(Ben Sargent via GoComics.com)
Matt Yglesias at Think Progess discusses what he considers the “Ten Weirdest Ideas In Rick Perry’s ‘Fed Up’“:
Rick Perry’s November 2010 book Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington is not a typical “campaign book” from a political candidate. For starters, its forward is written by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, nominally one of Perry’s rivals for the nomination. For another thing, its overall tone much more closely resembles that of a B-list conservative radio host looking to stir up controversy and sell books than of a cautious politician trying out poll-tested lines. Consequently, while the book is by no means a good one, it’s certainly a lot more interesting than most comparable works. I read it over the weekend, and thus am proud to produce the following list of the Top Ten Weirdest Ideas…
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8. Medicare Is Too Expensive But Must Never Be Cut: Both establishing Medicare in 1965 and expanding it to include prescription drugs in 2003 are examples of “an irresponsible culture of spending in Washington” (page 63), but establishing “‘councils of experts’ and panels of various sorts” to assess the cost effectiveness of different Medicare-eligible treatments is a “frightening” “scheme” that “undermines freedom” and can be fairly labeled “death panels” (page 81)…
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5. Almost Everything Is Unconstitutional: Regrets the existence of jurisprudence construing the Commerce Clause to permit “federal laws regulating the environment, regulating guns, protecting civil rights, establishing the massive programs and Medicare and Medicaid, creating national minimum wage laws, [and] establishing national labor laws.” Perry makes a partial exception for laws barring racial discrimination which he says fulfill “the intent behind the passage of the Reconstruction Era amendments.” (page 51)…
It’s frig-magnet sloganeering like this and the Palenty encomium that I posted earlier which made me suspect that Perry, “a man largely unencumbered by principles” (as a former associate phrased it), was doing the Will-He-or-Won’t-He candidate dance as a means of attracting media attention to increase his marketability on the Wingnut Welfare circuit. Quite possibly at/with the “encouragement” of Republican Serious-Money backers — the people that funded the original Taxed Enough Already agitators. The Koch Bros’n’Cronies seem to be trying to choke off the genuine nutroot Zealot Candidate (Bachmann, who may have been intended as the Palin-blocker) in time to herd the rubes into the “safe” (Romney) chute before the whole Repub-brand starts to whiff too strongly of a fly-by-night carnival. But even the most hard-headed grifter is prone to end up being seduced by his own grift… all the sweet, sweet fluffing Perry’s gotten from the novelty-mad Media Village Idiots over the past week must make it hard for him to resist believing he could run a long con all the way to Tampa, if not the Oval Office.
Which means I once again am driven to quote Doghouse Riley for the perfect encapsulation:
… You’ve just got to love, or puke at the mention of, how Rick Perry became the Instantly Credible Candidate when “credible” is code for–no, hell, it’s not even code, it’s synonymous with–“rich donor list”. I mean, there’s nothing else aside from this constant artificial excitement over what bright, shiny, and fur-wrapped object has grabbed the Religious Teabagger focus du jour. The Texas Miracle–interesting, by the way; a year ago, when the now in decline Establishment Republicans for Mitch–and Mitch himself, I think it goes without saying–touted Indiana as having the best employment record in the Abysmal Obama Economy. Daniels got away with it. Perry won’t.
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And don’t get me wrong: Rick Perry is religious scam artist, a public liar, and a neo-confederate fuck melon. And he could be Your Next President. None of those things is mutually exclusive of the other. Hell, in the last three decades they’re positively correlated. Rick Perry sounds like he stands for something. It may not matter anymore just What that happens to be. Democrats quit doing that full-time in 1981, after spending the previous decade apologizing for George McGovern and ridiculing Jimmy Carter. Sorry, but the possibility of President Rick Perry exists today only because Democrats wouldn’t stand up for themselves after losing to Richard Fucking Milhous Nixon.
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I hate to keep bringing it up, but that’s that. Democrats decided in 1972 that Liberalism had run its course; in 1974 Democratic Senators decided it was too costly to get the money out of politics. 2006 was just a re-capitulation; Democrats placed in a two-house majority because of an extremely unpopular war couldn’t find the wherewithal to defund it, let alone bring anyone home or hold the Worst President in History accountable. Democrats are not going to take their rightful place as the majority party in the US until they chop the Republicans off at the knees. That’s a requirement. Now, of course, the GOP has gone so far Right it’s in danger of falling into a Horowitz Singularity and emerging as weirdly religious Trotskyites, and the Dems will figure once again that sooner or later they’ll return to power on the backs of what morons their opponents are.
