Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

No one could have predicted…

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Bark louder, little dog.

In after Baud. Damn.

It’s a doggy dog world.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

“woke” is the new caravan.

As long as McCarthy is Speaker, the House will never be in order.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Cole is on a roll !

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

This really is a full service blog.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Rick Perry 2016: He’s Way More Butch Than Lindsey Graham!

Rick Perry 2016: He’s Way More Butch Than Lindsey Graham!

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Lindsey, as it happens, is the one other gen-u-wine military veteran among this cycle’s GOP candidates. But the only reason Rick Perry is getting more media attention than Lincoln Chafee right now is that Texas is so much bigger than Rhode Island…

We know where Rick Perry would like to lead the country. Back to 1861. He’s the first candidate in over 150 years to run for the presidency of the Confederate States Of America. — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

Tragically, not a joke; read the ThinkProgress article for an interesting list of all the things Rick Perry is on the record as considering “unConstitutional” — from Social Security and environmental/worker/voter protection laws to the direct election of Senators. (In the good ol’ days, state legislatures appointed senators, which was a real boon to corrupt state legislators.)

The NYTimes and the Washington Post could barely bring themselves even to be dismissive, while the Texas media knows him all too well. Christopher Hooks, at the Texas Observer, “Don’t Laugh… “:

… You didn’t think former Gov. James Richard Perry, of the Paint Creek Perrys, was leaving us for good, did you? It has been 30 years since Perry entered public service, almost half of which he spent as a governor whose level of dominance over the state verged on a personality cult…

Perry was never going to go away quietly, oops or no. If you were to make the case for his presidential ambitions, you could point to his survivor’s instinct and his long history of success as a political chameleon—first a Democrat, then a Republican; first a believer in certain parts of the infrastructure of big government, then a tea partier; a Christian conservative, or a Tenther libertarian. What are his actual beliefs? Does he have any, or is he motivated solely by his love of the performance of power? If the latter, it might be the most presidential thing about him…

The twins are Morgan & Marcus Luttrell, ex-SEALs, and Adam Weinstein at Gawker has an explanation of the ensuing Twitter-tantrums:

Rick Perry’s presidential campaign launched today on the premise that you don’t need to be able to count to three as long as you can push the red button. But amid his militaristic orgy of self-praise, dumb media people had a dumb media argument about the emo twins flanking Perry. Caitlyn Jenner was involved…

rick perry deletes his emails anderson

(Nick Anderson via GoComics.com)
.

From Jonathan Tilove’s article, at the Austin Statesman:

…[T]he bad news for Perry is that the field is large and fluid and his special virtues – leadership skills, executive experience and likabilty, which could make him broadly acceptable – aren’t necessarily unique. What is unique to him, not just in this field but it seems in the annals of American history, is that he is the first major candidate for president running for president while under indictment.

He and his team have done a very good job of presenting that fact in its best light, and making it almost an afterthought, if that, in most of what is now written about Perry. But, the fact remains that he is under indictment back in Austin, with no resolution in sight…

Perry was indicted for abuse of power after threatening to veto funding for the state’s Public Integrity Unit unless Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg stepped down from office after her arrest for drunk driving and unseemly behavior at the time of her arrest.

While Perry initially played the indictment to his political advantage, over time, Rottinghaus said, it is nothing but an albatross. In a field as large as this, for almost any other claim Perry can make on a voter – his foreign policy hawkishness, his executive experience, his social conservatism – there is, Rottinghaus said, another candidate who can make that same claim and isn’t under indictment…

Reader Interactions

87Comments

  1. 1.

    Amir Khalid

    I look forward to the media questions:
    “Governor Perry, will you take leave from the campaign to attend your trial?”

    “Governor Perry, how wil your conviction affect your chances on Election Day next week?”

    “Mr President-elect Perry, you’ve been refused bail pending your appeal. Will the Chief Justice be visiting you in prison to administer your oath of office?”

  2. 2.

    Baud

    AFAIK, Perry is still popular in Texas. Jindal plans to run also, and his polling is in the toilet.

  5. 5.

    raven

    A fucking air force JAG officer is about as weak shit of being a vet as there could be.

  7. 7.

    Schlemazel

    Given the number of clowns in the GOP car (“Yeah, I think we’re all bozos on this bus” – Firesign Theater anyone?) I have do wonder, do they all actually believe they stand a chance? Are some of the wounder ones running for VP and the future (2020) headliner gig? They can’t all be that delusional . . . seriously

  8. 8.

    raven

    @Baud: I disagree, like it or not W strapped his dumb ass in a jet. Pittypat ain’t gonna get hurt by his law books.

