Just a few hurried comments on the events of the day. (The events of the day are keeping me from the events of the day. Shall I say that a second time?)
Cain Mutiny. Presidential candidate Herman Cain has some more difficulties maintaining his myth of marital bliss, and this may be a game stopper for him. Naturally the death knell may come about over something that doesn’t matter a damn. Aside from his family, who the hell cares who he sleeps with, so long as it’s consensual and doesn’t involve minors, animals, etc.? Somehow this seems to bother people (and the mass media) more than the fact that the man has given zero thought to anything having to do with public affairs. He must be the first presidential candidate I’ve ever seen fail to give an opinion when someone asks him about something like the Libya intervention. He had to ask the interviewer what side Obama (i.e. the United States) was on. What the … ? Has the man been living in a 
pizza box? He is running for the G.O.P. nomination and apparently has no concept of what the pro-life and pro-choice positions actually mean.
Why the hell does this man want to be president? He smells to me like a cut-out for the Koch brothers, but what he says is that God encouraged him to run. Personally, I think God may have just been trying to order a pizza.
Deficit of Imagination. They’re sparring over the payroll tax cut – otherwise known as The Only Tax Cut That Needs To Be Paid For. With the Occupy movement receiving eviction notices from coast to coast, Congress is managing to turn the conversation back to debt with a good bit of help from the major news organizations. I heard Joe Scarborough sparring with Sherrod Brown about Medicare costs and showing “courage” by acknowledging that those costs were tantamount to a cancer on the body politic. His solution? Cut, cut, cut. Which is basically shift the burden onto the elderly, the ill, etc.
I didn’t hear Brown say this (he may have), but the courageous position to my mind would be to advocate expanding Medicare to cover everybody. The reason we have deficit Medicare spending projected for the next few decades is simple – we are subsidizing the profitability of private health insurers, who get to cover the least costly consumers while the government covers the most costly ones (i.e. the ones private insurers don’t want). The courageous thing to do would be to say, we can’t afford this model any longer.
I’m waiting to hear that from someone. Anyone?
luv u,
jp
Just writing whilest we’re having a little Thanksgiving layover on Titan, moon of Saturn, mother of all Tofurky. (Yes, this is where it comes from.) Taking a little break from the feasting, conversing, and pontificating (Anti-Lincoln is back on his Mexican-American War soapbox again), so this is a good time to open the mail, it seems. Most of our inquiries appear to be about our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, so let’s start with this:
Mean Little S.O.B. Gingrich has never been a favorite of mine – nor of practically anyone’s, I suspect – but his current campaign for president is remarkably nasty even by his low standard. The only flicker of humanity I’ve seen in him thus far has been his call to implement a bracero-like program for undocumented immigrants who have been here for many years. That will likely cost him with Republican voters, just as it did cousin Rick Perry, who voiced support for education benefits for undocumented youngsters. You could see the stifled glee on Romney’s face when Gingrich rolled out that position during one of the recent debates. No need to worry, though. Gingrich has kept to his standard of dickishness, intoning an almost Nixonian contempt of the Occupy Wall Street movement, exhorting them to take a bath and find a job, etc. Earth to Newt: it’s no longer 1971, man. That dog won’t hunt.