Ron
It’s really sad when you have someone make George Bush look like the thoughtful governor of Texas.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
How white of him to make a partial exception for civil rights. Gosh darn it, I’m going to vote for him instead of Obama!
Also too, from now on I shall now refer to him as Gov. Good Hair Fuck Melon.
Mark S.
From the Yglesias piece:
A deregulated slave market would have brought peace and prosperity to the country. Perfectly laudable policy choices at the local level should not be second guessed by bureaucrats in Washington.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mark S.: The Free Market would have ended slavery. When black people were freely allowed to buy and sell white people, game over.
Seanly
Oh, come on. It is very clear that we’re taking everything out of context. Clearly we’ve misconstrued it all and it is completely unfair to hold his own word from 2 years ago against him.
jharp
I think it is best to lay off the criticizing of Governor Perry.
To me, I want that fucking crackpot to win the nomination. Obama would win in a waltz.
burnspbesq
Nice to see that some things don’t change, i.e., Doghouse Riley continues to be endlessly incoherent.
Just exactly what, pray tell, is a “neo-Confederate fuck melon?”
General Stuck
I don’t know where people get the dem party gave up liberalism in the 1970’s. That is just wrong as a uniform state of the party. That in those days contained plenty of dixiecrats, and pre neo con Scoop Jackson acolytes for using war as a prime instrument of diplomacy.
There were some really landmark liberal laws passed in those days, but many of them needed moderate republican social liberals to pass.
Now that the Southern Strategy has come full circle, in the broad sense, and mostly in the narrow sense, with some exceptions, I think the dem party is much more uniformly mainstream liberal in both the house and senate, with the senate holding a few hold on conservadems, and even fewer in the house these days.
The problem is not the dem party abandoning mainstream liberalism, though not hard leftism. The problem is that all the crazies, many of which were once dems have settled into a seditious GOP, abusing it’s minority rights provisions, to use for acting like a majority, or at least blanket rejection of anything progressive or liberal, even down to raising enough revenue to run the country.
Worked2Death
Frankly, that article was a slap in face to fuck melons everywhere.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Mark S.: Huh. Declaring war on the South didn’t constitute federal involvement.
Whatever. Just another fine example of the clumsy fumbling that occurs when GOPers remember African-Americans can vote.
Now, where can I lay a bet on how long it takes him to start back away from his uncivil, racist, blood libel of The South?
rikyrah
love that you call him a grifter
LOL
kth
The danger with Perry isn’t that he governs according to that Bircherite playbook, as most likely he’ll dump all those teabagger rubes the minute he doesn’t need them anymore. The danger is that Perry, being utterly without substance, serves as this tabula rasa, this vacuum of intellect and principle into which swirls every dusty right-wing agenda. Which we just saw in the last presidency. It’s like that proverb from Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire, except for if it’s a farce the first time, what do you call it the second time?
gbear
Charles Johnson over at LGF has been gathering up stories about how Perry appointed extreme Creationists to head the TX school board. Perry was/is really intent on sending science education back to the stone age.
Spaghetti Lee
It’s like that proverb from Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire, except for if it’s a farce the first time, what do you call it the second time?
A Sunday morning talk show?
Anne Laurie
@burnspbesq:
Have you forgotten the 2008 Republican primaries, where some evangelical notable felt called to explain, over the air, how horny young Southrun lads would practice on plugged watermelons before… moving up… to the local livestock?
Now, do you need me to tell you his explanation of the phrase “stump-broke mule”?
MikeBoyScout
The juxtaposition is absolutely perfect.
I have the pleasure of having Europeans in the house this week, and while we had the snooze hour on in the background with its fawning over the barley relevant Wizard of Oz (If I only had a brain) Scarecrow poll results, I was asked (pointedly!) where we find so many of these idiots and why would we make them contenders for the presidency.
I’ve no answer, except maybe that we are doomed.
Bruce S
Colbert’s SuperPAC should go all out for Perry – yes, spelled right, with an “e”.
Slogan: “It takes balls to execute an innocent man!”
craigie
Today’s internet winner! Hilarious.
IM
@MikeBoyScout:
Well yes. Italy is ruled by Silvio berlusconi after all.
On the other hand, in a Berlusconi/Perry race, I would argue:
Vote for the crook, at least he is not Greg Stillson!
MikeBoyScout
@19IM:
Sure Italy has Berlusconi, but that’s not the same as a never ending supply of neo-confederate fuck melons.