  9. 9.

    dmsilev

    @Valdivia: Well, we’re still missing several of the 2012 clowns. Mittens is out. We haven’t heard from Newt. Nothing from Herman 999 Cain. Going back a bit further, I’m sure Alan Keyes is rested and ready.

    I believe the first rule of clown cars is that there’s always room for one more clown.

  10. 10.

    Valdivia

    @dmsilev: maybe there is a rule that the clowniest candidates only get to ride in the clown car once? I think that is all they need to have the grift to work.

    Kevin Drum had a ranking of candidates from clowniest to less clowny. Pretty much my take. Only exception is that I think if Kacich gets in he would be one tier up.

  15. 15.

    Another Holocene Human

    I’m so over Rick Perry, so boring. Hasn’t he had enough damning scandals yet? No? GOP in Tx holding his shit back as a professional courtesy?

    I’m reading full time Duggar drama. As a survivor of child abuse, these people disgust me. I’m glad to see plenty of people, including the crew on CNN the other day (including Don Dipshit Lemon!), seeing right through their utter bullshit: minimizing molestation, handing such a serious issue “in house”, taking no responsibility, uttering not a word of concern about the victims, and casting themselves as a victims of a worldly, police/media conspiracy.

    The most damning thing is when the planet’s most famous Gothardites admitted that juveniles sexually assaulting other juveniles in the home is typical in their community.

    WHAAAAAAAA—–???

    Oh yeah, sign me up for “Jesus” (Bill Gothard, sexual predator)’s godly plan right now!

    (Jesus is the one who said you should amputate organs if you so much as think about raping somebody, not exactly expert clinical advice but a far cry from this cult-Calvinist it’s-no-biggie, make the victim forgive the perp shit. Jesus also didn’t command offering forgiveness, instead, he counseled those who had done wrong to make restitution, as well as to plead for forgiveness, 7×70 times or some other ridiculous number. If you’re begging that many times, kind of implies the other party is not being coerced to accept it. And Jesus never said “well, just tell God you’re sorry and it’s all good.” I point this out because it’s kind of a stretch to call these people Christians. They don’t even pretend to follow the same scripture and traditions that Christians do.)

  17. 17.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    I hear on Morning Hoe that GE wants to move from CT to a “more business friendly state”, do they mean one of those that are turning their asphalt roads into gravel because they don’t have the funds to maintain them?

  19. 19.

    Waspuppet

    “OMG TelePrompTer you can’t be president” is SO 2009. New marching orders are in.

    Unless you’re saying there was just something DIFFERENT about this president …

  20. 20.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    Hmmm, it’s raining outside(looks at calendar, this ain’t right), we’re thankful.

  21. 21.

    Randy P

    We’re going to have lots of opportunity to point and laugh over the next year and a half. But it still depresses me to consider that one klown will be left standing in November 2016 and that person will receive votes from nearly 50% of the American voters.

  24. 24.

    NorthLeft12

    @Randy P: For the sake of your country, I sincerely hope that those “nearly 50% of the votes” does not convert to over 50% of the electoral votes.

    On second thought, how about for the sake of the world? The rest of us need the US to be a constructive member of the world community.

  25. 25.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Randy P:

    We’re going to have lots of opportunity to point and laugh over the next year and a half. But it still depresses me to consider that one klown will be left standing in November 2016 and that person will receive votes from nearly 50% of the American voters.

    That’s my gloomy take as well. Any of these clowns is poised to do real damage. And I don’t believe HRC is guaranteed. Anything could happen.

    I laugh at them, but I remind myself of those birds out in the forest who do imitations of the chain saws approaching their habitat.

    I laughed at Reagan in 1979. I laughed at W in 1999. I can chuckle at the klown kar, but it’s coming at me at 90 mph, bright headlights in my face.

  26. 26.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Another Holocene Human: As one who felt the righteous hand of God (and yardstick, and book, and…) on an almost daily basis in 5th and 6th grade I can only say there is no abuser like a believer.

  27. 27.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Valdivia: There’s a RWTroll in the comments section of my local paper calling liberals perverts because of something Bernie wrote forty years ago.

  28. 28.

