound banks who've had to ante up advance FDIC insurance fund premiums to restore the depleted DIF used to help the failing and see how they feel about all the special treatment the big bad boys received at their expense.

Here is Herman just three weeks after passage of TARP in October of 2008, raising no objection whatsoever to the new strategy of picking winners in the banking industry:

[I]nstead of buying toxic mortgage-related assets of banks as originally proposed, the Treasury has changed tactics and will buy equity positions called preferred stocks, which gives us as taxpayers an ownership stake in their success for a limited period of time.

Herman is making things up as he goes on many issues, editing his positions as he becomes aware of the inconsistencies of his own statements.

Not surprising, but not very encouraging.

999 Plan Contains Protectionist Elements

Which to Jerry Bowyer, here, is just another reason to oppose the plan:

And I haven’t even mentioned the protectionist elements of the plan which would, for example, allow business to deduct expenditures for capital goods if they are purchased domestically, but not if they are purchased for abroad. That one alone would constitute a Smoot, a Hawley and a half a Perot in one fell swoop.

B.O. Finally Gets Gaddafi: "And Now [Obama's] An Assassin"

So Louis Farrakhan in May 2011, here:

"We voted for our brother Barack, a beautiful human being with a sweet heart, and now he's an assassin. They turned him into them."

So ends the undeclared, illegal war against Libya, which was only supposed to take a few days.

Next!

TSA VIPR Units Search Trucks at 5 Interstate Locations in Tennessee Tuesday 10/18/11

Whatever happened to probable cause?

The American fascist police state expands its operations, in the ever so co-operative Bible Belt.

Two bus stations were also targeted, as reported here.

Random searches of cars cannot be far behind.

Herman Cain on Social Security

Seen here:

"Increasing the retirement age for benefits" is "preposterous."

Herman Cain Clearly Considers Mormonism To Be Just Another Christian Denomination

In his own words in 2007, here:

The Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Mormons and a few other faiths have three things in common – they believe in Jesus Christ, that He is the Son of God and that He died and was resurrected for our sins.

So what's the problem?

The political pundits continue to try and make Mitt Romney's religious beliefs a big issue as he runs for the Republican presidential nomination. Different denominations of Christianity are just that – different denominations – which means different worship practices of the same fundamental Christian beliefs.

America: where what once was fringe becomes mainstream.

Louisiana Bans Cash In Transactions For 'Used' In Order To Establish Paper Trails For Law Enforcement

Story here.

"This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" says the one dollar bill.

Just words.

Government just can't find enough ways to slow down the velocity of money.

Herman Cain Invites Every Family To Do Tax Arithmetic To Test His 999 Plan, But Only 17 Percent Do Their Own Taxes

Could they even if they wanted to?

So this story from earlier this year:

So given all the supremely personal acts that we have happily relinquished to software, why do 60 percent of Americans use a real live tax pro to do their taxes? TurboTax costs less than $100 for most people, and it’s probably a breeze compared with open enrollment. Yet only 21 percent of Americans use tax software. Nearly as many, 17 percent, use a pencil.

Herman Cain's 999 Plan Actually Taxes Income Three Times, Not Just Once

Most people who work get paychecks from businesses. Net compensation to about 150 million Americans in 2009 came to $5.9 trillion.

The businesses who pay all these people will no longer be able to deduct the cost of labor from their corporate taxes under the 999 plan, so business will pay a 9 percent tax on its cost of labor.

Once businesses pass through the wages, the workers now pay a 9 percent tax on this money which now becomes income to them, which, however, has already been taxed once at 9 percent as income to the businesses.

Whereupon, with what's left after being taxed twice, the workers now buy things in the marketplace from businesses and pay a 9 percent national sales tax without exception, thus exposing the same money to a third round of taxation.

Over the weekend Herman Cain has maintained here that his plan "is fair and neutral, taxing everything once and nothing twice."

On the contrary, much of the income is taxed three times.

Herman Cain Has a 999 Plan. Obama Just Has a 9 Plan, as in Unemployment.

So says Joseph Curl, here.

Jonathan Chait Sticks With Calumny

Here:

Even if Cain decided midstream to switch from business plan pseudo-candidate to actual candidate, it is difficult to believe that many of his putative supporters would actually pull the lever for him. Announcing one’s support for him is a statement, a finger in the eye of Obama and the liberals, not an indicator of a likely vote.

New York Yankees Beat Wall Street Bankers 124-28 in Cross Town Beat Down

So says Mark J. Perry, here:

Where's the outrage about "excessive" salaries for Yankees players, which have increased relative to average New York City salaries much more than salaries for NYC bankers?  What about an "Occupy Yankee Stadium" protest?

"Kultur is the Ultimate Economic Fundamental"

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard keeps trying to come to terms with Germany, here.

Herman Cain's Little Noticed 718 Percent Tariff Increase on Foreign Imports

Most of us have been fixated on income, sales and business taxes in Herman Cain's 999 Plan, but there is a little noticed line which I think adds considerable government revenue in the form of increased tariffs on foreign imports, and considerable American competitiveness by exempting our own exports from the plan's 9 percent business tax and the 9 percent sales tax:

Exports leave our shores without the Business Tax or the Sales Tax embedded in their cost, making them world class competitive. Imports are subject to the same taxation as domestically produced goods, leveling the playing field.

In 2010, imports to this country came to $2.3 trillion, on which a paltry $25.3 billion was collected in tariffs. If I understand Cain's plan correctly, that tariff would balloon to $207 billion to match tax burdens born by domestically manufactured and sold goods and services which are subject to the 9 percent business tax.

The last time tariffs on foreign goods similarly accounted for 9.6 percent of federal revenue occurred sometime between 1930 and 1935.

Herman Cain is thereby defying free-trade ideology in the name of a level playing field, which message should win him considerable support among American patriots, regardless of party.

"If At First You Don't Succeed . . .

. . . keep on sucking until you do succeed! Nyuk. Nyuk."

-- Curly Howard

DC Occupiers Ruin Stimulus-Funded Sod, Camp Illegally; Feds Turn Blind Eye

Reported here.

Tea Party damage to date = 0; incidents of trespassing = 0.

Occupy Wall Street in Chicago: Applause For "The Next Big Step in the Democratic Revolution"

Video here.