Also too, maybe I should have clarified my guests are Europeans from the north, but I’ll be sure to bust their balls, cuz misery loves company.
Mark S.
From the Dept. of WTF:
Someday they are going to make walking illegal. I know I feel suspicious whenever I’m walking down the street. I start going over what I’ll tell the cops when they ask me what I’m doing.
(via blue guy and bald guy with glasses guy)
Jenny
Perry shows off his experienced oral technique.
http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0fND5NP4fW7fn/610x.jpg
boss bitch
From Twitter (ThinkProgress):
Won’t be long before he uses rhetoric like this on Obama.
Jenny
“Mouthwatering”
http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/06vQcm41w8fjt/x610.jpg
Jenny
“Deep Throat II”
http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0fm42YnghAeez/610x.jpg
http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/09oU2tBeBI6yX/x610.jpg
No wonder Ben Smith had to change his pants.
FlipYrWhig
I already thought that Perry was Dubya Redux. But all the bluster and swagger and self-aggrandizement and aggressive performances of “authenticity” are also… Sarah Palin.
Will Reks
@Jenny:
That second pic really highlights Rick’s cupping technique.
Suffern ACE
@boss bitch: Texas sounds like a place that’s fairly depressing to live in. Full of crabs and obnoxious hot-tempered people with thin skin.
KG
Every time he has an interview, he should be asked about secession. And the interviewer should not move on until he answers whether he believes a state has the right to secede and under what conditions.
Jenny
Well, I can understand the sentiment, after all, Bernanke’s people killed Jesus.
Worked2Death
Take a moment to consider another governor of Texas:
Sam Houston refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy when Texas seceded from the Union, and resigned as governor. To avoid bloodshed, he refused an offer of a Union army to put down the Confederate rebellion. Instead, he retired to Huntsville, Texas, where he died before the end of the Civil War.
Sam said: “All new states are invested, more or less, by a class of noisy, second-rate men who are always in favor of rash and extreme measures, but Texas was absolutely overrun by such men.”
Suffern ACE
@KG: No. He should be asked how state-based social security would work and how he plans to pay for people who are currently recieving social security as we transition to the new plan.
Anya
Daily Show promo:
I can’t wait.
FlipYrWhig
@Suffern ACE: His answer would probably be, “Jesus,” and when the reporter said, “Wait, what?” he’d say, “Jesus is always the answer,” and that would be that.
Suffern ACE
@FlipYrWhig: So Jesus is “higher taxes and lots of debt or we cut off Grandma?”
KG
@Suffern ACE: This guy has so much stupid in his past, there’s just no way he survives scrutiny. And that’s even before we get to the whole “do we really want another Texas governor in the white house?” issue. As a side note: I think this hurts Mitt, because we just had an MBA president and that didn’t work out well.
Oh, and to answer your question about state based social security: it’d work just the same as federal only it’d require higher taxes because of a smaller pool of workers. The fun part would be what if you move to another state?
hhex65
Ah, so it is the Democrats’ fault, that’s a new and interesting take on it.
The Republic of Stupidity
Before???
I’m sorry, but that clown car left the garage quite some time ago…
Mike G
I am as shocked, SHOCKED as Captain Renault that Perry is ignorant of how health insurance companies work. But I guess when it’s a private corporation doing the exact same procedure, it’s AwesomeFreedomJeebusMurka.
Samara Morgan
No. The demographic timer will have to chop the conservatives off at the knees.
The country is still half bubba.
Bubba is low information, subject to Right Wing Authority tendancy, conservative fact blocking and religio-racial bias.
Democrats growing giant cast iron balls will not impress Bubba with the validity of the social justice message.
Doghouse Riley is full of bulshytt.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Suffern ACE:
Jesus is on record as wanting the children to suffer so I doubt he cared too much about Grandma.
Samara Morgan
btw, Anne Laurie….did you know Perry is a crypto-muslim?
JGabriel
How to make the media’s head explode: serve corndogs with arugula and gourmet mustard baked-in to the GOP presidential candidates.
Then sit back and watch Matt Bai’s eyeballs pop out — like a Star Trek artificial intelligence encountering a divide by zero error — as he tries to figure out whether it’s authentic or elitist.
.