    BruceFromOhio

    Time is a flat circle:

    I thought time was a gypsy caravan
    That steals away in the night
    To leave you stranded in dreamland

    With so many klowns in the klown kar kavalcade, I can see a total splintering of the primaries, where each klown gets votes and wins a majority in his or her region or state… and nowhere else. The only winners are the advertisers and the print shops. Perhaps this great gravy train of grift is really a jobs program?

    Ricky needs better rims, he looks like a claims adjuster.

  32. 32.

    Bystander

    That a guy under indictment can declare his candidacy without evoking uncontrollable laughter speaks volumes about how crazy the repub party is. Crazy, lawless and dangerous.

    Which is why I agree with Germy above about laughing at the clowns. One of those guys could be a Ralph Steadman character for the next 8 years.

  34. 34.

    MattF

    Biggest change from four years ago– he’s wearing glasses. And not your fashionista wire-rims, either. He-man glasses.

  35. 35.

    Valdivia

    @Baud: yes, I remember the case in 2002 of the sniper team here in the DC area. Pretty scary.

    Off to bury myself in books, have a good day y’all.

  36. 36.

    Mustang Bobby

    Forty-seven years ago today Bobby Kennedy was shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California primary. He died the next day.

    Maybe it’s just the mists of time and nostalgia clogging my mind, but I have yet to hear any of the potential presidents running for the 2016 nomination that come close to his vision, his compassion, and his eloquence.

  37. 37.

    Baud

    @Valdivia:

    This one doesn’t seem to shoot as often, or be as accurate. Hope they catch him soon. Now that it’s making the news, I wonder how he will react.

  39. 39.

    Valdivia

    @Baud: yes I hope they catch him soon

    @OzarkHillbilly: that would not surprise me.

    ok lovely people gotta go figure out how to teach that extra class I got saddled with which is on a theme I have little idea about. Fun! :)

  41. 41.

    raven

    @Mustang Bobby: It was the first time I dropped acid. I was in the Army stationed at Ft Lewis. We went to Seattle and scored, ate it and took the bus back to the fort. We got back after dark and couldn’t hang in the barracks so we took a radio into the laundry room, turned it on and it came on the radio. Oddly, the Tom Petty video of “Learning to Fly”, about kid’s first trip includes a one or two second flash of Bobby on the floor after being shot at 3:02. For years it drove me nuts how that was in that video! I finally read somewhere that he just put it in their randomly.

  43. 43.

    raven

    @Mustang Bobby: Nice. I was already on the road to cynicism at the ripe old age of 19. I was in Korea when MLK was killed and on my way to Vietnam that fall. Disillusionment was ingrained.

  44. 44.

    raven

    Will Joe ask one of these motherfuckers about the SOFA and our withdrawal from Iraq?

  45. 45.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    I laughed at Reagan in 1979. I laughed at W in 1999. I can chuckle at the klown kar, but it’s coming at me at 90 mph, bright headlights in my face.

    Reagen didn’t humiliate himself on national TV in 1976 like Perry did in 2008. That will be hard one to live down and Perry isn’t affable enough for people to over look it.

  46. 46.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Mustang Bobby:

    …I have yet to hear any of the potential presidents running for the 2016 nomination that come close to his vision, his compassion, and his eloquence.

    This guy is an eloquent, compassionate visionary.

  47. 47.

    raven

    SOFA Negotiations[edit]
    Negotiations between the U.S. and Iraq for a new SOFA began in fall 2010. There were late-night meetings at the fortified compound of then Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, and in video conferences between Baghdad and Washington. In June 2011, diplomats and Iraqi officials said that President Obama had told Prime Minister Maliki that he was prepared to leave up to 10,000 soldiers to continue training and equipping the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). Mr. Maliki agreed, but said he needed time to line up political allies. Eventually, he gained authorization to continue talks with the U.S. on keeping troops in Iraq.[69]

    In August 2011, after debates between the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House, the U.S. settled on the 3,000 to 5,000 troop number. An American official said intelligence assessments stated that Iraq was not at great risk of slipping into chaos in the absence of American forces, which was a factor in the decision.[70]

    In October 2011, American officials pressed Iraqi leadership to meet again at President Talabani’s compound to discuss the issue. This time the U.S. asked Iraq to take a stand on the question of immunity for troops, hoping to remove what had always been the biggest challenge. However, they misread Iraqi politics and the Iraqi public. Having watched the Arab Spring sweep across the region and still haunted by the traumas of this and previous wars, the Iraqis were unwilling to accept anything that infringed on their sovereignty.[71]

    Iraqi leadership picked up on that sentiment quickly. As a result, they publicly said they would not support legal immunity for any American troops. Some American officials have privately said that pushing for that meeting — in essence forcing the Iraqis to take a public stand on such a controversial matter before working out the politics of presenting it to their constituents and to Parliament — was a severe tactical mistake that ended any possibility of keeping American troops past December 2011.[72]

    After the pull out was announced, White House aides said the U.S. would keep its embassy in Baghdad and two consulates. They also said there will be about 4,000-5,000 defense contractors.[73]

  49. 49.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @raven: I turned it off while Joe was bitching about his taxes in CT. Did you know he pays 55% of his income in taxes? He should get a new accountant. And to answer your question about the SOFA, NO.

  53. 53.

    Keith P.

    @Baud: Jindal’s that kid who told the neighborhood he’s jumping Springfield Gorge on his bike, but now that he’s actually there and knows he can’t make the jump, everybody’s watching him, so he jumps anyway.

  54. 54.

    ThresherK

    I glanced at the top one and thought, Finally the two sides of Rick Perry are together. He’s running for President. Of Texas.

    Hey, let’s start a betting pool on which reporter will ask him “So, no secession for now?” We’d all die and have to leave the money in escrow.

  56. 56.

    Germy Shoemangler

    I suspect the debates will be tightly controlled, limited and brief. I don’t think the GOP wants them fighting too hard.

  58. 58.

    low-tech cyclist

    “We cling to our families, our Bible and our guns,” sings Gary Kyle and No Standards Band at Perry announcement.

    Bibles and guns – two great tastes that taste great together.

    They’d notice the cognitive dissonance there, if they had any cognition.

  59. 59.

    Elizabelle

    @ThresherK: You called it. Visuals say: this guy is running for the White People’s Republic of Texas. And any of you red staters who wish you were here to share the glory. Fertilizer plant implosions. Biblical weather. Counties with more cattle than people.

    Perry’s good looking. I wish his ambitions stopped at being a soap opera leading man.

  60. 60.

    low-tech cyclist

    @Valdivia:

    I think the better question is: who is not running for president from the GOP side.

    I’ve been using this quote:

    “Well, who in the damn galaxy ain’t?” – Mal Reynolds

  65. 65.

    JimL

    I protest that Tweeted comparison of Hannity to Boswell and Perry to Johnson. Both Boswell and Johnson were literate.

  67. 67.

    Chris

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    Yep. Agree completely with your last paragraph.

    Like it or not, we live in a country where almost half the people are stark, raving, bugfuck, loony tunes, kool aid guzzling insane. Sooner or later, one of them’s gonna get back in the White House. And if the Law of Worsening Republican Presidents holds, he’ll actually be worse than W. Bush.

  68. 68.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Chris: Why doesn’t one of the Koch brothers just roll up his sleeves and declare? Push all his surrogates to one side and say “I’m the one, mutherfuggers”

    And if anyone dares ask him to release his tax returns, he can refuse. Didn’t Mitt set that precedent?

  69. 69.

    nominus

    “AFAIK, Perry is still popular in Texas. Jindal plans to run also, and his polling is in the toilet. ”

    No, that’s not how it works here. Everyone in Texas swears that they always hated Perry, and they certainly never voted for such a fraud. Somehow it was everyone else in Texas that kept him in office long past his shelf date. In Texas you don’t disavow losers, you pretend they never existed. Meanwhile you just latch on to the next asshole who is going to commit all the same mistakes and/or crimes. See Abbott, Cruz, et. al.

  71. 71.

    Kathleen

    @raven: While I didn’t have to worry about being drafted to fight in Vietnam, I became very cynical at age 18/19 as well. I remember waking up and hearing that RFK had been murdered, and thinking “This is the end of the world” because it came on the heels of MLK’s murder and I was terrified that something more was afoot. Of course I’m one of those very rare people who still believe JFK’s murder was a conspiracy.

  73. 73.

    Chris

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    Why doesn’t one of the Koch brothers just roll up his sleeves and declare? Push all his surrogates to one side and say “I’m the one, mutherfuggers”

    Because a lot of corporate types would rather be the ones behind the throne than the ones sitting on the throne. You don’t want to bog yourself down in all the nitty-gritty administrative details of running a national government, or the mess of an election campaign. And you certainly don’t want to be the public face of the operation, the one who gets the blame when your policies go bad. That’s what you hire people for.