Arundel
Think Progress has a couple of interesting bits on Perry tonight:
PERRY ON BERNANKE: ‘I DUNNO WHAT Y’ALL WOULD DO TO HIM IN IOWA BUT WE WOULD TREAT HIM PRETTY UGLY DOWN IN TEXAS’ . Uh, kind of sounds nasty and unpresidedntial, no? Sorry, so fucking sick of this Texan brand of braggery about their tough-guy sadism being presented as delightful regional vigor. Appalling from anyone, much less a presidential candidate. Oh, and it “takes balls to execute an innocent man” you know! And I guess, publically mock the crying of a condemned woman as well, like W. Fuck Texas, honestly. I’m sick of qualifying that with I know there are many good people there, just.. No, just, fuck Texas. See a shrink about your masculinity issues, Texas.
Perry Reveals Plan For Total U.S. Anarchy: ‘Put A Moratorium On All Regulations’
Oh and by the way, this “rule of law” thing is for pussies. God, he seems like he’s cycling through some manic episode , drunk on the attention. He’s either going to burn out or kill someone with his bare hands to prove what a manly man he is, the way it’s going. Myself, I’m hoping for some distant-past gay skeleton vogueing out of the closet, and hopefully soon, because don’t know if I can take fifteen months of the media fawning over this preening, theatrically ultra-macho loon.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Arundel: Texas has a pretty big panhandle. It’s not nearly as large as Alaska’s, as populous as Maryland’s or as fast-growing as West Virginia’s but it’s nothing to be ashamed about.
(Although it is kinda stumpy and featureless.)
wasabi gasp
I wonder if he ever accidentally punched someone in the head while giving a speech.
Comrade Coffin
Posing in front of a “Veggie Corndogs” sign = RINO alert!
MikeJ
@Comrade Coffin: Ms Nutty Bar had truth in advertising.
aisce
you guys seriously do not need to worry about rick perry.
he just publicly threatened to assault the chairman of the fed. so yeah, good luck fundraising on that.
Martin
Gaddafi forces launched a Scud missile toward Brega. Sounds a little desperate.
Villago Delenda Est
@Samara Morgan:
The “Sharia foes” are beyond idiotic. They don’t mind the authoritarianism, mind you, just the fact that it’s in the name of Allah, not Jeebus.
LesGS
Trivial, I know. It’s “fridge-magnet,” not “frig-magnet.” Frig is a verb meaning “to fuck.”
We could call Perry a “frig-melon” and get through a lot of censors…
JGabriel
@aisce:
Linkie?
.
aisce
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/15/296552/perry-on-bernanke-pretty-ugly-down-in-texas/
he then went on to question the president’s patriotism and racially attacked obama’s standing as commander in chief.
in other words, there’s no difference between him and bachmann and paul, and wall street knows it. and they aren’t going to let any of these freaks win the nomination.
might as well make your peace with having to go through romney in 2012.
suzanne
Holy SHIT I just learned that Rick Perry’s father-in-law performed his VASECTOMY. WHY ON EARTH do I know that?! INTERROBANG!!!
My grandfather, close to the end of his life, when amazed/saddened/dejected by some current event, would often remark, “I’ve lived too long”.
Hearing that about Rick Perry made me empathize with my grandfather.
suzanne
@Samara Morgan: Can you just go hate-fuck E.D. already and go away?
Martin
@suzanne:
Real men perform their own vasectomy. With a laser scoped side-arm.
JC
@aisce: You think that anyone predisposed to vote for Perry, will either hear that, or care?
Palin took her political talent, and put it in the crapper, but it took awhile.
It will be great if Perry continues to say the dumb, but, I certainly wouldn’t count on it.
General Stuck
@Martin:
LOL, you win today’s internet, sir.
suzanne
@Martin:
The dude who pierced my, uh, well, yeah… Anyway, he gave himself his own Prince Albert. On purpose.
JC
I”I’m telling you, the guy knows how to campaign.
Just check it out.
JGabriel
@aisce: Thanks!
.
JGabriel
@suzanne:
I’ve just spent the last ten minutes staring into distance, trying to compose a response to this.
Now I know the meaning of the word: speechless.
.
Nethead Jay
@JGabriel: Hehehe, you never know when you’re about to be introduced to the true wilds of the net ;)
Yutsano
@Nethead Jay: Can we tell him about Rule 34 now? Huh? Can we? PLLLEEEEEAAAASSSEEEE??
Nethead Jay
@Yutsano: Go right ahead :D
Samara Morgan
@suzanne: i didnt mention him. you did.
the past is dust.
i hope you are breastfeeding. stupid lawyer cow.
Samara Morgan
stupid OLD lawyer cow.