    Also – I remember reading a long time ago that in the original Gilded Age, a lot of the robber barons considered politics to be beneath them. I used to think that was for the obvious reason (politics is a messy and dirty and sleazy business even in the best of times). Watching the Romneys and especially Ann’s reaction to the campaign made me realize there’s an even more direct reason – politics means talking to the rabble. It means standing up in townhall after townhall listening to the plebes, pretending that you care about their boring concerns, pretending that you’re one of them, putting yourself on display for them, actually seeking their approval, as if they had any right to pass judgment on you. The entire election cycle, I was just getting that vibe that they couldn’t believe they actually had to go through all the exposure to their inferiors when the White House was plainly theirs by divine right. I can well imagine that there are a lot more 1%ers out there who find the whole mess too disgusting to even try for it.

  74. 74.

    Helmut Monotreme

    @Keith P.:

    Jindal’s that kid who told the neighborhood he’s jumping Springfield Gorge on his bike, but now that he’s actually there and knows he can’t make the jump, everybody’s watching him, so he jumps anyway.

    No, once it’s clear he can’t make the jump, he makes his little brother who still rides with training wheels, jump.

  75. 75.

    Valdivia

    @Elizabelle: sorry I was burried in books until now. It’s a class of art of latin america in the 20th century (I called it A Visual Tango). It was programed for last term then cancelled, then cancelled again and revived last minute. I know enough (specially about the muralist movement) but I am not really an expert to wing it. Thankfully I had already done the syllabus and prepared the reading materials about a year ago now I just have to figure out what to say (and make sure I am not wrong!) It should be fun though once I cram enough knowledge in my head.

    @low-tech cyclist: lol, I have to start using that.

  77. 77.

    Amir Khalid

    @Valdivia:
    Interesting that the victim passed away 20 years ago and so is not Individual A, who’s been collecting beaucoup bucks from Hastert.

  79. 79.

    Tone in DC

    @low-tech cyclist:

    Bibles and guns – two great tastes that taste great together.

    They’d notice the cognitive dissonance there, if they had any cognition.

    LULz. That’s gonna leave a mark.

  83. 83.

    boatboy_srq

    Is it just me, or is that shot of Perry’s fauxnouncement the whitest whitey white collection of whiteness this year? It’s also in the running for the most masculine manly collection of maleness. But the white nature of the white collection of white folks on the white dais in front of the white plane is just so darned white. I keep reaching for my peril-sensitive sunglasses.

  84. 84.

    Epicurus

    Anyone here know when/if Perry’s trial has yet been scheduled? I’m thinking it would be good if it coincided with the GOP nominating convention.

  85. 85.

    pea

    after 30 years of watching the gains and rights of the middle class eroded (take wage/benefit cuts or your job will be moved to mexico),
    villified for expecting pensions they paid into that were “raided” by the likes of enron and bain capital, any republican who now says “i hear you”, “inequality is a problem in the u.s.” is just another asshole carpet bagger, lying through their teeth with a dollar signed twinkle their eye.

  86. 86.

    fuckwit

    @raven: And was, by all accounts, an excellent pilot.

    Now, who gives a shit? Hitler loved his girlfriend too. How is that relevant to anything? It doesn’t redeem him in any way. Neither does Shrub’s skills at doing loops in a F104.

    I am sick to death of all of this military-worship in this country. It got so ridiculous during the 2004 campaign I was puking blood: Swift Boats, kerning, both candidates and everyone downticket too trying to show how fucking soldiery they were. It was absurd.

    This is supposed to be a civilian-run country, last I checked. Two of the most well-known generals ever to have served as president warned us about the deep dangers of the military getting too much power, too much status, too entrenched, in civilian government.

  87. 87.

    Chris

    @fuckwit:

    I just saw a picture from a conservative and active-duty military Facebook friend: “A lot of people think [whatever her name is who’s transsexual and has everyone talking about her] is brave, but you don’t see ANYONE talking about [name of a soldier who lost both his legs and is pictured smiling with his two new prosthetics]!”

    I’m so fucking exhausted with the soldier-worship. Is it even possible to recognize anyone, or anything, anywhere, without being guilty of committing thoughtcrime and slander against The Troops? “Ohhh, you say you love bacon and scrambled egg breakfast? I guess that means you don’t love THE TROOPS, hmmm, you Islammunocialist flag-burning Volvo-driving latte-sipping traitor to the homeland?”

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